Farmers are changing the world with REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE - Groundswell Short Film

[Music] for over 70 years farmers have been pressured to make agriculture and food production more and more industrialized through intensive plowing and heavy use of chemical fertilizers our soils are being left sterile with little or no biodiversity these industrial farming techniques cause massive degradation and compaction of our soil contributing to flooding water pollution and erosion we've been losing land area essentially from erosion at the rate of about 10 million 7 to 10 million hectares per year which is almost the size of portugal you could see from satellite vast amount of topsoil leaving united kingdom into the ocean all over the world farmers are developing an alternative system to regenerate soil instead of degrading it to protect and increase water retention by covering soil with mulch and by growing continuous diverse crops without tilling or plowing it's called regenerative agriculture which includes no-till farming we are our entire existence on this planet to a six-inch layer of soil and the fact that it rains we erode those soils so we can't produce food so if we can find a an agricultural system that is more friendly to soils it's ultimately going to be a benefit for the farmers and for wider society it's only because of the uk's temperate climate that our soil has been so resilient but for how long it was the dust bowl in 1930s america that highlighted the problems caused by disturbing the soil and popularized the no-till movement farmers all over the world began experimenting with ways to farm without plowing planting the seeds straight into undisturbed soil direct drills can replace plows by using a cutting disc or knife to sow seeds with very little disturbance to topsoil so that it maintains its structure [Music] carlos cravetto is a pioneering no-tiller in chile south america i have been in 21 countries teaching no till to the farmers no deal must be done all around the world not only here where we used to have a lot of erosion keeping the the cover in the top of the soil every year and all these organic matter that is processed by mother nature begin to protect the soil begin to improve the humus compound of the soil that is very very important for farmers and this is the main key that they have as an adjective to be a good farmer that increase soil instead of deplete soil healthy soil needs minimal disturbance so no ploughing constant coverage with living roots diverse species and crop rotation ideally including livestock grazing farming is exciting now it's instead of almost drudgery doing the same thing all the time there are different views you see the soil altering which is fantastic a lot of swiss friends ca the government gives them assistance for five years and after seven they're now out yielding classic agriculture now our target has always been to to get back to the same obviously with less inputs with less and with better soil here we are on the farm which is in no till since 1980 so 36 years of no-till as you can see here this is my cedar the no-till machinery and at the top there is my great-grandfather plow so it means we don't plow anymore this is the past and today it's completely different you know that you are improving the soil and you are doing something for the future this is a good soil there is no compaction it's uh and this is not dirt it's soil the main tool is not the tractor the main tool is is the soil if the soil works i know that i will be able to grow crops the soil has incredible food web know a handful of healthy soil contains more living creatures and there are humans on the planet and and so someone i mean most of them would be microscopic so bacteria and fungi and then you just get all the things that eat those and then you get the things that eat those and then you end up with the really big things which we can actually see like worms our soil is actually a habitat and it's got infrastructure just like a city does it's got underground tunnels that are super highways it's got the mycorrhizal hyphae in there which are really the um fiber optic cables that are communicating with all the plants and networking them all so they're all talking to one another so the idea being that when you are standing on your soil you're really standing on the rooftop of this other world and and you as a farmer have the ability to destroy this other world or you can nurture it and culture it and and make it great agriculture is responsible for nearly 20 of the carbon emissions that affect global warming but with regenerative farming carbon can be locked up within the soil and remains in the ground as organic matter feeding the plants and microbes that nurture the soil cover crops like beans are also used to fix nitrogen into the soil reducing the need for chemical fertilizer if we get nitrogen use down for example which we can if we increase soil quality we can slash the amount of greenhouse gases that we release if you've got if you've got a decent soil structure it will hold the nitrogen it won't leach out the plants will be able to access it and it will start to turn over in time i think as an agricultural policy the government be mad not to suggest people went down this line but the trouble is we're using less chemicals less fertilizer less machinery to do it and and all the chemical companies and the fertilizer government machinery companies are advising the government on on on where agricultural policies should go if you take no-till the sort of next logical step is how do we use plant species to manage weeds so that we suppress them before they actually get established and thinking about rather than growing single species we're always growing multiple species but using them to do different functions so suppress weeds or fix nitrogen and it's all about managing all of those things and the other key thing is bringing in livestock if you have a mixed enterprise something that might not turn out to be a cash crop from a cereal perspective actually is perfectly good as a forage crop for livestock mob grazing allows cattle to live entirely on a diet of grass while fertilizing the soil it allows diverse plant species to grow that are not only better grazing for the animals but add to the organic matter in the soil on their natural diet the cows are healthier and need less intervention john cherry was so inspired by what he was seeing on his farm he and his family started an annual regenerative agriculture conference the first of its kind in the united kingdom this event is a terrific example people flock here because they want to do it the machinery is out there now and we started i think there were two manufacturers of no-till drills and there'll be 10 or 15 here demonstrating it was great because we had really good speakers we we could share ideas between farmers and it was very interesting i think we've got here a good foundation of ideas and people and it's truly coming from the ground up globally 12.5 of the world's arable land has been converted to no-till agriculture the revolution is underway

Channel: Groundswell Agriculture

Views: 38,370

Rating: 4.9279623 out of 5

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Id: Uj_RgbhJ7XM

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020