On Air at Groundswell: Healthy soils delivering sustainable farming systems

As part of our special podcast series brought to you by the School of Sustainable Food and Farming at Harper Adams University, this episode looks at how healthy soils underpin resilient and sustainable farming systems. Arable agronomist and farm consultant with Ceres Rural, Louise Penn, beef and sheep farmer and AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds representative Izzy Eames and regenerative farmer, coach and consultant at Grassfed Farmer Silas Hedley-Lawrence dig deeper into the role of soil in tackling climate change, improving nature and health, whilst looking at how adopting a more regenerative farming approach can help restore, enhance soil health, ecosystems and communities. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to day two of groundswell. We're bringing you a special podcast series for the Farmers Guardian podcast, brought to you by the School of Sustainable Food and Farming at Harper Adams University. This session is going to focus on soils, so I'm joined by some fantastic panelists here. Izzy, if you could introduce yourself, please. Yes. Hi. My name is Enes and I'm the HDB series notices and knowledge stage manager for the northeast and a beef and sheep farmer from the northwest. And Louise, I asked Louise Pan. I'm an agronomist and farming consultant, working for series Rural, and I also, have a family farm, so mixed family farm, which I'm very involved on as well. And so I'm a regenerative farmer of many, many years, most recently farm manager for Farms in Oxford, which is a research consultancy farm. But as of yesterday, I'm now self-employed. Return to coaching. So fantastic. So school is so is obviously is becoming an increasingly big asset to the farm in terms of building that resilient farm business. How pivotal is soils? Look? Massively I think from my sort of HDB hot when I have that on. It's like soils to have soils functioning is first HDB as a levee board is absolutely massive. If you're soils aren't functioning, you aren't getting those yields. You aren't getting that. That's the profit coming into the business. And for us HDB, we collect levy based on tonnes per grain for sold tonnes of all seed sold. So for us it's a it's a bad Dave soils on focusing properly. It means that we can't then reinvest into what levy payers want. So yeah it's massive. It must be important. Yeah I completely agree. I think the kind of pivot to my in my career was when I became interested in Regent's Park culture. It was someone said to me, might have been gay. Brown can't remember. But I said, you know, you can't grow good green stuff if you don't have good brown stuff. And that is something that sent me through this, down this path and into this rabbit hole of majority farming. And actually, it it's it's so true. You know, we we focus on what we can see because it's there, but there is so much that goes on underground. I think even in all this, you know, this speakers here, there's still so much that we don't know when you're speaking to your farmers in terms of kind of initial advice to really start off on that journey, what kind of top tips you have? I think just find communities of people to be around who are trying to encourage you on that same path. And I think everyone's at such different like spaces, and I think it's so important to join something like, it doesn't have to be HDB. It could be something like going to groundswell. You can go in, it's at farmers or, you know, some of those other organizations who are doing this really fun, group bringing people together who are all passionate. And I think going there and having an understanding of what others are doing and then going home and trying to see how that would fit in at your farm, at home. But I do think it's like massively contact specific, which I think it's everyone talks about here is is one thing that works on one person's farm but not on the other. So I think it's massively about going out, getting that knowledge exchanged, speaking to lots of people, getting loads of ideas, doing lots of listening. You know, you can read all that you want, but it's always the listening. I think that sort of counts. I decided specifically on your farm, how are you nurturing your soil? Well, the key thing with soils is they are just the priming medium in the middle of converting energy, which is free into energy, we consume. Right. So if you have a fully functional, amazing, healthy soil, then you maximize the energy to produce and also the cash flow through your business. And if you have poor soils because of poor management or whatever poor historical whatever could be essentially bottlenecking all of your soil nutrition, everything veggies, your crops, everything else. And that hinders your business financially, right? So everything that I do on my farming systems around is about working with nature and design everything around ecosystem processes. How do we get as much carbon and minerals and water and air flow going through our farming systems, which promise and pumps that energy flow overall that creates nutritious, dense food from as little or no impact as possible. So for me, it's that's, that's that's the aim of the game. So when we get a great big massive drought like we had in 2022, it doesn't actually affect my farm or my business. I'm still grazing to dense grass and even half behind. And I've got a three month rotation because I've been able to adapt and move the crisis around, risk all the neighbors slightly and a bit more, a bit of boredom. And that's essentially down to how our soils are functioning because of how we design the system around the whole point. When you're first starting out, is there an element of you kind of just have to hold your nerve that you're, you know, you're essentially trying to change the ecology and, you know, change the kind of dynamic of the soil is there, is there you know, there's going to be challenges initially, isn't there from the outset? I think that's from one of the conversations I probably saw this with no more is is I think I'm at the start of my farm at home of of this. I mean, we're an upland beef and sheep farm. We've never been high end imposed or anything like that. But we're definitely at the start of, of this sort of journey. But, you know, I think there's always challenges throughout, you know, not just at the start. and I think, again, it's having those people around you to help advise you and guide you. And when things go wrong, and it really someone spoke yesterday and it really struck me and they said, you know, this, this way of farming is very much like a snakes and ladders sort of thing. And you go, got this ladder and you get to this next level, and then you get the snake and you go back down again, you're like, oh my God, it's all gone wrong. And actually, no, it's not. Everything that happens is is a way to to learn again and enhance your own sort of experience of it. So yeah, I don't think it's as much as I find as I say, I go off on on now, when I film, I like most like glass half empty is when I'm doing something on our farm that is damaging the soils. And it's things like last week we applied some fertilizer. It rained solidly for a week, and all I could think of is that that fertilizers leached out the profile. It's not gone into the grass. It's also that we've lost some money. I'm thinking that is just a massive problem. Whereas when every time I think about regenerative agriculture, when I think about that field that's going into a herbal life, I then think glass half full, I'm like, so why? Why can't we provide that? Not like nitrogen. Why aren't my cells functioning to allow me to do that? Why am I not going to pull this plaster off and try and understand it? And so I think it's more of a solutions thing. It's the challenges. It's more of a finding a solution. Maybe I really like that snake in that does. And I really like yeah I had and I was like, yeah. So would you say in terms of your experiences is a bit like that? Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, we have things happen mostly linked to the weather like a do you think this year with the amount of rainfall that we've had, you know, we were talking, John Kemp morning session yesterday. Amazing. And he was talking about that. We got regeneration of soils and degeneration of soils. And with all the rain that we've had, we know we're going to have some pretty anaerobic conditions and we're going to have lost probably quite a lot of soil biology. you know, even rainfall can actually compact your soils and reduce the bulk density. so, you know, there's a lot of farm, there's a lot of fields that bear fruit heads into a bear. And, I mean, I'm getting all my clients to put like some cover crops in if they're that way. minded. But I think, you know, this is a definitely we've had a lot of this year. but I think being good consultant or being a good farmer is recognizing that, okay, we've gone down the ladder. How do we need to go down the snake? Sorry. Yeah, well, I suppose snakes and ladders. you know, how can we, you know, regenerate that. And I think as long as you're slowly going in the right direction, you know, it's going to be a weekly line. It's not it's not a straight line. I think stylistically as well as that, we're at the mercy of the weather, aren't we? Really? You can do as much as you can, but it's all about trying to make your souls function well so that when we have these adverse weather, we can. Yeah. I guess the point is, how do we make the snakes as short as possible and the ladders as big as possible? Right. Whereas in a more degree day Tiv, whatever the word is system, the snakes are longer than the ladders, right? So you got a little logic on, on a big snake and you start again. So how do you build that resilience into your farming system and your agri business just with good management? Because ultimately Mother Nature is going to do a way better job than we will. There's this whole interconnectedness of these different systems. Your solar system, your plant system, you a livestock system. US is a human system, then a wide ecosystem. Above that, one thing that will mark up the whole thing is the human system. So for me, I am quite lazy. Some people call it effective. I'm not right. Get out the bloody way. Let Mother Nature do her thing. And you know, I'm very much a grazing guy, and I know there's more nuance and you've got to be more direct in arable stuff, which, you know, is all about, because also you're fighting nature more. You're going to try and grow monoculture wheat. That is exactly what nature doesn't want to do. If you want to produce amazingly resilient, diverse pastures that pump and prime your ecosystem processes, just get the hell out of the way and just, you know, grazing animal impact in time. That certain thing I'm tweaking is those three things. And it's still hard work. And I wanted to touch on livestock grazing and how you can implement that into your system to protect your soils. So how are you doing that on your phone? Well, it's very easy for me because my farm well, I say my farm, the farm I've just left is is manual permanent pastures, one half thousand acres, half of that's on a floodplain. The one thing it does do is create good grass. But where the massive low hanging fruit is, and I'm sure this is exactly what you guys are saying with your cereals, I will hat on. There's so many tens of thousands of hectares out there of arable ground that hasn't got livestock on, and whilst putting sheep or whatever onto your cereal crop might not increase the yield of that cereal crop, what it will do is decrease your reliance on fungicides and herbicides and on the input cost around it. Right? So do you think there is that mindset change around yields that farmers need to understand, and is that changing? I think you've got I've got my clients that, you know, very driven by yield. And we all need to be driven by yield because at the end of the day, if we're not making money, we've got to think about the bottom line. And actually cash is king. And I'm very much on the page that with all of my clients. But there are different routes to get there. And I think that, you know, any time, if you can have that trend that increase your soil, how your yields are going to go with it, I think you have to be realistic about yield as well, about what you actually think you can produce from an area of land like this. A lot of farmers who I work with, they're expecting these 12 tonne crops, and they're just pumping them full of fruit, full of things. And realistically, they're never going to really get that 12 tonne. But they but they sort of looking at again at the yield thing and it's like, where does this benchmarking program. And it's crazy the amount of people who have no idea what a gross margin looks like. And actually like building that up over a number of years, like using things like yield mats and like taking areas of the farm out that are never going to produce those 12. And then overnight, you know, you might reduce nitrogen on farm trials. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's just getting a bit more, creative and having a bit more. Yeah. Yeah. Curiosity about the key thing you said it was the gross margin. Like pork yield to the side if you've got a massive yield, but you're losing money on it per ton, you're better off having less yield because you're losing less money. Right? So go for your gross margin. How do we cut as much cost out of the whole thing as possible, with as much output that we can do with limited cost, and then chuck the overheads. Right. And as again, that whole precise that. Right. Well, this farm or this corner of that field never does good. Let's put it into a bit of SFI wildflower seed or something instead of trying to put it into wheat. So and then you do get enterprise stacking, chuck the sheep on it and your pigs or whatever else. And all the sudden is what is your weight in your SFI. You're chucking out 2 or 3 other enterprises without much more input cost and no more overheads. Often something that's come up repeatedly across all the sessions is that idea of data collection, monitoring and evaluating. When it comes to soils, what tools are we using and how are you keeping across, you know, the value of your soils, I think, well, it's an absolute HDB plug again, but it's it's quite I mean you probably do something so so it's all technical. But for my PhD we have this soil health school Cob, which is basically the like biological, chemical and physical indicators. and there's sort of eight indicators. And the idea is that farmers can go and do that themselves. I mean, if you have like great, great grandmas like Louise, like they've got a lot of integrity, whereas there's some agronomists who will be going out to farmers and not really putting them first when they do some of these assessments. And the idea is that a farmer can go into that field. And if you have found if there's some really in-depth biological indicators out there now, but to bring everyone along with you, it's starting at something that's quite simple and easy to understand and very proven. I think that which is like a basic yeah, yeah, earthworm comments like we we've got farmers going out and getting understanding about what each earthworm does and that what can they bring to the soil. And then they go on that, start in that basic journey, and then after that they get more interest in it. And then and then you start to sort of take themselves. Yeah, yeah. And then you can go into maybe some of the more in-depth ones, but I don't know the some of the indicators out there is the whole point really is trying to get farmers to be as observational as possible. Right? The more observational you are. And and what's the word, I guess active in your observations? I you log it and you change or pivot tack course whatever based on what you see there, the farms and farmers that generally have really good farm businesses because they're actually reading and interpreting the landscape. Essentially, there's three aspects of soil health, right? Is the physical structure and the physics is the soil biology and is the soil chemistry. And often agronomists in the past, not Louise, obviously, she's wonderful. All the focus on the chemistry side. But actually if we think right, how do we have magically improved the soil physical structure that opens up the movement of the chemistry and the mineral cycle, as well as the soil microbiology that facilitates all the nutrition to be more, effective, and as well as getting more carbon as ecosystem process being pumped and primed to that system. So in terms of the data and the baselining and things are monitoring, how do we keep an eye on not only the chemistry side with the lab stuff, which also is limited because you're only picking up on to test or test able to read. And there's so much going on down there that we've got no idea about. You know, you can do a soil sample and take the crop or the pasture right above the soil. I know have a really high rating of something in the soil, and it won't even be in the pasture or vice versa. Right. So do the tests and observe. But I think the point is to get farmers out and to dig in the whole thing. And I think, yeah, that's true. As an economist, it's all very well me going and doing these things, but it's trying to get your clients to come with you. You know, if I'm going to go and take spending, you know, dig a hole in the soil, I want my client to be there and we can talk through it together and, you know, sit down with you with your agronomists and going through the tests and actually working out some solutions of what to do. But it does take a really long time. You know, there's a lot of attention to detail to get that, you know, the chemistry balance, you know, they're the ones that are going out with the kit. You know, really realistically if you're going to go and do some cultivation, then you should be digging, you know, having a go digging behind, seeing if you really need to do it, see if you got the machine set up properly. But, you know, we can't always be there. So I think a lot of it is education for farmers. And in terms of policy and government policy, do think there is a real understanding now the value of soils and, you know, supporting farmers in and and protecting that soil is do you think there is enough focus within sustainable farming incentive, for example, I was again, it goes back to the trying to bring everyone along with you. And I think the government with the with the SFI is, you know, as much as it's maybe been a bit of a fragmented approach and here, there and everywhere is, is that it does start a really good base, but it's trying to get people on to this pathway and getting a bit more of an understanding. And and again, I mean, you don't really get the full benefit if you go out and do it yourself. So the someone again, is a really basic entry level thing. But it's it's great to then just get people to start observing it and getting that understanding. So I think I do think they understand, why it's important though, how it's important. I think it just needs to go all the way up the chain. I mean, I had a really good talk before about, how it's not in with the chefs and chefs are actually so such a mouthpiece for producers. And I think, you know, it has to go all the way at the chamber. I don't know what's wrong, but yeah, I think, I think the options available under SFI, you know, they are actually supporting stuff for people who are farming or trying to fly, which which is really great. And I think, you know, if we can keep doing some of these things and generating that on farm data, but I think they would keep listening to what we want. And my point is, with some of my clients, you know, you can design it because if you've got rules, if you're not careful, you're kind of reducing that flexibility, like there's a no till option. But then, you know, you can't know that you are restricted to what you can do. And you go to no till for years. You can load a certain subsoil, but, you know, if you get a big rainfall event and we do need we've got some, some compaction. You don't want to be too limited. Yeah. Yeah. So I couldn't be able to adapt it. Yeah. It's got to be I think it's got to be flexible. But it also actually does have to have a bit of like rigor behind it because, you know, when I look at the most species cover crop or it's like two species in my mind that is no one there. And I think the point of all this is like, you know, we're here at groundswell right now, which is such a massive, huge hub of energy and people. But the people here right now from across the whole supply chain, there's people here from the government, and there's also people with one acre just growing asparagus and everything in between. Right. And I think that's the unique thing in the UK is you do get UK sometimes gets a bit I don't know what the word is. describe it. But like the negativity sometimes around the subsidy stuff, what it's doing is encouraging people to go in that in a better direction, whatever their intentions, whether they're just doing it to cash in on the £380 a hectare or whatever you get for a herbal lay, or if they're doing because they actually really want the herbal aid, because they want to bring in sheep and increase diversity, want that living. Right. And I really get it. It doesn't matter. The point is that they've done it. And the lamb base, whatever the intention of the human in that system is hopefully moving forward. And that's a blanket option for every single land owner in the country that is managing land to produce food. Whereas you look at other countries, say, in New Zealand, where I'm from, my family farms are none of that is there. And you actually drive around New Zealand and gonna get in trouble. Now you look at this lovely green, productive landscape and actually it's it's pretty dire in lots of places. It's it's nailed. It's a huge amount of production, massive amount of fertilizer input because the whole model is based around production. No one's really thinking about the wider thing around biodiversity, public money, public good and so helping us up, whereas in the UK it really does. So obviously SFI is evolving and improving it and they're making it better and it is getting better. More, more people are signing up. But the point is it's there and it is pulling the whole industry in the right direction. I think you make a really good point as well as like we're so fortunate in that sense because there's small Indian farmers that came to visit us at cereals and talked about cover crops, and they were wanting to go into cover crops and said, well, why are you doing that? You know, is there any funding? And I said, no, nothing available. Don't like yesterday. There's nothing in in America that I do. And I think it's so and I think that's the whole public money for public goods. When you start to realize what your land can produce and give to others and actually how much it affects the communities around you, then you get real appreciation. And like this money isn't for free. Technically, you know, we're all contributing into it. So it's really utilizing that and making sure you have a real appreciation. Empower yourself of what farmers can do. And I think that's also important that when you are delivering these actions, that you do take some ownership when you are delivering a public goods. So, you know, if you're going to grow a cover crop or you're going to put a, you know, herbal lay or some pollen nectar mix, yeah, it's much you should be looking for that because that is going to benefit your soil. You know, we are also being paid to deliver something. so we should you know, we should be putting a lot of effort in a lot of attention to detail to make sure that we all use that money correctly. Definitely. And it can all go downhill from there with those. But those actions, if they are not managed. Yeah. If we don't do it properly. Yeah. We won't, we won't have it. Yeah. Obviously food security and domestic food production is being talked about a lot in terms of the role of soils within that. How pivotal is that? The main thing right. If your soils are able to produce 2 or 3 times more output or energy from the same hectare, that's your food security right there. If you've nailed your source to the point where everything's in a massive bottleneck, then the amount of food that we can produce on this puddle of rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and where we are right, is reduced. So. So how does everything how can we produce more from less? By working with nature. Right. It's it's a whole cycle. It's not you know, I think you can't just isolate soils because you didn't have those, like, living roots near the water and all that. You wouldn't have. You wouldn't have soils. You just have like rocks. Yeah. So so we need the soil. We need to look at all of it. It's all isn't. Yeah. Won't ever. Yeah. And that's such a key point. Everyone here or not? Everyone here. But like everyone in the industry, is obsessed. Blinkered. carbon. Actually, the biggest issue on our planet is the broken water cycle. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. The movement of water from not enough in the right place and too much in the atmosphere is what's actually causing the main heating effect and these massive, huge weather events. And when everyone everyone talks about resilience and our farming system, it usually revolves around a broken water cycle where in a drought stuff didn't work. It's two ways to dry whatever. So your soils and the ability of those to prime and move that water cycle. Because actually water cycles are all about slowing the water down. Carbon cycle, mineral cycle, all the nutrient stuff we want to speed it up on as much and as quick as possible because it's productive, right? It's the cycle water on to slow that stuff down. It's a landscape design. You're treating it everything in isolation actually. You know, biodiversity, soils, water and waste. Everything is all linked and connected together rather than isolating it like density with food. Right? Yeah. That's to say. Yeah. Imagine if all the food we ate in this country was higher in micronutrients chemicals, and it wouldn't be the pressure on the NHS. Yeah, it's really great talk to yesterday on that. You know, my interest in soil microbiome is led to my interest in my gut microbiome. And that is so interlinked. And I think that, you know, everyone, everyone at the show will be very thinking about, you know, reducing eating processed foods and all that. But it's it's it's all interlinked and it's just I want the rest of the world to just wake up and be like, you know, yeah. Why not? Why do you not why does not everyone care about it in the same way that we do? Yeah, that's I mean, that's really, you know, hot topic at the moment is public procurement being able to produce food for our hospitals, for our schools, locally produced high nutrient food. and how are we going to get to that point? I think the problem is right now is there's obviously loads of farmers out there that are producing food just like that, and it's just getting sucked into and absorbed and diluted into the normal supply chain. There's not actually a proper integrated supply chain to get, that product from multiple farms that can be delivered at scale to the destination. It needs to be like the NHS. It is absorbed into everything else. Right? So, you know, it's like, did you get a good beetroot or a bad one like, you know, right. You just get a beetroot or whatever it might be. Well someone said this more than me way of eating breakfast this morning. Me and my friends are camping together. So I said is it so? Last question at all yesterday. Is it, you know if you are producing wheat redundantly but then it's put, you know, the produce from your crop is put into like a pot needle. Yeah. I heard that. Yeah. So is there such thing as a region. Yeah. Like it's, it's not healthy. You know, we could reduce crops in a very healthy way and reduce all the inputs. But then if it's just getting put in ultra processed food with the rubbish and the ingredients that you don't have, it's not much that boiling water in a pot noodle would just nuke all the goodness up in. Yeah, as well as the plastic, but I just thought that was really and I think I think it is again, it's, it's the whole way up the chain. It's the doctors like the interesting doctor talk yesterday. And he was just saying, you know, it's about his quality of life as a doctor. Robin. the parallels between, agriculture and pharmacy is huge. And there's about the healthcare professionals that are here. And I sort of saying it's like, you know, you get paid to prescribe patients with diabetes medicine, you don't get paid to improve that, health. And so it all starts when the doctors start to understand, I think the veterinary now understanding it and the understanding it and getting a bit more of a passion about how can we actually find a solution without being paid by like big Pharma and big like agriculture. So I think it's empowering people and getting them all together and things like this are so great for that. Yeah, 9000 people here, whatever it is, you know, it's definitely, you know, there is stuff happening and I just yeah, I can't wait to see like ten, 20 years time, you know, how things change. The heck I know that's the soil, right? Because you do not produce good quality, high nutrient dense food without the soil to produce it. And the soil is what then pulls through that whole supply chain. Healthy pastures, healthy crops, healthy food, healthy with where the soil is, healthy economy. That's the that's the foundation you need to get right. All these things are completely so interconnected you cannot separate them and expect to get a good outcome by managing one thing over the other. You've got to manage your cropping or your plant system or whatever to make sure your soil is in a position where it can then produce a healthy nutritional crop food product. That's I mean, is you can't say food security about being like, how nourishing is it and how good quality is it should be what is the food quality of what we say? And I think that narrative is slowly changing. But there's more to be done around that. And I'm conscious that I need to wrap up now, but I really want to put to you this final question, which is where do you see the future of British agriculture? It's quite a broad one. That's a big one. Where do you see it? I mean, I see in my my mind's eye. See, future agriculture is just having a much greater appreciation for for what we can provide as farmers, you know, a united front of empowered farmers who understand what that bit of land is doing for so many millions of people and also for so many millions of, you know, biodiversity, insects, animals and all that sort of stuff. And I think just, you know, a lot more of an understanding about what we can actually provide as farmers. I don't know, probably to that a minute. You, I mean, as an, as an agronomist, I would like to see I want us to be at the forefront of agriculture. And I think there's so much more innovation that we can do in terms of, you know, the varieties that we've got, you know, more precision when we're ready to on at the end of it. Yeah. You know, I do think if we could, you know, I've got a drone, you know, I should be able to be doing more things with that. You know, I think there's a lot more innovation and that, you know, if you walk around and some of the stuff that that's coming through, it is really exciting. And I just I'd like to be doing more and more attention to detail. I think we are we are, we are going in that direction. So I just I think we're very diverse. and basically what you want, you'll find. So in the UK, if you're a small farmer, you can make it work by direct selling the markets there. The logistics are there to make it work. If you're a big guy on 10,000 acres, you can make that work too. Not only that, you've also got options. Also, find and create your own supply chains locally, whether you're big or small. Whereas for example, New Zealand, if you've got a 50 acre farm, you can't sell because you can't get a courier that send it around. So you can't make money in New Zealand unless you've got skills and efficiency, whereas over here is inclusive in that sense, you can make your business work depending on what you're starting with. You just tweak and change the model. But I think what will happen is the majority of land managers will be farming the more agro ecological way, whether it's because of the understanding and the knowledge sharing in places like ground. So on the energy in the movement and all the stuff in the media that makes people aware of it, or if it's the stuff like SFI that is more of a financial encouragement, right? Yeah. It's brilliant. Well, it's a very solid. Thank you ever so much for your time and enjoy the rest of the show. I promise. Thank you.