Large scale regenerative agriculture

[Jungle Bill]

Any thoughts anybody? Not a lot of detail so far, but an interesting concept.

Regenerative Agriculture | New Foundation Farms

Our vision is the development of large scale regenerative agriculture in the British Isles: farms which capture carbon, build soil vitality, create healthy food and provide a vibrant economic engine for the renewal of our countryside.

newfoundation.farm

 

[newholland]

I wonder if they pay the farmer per acre to acquire the farmers farm or if it is the other way around and the farmer pays per acre?

@Sheila Cooke it would be great to have some more info please.

 

[Treg]

@Regen Cornwall this thread may interest you.

 

[Martyn]

Intresting who will financially back it?

 

[Treg]

"We will acquire & transform farms" & "We will build the capacity of a New Generation of farmers to flourish and once again be able to afford their businesses in new models of ownership "
Can some one explain that clearly to me?

 

[Farma Parma]

its gonna take some computing this but will my fag packet maths i need a minimum of £123k just to cover Rent & current Enviromental Schemes funding.
Us Tenants days are running short i fear

 

[Kiwi Pete]

"We will acquire & transform farms" & "We will build the capacity of a New Generation of farmers to flourish and once again be able to afford their businesses in new models of ownership "
Can some one explain that clearly to me?

It is feasible - the Degen Ag way of achieving the opposite effect worked: "divide and conquer".... about the only part that has worked, other than cheapening foodstuffs at [hidden] environmental cost

So a collaborative effort with some effective strategies can also work, likely better, than keeping everyone standing at their farm boundaries wielding pitchforks?

Boundaries are the whole problem within conventional ag, I believe this aspect can be just as temporary a fad as veganism, or any other illogical prejudice based on beliefs only?

 

[Treg]

Not saying it won't work KP, just want it explained clearer & there's just a small shadow of suspicion in the back of my mind and I mean no offense to anyone but suddenly there's cash being thrown at Regenerative Agriculture, sometimes that moves things forward & sometimes that destroys the Original ideals .
It's a difficult balance.
I do hope they keep farm size down as around here the start up farms are 10-20 acres & people seem to make it work, whereas alot of council starter farms are now afew hundred acres & as @Farma Parma has said rents are alot to find plus kitting out a farm that size is expensive.

My vision would be collaborative too KP , so as a idea I would say split a 1000 acre unit into 10 smaller units all doing something different, then you could rotate the farms every few years so that the Arable & Vegetable areas would get proper breaks & be able to rebuild soil.

I don't think people really understand the disaster we're heading to , I farm in a Vegetable growing area in Cornwall & there's alot of farms that have been burnt out by growing vegetables, who's going to take on those farms & rebuild their soil if theres no profit in livestock farming?
There are fields next to me that have had 4 failed crops before producing a crop of Broccoli, 10- 20 years ago that would have been unheard of. I was taught 1 year in 5 for Vegetables yet there's farms around here that have kept cropping for 20years until they're left with dirt.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Not say it won't work KP, just want it explained clearer & there's just a small shadow of suspicion in the back of my mind and I mean no offense to anyone but suddenly there's cash being thrown at Regenerative Agriculture, sometimes that moves things forward & sometimes that destroys the Original ideals .
It's a difficult balance.
I do hope they keep farm size down as around here the start up farms are 10-20 acres & people seem to make it work, whereas alot of council starter farms are now afew hundred acres & as @Farma Parma has said rents are alot to find plus kitting out a farm that size is expensive.

My vision would be collaborative too KP , so as a idea I would say split a 1000 acre unit into 10 smaller units all doing something different, then you could rotate the farms every few years so that the Arable & Vegetable areas would get proper breaks & be able to rebuild soil.

I don't think people really understand the disaster we're heading to , I farm in a Vegetable growing area in Cornwall & there's alot of farms that have been burnt out by growing vegetables, who's going to take on those farms & rebuild their soil if theres no profit in livestock farming?
There are fields next to me that have had 4 failed crops before producing a crop of Broccoli, 10- 20 years ago that would have been unheard of. I was taught 1 year in 5 for Vegetables yet there's farms around here that have kept cropping for 20years until they're left with dirt.

I seem to be fairly lucky in that I can "step outside of" agriculture and have a look and then nip back in, in order to do a bit of work now and then ?

Now I'm in a livestock area and the main theme appears to be "don't want his sheep anywhere near my sheep in case his have got 'xxxxx' and so farmers will cooperate (like, we'll share our gear amongst ourselves because it works better) but there's also this fear of fully cooperating, maybe we don't think our neighbour is quite as good as we are at "our job"? Or something?
And the end result is that we don't really work together to make best use of the local landscape, otherwise there wouldn't be everywhere you can get a tractor to all overgrazed and grass to burn on the hills.
There wouldn't be tiny little mobs of sheep and cows dotted all over except we've been taught to squabble and scrape and 'claw a living' to a certain extent - any decent investor can see the potential in just taking a bit of money and buying something that just needs fixed, and fixing it.

All that's really needed is a common holistic framework and people naturally self-align everything they do in accordance with it, the opposite effect of regulations which tend to have everyone scurrying off to find loopholes - like buying more gear to avoid paying taxes, or keeping land "in the family" for no real reason than to stop 50 other people making a living each of it

Anything that gets people back on the land working together instead of against each other has to be (and take) a massive change, one sorely needed IMO

As you illustrate, 4 failed crops in a row is probably about what it will take to drive home that conventional ag isn't really ticking the boxes.
In some ways you could say all crops "are failing" if farmers can't make a decent margin on them with all the current tech and scale, but these are commodities and not foods.

That's probably why the cash is getting thrown into "selling regenerative" at the moment, because the supply chain is a degenerative one and so is the model it's a part of.
For "large scale regenerative" then a lot of investment must be made in the area that extracts all the value from what is produced - and it's going to be a lot more simple to sell quality in future

 

[Treg]

When I was growing up my parents had a dairy farm & was next door to a daffodil farm . Daffodils at the time were grown 2 yrs in 7 so they would do land swaps with my parents. They would grow 2yrs Daffodils & then reseed the land plus give us the same acreage of there own land reseeded while they had ours , worked really well for both parties.
I've lent my tractor to Neighbour to help with their silage, returned with a puncture.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, really does depend on your neighbour. ( & yourself )

 

[Treg]

My worry also would be who's providing the cash & why?
An idealist benefactor or Multinationals looking for control & profit?
Regenerative Agriculture is grass roots farmer driven that should be protected at all costs.
Learn from Organic Agriculture, it was exactly the same grass roots farmers taking back control for their selves & cutting out the Multinationals , now I believe the Soil Association has lost it's way because the wrong people are in charge, no longer farmers but suits & no longer stick to the Soil Associations original vision.

 

[som farmer]

in the constant drive for production, started by ww2, I feel that we have 'lost' our way, in farming, the basics of the 'Norfolk 4 course rotation', still hold many valid points, for modern farming. We farm pretty intensively, and I have always been keen to plough, and reseed. Land I was farming 26 yrs ago, arable, and grass rotation, I was selling 4 ton wheat/ acre, 26 yrs of arable since, I reckon he doesn't get 3 ton, and costs have gone up considerably ! and any rain, now, lies in puddles, on the sown ground (but he assures me, he hasn't got a pan). The last couple of years, we have tried some min till reseeding grass. The reasons being, needing to re seed grass before its allotted time, a decline in mole hills, and very few worms behind the plough, the moles I could do without, the worms we need ! And whether you call it regenetive farming, or holistic, I am certain we have to look after our soils, a lot better than we do now, and that means increasing the organic matter of the soil, quite how, not 100 % sure yet. As we are intensive, we export a large amount of sh1t to a near arable farm, and he will take more than we produce, and reckons he can see the diff in next crop. Climate change, and carbon footprint, are the buzz words of today, and I feel that if we can increase the organic matter, and the bacteria/ worms (but not moles) that break it down, we will increase the amount of carbon these soils, will absorb, at the same time, increasing water retention, yield, and hopefully reduce fert amounts. In the drive for increased yields, we have all 'invested' in machines, and technology, and being encourage to increase the acreage/ yields to cover the extra costs. I am told some fields on salsbury plain, are getting to a stage, of not being profitable to crop, despite throwing fert etc at them. If this is going to become the future in the thinner soils (basically they are fu##ed), perhaps it is time to go back to a proper rotation, and have the added advantage of absorbing more carbon.

 

[Regen Cornwall]

@Regen Cornwall this thread may interest you.

Thanks...

 

[organicguy]

in the constant drive for production, started by ww2, I feel that we have 'lost' our way, in farming, the basics of the 'Norfolk 4 course rotation', still hold many valid points, for modern farming. We farm pretty intensively, and I have always been keen to plough, and reseed. Land I was farming 26 yrs ago, arable, and grass rotation, I was selling 4 ton wheat/ acre, 26 yrs of arable since, I reckon he doesn't get 3 ton, and costs have gone up considerably ! and any rain, now, lies in puddles, on the sown ground (but he assures me, he hasn't got a pan). The last couple of years, we have tried some min till reseeding grass. The reasons being, needing to re seed grass before its allotted time, a decline in mole hills, and very few worms behind the plough, the moles I could do without, the worms we need ! And whether you call it regenetive farming, or holistic, I am certain we have to look after our soils, a lot better than we do now, and that means increasing the organic matter of the soil, quite how, not 100 % sure yet. As we are intensive, we export a large amount of sh1t to a near arable farm, and he will take more than we produce, and reckons he can see the diff in next crop. Climate change, and carbon footprint, are the buzz words of today, and I feel that if we can increase the organic matter, and the bacteria/ worms (but not moles) that break it down, we will increase the amount of carbon these soils, will absorb, at the same time, increasing water retention, yield, and hopefully reduce fert amounts. In the drive for increased yields, we have all 'invested' in machines, and technology, and being encourage to increase the acreage/ yields to cover the extra costs. I am told some fields on salsbury plain, are getting to a stage, of not being profitable to crop, despite throwing fert etc at them. If this is going to become the future in the thinner soils (basically they are fu##ed), perhaps it is time to go back to a proper rotation, and have the added advantage of absorbing more carbon.

The same story here! 20 years organic farming has halted the decline in some fields but we have not made any improvements. we need to farm differently if we are to turn around a 100 years of soil degradation( even though we have always been a mixed farm!)

 

[Barleymow]

had a very interesting talk about it last night, the challenge is cut inputs by 50% in 5 years while maintaining the same profit levels .

 

[sjt01]

had a very interesting talk about it last night, the challenge is cut inputs by 50% in 5 years while maintaining the same profit levels .

Were you at the I Agr E at Saxham?

 

[Barleymow]

no sfmc meeting

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

had a very interesting talk about it last night, the challenge is cut inputs by 50% in 5 years while maintaining the same profit levels .

Just maintaining the profit levels alone may be a challenge under conventional models.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

@Kiwi Pete mused a while ago that perhaps we'd all be better off sharing our pasture in big groups, perhaps a whole uk county, then having one huge mob of stock and only hosting them for a day a year. There's much to ponder in that model.

 

[sjt01]

@Kiwi Pete mused a while ago that perhaps we'd all be better off sharing our pasture in big groups, perhaps a whole uk county, then having one huge mob of stock and only hosting them for a day a year. There's much to ponder in that model.

Who is going to do the milking? It would need a good sized mobile milking bail.