Episode 6: The Beginner’s Guide to Carbon Farming
Regenerative farming and carbon sequestration - revisited! In episode 6 of the FutureFarm podcast, we return to a popular topic. This time, a panel of specialised agronomists give lesson 101 in one of farming's most exciting and innovative areas of development. Tom Tolputt, Anthony Ellis and Craig Patrick tell us about their own 'journey to regenerative', identify some 'dos and don'ts' for getting started, assess the positives in an agricultural, ecological and financial context, and discuss embedding the principles of regeneration in the next generation of UK agriculturalists.
Contributors in this episode
Tom Tolputt
Anthony Ellis
Craig Patrick
Florian Ritzmann
FutureFarm
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re farming an allotment of a few square meters to covering 1,000s of acres, there’s lots of good reasons to improve soil organic carbon.”
Hello, I'm Florian Ritzmann and this is the FutureFarm podcast. On today's show, we return to our proverbial roots, which is regenerative farming and carbon sequestration. In previous episodes, we heard from a spectrum of farmers who had either made the jump and were eyeing the opportunity. For this episode, we thought it would be useful to put together a panel of specialised agronomists to talk about their experiences working with all kinds of farms. So, without any further ado, let's start the show
With me are three experts in the field of carbon sequestration and regenerative farming, all coming from slightly different angles. Anthony, could you give us your full name? What do you do? Where do you live and what is your contribution to carbon sequestration and regenerative farming?
Anthony Ellis:
My name is Anthony Ellis. I'm an agronomist by trade, but I also farm with my father in Cornwall on a small mixed family farm. In the last few years, I've started to transition our farm to a more regenerative model and off the back of that, a number of customers across the south of England have looked to join us on that journey towards a transition - taking a bigger focus on soil health and carbon sequestration.
Florian Ritzmann:
You went to Australia and that's where you picked up your focus on soil. Is that correct?
Anthony Ellis:
Yeah. So my wife and I emigrated to Australia a number of years ago, and I spent my time there working in and around the Barossa Valley. As I started visiting customers, I worked as an agronomist there - same as here, but, as I started driving around and seeing different farms, I started to notice that one or two of them were doing things a little bit differently. As the recent drought, they're just sort of coming out of now, was really started to bite in 2016 -17, farmers started to really have to de-stock and get rid of a lot of livestock. There were one or two farmers in the area that were keeping their livestock numbers up and keeping feed in front of them. So I sort of started to ask a few questions. There was a guy called Andrew Carter, who lives just on top of the Adelaide Hills, Northern Mount Lofty Ranges and he had just come back from a business holiday, if you like, to America and done the whole Greg Judy and Joel Salatin trip and he introduced us to this idea of regenerative farming and adaptive paddock grazing, mob grazing, whatever you want to call it. And so that was sort of my introduction to the concept and the idea. I threw myself in the deep end and read Charles Massey’s Call of the Reed Warbler, which was pretty hard work as an introduction to regenerative agriculture. But that's sort of, yeah, that sparked an interest and the light bulb started to flick on, If that makes sense.
Florian Ritzmann:
Thank you very much. Now, Tom Tolputt, over to you. What do you do? And, how did you come to this whole complex of soil and livestock as your specialty?
Tom Tolputt:
We run about a 700 acre organic farm based around beef and arable rotations. And about 25 years ago, upon graduating from Harper Adams, I was recruited by an American nutrition company who were basing their diets on taking a lot of forage samples from the farm. We noted that as we were using less nitrogen on the farm - we were on about a 220 kilo hectare nitrogen input type grazing scenario, but they encouraged us to use less nitrogen - we were growing grass, which was higher in sugar, and higher in dry matter and lower in protein. It was much more balanced to an animal's needs, so we decided to go organic on our home farm. And we were sort of lazy organic for a long time where we were sort of encouraged by the various governing bodies. But I then by chance, I bumped into a sort of a soil scientist called Gary Zimmer at an organic dairy conference. And it turns out he, in his previous life was an animal nutritionist and he kindly invited me to go to America, much as Anthony was saying then about these sorts of trips, to sort of, help crystallise your ideas. And after 10 days in America, looking at grass-based farms and the potential in soil improvement within the organic sector, I completely changed my view on things. So I came back and started to work out how this could look within the UK. By chance, Anthony and I had met before and worked together. Previously, he'd been on his sort of regenerative journey, I'd been on my own with Gary Zimmer and we started to look at the opportunities within it. The average UK farm produces seven and a half tonnes of dry matter of food forage from the farm. There are organic farms now producing an excess level with no sort of artificial fertiliser inputs. So, from a purely animal based perspective the feed was better balanced. From a financial perspective the potential to make a lot more money from better grazing from small soil improvements is huge. So, there's sustainability, there's a practical sort of side to it and a financial sustainability. Having sort of worked with Anthony and Craig, looking at the sort of health and source side of it, there's a huge carbon potential and soil health potential. So it seems within that, this agriculture that we're sort of all advocating is sustainable, its financial, its carbon-sensible, it has a huge future. It's a win, win, win which so rarely happens.
Florian Ritzmann:
Okay, so that we've heard in previous podcasts. So this kind of thing I want to dig into a little bit more. But before we do let's give Craig a chance to introduce himself. Who do you work for and what's your angle?
Craig Patrick:
Yeah. Hi, thanks for having me. My name is Craig Patrick. I work for a business called Precision Decisions. And as you can probably tell, I'm based up in the North here in North Yorkshire, just outside of York, and our business is predominantly as a precision agriculture service provider. And it's been established for over 15 years now. And my personal role within the business is very, very much on a consultancy basis. So I oversee a lot of our infield soil services, direct services that we provide to farmers, anything ranging from soil sampling, soil conductivity, scanning, surveying, all the way through to data management with things such as yield mapping, biomass maps, from sensors, things like that. I get a lot more hands on with farmers and customers to help make the most of that data and improve the management decisions and processes that go on in the world of crop establishment. Predominantly from an arable background is the business, however, we apply that to livestock and arable situations now. Before that, I am a farmer's son, first and foremost, whether it's by luck, or by chance, never got involved in with him directly. And my father didn't push me and my mother probably would have killed me if I did. So yeah, we no longer have a farm – Dad’s since retired, so yeah, he retired just shortly before I was in a position to maybe try and get my teeth stuck into it on a personal level. So I spend my day job helping other farmers, whether that be a small holding farmer just down the road or a larger estate somewhere in the country looking to get involved with understanding the soils a bit better, and a lot of the data and technology that's surrounding the farm in these days.
Florian Ritzmann:
So they couldn't take the farming out of you. All right. So I'd like to start with Tom, I hope the connection holds up. It's a bit iffy, but we'll try. Now specific to livestock and carbon sequestration - in a previous podcast, we spoke with Tom Gregory. Tom and his wife, Sophie are organic dairy farmers in Devon. Tom, in passing, explained to me that, when it comes to livestock he was at the very beginning of the journey. In fact, when we were speaking to him, he had someone on his land, sampling the soil. And he told me that essentially, the complexity of measuring carbon in a livestock environment is much more difficult than it is in, for example, in the arable world. And he said, there's just a lot more variables going on. That was his quote, a lot more variables going on. And so what I'd like to ask you is ,well, what are those variables? Perhaps you can explain what he might have meant and what makes livestock so different from the arable side?
Tom Gregory:
I guess the variables sort of range around the setup of the farm. We now know that permanent pastures hold a huge amount more soil, organic matter, soil biology, if they're well managed. And generally within the livestock sector, especially if they've evolved in the dairy farms, the fields around the buildings, because they're quite often used as a transit position - you know that the cows go across this field to get access to other fields, farmers are very loathe to cultivate or plough them. They're usually very nutrient-dense, the closer they are to the slurry pit or the to the buildings. Farmers like to spread the nutrients as close as they can to the farms for a purely practical or pragmatic reason. So we find the variation within the livestock sector absolutely huge. On our own farms, the permanent pastures, which have had animals grazing them for probably millennia, they can be two to three times higher in soil carbon, soil organic matter. So there's a lot of biology, there’s a lot of health and these fields have the potential to be more resolute in a dry period, because there's so much organic matter holding these nutrients, holding moisture. they're less variable in dry times. Whereas the more arable parts or the temporary lays, sometimes don't have this acquisition, or this maintenance of organic matter. So from a nutrient point of view, from a soil carbon point of view, there's a terrific range around the farm. And of course, they also have access to organic manures and these can be hugely important in terms of utilising and reducing the amount of inputs that are required on a farm. So he's absolutely right, the variances are huge. They're generally a good thing, because you know that there's reserves of nutrients, huge reserves of potential organic matter and organic fertilisers, which are good for the soil. And so yeah, there's a genuine advantage to having livestock. And I think that the latest data that we're getting on all the soil analysis that we're doing, really indicate that a well-run livestock farm with temporary or perennial or permanent pastures, has generally a much healthier soil because of the nature of perennial cropping and correct grazing.
Florian Ritzmann:
He said, when it comes to baseline measurement, you know, it's not like I have a carbon calculator man come or even visit my land and tell me kind of roughly where my starting point is. And I suppose it has something to do with the distribution of the land and what you just said, it tends to be more nutrient rich closer to the farm, but different in other parts of the land. He said, I'm almost forced to start sampling my land, every field individually and that has a high cost to it, that's a barrier to entry for me. That's something that in an arable world, you probably don't need to do, at least not to that extent. Is that something that you'd echo?
Tom Gregory:
I guess I have a slightly different view. He's absolutely right. And what we're starting to do is do something on a one or two hectare basis, because the ranges are so great, but that in many instances is actually showing advantages, because it's showing that, you know, areas close to the buildings or near manure stores have very high levels of nutrients and organic matter. That means that by getting a better idea of fields, or maybe even areas within fields, you can target nutrients to increase the production and the resilience in parts of the farms with low production. Where you've got high nutrient levels, you don't need to put any fertilisers on. So whilst there is a cost to this, there's also, it can actually highlight, some huge advantages and that means you can target your nutrients and your purchase of inputs to a much greater degree. So it is a cost, but in many instances, that journey to understanding the sort of regional differences and variances across fields or across a grazing platform can bring advantage. It can increase output, it can mean targeting what you know, the valuable resources of your own organic manures as well.
Craig Patrick:
Just something to add to what Tom was saying there, just from my perspective dealing with livestock and arable farmers, and it's something that I've seen working with Tom over the last couple of years on his own farm, as well as obviously in the area. And I always tend to find that livestock farmers, they're almost battling on two fronts compared to an arable farmer. On one side of the brain, they're thinking about the animals and the livestock and all the attention to detail that goes in there and it's often the soils and the crop inside of their enterprises that tend to get overlooked or less prioritised. So when it comes to things like understanding soil through soil analysis, or maybe dedicate a certain amount of expenditure to researching that part of the farm and trying to better it, it's often a slow starter for livestock farmers because all of that attention to detail is on the animals. However, over the last few years, we're starting to see within the industry a lot more livestock farmers really get a hold of understanding soil health because they can see if they grow better crops through better soil, they're going to get better productivity from their animals. So as we start to look more in depth on livestock soils we suddenly really start to understand actually what good soil health should look like within a livestock farm, whereas in the arable world, farmers have been looking quite intensively at their soils for a number of years now whether it be through a regular space GPS soil sampling, like Tom referenced to that's still quite new within the livestock sector just because it's not always been that priority in that they've always had that other thing and the other side of the business that needs their attention to detail, which is often seen as a more living and breathing part to their business. But we're starting to see the tide change, I think.
Florian Ritzmann:
Thank you. So we're moving from a focus on the animal towards a more holistic focus, which includes the soil. Okay, now over to Anthony. Slight change of scenery. In another episode, our second one, where we did talk about carbon exclusively we had Ali Capper on, who works for the NFU, but she's also an apple farmer in Hampshire. Her quote I'd like to play back to you is where she says carbon sequestration or regenerative farming, in that context that was used interchangeably, ‘works if you're working across 1,000s of acres and broadacre. It doesn't work very well from my sector for fruit and veg plants and flowers.’ For the layman, somebody who's not, you know, tilling the soil - or actually in your case, you don't till the soil - it doesn't mean much to me. And I'd like you to perhaps put some meaning into that. Why does Ali think that arable farmers have it a bit easier when it comes to making the soil healthier, and measuring carbon than a perennial farmer like her or horticultural farmer.
Anthony Ellis:
So I guess there's a few different things within that to pick apart. I mean, firstly, I don't see size of holding as a barrier to improving soil health or improving soil organic carbon content. There are lots and lots of different reasons to improve organic matter and organic carbon content of the soil. Really only one of those reasons is that you might want to get paid for it. If you’re looking into soil health and everything, if you're improving soil organic matter and soil organic carbon, then you've got nutrient cycling, improving nutrient cycling, nutrient retention, you got moisture retention, you've got pliability and workability of the soil, all these things are net benefits to us as farmers from improving soil organic matter content. So from that regard, yeah, I think it doesn't matter whether you're farming an allotment of a few square meters to covering 1,000s of acres, there's lots of good reasons to improve soil organic carbon. What she is sort of alluding to is that when you start looking at some of the schemes that are already up and running, paying for soil organic carbon, a lot of them focus very heavily on the arable side of things. And I think if you follow the money, to coin a phrase, there's a couple reasons for that. Firstly, historically, arable ground has been more intensively managed, more intensively tilled, and will have therefore lost a lot more organic matter, organic carbon, and therefore there's a lot more potential there to put that back with changes in practice, and what have you. So if you're looking at being paid for sequestering carbon, you're gonna go to the soil that's got the least amount of carbon in it to start with. So most of the schemes will chase the arable acreages for that. So I suspect that's probably what she means. I mean, as far as the fruit-veg industry goes, I mean, there's some really good veg guys, and the way that they are really starting to focus on soil health and reducing tillaging, improving organic matter content with stripped hill veg and that sort of thing, is really kind of at the cutting edge of divergence. So you know, there are guys looking at doing things differently in that regard. So, yes, does that sort of cover some of what she said?
Florian Ritzmann:
Yeah, it does. I think there was also a bit more of a practical angle, ie, we don't even know where to start with our apples and what to do. I spoke to a lady who is the founder of a company that dies soil sampling, and she says, yeah, the trees are a problem because our machines can't navigate around them so easily. So that's perhaps what she was referring to as well. It's just easier on wide open land.
Anthony Ellis:
Yeah, it is. I mean, we've recently just completed a project in the South Downs National Park and one of those farms that we work with had a sizeable orchard on the farm and we did do soil organic matter testing using GPS references and yeah, you've got to adapt the format of your testing a little bit to take down the tree lanes and everything. And actually what we found, because it was something we hadn't really done before - we started taking measurements directly under the trees and directly in the centre of the mid row and there was quite a significant variability between the two. So I understand what she means, you know, that there is going to be challenges in terms of sampling within that environment because there is variability between a fairly short distance across the field or across the cropping area.
Florian Ritzmann:
But nothing that you can't overcome if you're seriously interested in improving the soil in your orchard.
Anthony Ellis:
Yeah, no, and if anything, an orchard that’s laid out very methodically and not just necessarily a traditional orchard where the trees are not necessarily leading to a pattern, but where you've got orchards that are laid out with very specific pattern, you can sample to that specific pattern. And you can therefore divide the field up into very specific management areas that you can sample accordingly. So it's not insurmountable.
Florian Ritzmann:
Craig, over to you. My final quote that I want to throw at you guys, Kip Papworth, who farms arable in the Norfolk area, he gave a quote that I love, but I'd like to test it. He said, ”You'll either farm for improvement in soil and carbon, or, you will farm for the marketplace and personally, I don't see a lot of crossover here”. So we're gonna go cross over into the commercial implication of going regen. And I’d like to ask you, is it really as black and white? The technology is always evolving - I mean, do we really have to accept that when you go regen your yields are going to drop? Is it really like that, or are we looking at a future where we can say no, it actually makes no difference, and we end up with better soils?
Craig Patrick:
Personally, the short answer to that question for me is no, absolutely not. And the day that we settle for that and accept that, that is the day we stop learning and stop progressing as farmers and growers and advisors is my honest opinion. And to break that question down further - the introduction of new technologies can improve efficiency outputs, all while being more sustainable. Generally, I do think it can but we've got an awful lot to learn. Define the technology would be my first question here. Are we talking about advancements in technology of the physical machines that we're using in the field. Whether that be types of cultivators, harvesters, machinery that we use for farming, you know, the old tractor steel and diesel sort of things - the machinery gets more efficient, there is less reliance on fossil fuels, there's an awful lot of work going on in robotics. Albeit, the general consensus is that it lends itself more to small scale farming at the minute, but by no means does that mean it isn't going to be scaled up and in the future, be more commercially available. With what we do within our business we have been fortunate enough to get involved with various robotic projects, and even ran some projects off our own back with regards to robotics and farming. It's a really exciting space. It's quite sci-fi still, and as a farmer at heart, like all of us are on this call, it does boggle the mind when you see a tractor going up and down the field with no operator on it. It's hardly making a mark on the soil because the machine is smaller. Because you can run that small machine over a longer amount of time, you don't have to feed that robot, you don't necessarily have to pay its labour for every hour. So it can work 24 hours a day, in theory. It doesn't have a family so it doesn't have to come back in the shed at certain times and things like that. So that side is fascinating. And that's only going to grow exponentially for sure. In terms of the other side of technology, as we advance our understanding of chemistry, it's not as simple as maybe getting better chemistry and being able to use it. You know, we are losing more and more chemicals off our approved lists, particularly in this country, faster than what we can get new approved ones. So when it comes to things like weed suppression, disease, risk, all that sort of stuff. It's a bit of a balancing act. And when it comes to the argument of doing things sustainably but taking the yield penalty, there's plenty of examples out there of quite cutting-edge thinking farmers that have been deploying techniques. You know, I use the phrase regenerative - it's generally the word to describe some of these techniques to achieve that. And I don't know this chap personally, but I've seen a farmer called Tim Patton speak before. When I listened to him, it really grabbed me probably like no other farmers speeches or presentations has grabbed me before because it just seems so left field to me. Some of the techniques that this particular farm was employing, I think it’s about 300 hectare farm, so it's quite sizable. It's not smallholding, but it's not massive estate sort of territory. So somewhere middle ground. That farm had really tapped into the idea of understanding soil biology a lot more. And it was more detailed than I thought general farmers were even capable of doing to the point where this farmer has almost turned his local farm into its own biome - whereby the processes that that farm has undertaken over a period of time, this doesn't just happen overnight, and the farm management process that they've built over time has developed a system whereby the crops that the farm’s growing and the techniques that they use, and if you tried to deploy those techniques and those crop varieties and those practices on some new fresh virgin soil on the neighbour's farm or the other end of the country, it wouldn't work. And that's because the entire ecosystem of the farm has been really honed in to what this farmer is trying to achieve. And it was really quite fascinating and to the point where this farmer is even brewing his own biology, literally brewing his own biology on farm, and then applying that to the lands. I think some of that goes down with the establishment method with the drill and that is in a bid to promote that part of the of the soil. The soil is made from the biology, the chemistry and the physical components. And the one that is least understood by miles is definitely the biological. We're starting to get somewhere with understanding chemistry and the physical aspects and different soil types and what that means. But for me personally, biology is an area that I'm really trying to understand a bit more, but it is really complex. And for want of a better phrase and pun intended here, soil science is a real can of worms. It's really fascinating. And in that particular instance, yes, this farm is using just what's generally coined as regenerative farming techniques. They're reducing their costs, yes, because they're using less herbicides, less pesticides. In fact, I don't think they've even applied pesticides for the last five years or so, and such as the way this ecosystem has been developed their margins, they've seen savings of up to £50,000 a year, I think it was, yet, they've also still managed to gain a general yield increase on wheat. They were still getting a yield increase of about one tonne per hectare today than what they were 10 years ago, when they first started out on the journey. So for me, that's a valid use case where someone has put this into practice on farm, and it's working. And I think when it's coming from a farmer as well, farmers learn from farmers the best. They'd rather hear advice from another farmer that's practically employing it than say, an advisor or a university academic telling them what they should be doing. Seeing is believing in a lot of cases and when you have case studies and farms like that, that are doing this, and I'm sure Tom could name a few down in his neck of the woods, that are doing very similar things if it's not his own farm, for example. So those case studies are out there. It's about promoting those success stories and sharing it because sharing that knowledge will allow other farmers to adopt, and everyone then goes in the right direction.
Florian Ritzmann:
I should say Kit, if you're listening, I know I totally put your quote out of context. Please don't come knocking on my door, you're not the villain of this piece. And I know that Kit would agree with a lot of what you're saying. And for example, the use of technology and smart tractors and all that kind of stuff, he would fully agree with. The thing that he didn't really get into was the full regen of no till - that's the bit that he ruled out for himself.
Craig Patrick:
I think that quote, itself of how it was phrased, is still valid though and I completely get that and one thing I find interesting - some of the work I have been exposed to over the last few years is almost like a sociology experiment with farmers. Farmers aren't all your stereotypical characters. They're very different pockets of demographic within the farming community - from your stereotypical I just want to make money all the way through to your really forward-thinking, farmers. I want them to integrate every aspect of their environment and business so that it can all improve. And it's a completely different subject. But I do think that's a lot to do with it. It's farming mentality.
Florian Ritzmann:
You mentioned the example where the farmer researched their own circumstances and came up with the way that made it work - meaning the soil is more healthy, they've improved the yield and presumably, if they want to, they can sell their carbon edits too. That's a fantastic example. And you're absolutely right, that's what the world needs to hear. However, positing this and I'm willing to be shot down on this, but just for some farmers, this might be a little scary. Because as you’ve explained, in order to get to that you might have to do a lot of experimentation, a lot of research, you may or may not be equipped for it, and you may need help from someone else. Hmmm - you know, I'm just gonna do what I know. And that involves synthetic fertilisers and tilling. So I suppose I should ask Anthony about this. I mean, is there any advice that is applicable to any farmer who's interested in regen and carbon sequestration? And it doesn't matter where they are in this country, you know, it's like a 1-2-3. Here's how you start, this is what you need to do in order to get started. Is there any such advice that you could give to any farmer?
Anthony Ellis:
I think the whole point of regenerative agriculture is, there's not necessarily a rule that you can open up. So at the beginning, work your way through, and at the end of it, you will be regenerative. I don’t think it works like that. Every single farm, as we just sort of alluded to there, every single time is going to be different. Every business is going to be different. And so everybody's going to be starting at it, and looking from a different angle and perspective. And so, for each farm, they kind of need to sit down, work out where they are and where they want to go within this. And if their priorities are reducing inputs, then that's something they've got to focus on and look at. If their priority is increasing biodiversity, then that's their starting point. Everybody’s going to have a different set of priorities and therefore a different starting point. So now, if there's one piece of advice, I think I give everybody, if you want to start the journey, then you've got to sit down and figure out what your goals are and what your aims are.
Florian Ritzmann:
Absolutely. How about you Tom? In the livestock sector - Is it the same thing? Is it like - everyone's different? But if you know what you want, there is a path to it?
Tom Tolputt:
Yeah, and I know we've prefaced Kit’s quote but I don't think the three of us would be interested in a less productive, less profitable, less sustainable system. I genuinely think that with good management, with an open mind, you know, that there is some very low hanging fruit, simple changes in grazing management, in the understanding of your own soil analysis, in taking things that interest you. I mean, most farmers are either interested in the livestock or the machinery or the environment they farm in along with their profitability. So you sort of work with the most suitable thing. If it is an arable person, you probably start with tillage and then fertilisers and rotation. The way the market is progressing with, you know, now there's contracts available where you can grow two crops side by side, bi-cropping. This is adding diversity. It means you can grow nitrogen fixing crops with a cereal crop. I genuinely think the next 20 years is going to be so exciting to the open-minded next generation of agriculturalists. And I don't see it will be yield limiting. I think there will be a reduction in synthetic and salt-based fertilisers because we understand that the more biologically stable, the more natural fertilisers have their place. So yeah, it's the farmers having the confidence in themselves to understand what interests them and work from their interest forward and an understanding of their soils. And that might be as simple as their own observations, you know, looking at the plants, looking for areas of compaction. Compaction is a big problem in agriculture that can be ameliorated with machinery or rotation with different crops and things. So I think it's just encouraging the farmers to look at what they've got and understand their own farm and what interests them and start from that point of interest in confidence.
Florian Ritzmann:
What I'd like to ask you next is less about the future, but the immediate world that we live in. And since the last podcast, where we focused on Ukraine - the war in Ukraine was already happening then, but it certainly is still happening now and we've had the beginning of an explosion in prices across the board in everything, including obviously, food. And so, some of the farmers that I've spoken to, indicated to me that while we were thinking about making changes and going a bit regenerative, but now with the wheat price of 320 a tonne, or whatever it is, you know, we can afford fertiliser, no matter what it costs, our margin is good, and so we're just gonna, you know, crank it out as much as we can. Now, again, I'm exaggerating to make a point. But is the regenerative agenda a little bit stymied? Is it being held back - by this famine on the horizon in certain countries in this world, because the food that's come out of Ukraine is missing? Is the current attitude: we have a hole to plug, prices are high, and this regen stuff right now is a bit of a luxury. Do you see any evidence of that in your conversations with some farmers?
Anthony Ellis:
On the face of it, the farmgate price for, take wheat for example, it is very good. But the input prices are still extremely expensive. And I mean, even the price of wheat has come back a little bit since its high in mid-May, so that the shine may have been taken off that a little bit in the last couple of weeks. But I'm still getting farmers asking or saying, I'm looking at the farmgate price, and I'm looking at my input prices, I'm struggling to make the numbers stack up at the moment, even there. So there is still a little bit of doubt in the industry, I think, as to whether they can make it work. And so I suspect with the price of input costs, at looking at different ways of cutting inputs, it is still very high on people's agenda, or most people's agenda. And so the principle around regenerative agriculture, I suspect are probably just as relevant as they always were. And so going back to what we were talking about a minute ago, regenerative agriculture, it has to be a commercial prospect. And if it's not a commercial prospect, it falls flat on its face from the word go. So I think there is still doubt in the industry. I think people are still looking for ways of doing things differently. And, and I think some of the ideas that are being bandied around tick the boxes with that in mind. So yeah, I think we still got some changes to make.
Tom Tolputt:
But I think what Anthony is highlighted and what we all know, is that change is coming. That with climate change, with the decoupling of subsidies within British agriculture, we've got to look at models abroad that are successful. And with higher rainfall events with higher drought events, with more extreme temperatures, the transition to regenerative to reducing tillage, to cover cropping, to just put the resilience back in the soil. So I think Florian’s comment about you know, this is a moment in time with very high input costs and output costs and so the margins are still there for the good ones. But at some stage in the next five years, you're gonna have to jump into a way of farming where you are more sustainable - financially and commercially and agro-ecologically, because it makes sense, it makes damn fine sense. Farming like this, with the reduced tillage, without the high input, without the damaging chemicals. You can still use inputs but they are ones which we know suit the soils better, which build organic matter and this resilience. So it's absolutely right, today is a moment in time, but whilst there's still an element of subsidy from the government, whilst the market is quite dynamic, I think it's a heck of an opportunity for those farmers who have the inclination to start to analyse their own journey. But you know, there are those which are less resting on their laurels, but I think that within that there is still a heck of an opportunity to embrace change, however small they be.
Florian Ritzmann:
Thank you. Craig?
Craig Patrick:
Yeah, it's a great question. Obviously very topical with what's going on and the terrible state that part of the world is in. But I think it's an opportunity just to point out that regenerative agriculture is a philosophy. I don't think it has to be binary. You don't have to wake up one day and say right, I'm going to be a regenerative farmer. You can adopt the techniques and work it to suit with the current situation. What's to say, yeah, okay, put more wheat crop in the ground in this immediate moment in time, because we know that there is a premium demand for it. It doesn't mean that you cannot establish that crop in a way that isn't considered to be using regenerative techniques and you go back to ploughing the field before and smashing it to bits with all sorts of chemicals and what have you. But by any means you can still adopt a lot of the useful practices that reverberated in the regenerative world to establish wheat crop in. Yes, in one sense, it does go against one of the main philosophies of regenerative agriculture, which is diverse cropping and rotation, but at the moment with the way the world is it there's obviously a need for it. And it's not only the UK as well, that needs to answer that question. It's everywhere in Europe to help the shortfall. I think a lot of people didn't realise actually how big the Ukraine is, until it's become more highlighted on the news. Yeah, the landmass is just immense. So it's okay was sat here in the UK with our tiny field sizes, so you know, we're going to ram as much wheat into the ground as possible. In the grand scheme of things, it's a drop in the ocean, when we look at the deficit it is trying to make up, plus what the rest of Europe can contribute as well. So, it needs to be a joint approach across various nations as well. But for me, I don't think it should be an excuse to say I'm out, regenerative has to go on hold. Regenerative agriculture is almost a bit like religion. It can be can be thought of in that, you don't just wake up and you suddenly are a full blown convert, you know, there's aspects of it that you can incorporate into your life to get the fulfillment or the productivity, whatever it is. Maybe it shouldn't be black and white, I don't think.
Florian Ritzmann:
Okay, we shouldn't be taking a step back. And I agree with that. You think it's a good thing in its own right. And it's funny how we actually haven't spoken about the carbon credits at all. It seems like all of you, you three agree that taking care of the soil, it's just good business sense and carbon credits are the thing on top. But I'd like to round this conversation off with a question that's just occurred to me, I think all of you have one thing in common, which is that you went to college to study agriculture. But you came to regenerative farming, through essentially a personal experience. Anthony, you went to Australia, you met people who kind of showed you the way. Same with Tom, you both took your ideas out of the US, of all places. Is this stuff not taught in college? Why are we getting to this point right now, that regenerative for the last five years has been really coming to the front? But it seems like it's not been taught in college? And I’d just like to understand why it's taking so long really to adopt practices that seem to be such common sense? So Anthony, please?
Anthony Ellis:
Short answer is, No, it hasn't been taught in college. When I came through uni, in the early 2000s, I was taught a very conventional approach to agriculture, with everything, all the different enterprises split apart and taught separately. And the agronomy side of it was taught very much, here's the problem, here's the chemical solution to fix that problem. And then there's another problem, so here's another chemical solution to fix that problem. And everything was slotted into its individual box, for, you know, each problem was put into a box with a solution for it. Whereas I think, although the main proponents of regenerative agriculture have been screaming about this for 30 years, nobody's really taken any notice of it, because they haven't really needed to. But now as things start to change, as we start to experience more climate variability, as we start to see yields plateauing, or even drop away, despite increasing inputs, people are starting to wake up and realise that actually, there's something else at work here. And that we need to look at how we solve these problems on a broader scale rather than trying to fix individual symptoms. There's a greater problem that needs to be addressed behind that. And so I think it's coming within the colleges. And I know, Harper Adams has started to build around regenerative principles and things like that. So it's coming, but it's taking a while. And I guess the other aspect of that is that a lot of the research behind it is sponsored by big companies, and they're there to get a particular result.
Florian Ritzmann:
I was gonna ask - that is Harper Adams sponsored by Bayer and BASF?
Anthony Ellis:
You know, it's the way the system has been built. Researchers aren't paid by government anymore, or very few of them are. They're paid by the big ag companies to research their products. And so there's gonna be a certain amount of bias in that, I guess, not wishing to cause too much controversy, but you do find yourself following the money quite a lot in these situations. And then there's more influence that that money has.
Florian Ritzmann:
Thank you. Great.
Craig Patrick:
Yeah, a couple of points. When it comes to Ag colleges and things like that, I do think some of the issue is the fact that students are young at that point. And when I think back to when I was 16, or 17, I was interested in Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I wasn't necessarily obsessed with understanding how to run those vehicles, fuel and all the efficiencies. And I see that with a lot of young people getting into agriculture, they see this shiny, red, big red tractor, or green, or any other colour - the big machinery, you know that vision of what farming is, and that takes precedence over the brown stuff, which is what everything comes from. And myself, predominantly, my education was just conventional University actually - more geography specific. So I've gone through education, learning about soil and things like that, because that's what I was interested in. Whereas I think a lot of ag students that go into ag college, to learn how to run a farm and do all the operating procedures that goes on on a farm, whether it is driving tractors or operating milking parlours, all that side of things, and the soil tends to take a bit of a backstep. So yeah, I could probably argue that maybe more attention to detail on understanding soil should maybe come in earlier than agricultural college to get more people interested in what is essentially a basic element of our industry, which is understanding the soil. It's important, not only within our industry, but in life. Everything has to come from it in terms of what we eat and grow. So I think that's one of the key things for myself. And secondly, I think that just the general demographic of how farming families and industry works. It's very close-knit and most people that are going for agricultural college, or what have you, second, third, fourth generation farmers within their family. So there's a lot of inheritance going on there. And when I mean inheritance, not necessarily a physical side of it, but the mentality side is inherited. I work with an awful lot of farmers in different disciplines, different demographics, and it's quite common for me to come across people my age, so farmers in their 20s, and when you question some of them about, okay, why are you doing this, why are you doing that? The answer will usually be, well, mum always does this, dad always does that at this time of year. And that's just the way it's been. And it doesn't get questioned. So going back to the sociology side of understanding the farmers and lineage and all that side of things, there's a lot to answer for as well, I think. It's very rare you get outside people may be coming into agriculture, it's more inherited.
Florian Ritzmann:
I've heard that one before. You must have been sitting in front of your TV and shaking your fist at Clarkson with his Lamborghini tractor?
Craig Patrick:
I was more jealous, to be honest.
Florian Ritzmann:
All right. Tom, I don't know whether you want to add anything to the sort of lack of education?
Tom Tolputt:
I think both the guys and yourself have highlighted something almost subliminally. A few years ago, I was introduced to a WhatsApp group of journalists and chefs and regenerative farmers to try and work out what regenerative farming was. What the hallmarks of it were, you know, and virtually every single one, much as Anthony and I and Craig, were either first generation farmers who were starting out, or they were people who've been in industry and come back and looked at it and thought - hang on this is a corrupt model. We're using more and more active ingredient from these pesticides to get the same effect that we did at the start of their life. That we're using more and more nitrogen with less and less organic matter in our soils. And I think that ability to ask the question, that strength of character, maybe it's an age thing, we've just had time away and come back and asked some simple questions. That was certainly a hallmark a few years ago, because it wasn't being taught. I think there is interest in that now. But so many of the regenerative farmers that we work with, have read a book or they've been on their own journey, and they seek more knowledge from Antony or Craig or myself to help them furnish that journey, because educationally and practically, and from a commercial point of view, why would your agronomist encourage you to use a lot less chemicals and less machinery and go to perennial croppings where there's less seed to sell. So, there's very little commercial impetus towards regenerative farming, but there's a heck of a lot of curiosity to it. And I think things have changed, but I think you made a very fair point that I just don't think it was supported from a scholastic or an educational point of view. And I think people have had to find their information. I think it's more available now. But that is something very dynamic and changing now.
Florian Ritzmann:
That seems to be the lesson that I've learned from this. Every farmer I've spoken to has found their own way into this through somebody else. And not necessarily through education, and certainly not through tradition. In fact, tradition, as far as I've heard, seems to hold a lot of farmers back because if you grow a cover crop, but your next door neighbour doesn't, and then it is that thing, you know, you don't want to stick out. I'm not a farmer, I can't really relate to that.
Tom Tolputt:
It's funny, tradition can be quite short sighted. Apparently, because I mean, one of the things that we've started doing at home here is turning the sheep onto the winter cereals - graze on the winter cereals. And when I first mooted the idea to dad, he threw his hands up in horror and said, what the hell you on about, of course, we're not going to do that. And then he sat there and thought about it for a little while, and said - well, your granddad used to do that, actually. So this is taking a step back and looking back two generations instead of one. And seeing what people were doing back in the 40s. And raising winter cereals. So you're removing overwinter disease. So you're cutting back on your fungicides, you're structurally grazing the plant, so you're cutting back on the need for fertiliser, you’re processing organic matter and biomass through the sheep. So you're chucking in a bit of nitrogen and phosphate, and you're cutting back on the amount of fertiliser you need. So it's, you know, it's just looking at different practices and a slightly different set of eyes and a different understanding of the science behind it and proving the management as you go.
Florian Ritzmann:
Fantastic Really cool. Did anyone want to add anything more? I mean, I could speak for days.
Craig Patrick:
I was just going to add to that. I think exposure is key. That's kind of what's been highlighted. Exposure to different practices, exposure to different ideas, and whether it's actually what's going on on a farm or just basic education. Exposure to these different platforms. And just to throw it back to your comment about Jeremy Clarkson and what he does on his farm. I think that program and what he's done, has brought more exposure for British farming into the general public than any other institution could probably have hoped for, even if they tried, albeit indirectly. And I'm one of those people that will watch videos on YouTube or things like that. And a lot of the comments surrounding that program will predominantly be from people from the non agricultural world that are the main audience. And the amount of comments where people are saying, oh, we have no idea this is how a farm works. And I'm sure that program of Clarkson’s farm will be responsible for many people getting involved in our culture, whether there are 15/16 year olds, boy or girl in school deciding what they want to do with their lives or someone who's having a midlife crisis and then decides he wants to turn into a first generation farmer. Anywhere on that spectrum, I honestly think people will have had their eyes opened by programs such as that and joined the industry. And couple that with the whole environmental agenda going on as well, which is coming at another angle and getting more engrossed into particularly young people's minds, it's surely only going to be positive for agriculture.
Florian Ritzmann:
Whoever thought that we'd end this podcast on celebrating Mr. Clarkson. And it's true. Even my kids, when I told them, oh, let's watch a show on farming – and they were like boo, and then, after one or two episodes, it was like, Can we watch Clarkson, please? And that’s city kids - never been on a farm. So you're absolutely right. I mean, that it's embedded something in them. And an understanding that wasn't there before. That's certainly true.
I loved this conversation. It was fantastic. Thank you very much for your time. And I think we went much deeper than I initially thought we would. And all I can do is say thank you to you guys. And yeah, this is great. Speechless.
Florian Ritzmann:
We could have gone on for hours. One of the things about these podcasts is the enthusiasm and passion that comes with discussions about soil. So what did I take away from it? It is interesting that Tom, Anthony and Craig all came to regenerative farming through their own observations and mentorship and not through university. It's interesting because these ideas, the ideas that go with regenerative farming and carbon sequestration are not new. They've been around for I would say as long as agriculture itself. Well, doesn't matter. What does matter right now is that all three agree that regenerative agriculture makes business sense for every farmer. And so I conclude by apologising to Ali Capra, Kip Papworth and any other former participant on this series whose words are mangled beyond recognition. I did it for a good cause. And so I sign off. It's been great to have you and talk to you again soon. This is Florian Ritzmann and the FutureFarm podcast
