And instead of the usual exchanges of disaster stories when they meet, these people are cheering each other on, swapping ideas and finding that “getting out of the way of nature” can produce pleasurable surprises, which increases as time goes on.
At present, I am Zooming a second course from an outfit called Biodiversity For A Liveable Climate based in Boston, US. The first one was called Biodiversity and Symbiosis, and dealt with the cells, bacteria and microbiota which created all the living things on earth, both plant and animal, and which continue to keep them all going, including Homo sapiens.
Togetherness is what makes nature work, and togetherness with each other and with nature is what is urgently needed for people to start to work towards healing our guts, our land and our climate.
The second course, demanded by all those who partook of the first one, is getting us to look at Biodiversity and Systems Thinking, to try and find some answers which might resonate with people we individually interact with. I’m the only Kiwi on the course and, from what I tell them about what we are and aren’t doing here, a number of those Americans really want to come and visit, if not stay forever.
One of the aspects of the massive learning I’m getting is finding a raft of books on the individual efforts going on all over the world where desertified landscapes are being re-greened, and where farmers who have suffered devastating fires, floods or inherited farms with huge debts and zilch productivity, have been introduced to those whose lives have been transformed by moving (sometimes over many years) to regenerative farming. These are now making profits, have healthy soils and animals, happy families and time to add to the swelling number of publications about their lives in harmony with nature.
One such is Charles Massy, whose farm is on the Monaro Tablelands of New South Wales. We keep being told that Australia is the driest country on earth, but his book Call of the Reed Warbler relates his visits to a great number of regenerative farmers all over Oz, Africa and other dry places. This is a guy who studied agriculture in the 1970s and farmed Merinos successfully for two decades, before discovering a whole new life in regeneration, which resulted in him returning to university in 2009 to do a PhD in human ecology. The thesis from this provided the core of the book, plus his massive reading and support from hundreds of well-known names in biogenic farming and its facets.
Much media attention in NZ has been given to the supposed unscientific ideas being tried here for regenerative farming. No tillage, multi-pasture species, constant movement of animals and long rest periods. But regenerative farming is a huge amount more than that, and involves studying and understanding the multiple ecosystems operating across every farm landscape and working to maximise each one. This involves getting water cycles working properly, a huge amount of biodiversity, including both insects and birds (including wildlife in Oz), and holistic planned grazing.
We are already getting droughts in NZ, and the stories of areas with minimal rains being fully infiltrated (rather than running off), creeks running and nature producing things like native grasses and shrubs from seeds which had been buried for many years, was so heartening to read, and realise that it can be done here.
Massy refers to the mindset of farmers and the urban public as the Mechanical Mind, where technology is assumed to always be able to find solutions to the disasters we have long created. He looks instead to what he called Emergent Minds, where man can step back (theoretically at least) and let nature recover the natural ecological systems, many of which were flourishing under indigenous peoples (including ours), but were destroyed rapidly with European settlement.
I have read so much recently about green and lush regenerative farms in both the US and elsewhere, where just over the fence the “industrial” farms are bare, brown and feed substitution is a major part of life – and a huge cost to those who live on them. Strangely, the views of such farmers are so often disbelief and derision, while the green evidence is there before their eyes. Somewhat similar to some of the media reporting about NZ that we have read.
I attended a lecture on regenerative farming presented around the country recently, which was to packed audiences wherever given. I’ve been a believer in nurturing soil life for years, and am terrified of what we are already seeing of climate change.
I would love to see a nationwide move among agricultural institutions to teach students and farmers about our ecology in all its forms, both above and underground, so that our land can again be permitted to show what it could do, before so much of what we have done had killed off its togetherness. Just because we can’t see the small things, doesn’t mean they won’t come back, given half a chance.
Who am I? Sue Edmonds is a Waikato-based writer specialising in agriculture and regenerative farming.
