Regenerative Skills

Harriet Mella demystifies cutting edge soil science for ideal plant health

Welcome back to another interview from the skill exchange calls that I’ve been running with Climate Farmers for our regenerative farming network in Europe. 
This is one of the many community building activities that I’ve been organising to help to connect farmers around Europe to some of the best emerging information available, and to get their most important questions answered from around the world. 
In this session I had the pleasure of speaking with Harriet Mella, an independent research scientist from Austria known for her work uncovering the unexplained phenomena of plant growth and development. Informed by her background in microbiology, mycology, and biochemistry, Harriet has a unique capacity to describe little-known connections between emerging biological research and agriculture. Her objective is to use the scientific background that we have to introduce agricultural methods that are more resilient and low input for farmers.In this exchange call we take a look at a wide variety of topics surrounding plant health through soil biology. Harriet does a great job of summarising very complex aspects of cutting edge research into practical applications for work on the ground. 
At the moment, she’s probably best known for the Carbon Micro Cycling course that she teaches on the Agriculture community platform Kind Harvest. She has worked a lot with John Kempf from Advancing Ecological Agriculture and refers to him a few times during this interview. 
Before we get started I want to remind all of you who would be interested in attending one of these skill exchange calls live in the future, all you have to do is be a registered farmer in Europe to receive the invitations and call links that we have coming up. I’m planning a session with Charles Dowding about No-Dig market gardening at the beginning of October, so don’t wait too long. You can register now at climatefarmers.org
Links:
Harriet Mella on Linkedin
https://kindharvest.ag/courses/ra-cc-carbon-course/
climatefarmers.org

How to make and analyse high quality compost: Expert panel 8

Welcome to the 8th of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more.
In this session I hosted a discussion on how to make and analyse high quality compost with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organization working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe. In this panel I invited three of the most experienced and influential educators in the field of compost production and biological soil amendments.
This is an area where there is still a lot of contention as you’ll see in any online forum on the topic. Differences in opinion about bacterial or fungal dominant compost, hot thermophilic decomposition or cooler and slower techniques. Whether compost teas actually work or if prebiotic food is more important. This is a new and emerging field so there are new discoveries all the time, but rather than get bogged down in technicalities I organised this panel to cut through the confusion and talk about what really works and results in improvement of soil health for growers.
Now one mistake that I have to own up to is that I screwed up a bit on the scheduling coordination with the speakers, and for that reason Charles Dowding and Adreinne Goldshalx didn’t show up until the end. We’ll get to hear a little bit from Charles in the last 15 minutes, but Adrienne only comes in during the Q&A portion which isn’t part of this episode.
Don’t worry though, I have plans to do follow up interviews with them both so we’ll hear from them in some of the episodes coming up. Luckily Troy Hinke of Living Roots Compost Tea was a real hero and carried the discussion and all the questions I had all the way through.
Don’t forget that if you want to see the video of the full event, you can check it out on the Climate Farmer’s Youtube channel through the link in the show notes for this episode. Since these discussions are longer than the regular weekly episodes, I’ll keep the intro short and jump right into the introductions for our panelists.
Links
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9BQ2a952wEchjyRSZPV6-Q
https://www.livingrootscomposttea.com/
https://www.instagram.com/livingrootscomposttea/?hl=en
https://charlesdowding.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/charles_dowding/?hl=en
Check out these previous episodes on soil health
https://regenerativeskills.com/gabe-brown-on-how-to-restore-soil-and-ecological-health-on-a-massive-scale/
https://regenerativeskills.com/regenerating-the-biology-in-your-soil-expert-panel-4/
https://regenerativeskills.com/robert-pavlis-soil/
https://regenerativeskills.com/matt-powers-regen-soil/

Stefan Sobkowiak on running a profitable regenerative fruit orchard

Welcome back to another interview from the skill exchange calls that I’ve been running with Climate Farmers for our regenerative farming network in Europe. 
In this session I had the good fortune of introducing Stefan Sobkowiak to our group. Many of you who’ve been listening to this show for a while will remember the last interview I did with Stefan in the last season during the series on agroforestry. Stefan is one of my favorite sources for practical and honest techniques for managing the whole ecology of an orchard from propagating new tree species through maintenance, pest management, harvesting and even processing and marketing your products. His film, the Permaculture Orchard has help people around the world to transition towards diversified, resilient, and more profitable models of running their tree crop businesses. His YouTube channel goes even more in depth as he’s always creating videos about the innovations and even struggles that are going on at his orchard Miracle Farm in Canada.  
In this session we cover a lot of ground in a short time.We talk about How to manage pests and diseases by improving soil health and biodiversity in the orchard. How to care for the health of your trees for better yields and profit. Integrating other crops and animals into the system for ecological and economic resilience. And how to adapt common methods to your unique climate and context. 
There’s a whole Q&A session that happens after the half hour interview on these skill exchange calls which are exclusive to the Climate Farming network here in Europe. So if you’re interested in attending these calls in person to have your own questions answered by the experts and tap into the growing community of farmers, consultants, and educators around Europe, you can register right now at ClimateFarmers.org
Come and learn Syntropic agriculture and profitable agroforestry with me in Spain!
This is the first announcement that I’m making for an exciting course that I’ve put together with my friend and Syntropic agriculture specialist Jacob Evans. I interviewed Jacob last season about his experience applying syntropic principles and design to the challenging ecology of Andalucia in southern Spain, and how even with the harsh heat and bone dry conditions that they face there he was able to establish an eden of productive perennial crops and support species on degraded former farmland. 
Since that interview Jacob and I have been looking for ways to collaborate and so I invited him to come and teach with me at the farm of our good friends and Climate Farmers, Carlo and Coralie. The two of them have been developing their new orchard a few hours south of me in Barcelona and are super excited to experiment with Syntropic agriculture for all the incredible benefits of mixed biodiversity and ecosystem services that it has the potential to develop. Together we’ll be hosting a group of learners for 5 days in which we’ll not only go through the principles and theory of how these systems work, we’ll be putting it into practice directly on the land as we install syntropic orchard rows on their site. I’ll also be going into the practical side of ensuring that this innovative way of planting matures into a profitable venture that can accelerate the development of your farm. We’ll cover soil testing and plant health, seed saving and plant propagation, alley cropping and animal integration, and a lot more. There will be team building activities, incredible food from the surrounding community, and much more in this 5 day intensive learning experience. So whether you’re excited to develop a large farm with agroforestry, or just see the opportunity to plant delicious fruit trees in your back yard or neighborhood, you’ll leave this course feeling confident to go out and start planting no matter what climate or bioregion you live in. 
You can find all the details of the workshop at thegreenrebel.org or find them on instagram at thegreenrebel.

Will Harriss of White Oak Pastures on the bigger picture of a regenerative farm business

Over the last handful of weeks I’ve had the pleasure of managing an ambitious new project in my role with Climate Farmers, an organization working to build the infrastructure to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe. We call it the Pioneer Program. What this is essentially is a collaborative effort between us and some of the most prominent and experienced educators in regenerative agriculture. In this first program we partnered with Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden and his online masterclass to guide farmers from all around Europe to redesign and transition their farms and businesses towards regenerative models. Through the incredible education provided in Richard’s course and guided facilitation from our team and other knowledgeable practitioners around the world, we’ve helped our group to develop their holistic context, analyse new enterprise options, and map a course for a regenerative future for their land. In a short time we’ve seen dramatic transformations and progress in both the farm ecology and the mindsets of our program participants. 
During this journey I had the pleasure of interviewing Will Harriss of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia and guiding a Q&A session with our Pioneer farmers. 
Since Will does a great job of giving his own introduction early in this interview I’ll cut this preface short and jump right in. Don’t forget to stick around till the end where I’ll tell you how you can join the next Pioneer Program with Climate Farmers and now I’ll hand things over to Will Harriss.
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
https://whiteoakpastures.com/
https://www.instagram.com/whiteoakpastures/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-6RVpGF4tM
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTmheMIkvmt2T2k62oo-Yfw
https://youtu.be/nnYR7onhwc4

Nathan Fournier on The business side of regenerative landscaping and community restoration

It was a couple months ago that Nathan Fournier joined the Patreon community and we began a correspondence. I quickly realised that he had followed a similar path as I did in getting into ecological design. Nathan first studied engineering and pursued that career path only for a short time before realising that there was a lot missing in the pursuit. Fast forward to today where he’s running a successful ecological landscaping service offering edible gardens, tree planting, and much more to a wide range of clients in his community. 
I’ve often thought about getting into landscaping work myself and nearly started a company before some different opportunities came up, so I was excited to hear about Nathan’s journey into the profession and what he’s learned in the process. 
In this interview, we unpack all of the potential in offering ecological repair and optimisation services and just how many interests and skill sets that it can accommodate. Nathan gives some great insights into the business end of things which is often where permaculture design courses and other ecological learning leaves off. There are also a large range of side businesses that can help to support the transformation of whole communities through the production of high quality seeds, trees, compost, tools, and much more, so this really serves to open a range of options outside of just farming and gardening for people looking for career paths to support this movement. 
I really hope that you find some inspiring information here, but I’ll start from the beginning with the story of how Nathan got started. 
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUh-ip5MTw
Links:
https://www.homeharvestcentralma.com/

How to repair the hydrological cycle of a landscape: Expert panel 7

Welcome to the seventh of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more.
In this session I hosted a discussion on the importance of restoring proper hydrological function in a landscape and the steps to achieving it with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organisation working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe.
In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators working on this from a farming perspective. Since landscape hydrology and its proper function is often overlooked in its importance in regulating global temperature, I wanted to focus on this specifically. I was lucky enough to bring together three of the experts that have most guided my learning in this field, Zach Weiss, Nicole Masters, and Mark Shepard.Don’t forget that if you want to see the video of the full event, you can check it out on the Climate Farmer’s Youtube channel through the link in the show notes for this episode.
Zach Weiss is the protégé of revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner certification directly from Sepp. Zach went on to create Elemental Ecosystems to provide an action-oriented process to improve clients' relationship with their landscape. Elemental Ecosystems is an ecological development, contracting, and consulting firm specializing in watershed restoration and ecosystem regeneration. The firm’s work includes Aquaculture, Agroforestry, Water Retention Landscapes, Terrace Systems, Spring Development, Natural Building, and more.
Mark Shepard is the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC, founder of Restoration Agriculture Development LLC and award-winning author of the books, Restoration Agriculture and Water for Any Farm. He is most widely known as the founder of New Forest Farm, the 106-acre perennial agricultural savanna considered by many to be one of the most ambitious sustainable agriculture projects in the United States.
Nicole Masters is is an independent agroecologist, systems thinker, storyteller, educator and author of the book “For the Love of Soil.” With over 20 years of practical and theoretical experience in regenerative agriculture, she is also recognised as a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker on the topic of soil health. Her team of soil coaches at Integrity Soils work alongside producers in the U.S., Canada and across Australasia supporting producers and organisations who cover over 24 million acres, to take their landscapes to the next level in nutrient density, profitability and environmental outcomes.
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
https://www.integritysoils.co.nz/
https://www.elementalecosystems.com/
https://www.waterstories.app/
http://www.restorationag.com/Check out some of the previous expert panels:
https://regenerativeskills.com/the-broad-applications-of-the-holistic-management-framework-expert-panel-6/
https://regenerativeskills.com/farm-economics-with-mark-shepard-and-michael-ableman-expert-panel-5/
https://regenerativeskills.com/regenerating-the-biology-in-your-soil-expert-panel-4/

Shane Simonsen is back to outline the refinement of his “Zero-Input” agriculture experiments

Today’s session is an interview that I’d been looking forward to doing for a while. Since last year in fact, when I found Shane Simonsen’s blog and began corresponding with him online. That correspondence turned into one of the most popular and talked about episodes from that season due to the ingenious way that Shane approaches farming his land in Northeastern Australia. 
In that first interview Shane gave an overview of the experiments in biological succession and food production on his homestead. His blog follows these experiments and speaks from a deep understanding of plants and how they live. In my opinion, it’s one of the most original approaches to large scale food production that I’ve come across in a long time and asks the simple question of “how might we still be able to produce enough food for ourselves and our communities if we no longer had access to all of the inputs and fossil fuels of our modern times.”
In this episode we get to pick up where we left off last time and see how some of these plant breeding efforts have paid off. Shane speaks about how he’s shifting phases at the homestead and focusing more on refinement of his system rather than broad experiments and the increase of diversity. Now that he’s seeing results from his consistent efforts over the last 5 years, he has a better idea of what thrives, what fails, and what’s worth pursuing to greater fruition with his limited time as the primary caretaker of his land. 
Beyond that we get to talk about a new book he’s writing which is something of a post post-apocalyptic future sci fi novel based on biological advancement rather than technological, which normally defines the genre. Though he’s still early in the manuscript, I loved talking about the concept of a post global collapse that envisions how our species might recover by returning to our reliance and relationships with the living world. 
This conversation meanders through a lot of topics so I hope it’s not too tricky to follow along. For plant nerds like Shane and I, I think it’ll be a real treat. So let's jump right in
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
https://zeroinputagriculture.wordpress.com/

Ivo Degn And Philippe Birker On The Climate Farmers Journey And Mission: Part 2

This episode is the second part in our interview with the cofounders of Climate Farmers, an organization I’ve been working with for almost a year now that is working to build the infrastructure for regenerative agriculture in Europe. In the first part of the interview from last week we’ve covered the challenges of modern farming in Europe and the niche that Climate Farmers is hoping to occupy in the transition to a regenerative agriculture future in Europe. We talked about our own strategy of focusing on direct support for farmers through the different projects and departments within the organisation from the ever growing academy making quality educational resources easy to find, to the remote sensing team helping to gather data and metrics on the improvement of the soil and other ecosystem services as these farms transition to regenerative methods. 
To wrap up the conversation we’re going to go back to the beginning and recap the crazy turn of events that got us to where we are less than a year from launching. You’ll get to hear how this small agtech startup has gone from a loose idea to attracting collaboration and support from industries and farmers alike. 
The journey is certainly not over, in fact the really challenging parts are still ahead. If you haven’t yet heard the first part of this interview I’ll encourage you to go back and have a listen because it’ll give a lot more context to the wild story that’s about to come. So let’s check back in with Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker to see how this all started. 
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:climatefarmers.org

Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker on the Climate Farmers journey and mission: Part 1

If you’ve been listening to more than a few episodes this season, you’ll certainly have heard me mention a few times that I’ve been hosting the monthly expert panel discussions with Climate Farmers, an organisation that is working to promote regenerative agriculture in Europe. The truth is that there’s a much bigger story behind that collaboration and a whole lot more going on than just the panel discussions. 
Today I want to begin to share the story and the journey that my colleagues and I have been on for almost a year now. Until recently I’ve been a bit apprehensive to talk too much about the work I’ve been collaborating on with the team at Climate Farmers because it’s still a very new project and it’s taken us a while for us all to get clear about our direction, strategy, and path towards our goals. All of those have become much clearer in the last handful of weeks however and it’s time to unveil this ambitious project and the remarkable people that have worked together to get it off the ground. 
So today is going to be the first in a two part interview with Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker, the co-founders of Climate Farmers. In this first part, we’ll be talking about the concept of the organization, the current state of modern agriculture in Europe, and the goals that we’re working towards in order to directly assist farmers in their transition to more profitable and ecologically viable business management in a challenging and fast changing industry. Next week, in part 2, we’ll go back to the beginning and hear from both of them about the wild ride that has brought us so far in such a short time and all the brilliant people that make up the team that is making it all work, so be sure to stay tuned next week as well. 
But before we get into the bigger concepts, Let’s start by getting to know Ivo and Philippe, and the ideas that turned into this initiative. 
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:climatefarmers.org

The broad applications of the holistic management framework: Expert panel 6

Welcome to the sixth of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more.In this session, I hosted a discussion on the holistic management framework with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organization working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe.In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators from the global network of Savory Hubs to share their knowledge about the wide applications of the holistic management framework. Since holistic management is often only associated with animal grazing, I wanted to hear from the women today about how relevant and influential it can be for people, not only in other types of farming businesses, but also in other aspects of life. In my work with the farming community that we’re building across Europe, the topic of holistic management keeps coming up because of this frameworks’ focus on managing the complexity that other forms of decision making work to simplify and reduce. In contrast to those methods, the idea of managing anything, from a business, to a community, relationship, or government, holistically involves understanding the whole and all the complexities within it. This is especially necessary when working with living systems and the unpredictable aspects that come with it.Since these discussions are longer than the regular weekly episodes, I’ll keep the intro short and jump right into the introductions for our panelists.
Precious Phiri: is a member of the Regeneration International (RI) steering committee and also serves as RI’s Africa coordinator. She is also a training and development specialist in regenerative environmental issues and community organizing. She recently founded an organization called EarthWisdom, a network which she formed immediately after her full time nine-year career with Savory hub in Zimbabwe. Her work focuses on training rural communities and collaborating with networks in Africa to reduce poverty, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock, and wildlife.
Sheila Cooke: works to enable farmers to regenerate soils whilst attaining a higher quality of life. As hub leader for 3LM, Land and Livestock Management for Life, and an Accredited Field Professional with the Savory Institute, Sheila is developing a network of Learning Hubs, Accredited Educators, and Ecological Outcome Verified producers of food and fibre.
Sarah Gleason: is a first generation bison rancher based in Hesperus, CO. She entered ranching after building a career first in consumer marketing and later in advocacy for regenerative agriculture and conservation. After working for multiple years with the Savory Institute and Holistic Management practitioners worldwide, Sarah launched into full-time ranching herself. She began her business in 2016, when she purchased her first 15 bred bison. Gleason Bison is a holistically managed, grass-fed bison operation committed to serving its community, regenerating the environment, and producing thriving animals.
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
savory.global
https://www.3lm.network/
http://gleasonbison.com/
https://regenerationinternational.org/