Review by Jayne Lunnon
“It’s all about the soil, really, isn’t it?” Hanna Jones – Farm carbon and soils adviser.
“Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains”. – Paul Harvey
Image from film cover, created and directed by Colin Ramsay
This British film looks at 3 young British farmers in 2022, who are standing up against the industrial food system to transform the way they produce food. The film is a delightful window onto how they want to farm, the challenges they undergo, and the passion they hold for working regeneratively in harmony with nature, not against it.
Wikipedia describes regenerative agriculture as:
“Conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil.”
Wiki has nailed it! And so we follow the journey of the 3 farmers in bringing about change in a highly processed, industrial system, with a backdrop of 94.5% of food sales in the UK managed by 9 retailers.
Anna Jackson – Pink Pig Farm, North Linconshire.
Anna grew up on a farm but her father encouraged her to leave due to poor prospects for farming in general and pursue a career elsewhere. She became a photographer, but during lockdown her work dried up and she returned home. She farms with her father who has been practicing regenerative systems for many years on a mixed farm.
- They rotate different crops in different fields, ensuring that “cover crops” (crops which are transitional to the “cash crop” and which help feed the biodiversity and microbiomes of the soil) are successfully cultivated and costed to assess whether they have a commercial value.
- Anna’s father also plants herbal leys which benefited the farm during 2022 drought through maintaining the roots of the plants (the longer the roots, the more they are able to impact the soil health), pumping carbon into the soil, fixing nitrogen in the soil (so negating the use of dangerous nitrogen chemical sprays) and bringing the minerals of the soil up through the plant to help its resilience.
- They implement minimal ploughing, aiming to only disturb the top 4 inches of the soil in order to preserve its health, regularly monitoring all the soils on the farm and employing a field by field approach to managing their systems. When Anna’s father started his regenerative agriculture journey, his soils were dead, and were just sand. Now, after a few years of no pesticides / chemical fertilizers and limited machinery compaction of the soil, they are starting to see the return of worms, dung beetles and roots which are building the structure and biodiversity of the soil. They say that soils can repair themselves within 3-7 years!
Adrienne Gordon – Sweat Pea Market Garden, Cambridgeshire.
Adrienne had no background or experience of farming, but wanted to start a market garden to grow fruit and vegetables to feed her local community. She partners with a sympathetic farmer who wants to produce a market garden but has no expertise and is happy for her to work on his land.
Adrienne struggled in the 2022 drought, watching her soil crack, dry and die due to poor management in the past, but was determined to feed the soil with planting to help regain it’s structure and health.
We have an insight into how hard it is for food producers on the fringe of the supermarket industrial supply chains to sell their produce to consumers.
- Adrienne attends farmers markets attempting to build her brand and her customer base, and discovers a niche for flavour and taste. She learns that there is an art to displaying her vegetables and flowers in demonstrating abundance, colour and freshness. (It did look pretty inviting, and as a sample of 1, I would have bought veg that I don’t normally buy as they looked so good!).
- She also engages with local schools, inviting children to her market garden, encouraging them to taste her foods, and to develop a passion for growing their own food in gardens and green spaces.
- Healthy soils pull CO₂ out of the atmosphere. One presenter passionately put the case that we should be educated in schools about soils and their importance to nature, and all children should participate in growing food.
- Adrienne is quite open about the fact that she has a family she can fall back on and live with, and that she often needs to take other jobs to earn some cash. She did not pay herself in the first year from her income, and netted >£4,000.
Ben Thomas – Treveddoe Farm, Cornwall.
Ben has always been obsessed with cattle and raised Belted Galloways (native breed beef). He and his wife rent the farm from a neighbour.
Ben is clearly passionate about the welfare of his animals, and the conservation of the farm that they live on.
- He operates a mob grazing system, ensuring that the land has sufficient rest period after they have grazed. The cattle are moved daily. This ensures that the soil does not become too compacted by hooves and damage the soil health.
- They are out grazing all year around, enjoying natural fibres from the land. He does not feed them grains. This impacts his profits favourably, though he was concerned that through over-wintering them outside, they were not putting on weight – he learned that to maintain weight in the winter and gain weight in the summer is a good system for animals who live outside. (They have natural shade and shelter of trees and woodland).
- With the benefit of regenerative practices, we see how the soil is improving: 2 separate sections of soil are dug from different parts of the farm, demonstrating how healthy soils can absorb water and feed the soil and life forms in it, so retaining vital nutrients and moisture which improve their resilience; in contrast to compacted soils which have squashed all air out and act to repel water, not allowing it to absorb. This has the impact of flooding, washing away soils etc.
All 3 farmers visit a more experienced “mentor” type regenerative farmer who had more experience of farming as they want to: all 3 benefit from their wisdom and encouragement to continue with their passion for regeneration. They were able to learn about mixed systems, and how chickens following cows in a grazing system help scratch the dung into the soil, feeding it bugs and nutrients; or pigs who graze specific areas on a farm to completely clear it, churn up the soil naturally and tread in the nutrients from their fertilizer.
One “mentor” suggested that we have 40 summers left in our soils before they are completely exhausted through the industrial process, and that the race is on to revitalize our biggest natural resource. If enough consumers care about the welfare of animals and the conservation of nature, then we can change the industrial system.
Regeneration is appearing everywhere, not just in agriculture, but is people, relationships and values.
Key background facts and quotes:
- 6 inches of soil feeds 8 billion people.
- “Soil is the most important resource on our planet, and we’re degrading it at a fast pace”
- “We have come to believe that money is more important than soil, and money is made by industry, by manufactured goods. So we are prepared to pay lots of money for cars, computers, houses, airplanes, everything else—but food must be cheap. That idea has to change.” – Satish Kumar
- “Soils are absolutely phenomenal in the amount of carbon they can store.” – Hannah Jones
- “An estimate of the carbon stored in soils in the UK is about 10 billion tonnes. …Equivalent to 80 years of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK.” – Hannah Jones
The key themes of the film are around the health of the soil, and how the young farmers work to improve it for the benefit of conservation and food production. Healthy natural water systems are vital to soil health, and this has much to do with the way that agricultural systems are managed sympathetically with nature.
Overall, a fabulous film giving an insight into how young people are fighting the industrial system to provide a better future for nature and for their own health.
