Uncle Google tells me the obsessed, free-thinking beekeeper is actually an innovator, entrepreneur, information technology whizz, businesswoman and motivational speaker. I think she might have achieved more in her life than Steve and I ever will. But enough of that, let’s talk about me.
In 1999 my family and I planted a gold kiwifruit orchard and within 10 years I noticed the worms were burrowing through the pumice and clay, turning it black. (carbon sequestration, see photos – the orange lumps are pumice).
Today, the original 75mm to 100mm of topsoil is now mostly 300mm but in some cases it is 600mm deep.
It is typically shallower where the kiwifruit canopy is normally fuller and little grass grows and deeper where the multi species sward of phallaris, cocksfoot, dock, buttercup, lotus, clover and ryegrass thrives.
Over the years I have also used copious amounts of chook manure and mowed infrequently.
This incredible increase in soil depth happened quite by accident.
Imagine what could have been achieved if we knew how to make it happen over large areas of New Zealand farmland. And what if we were paid carbon credits? Kenyan farmers and some Australian farmers are paid and some now expect to make more money from carbon credits than from livestock.
Let’s talk about Alan Savory’s holistic grazing system. I think I have been doing a mechanical version of this on my orchard. Check out his TED talk, How to green the world’s deserts. Do you agree?
A while ago a friend lent me a copy of the book, Call of the Reed Warbler, by Charles Massey. It is so good I bought two copies. It is 500 pages of regenerative farming and Savory success stories along with explanations of how scientists are unravelling the secrets of soil-building.
For example, the Dunnicliff family’s 1,054,700ha station set-stocked 20,000 cattle. In about 2011 Savory convinced them that with holistic grazing – not what we call rotational grazing – they could graze 100,000 cattle.
For $5 million they developed a 100-paddock cell system, running a mob of 3200 bulls moved every three days. By 2015 they had more than 80,000 head and in 2017 almost 100,000. Note this is a 300-day rotation system. In New Zealand our grasses might be unpalatable by then, which might require the use of cover crops.
Some time ago I heard of Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil book. At first I resisted getting it. I mean, what would a Yank know about soil? They do dust bowls. Finally, I bought a copy and read it. Boom. I bought another three, lent two out and sent one to Jacinda Ardern.
I have now ordered more than 100 varieties of seeds and will soon begin my own experiments with cover crops.
When Brown took over his in-law’s farm the water infiltration rate was 12mm an hour (my incredible soil probably does 25-50mm mm hour). His soil now is now at 50mm in 25 seconds. In case you missed that I’ll say it again – 50mm in 25 seconds.
If NZ farms were half as good as that we would seldom have floods or ponding, except in cut-over pine forests and maybe some native bush.
When he took over Brown had no topsoil and the organic matter was 1.8%. It now averages 975mm of topsoil with 8-12% organic matter. I guess NZ soils might be 8-10% in organic matter but most are less than 100mm deep, with few deeper than 300mm.
Some are worse. For example, the cut-over pine forests around Galatea have little topsoil, just pumice washing away in the rain. At a recent Zespri sustainability seminar one of the speakers said NZ has 0.2% of the world’s land but produces 1.6% of the world’s silt. Does that sound like regenerative farming?
Brown has been running his family farm for only 25 years, so how has he achieved the turn-around? By true regenerative farming. It is not organic and need not involve seaweed and compost. Two simple steps are absolute – no till and multi species (cover crops really help to increase diversity).
If you’re in a hurry, add rotationally grazed livestock. More of a hurry, make sure your livestock are holistically grazed. Still not fast enough? Push the holistic grazing to beyond what even Savory envisioned – a million kilos of livestock a hectare.
Neil Dennis, the Canadian who achieved that, like many farmers, initially knew holistic grazing wouldn’t work on his ranch. He set out to prove that but instead found it actually did work so he pushed it to the extreme. Water infiltration rates on his land are now 400mm an hour. Where in NZ do we get that much rain in an hour?
I lied about the rules. There are four more guidelines – try not to graze more than 50% of herbage in a paddock or else the roots begin to suffer, minimise the removal of herbage from where it was grown, reduce or eliminate synthetic fertilisers and reduce or eliminate biocides. Set stocking is the one absolute no-no.
By 2004 Dr Kris Nichols was putting pressure on Brown to stop synthetic fertilisers because they degrade and destroy the soil fungal webs. So Brown instigated four-year split trials on several crops. By 2007 it was a no-brainer – if he spent no money on fertilisers he got the same or greater yield.
Hundreds of farmers and scientists overseas have developed low-cost or free systems that pump carbon into the soil. Numerous NZ scientists have developed extremely expensive systems that blow carbon out of the soil. Some NZ scientists have measured soil carbon losses from dairy farms at an average of 700kg to 1000kg/ha/year for the last three decades. That is not sustainable, let alone regenerative.
So now that you are all rushing out to buy cover crop seeds, greencoverseed.com will help you choose seed for your situation. Jamie Scott’s Innovative Ways to Seed Cover Crops might assist with timing, rates and methods.
I understand America now has 20m acres under cover crops, up from 14.7m in 2018. This fad started some 30 years ago and shows no signs of slowing down.
I am not expert and have ignored regenerative agriculture until I read Brown’s book this year. I discovered much of the information above in the last week. There is so much to learn and it is not hard to find.
Who am I?
David Horwood is a Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and beef farmer.
