Intensive Agriculture is Degrading Landscapes - Do This Instead

what if there was a way the uk could produce enough food for everyone using methods that increase biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in this video we're going to look at the crucial role that regenerative agriculture can play in ensuring prosperity for the uk but first i want to clear something up i think it's really good that i start with this because it will bring you into my way of thinking when it comes to rewilding in a recent video that i made on the transformation at the nep castle estate they went from an intensively managed agricultural estate to one of the most biodiverse places in the uk apart from the fact that they call the deer it's entirely governed by natural processes and this video got a lot of comments which went like this is all well and good but how can we possibly feed ourselves if we just rewired our lands and i get it on the surface some forms of rewarding management can look like this and it's true nep does produce less food now than it did but the thing is is we actually need more places like that biodiversity strongholds which are popping up around the country but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't be producing food on our most productive agricultural lands using regenerative techniques i want to know that rewilding for me is scalable it's an umbrella term that can include a number of different forms of management that all work to the same goal to increase biodiversity and ecosystem resilience through although not limited to natural processes so rewarding can mean exactly what happened at net it can also mean the greening of a city building it can be the restoration of a peat bog it could be the reintroduction of a missing species and it can also mean the topic of today's video regenerative agriculture let's not limit rewilding to a single idea okay so what is regenerative agriculture well it's an approach to aquaculture that focuses on improving and maintaining topsoil health as well as biodiversity and ecosystem resilience all over the world there are many different ways to practice regenerative agriculture but in this video we're going to look at three methods that are relevant to the uk mob grazing regenerative cropping and agroforestry these three approaches provide the solutions to the main problems which are associated with unsustainable agriculture in the uk but what are these problems why do we need to make a change during the second world war the uk had to become largely self-sufficient we went from a country that imported 75 of its food to producing 75 in just 6 years this meant drastic measures were taken to convert our landscapes to agriculture with many of our natural areas being drained ripped down plowed and sewn with monoculture crops that's what we want to see you know it's good to know that this flying up of old grassland is going on day and night all over the country initially this was herald a success and the uk had found its way after the war but we continue to farm to produce the population rose technology advanced bigger and better machinery more effective chemicals to ensure bigger and better yields year after year after year oh and we joined the eu and the common agriculture policy whose goal was to produce a surplus of food for europe at whatever cost not only was there a lot of food waste and money being pumped into this form of agriculture it soon became apparent that this way of farming was damaging our landscapes at scale and the two main damaging approaches have been overgrazing from livestock which is where the vegetation on the landscape is over consumed by grazing animals right down to the soils unable to recover as a result you get this blanket of short grass in some cases topsoil erosion desertification less carbon being captured and stored and less biodiversity the other damaging approach is intensive cropping which is where the same crop is grown on the same piece of land year after year the land is plowed crops are sewn and then spread with harmful chemicals to help it grow this results in a decomposition and degradation of the topsoil pollution of the surrounding environment and a severe lack of biodiversity a staggering 70 of all uk land is under some form of agriculture and although it's growing not enough of this land is regenerative let's look at regenerative grazing otherwise known as mob grazing instead of having one large field where animals are allowed to roam and graze throughout the year with mob grazing this field is segregated into several smaller compartments all of the livestock are then grouped into one area and then after a short period they moved on into the next confined area and so on systematically through each compartment since many compartments are shut off from grazing pressures the grass is able to put on growth and in doing so it locks in carbon it increases soil structure and health provides habitat for biodiversity and when the animals eventually get there they have some delicious nutritious grass to eat which they graze they defecate upon and they trample it all down and then they're moved on providing optimal conditions for that area to grow once again this is also known as livestock mimicking nature because you see in nature in a natural system herbivores they stay grouped together due to the risk of predators and they make their way like this through the landscape intensive grazing but for short periods and then a long recovery phase this is a really exciting approach which needs to be adopted widespread across the uk because it not only brings all of the environmental and ecological benefits it also makes the animals healthier and fatter too however it's not without its challenges water supply is one each compartment needs it and then each compartment needs to be constructed and maintained then there's also the trial and error element of this type of grazing farmers have noted that no two compartments are the same different geologies plant assemblages and even the weather can play a role in how long you keep animals grazing within one area four and also having the livestock contained like this within the compartments this would make it much easier for a predator like the lynx to be reintroduced because the livestock would be confined to these spaces and not so accessible to a lynx sounds like a win on all fronts to me let's now discuss regenerative cropping when it comes to growing crops regeneratively there are a number of different approaches but the fundamentals include no tilling or ploughing of the soil and no harmful chemicals the emphasis instead is upon using a diverse mix of crops within a rotation to increase the health of the soil naturally a technique called cover cropping which is where crops such as clover are used to fix nitrogen back in the soil before planting a cereal crop there's also a technique called under cropping which is where you plant two species at the same time to ensure that after a harvest there is still a green layer in place so the clover would grow beneath the oats and this under crop of clover would remain fixing nitrogen in the soils sequestering carbon and cutting costs by not tilling the land and inputting chemicals this means that there's less time spent on the tractor less money spent on chemicals and fueling the work saving the landowner a lot of money mob grazing systems can also be incorporated onto a cover crop to accelerate the production of organic matter in the soils in some cases farmers have reported greater yields using regenerative techniques but often compared to intensive farming there's going to be a slight loss of food produced but i ask you this what's more important having more food today and actually we're not throwing a good chunk of this food away and we're not with having none tomorrow or having less food today but we know that moving forward we're going to be getting it every day the third method is agroforestry and you guessed it it's all about incorporating trees into farming systems this can mean combining trees and pasture with grazing animals interestingly trees that have high levels of condensed tannins they actually help reduce the levels of methane produced by the cows a selection of fruit trees can be planted in rows between crops this will not only regenerate the soil but also provide fruits for the farmer to sell on the uplands where there's little cover trees can offer protection for livestock as the climate becomes more and more unpredictable having these areas is important for the welfare of the animals trees also offer farmers fuel a resource to build with and access to straw to feed the animals during the winter and you'll also get all of the great things which trees offer carbon storage flood defense water retention shelter and of course space for biodiversity currently only three percent of all uk farms are practicing some form of agroforestry so again there's a great opportunity here these are the three main forms of regenerative agriculture which will help ensure a future for not only our food production but also the overall health of our ecosystems but how we produce the food is just one piece of the pie for this to work on a national scale the government must provide funding to landowners to make the transition to these methods we must as a country address the issue of food wastage we're currently wasting 9.5 million tons of it currently 250 000 acres of our most productive lands is currently used for bioenergy and biofuel crops more of this should go to food production and factory farming sees huge amounts of grain used to feed animals who spend their lives cooped up in energy zapping buildings these are just some of the other issues which need to be addressed if we're to feed britain i really enjoyed making this video learning about the possibilities of regenerative agriculture but i also realized that it's an incredibly vast topic so let me know down in the comments if i missed anything and whether if you like it or if you don't like it on the screen now is the video.net so click on that to see what a truly rewired british landscape looks like in the meantime thanks for watching leave curious

Channel: Leave Curious

Views: 35,059

Keywords: regenerative agriculture uk, rewilding britain

Id: iuqQtgH35nU

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022