 Kia ora koutou. Nga mi koutou. I'm Elina Siegfried and welcome to this webisode on building farm resilience as part of the Our Regenerative Future series. Wonderful to have you here. Again, my name is Elina. I'm the author of the Our Regenerative Future series produced in partnership with Pure Advantage and Edmund Hillary Fellowship and over the past six months or so I've taken a deep dive into the world of regenerative agriculture. It started out as an idea to write a few stories about carbon sequestration and some of the farmers that were employing regenerative methods on their farms and snowballed quite quickly into a 15-part content series published on Pure Advantage and Edmund Hillary Fellowship's blog on medium and has spun out six or seven actually webinars by now. So we launched a series of six to begin with and found that the conversation and dialogue around regenerative agriculture and the regenerative economy in general was such that we decided to launch another six webinars. So this is number two of that second series. And in the next few weeks we'll be just looking at themes like regenerative forestry, regenerative tourism and urban agriculture as well and the recognition that it's not all upon farmers to be solving our climate change and other environmental woes and that we all have a part to play in creating a more regenerative and sustainable economy for New Zealand and bringing about the kind of systems-led little strategies that we need to go into the future. So today we are on the farm and we are discussing farm resilience and all its forms with two wonderful panellists which I'll introduce to you quickly. Greg Hart along with his wife Rachel is transitioning their traditional sheep and cattle farm station into a farm with regenerative farming systems. So there's a restoring planting trees, sequestering carbon and building healthy soil. Mangarara Station near Elleslorp in the Hawkes Bay is also known as the family farm and it's a 610 hectare property that's an open to public living example of regenerative agriculture which is really neat. They've got an eco lodge there so you can go and see what's going on. Greg is a bachelor of agriculture from Messi and has previously worked in the agribusiness consultancy, livestock export and grain marketing. Gary Williams is a water and soil engineer by a dynamic farmer, permaculture activist and teacher and a natural philosopher. He's the author of several books and along with his partner Emily has been living on a small farm where they run a diverse array of farming and forestry activity from home gardens, orchards, staple crops, animal grazing, firewood, implantation forests and wilderness teaching. So he's a long time guru in this space. Wonderful to have you both on the panel today. I see that everybody seems to have voted in our poll which is fantastic. Thank you. We've got a good mix of people on the call today. So 36% farmers and growers which is a little lower than we usually have but we've got others from science and academia, business media and other. So it's fantastic to see such a wonderfully diverse group here today. Looks like most people have read at least some of the regenerative future stories which is fantastic. So we've got a good grounding of what the series about and again most people are somewhat familiar with regenerative agriculture or very familiar. That's fantastic. So I think we can start this conversation at a pretty high level. I think now I would love to introduce or rather let our two panelists introduce themselves and invite them to perhaps weave into your introduction what farm resilience actually means to you. Let's start with you Gary. Okay thank you Alina. I suppose in terms of background and on the property we have here which is quite a small farm. It's mainly a hill and so most of it's gone to forest. Well it was mostly in pasture and we came here. It's now largely in forest and I mean it was a huge learning exercise for us and I like to sort of say that to people you know that when you make mistakes that's good because that's how you learn. You only learn by doing things and then trying to work out what happened because the mistake is just sort of a happening which you can learn from and it's really that's what's really important and I think in terms of a regenerative type of agriculture or whatever you want to call it you're going to be on a learning curve you're going to be transitioning to something quite different. That's really important that you make mistakes because that's what resilience is going to be about really learning from your mistakes. But I think you've sort of done a brief introduction of where I'm coming from but I'd actually just like to talk a little wider about resilience because to me it's not something in itself. It's in context with what's a healthy ecosystem. So there's a balance between productivity and resilience and as a constant sort of interchange goes on that maintains both productivity and resilience which is like repair and protection of the system under either internal or external threats or hazards that come along. So I'd like to actually start not with agriculture but with ourselves. I think it's maybe easy to understand resilience in that way because we're an ecosystem right we're living breathing ecosystem and when we take in food some of that food is for energy and vitality to do work and that right so we take in food we actually burn or we burn carbs with oxygen which we breathe in and it's like burning in a engine as well you actually burn and you cause damage by burning and so the system has to repair itself constantly and so there's this sort of balance going on and so some of the food is sort of straight carbs easy energy sugars some of its fats slow burning longer term energy but all of that causes damage to our systems to ourselves to our system so then we talk about antioxidants right and micro nutrients that come in to do all the complicated repair balancing protection systems required to allow the body to remain healthy so to me we're healthy when we have the the right balance between productivity or energy for work and repair protection type of resilience and the tricky part of it is is how our body knows when to repair what with what and how and it's highly complicated and it's a very diverse system and the response has to be what I think is a really important word in proportion let's just be proportional to the issue or the problem what's going on and to give an example of that the body sometimes overreacts and you get lots of inflammation around the body like maybe it's happening with this coronavirus actually and that's an overreaction it's not in proportion and that's dangerous so the question is how do we maintain proportionality how do we get the right information so again resilience to me comes from highly interconnected systems which provide information which allows proportionate action so if you come to agriculture and and perhaps I will start with a more horticulture one you need a lot of diversity which is well connected I mean diversity in itself just doesn't work you can throw a whole of stuff there that doesn't work it's got to be well connected it's got to have the right feedback systems and it's got to make appropriate responses and to try and do that with our small brains ourselves in a management way is really really difficult so to me regenerating or regenerative agriculture is about nature doing all that work because she knows how to do it she's been doing it for millions of years and we just come in as a small amount of energy a small amount of management that maybe then allows us to take some resources from that system and we give back by the way by our actions and our intelligence because when you're trying to get a resilient system by putting that in there to kill that weed or putting that in there to kill that bug or putting that in there to give a bit of nutrient just about all the time you're going to be in wrong proportions and the system's not going to work well and that's why I think our industrial agriculture is so lacking in resilience it's so fragile for that reason and that's why I see going over to something that is based on nature doing most of the work and thank you very much and getting things right and repairing things as as required then we're going to be much better off so that would be my take on resilience thank you Gary yeah certainly a delicate balance to be to be managing out there on the farm Greg over to you Greg have have we got you on the line here just yeah thanks Alina and Kia ora everybody I am on one of our classic rural dodgy broadband connections and so I might come ago a bit and miss a little bit but yeah it's great to be here today and resilience is really probably what put us on our path and changing the way we were farming and managing Mangurara and that journey began about 20 years ago and and at the time I guess we were thinking about the future and having our first child and and thinking about the world that that they were going to inherit and then I guess at that time you know sustainability was was kind of in our thoughts and understanding that past agriculture in New Zealand is based upon bringing you know nutrients from the other side of the world to keep our fertilizers on our pastures and keep the system growing and so that didn't seem a long-term sort of sustainable option for us and especially when we consider the amount of energy involved with that and and finite resources and so that's sent us off on this very long journey which I'm sure is going to last the whole of my life and it has evolved over I guess the last 10 years or so of the awareness of the word regenerative agriculture and we don't get hung up on on the words or the labels that we give it but it is about the philosophy and the approach of working with nature looking and learning from nature and part of that also regenerative agriculture is about building resilience into your system and for us you know that that does start with the soil and and it's also been about building a whole lot of diversity into our system which has has been not just adding a whole lot of trees and creating that space for nature as well as you know different production systems which leads to different income streams but also it's been being about you know creating diverse sort of you know all the visitors that we get to to our farm and a whole lot of energy that sort of fuels us and keeps us going and like Gary mentioned I do think you know we can't leave out our personal resilience from this and I think that has been a big part of you know the journey on the farm because ultimately I think as we go through life and hopefully learn a few things along the way we continue to evolve and deepen our understanding of what we're on this planet to do and I think you know that starts to be reflected in the landscapes around us and and hopefully you know there's our landscapes are a lot diverse and hopefully you know beauty is a big part of what we do here and so I think you know that's been a personal journey and resilience also as we've seen in Hawkes Bay this year going through the drought and and I guess you know with COVID and everything is community resilience which has been really important too and just acknowledging you know that role of kindness and compassion and for people to support and look out for each other so it is very broad but all connected. Right we are experiencing a little bit of a distortion with with your video Greg I'm thinking we might just turn turn off your videos the audience coming through nice and clear if we're okay if you're okay with that I would love to be able to hear what you're saying yeah Yeah I think in both of both of your answers there you really touched quite a lot on resilience beyond just thinking about the environment and that's something that often conversations around farm resilience are around the environmental factors resilience from pests from extreme weather events from the sorts of droughts that we've seen this summer in the North Island so Greg I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that community or emotional or social resilience that you think regenerative farming can help facilitate yeah thanks just I guess also you know as as a view of resilience you know it is about our landscapes and and the appropriate land use for for the different land classes and there also it's its ability of meeting you know the challenges that are just part of life and but I guess the ones that we don't expect every day and so it's just about not just bouncing back from those challenges that we face but it's it's about bouncing forward so that we continue to evolve and adapt and you have become more resilient to it to the challenges that the future undoubtedly holds and I guess you know on on a community level again we have had you know Poppy Renton has become a bit of a hero in Hawkes Bay starting a Facebook page which has given us the ability to connect as farmers and support and just share stories and just you know especially people on farms to know that you're not alone out there and and that there are others in the same boat and and I guess it was especially hard through COVID because the pubs were closed and we couldn't just you know pop down and have a yarn with with all your mates over that time so you know it was important to be able to connect and communicate and have that that support yeah absolutely it's wonderful to see the farmers going online too as well as all all us city folk who are working working from our home offices. Gary did you have anything you wanted to add around social and community resilience I know you've been working in this space a long time yeah well the whole idea of growing food is to feed people and it's it's not well it shouldn't be somebody doing one part of it and the other people are at the way at the end of some system and and just buying on the supermarket I mean I think it's really important there's not many communities supported sort of agricultural sort of systems in New Zealand there's one or two it's it's very prevalent in North America in particular but there are there are different ways in which we can connect people between urban and rural and everything in between I think that's that's what's really important I think for any food system that is to be resilient requires again good conductivity and that means human conductivity as much as you know we tend to think of it as just something to do with nature well we're nature too and we have to connect with each other and we have to support each other and we have to find ways of feeding back information which is which is appropriate and helpful and and I have to say I mean I come from a farming background my parents are farmers and my I still have a lot of family of farmers and and that and so my wife's the same a lot of feedback is not always helpful because it's not aimed at trying to help with appropriate action that should be taken and so I think it's really important that people do relate to their food and try to understand it more trying to what's behind that food what's the effect on both people and our wider environment from our farming methods and how can we help everybody in the system to be healthier I mean you can come back to to health because I mean a well-functioning ecosystem as we can call it healthy so our food supply system needs to be healthy in terms of right from right through and and of course the problem is at the moment it's not it's very unhealthy in its sort of very linear connections long-distance transport poor feedback between the people in the along the chain so very much the sort of when I was with people trying to promote organics and that it was very much about people understanding where the food came from how they can be involved with it so it's absolutely you know it's just as vital that part of the system as what happens on the farm. Yeah I love it healthy food, healthier people, healthy communities. Greg do you want to add something there? Yeah just I'd agree with that too because I mean it's been a big part of our journey as connecting people back with the farm and I think that loss of connection is is one of the biggest issues that results and you know the the challenge is whether it be climate change or social issues and health issues out there is just that loss of connection with understanding how food is growing where it's coming from and that and so that's that's a big part of this is educating and connecting people back to the land so they can make more informed choices and that whole thing about understanding that every dollar they spend particularly on food is a vote for the kind of future we're going to have so you're connecting people back to the land and farms is really important. Thanks Greg I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience this summer you of course are in Hawkes Bay where there was a pretty brutal drought can you speak a little bit as to how it was in the Hawkes Bay and how you dealt with that on your on your property? Yeah we gear up like most Hawkes Bay farmers for dry summers but I guess the way we do this a little bit differently is by having higher pasture covers and using holistic grazing management so we do take more grass into the summer so we've kind of got a hay shed full of grass already on our farm which we can graze down you know through through that summer and you know that that is all about you know taller grasses you know with deeper root systems going into the ground so accessing water deeper you know deeper in the soil profile and also you know we always wanted to keep the soil covered with our holistic grazing and so you know the soil is never exposed to the sun and and drying it out and and then we have longer rest periods so you know while we we don't graze it right to the ground through that summer initially and you know give it a longer rest period so that it can recover and so we we did have you know good pasture and plenty of feed for our animals right through the summer where we sort of get a little bit where it got tough for us is when we don't get rain in April and May and because you kind of expect it to be raining there and so we got through the summer perfectly okay and but we have had to reduce our stock numbers going into this winter but again you know grass grows grass and pasture covers have bounced back really well and so we're in a position basically now to restock stop the farm and we have saved ourselves a lot of stress through this time because it has been really hard for a lot of farmers and you know there's been farmers that have been feeding out to their stock since February and yeah and that's tough and it's really expensive we haven't bought any feed and you know we haven't applied any nitrogen but we're still you know farming very profitably and each day at the moment I'm going out and shifting my animals and they're going into the pastures you know almost up to their knees and and you know they're well fed and you know the other really big benefit of just this approach is you know for the mental well-being and welfare of the farmers and it does take a lot of stress off and you know because we all love to see our animals you know healthy and and doing well and being well fed and so and you know we've been able to do that which is which has been really cool and it's great to see a sort of a cascading series of effects there if you've got a resilient farm then the animals are more healthy the farmers are faring better in terms of stress and really interesting to hear how those kind of regenerative methods can be helping retain the water. I know we spoke last week with Jeff Czech from the Rodale Institute who of course is a global leader on regenerative agriculture and I think they've been running a 40-year study I think talking about or one of the findings is how in drought years the organic crops tends to fare a lot better than conventional ones so I'd love to ask a question now which has come from Barbara Hay and refers to a Dominion Post article this morning actually a story called fertilizers are vital so perhaps this is a question for Gary but the article says there are misconceptions around soil health and regenerative agriculture namely that fertilizer is counterproductive to both this just isn't true this is the quote most New Zealand soils for example are naturally poor and phosphorus your thoughts on that Gary well yeah that's probably a big question isn't it I mean they're actually not poor and phosphorus are poor and available phosphorus more than actually but and sometimes these details are are important so yeah well it goes right back to the heart of the of the system you're trying to do in terms of fertilizer I mean systems obviously work well by themselves in nature they have for you know we've come along and we've changed the approach and particularly the problem with artificial synthetic fertilizers actually suppresses natural fertility of the of the system because it it actually reduces the soil life and the structure of your soils it gets affected and and it doesn't regenerate properly I mean going on from what Greg said in terms of like if you've got a system of that type of grazing he talks about then you've got more soil life you've got better moisture holding capacity the whole system is it got much more what you say yeah capacity to last through events like droughts or whatever it is or storms as well because you've got the cover on that so the problem with the artificial fertilizers is it dumps down the whole natural system and makes it much more fragile so of course you're stuck with it then you've got no resource so you have to keep applying it and and then because it's the soil life is not active and it's not really a balanced system then you get pest problems you know might come in grass grub things might come in or whatever might come infect your your pastures or your crops or whatever and so you're just getting the vicious cycle of more and more fertilizer and then more and more pesticides and herbicides and all sorts of things that going on that just spiral you into it so yeah you can you can keep doing that if you can keep you can hold the fertilizers if you keep got all that oils all that to run all those machineries to do it all no you can do it but at some point we've got to get off that we've got to get back to much more using the natural fertility there and generate more natural fertility so that then we can get a surplus for ourselves from that and um and the biggest issue to me is the i suppose the most problematic agriculture to me i that put it this way is what requires telling because there are annuals and that's basically vegetables and arable crops there are annual crops they need to be replanted every year you need to do something prepare the soil for it and then you've got to look at the competition that comes from that prepared bare soil which we call weeds or whatever it is so you're getting to really a vicious cycle and and so to put my cards in table i'm much more in favour of sympathetic to perennial systems um when you talk about perennials most people talk about think about trees and horticulture net but what gregs talk about is a perennial system involving grasslands and large animals grazing recycling the nutrients building up the soil carbon etc etc and it does it without having to till the soil without taking off the cover right so our most problematic agriculture to me is our staples our wheat and oats and our veggies and the way it's grown in an industrial system and if you knew if people knew what was put on those veggies when they were growing i live in the orphanage i could take you to places well they pour on toxic chemicals one after the other after the other and artificial fertilizers now that grows a type of vegetable but how good is that vegetable for you it comes out of a very unhealthy environment to me and it's not that good in terms of keeping us healthy so i think the people who talk about say oh yeah no where our soils are okay and we can keep applying fertilizer need to step back and say well what are you trying to do here you know what sort of food are we trying to grow um you know what's the quality of that food in terms of its vitality and and and that so personally i mean i've heard this argument well this thing so many times i sort of put it to one side and i said look you do your own thing you do your industrial agriculture you know let's to get on with the people who want to get on with with growing food well and in a way that's gives you good natural fertility and vitality yes i think i think that's an interesting point there around investigating where the benchmark is that people keep pointing out that New Zealand has world leading agricultural systems and we certainly do do a lot of things well but we we still do them in a in a very unnatural way compared to how nature would be managing a system you made a good point there around fossil fuels and farm plants in a in an uncertain future in terms of fossil fuels and i Greg i know that you talked about that quite a lot in your article in terms of of reducing reliance on on imports from outside of the country and particularly in this time of of global pandemic and the realization that this could be something that's in our future as waves of these sorts of global shocks can you speak a little bit to the ceasing reliance so much on fossil fuels on your property absolutely um and but just also like to cover off that question about fertilizer because it is key and it is fascinating and i can't answer it but i was um involved with a forum the better futures forum um and sort of putting in some feedback to what that group is doing at the moment and of course the issue of you know fertilizer arises and the reality is that you know the current system system is not sustainable and so therefore we have to look at alternatives and that's what sent it set us off down this path and like um Gary said you know we are focusing on um perennial production and um and creating those natural nutrient cycles as much as possible and returning as much back to the to the soil as we can and you know ideally um as far as our sheep and beef production on this farm then you know i'd love to have a local abattoir and um where we can compost you know the waste that doesn't get eaten by humans not the waste but the materials that are not um consumed by humans back into and to the farm system it'd be great to get the bones back because i think my understanding is that you know the phosphorus that we lose from our system is as largely in the bones of the animals and and so again there's ways of um composting them, burning them back and reapplying it back to the soil and you know again i'm not an expert on this but you know i've heard people talk about um you know peak water, peak oil and these challenges we face and peak phosphate is possibly another one that's right up there this century and so we do have to you know recycle as much as we can and keep it on on our properties but you know i think we're going to have to look at um an opportunity and and gary appreciate permaculture thinking is the problem is the solution and i know our local councils are having issue with their sewage ponds and that at the moment but you know if that could be processed like it is in some countries around the world and and again replied back and back into our nutrient cycles and i guess the other really big opportunity at the moment is um through harvesting seaweed and perhaps capturing some of those nutrients that end in the ocean and getting them back onto our land as well so that's cool and um yeah with with the fertile getting rid of the fossil fuels um we haven't gone down the track of those beautiful sunflowers that are in that picture behind you alina and done those diverse crops and just because you know i guess we were looking a little bit further ahead and and you know there's a lot of energy involved with you know cultivating and harvesting all those seeds and bringing them from all around you know the country and and getting them in and i do appreciate at the moment that guys doing that are getting amazing results and we've got the energy and so you might as well do that because they're getting some really great responses and benefits to their soil and um but you know we're trying to get that diversity through our grazing management and also through planting trees and i think the really big opportunity that we are missing at the moment in New Zealand is through silver pasture and agroforestry and including um trees into our landscape with grazing animals and a whole integrated system you know where um there is a lot of opportunity at the moment through carbon schemes to to get extra income you know from from the land by clipping the carbon ticket while it's while it's here um but you know again through through diversity um we are also going to be creating a bit of stock fodder for for animals through drought periods you know we can include some fruit and nut trees you know in our in our lines of of um trees that we're planting in our pastures and um you know and it's just creating that whole biodiversity which you know we just had a young fella just started working for us today and we're out shifting um cattle and hadn't seen whenever we shift cattle we just get this big flock of birds come around our place and you know because the grass is longer there's the insects have had more time to breed and and so as you put cattle into new pasture every day they obviously kicking up a few insects and it's a it's a feast for the birds and again that's i think part of starting these natural cycles and back to those natural nutrient cycles you know the manure from from those birds that's going into the system and the insects and you know we're just connecting it all up again and reconnecting a lot of those natural cycles yeah the trees the trees are an interesting one and super important and i think it was Kay Baxter who made the point and in her article um that trees can often access the stores of phosphate that are much deeper down than pastures or other diverse pastoral plants can't get to um absolutely and and there's also the animal welfare issues too you know um if we are to you know our export markets are going to we want to be the best of the best and our animal welfare um has to be right up there and so um i think it's important especially you know in hot dry halls bay that there's shade and shelter um for our animals so it takes all the all the boxes and um you know while there's you know opportunities through different council incentives and billion trees well not so much billion trees unfortunately that's all about um you know there is opportunities to get native plantings on the farm but so much of us just you know blanket planting of trees um but there is this opportunity of sequestering the carbon and um continuing to produce food as we do it and and increasing the income that we're earning off the land at the same time and also building that resilience stopping wind putting shade and um so yeah that's that's a real opportunity hmm yeah there's a big question there about what sort of trees we're planting isn't there next week uh it's seven o'clock next monday we have got a episode we're on regenerative forestry and we're speaking in that one with dame and samond dr david hall and remona radford who's um coming at it from a te ao Māori perspective in terms of forestry generation so that's going to be a super exciting um high octane uh webinar i think some amazing people on that panel as well but greek i'd love to hear a little bit from you about um how you're approaching the mix of of different trees you're planting on your farm and then then gary i'd love to circle back to you with a related question as well but greek um if you want to comment on that first yep so i guess you know we're very fortunate that we formed a partnership with air new zealand 10 years ago yeah because i don't think we'd be forming one just at the moment but um that has enabled us to identify some of the steeper more erosion prone land on our farm and and so um with that community support or support from in new zealand um we've planted um areas that have been you know livestock are excluded and that is just forward nature and regeneration so we've identified those parts of the land and obviously you know waterways are all fenced off and planted and then um there is the matter of just integrating trees through the pastoral system and and again you know taking out learnings from nature um diversity is the key and so um we've planted you know many kinds of of trees um through the pasture and then that's an area that we're going to keep keep expanding on so um yeah and of course that's just matching right tree right places as our first part of that decision-making process thanks greek um gary i want to put to your question that came through um in the registration from somebody um when they when they signed up for this webinar but can you speak to any implications of the overreliance on fast-growing non-natives such as as poplar and willow on farms okay lina if i can just um back up slightly without greg said because i'm sort of yes yes yes everything he's he's saying there and and just comment i'd like to make is that you know trees are nutrient cumulators and they accumulate within the soil and then the groundwater will take those nutrients across the the land and so how you how you have trees on on a landscape is really important in terms of accumulating and feeding your maybe your pasture all areas or your or your beds will grow in areas or whatever there's there's a whole interconnection in the landscape um in terms of where you put trees and and and the benefits like what greg talked about with the shade and the shelter and all that but the nutrient accumulation is really important um and so there has to be a sort of a an accumulator side as well as a sort of a a take side so there's a give and take so you do take certain um um nutrients off the farm but you can also accumulate them on the farm by by doing things with trees and and just i'd like to touch on the other point you made about birds because birds are great um spreaders of of nutrients and seabirds in particular and um i was gonna say we have always more like had huge lungs of seabirds in New Zealand and that was one of the main ways that the nutrients in the sea get recycled back to the land is by seabirds unfortunately a lot of our seabirds are declining in numbers quite drastically so we're losing that recycling ability of birds particularly nutrients from the sea back to the land um so that said then what's the role of different trees uh is around is new question um and a lot of it comes down to um speed i suppose timing um it's like it if you want to sequester carbon for instance actually the quickest way is what Greg's doing because grasslands and animals will sequester it more quickly they won't sequester it as much as trees and forests will in the end so in the end um a forest particularly its growth phase will sequester a lot of carbon and then even it's in its mature phase will certainly hold that carbon and recycle it um so a lot of the trees that we grow um like poplids for soil conservation purposes on hill country um because they grow fast and they have deep roots and they help to stabilise the land more quickly um and so the same with i'm well aware of for my professional work on rivers that we use willows along riverages because they grow fast they actually accumulate takeout term too much nutrients from rivers very quickly um and they can be managed to very easily to um and draw and reduce erosion etc etc etc so that's why they're used um if you're going to use a wider range of trees then the first thing you'd have to do for instance along rivers if i can go on that one is give them a lot more room the riveral space have much wider berms and much more extent of vegetation along them um it's a bit the same um in agriculture as well that i mean i think you can use willows as an initial um uptake of nutrients when you've got over new excessive nutrient loads and um that's true of quite a lot of our wetlands and and waterways um but then they're a great new crop for natives as well natives will come through willows very very easily and um particularly birds come in they eat the buds they poop they drop the seed the natives can come through all sorts of reasons why so to me i don't think it's an either or and and if we started talking about horticulture well it's even more difficult because virtually all our horticultural crops even diverse food files ones come from other ecosystems outside new Zealand and we put together the trees from all different ecosystems put them together and think well how are they going to grow as a as a sort of um a well functioning ecosystem now with all these different ones coming from different places and so there's there's a whole question around there that i haven't got time to go into but but to me it's um it's from a permaculture perspective i say well what's there what works well and how can we progress at all what succession can we have i don't think it's an either or um it's a matter of um it's again it's a matter of diversity of thinking and diversity of action and and that and we can't sort of suddenly jump from one thing to another or if we do we're going to have lots of consequences so it's a question that's a very good question but it's it's a very long answer and i haven't got time to go much further sorry it's okay we've got we've got plenty of things to explore on this webinar and the questions that we don't get to we'll try and address some of those on the pure advantage social media in the coming weeks so we can keep this conversation going um there's a little bit of debate going on here in the q and a around the role of cattle um with a question or somebody pointing out that dr paul winter has been and has been on a speaking tour around climate change and one of his major mess messages to decarbonize is to phase out cattle farming and plant many more trains mainly pine so i think we've debated that one a little bit and we'll be absolutely diving into the pine versus natives more next week um but what what are your takes on on phasing out ruminants as far as regenerative agriculture goes i know there's been a lot of discussion around this and and the look the role of of a whole systems approach so great perhaps we'll start with you and then we'll hear your take on it gary yeah my understanding and and you know this is an area that needs more work and so you know looking at um white pastures um farm white oak pastures and in america have done that analysis looking at um their cattle production and what they what that's doing to greenhouse gases and and comparing it with the impossible burger type you know vegetarian undyte and you know i think part of regenerative agriculture and it is a paradigm shift is um the understanding that humans and our systems that we are managing can be part of healing and um doing good on the planet as opposed to um a lot of discussion which is about just doing less bad and so you know from that study and and a lot of work that is that is underway now and understanding that pastoral grazing systems with ruminants are going to be sequestering more carbon than they are emitting um i was listening to a webs um podcast yesterday that's called the regenerative agriculture journey out of australia and and they're doing some interesting research at the moment and research indicating that by feeding um seaweeds and the enzymes in the seaweeds um can reduce methane from animals by 90 percent and um so when you add you know diverse pastures and and that i think you know again you know there's reduced amounts of methane coming there i don't think we fully understand the role of methenotropic um bacteria in the soils and their ability to sequester methane and um and and so i mean you know sheep and beef farm in new zealand we're already 30 percent below what um our greenhouse gas emissions were in 1990 so you know that is part of a natural cycle and it's an essential part as gary said you know harvesting um that fast growing grasses and and completing those those carbon cycles going needs animals as part of as part of that and so you know and there's the whole you know fertility role that they have and and the nutrients that they are returning back to the ground and all the microbiology associated with that and so um i think that i don't believe that that um yeah we should be removing animals in particularly um ruminants and cattle from our food system i think it's an essential part of it but incorporating trees and incorporating the whole lot thanks greg anything you'd like to add to that gary you know my comment would be it's it's not um what you're doing it's how you're doing it um which is really important and and and it depends we keep saying in permaculture it depends depends on the place depends on the climate depends on the landscape you know there's certain areas where you can really grow trees really well in certain areas which are grasslands grasslands with large animals are part of the ecosystems of the world um you know we we can manage them well we can we manage them very poorly um because we're very poorly managing uh partial animal farming doesn't mean to say there has no place anywhere in the world or that we can't do it well like what greg is saying so it's it's much more about how how do we go about doing it um because it's all very well um dame will put it all in in the forest and i'll come back to the point i made that how veggies are growing and that's a thing and that's probably the most destructive type of industrial agriculture in terms of what's doing to the to the to the soils and local environment and so it's yeah i mean we can we can sequester carbon in all sorts of different ways and and it comes back to diversity again it's how the they're nearly how the trees are in the landscape along with what grasslands along with what they'd be done with some of the vegetables and that and you can grow veggies along the edges of forest really easily that's where a lot of them come from um it's just we don't do that um and to and to sort of say they take this a blanket saying no no we've just got to get out of ruminants i mean it's like okay then we should just get it get out of of the top of my garden we're doing now because man that's so destructive and and when you talk about methane i mean it's how it gets recycled is the issue not that producing methane the places that produce the most methane are tropical rainforests they produce huge amounts of methane far more than a partial farm will do but it gets recycled within the system wetlands are great for producing methane that's what they do it's a breakdown system where they produce methane um and we get hung up on sort of the methane we measure somewhere on the farm and we don't consider the methane we don't measure in our wetlands and forests and we somehow think the methane on the farm is bad and the methane on the forest well we just ignored that you know i i just don't think our cutting is very good at all frankly so uh and that's why that's why again the feedback information is not appropriate and so we keep making in my opinion the wrong choices and unless we get the information you know a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more accurate then i think we keep making these sort of broad statements about has to be like this has to be like that that's the problem with our culture which is like it's okay we got a problem find a solution that's the solution just do that we don't think about connections we don't think about consequences we don't think about the whole interaction that's going to take place from from that particular action and that's what we need to do we need to think about what are all the consequences well all the ramifications that they're going to take place from doing that all right socially economically environmentally and culturally too yeah i think in herein lies the problem with our predominant reductionist scientific inquiry to measure all these small parts of inherently complex system we have a few more minutes here and there's been a couple of comments around bees so i just love to talk a little bit about peas and pollination and in barry fosters pointed out pointed people here towards the trees for bees website and incorporating important sources of pollen and nectar but there's a question that came through with the registrations that i'd love to ask you gary what do you know about pollination security and threats such as the fall in economics of beekeeping well i used to do beekeeping myself before the varar mite came in it was very difficult to do it without chemicals but only in a small scale and i'm no expert on on on those pollination questions really i mean i i just do note though that our insects are in huge decline not just bees and that's clearly because in my opinion all the toxins that have spread around our landscape and and insects get particularly affected as the soil life so we have a wider issue i think than just you know pollination of some crops i mean insects uh you know a huge lot of the biomass and lands insects and and and they have a really incredible role to play in any ecosystem and we tend to ignore them because they're too small we think about bees because we know they pollinate some of our crops that we need to have pollinated but we really need to look after again a wider question than just bees and so yeah we we can look at what might be affecting the bees and colony collapse and these sort of things that are going on and and why that's the case but um you know we do have frogs in our ponds in our place but frogs are disappearing all over the place too you know and all these creatures have a role in nutrient recycling that's important for the ecosystems and and so you know people say oh no no we can just put fertilizers on whatever come back to that same question so until they get off that sort of bandwagon um and and the bees it's just it's just another one part of the whole the whole issue really thanks gary we've got just a few minutes left here so i'd love to finish with um asking you both there's been a question um on the chat for a while here around the transition from traditional to regenerative agriculture farming and and how you've navigated them perhaps we can incorporate that question with with the subject of of resilience so i'm thinking it'd be a nice way to finish if you could perhaps give one example each of what do you think what would be the first step or if you could only take one step to make your farm a little bit more regenerative and more resilient what would be the first thing that you would do gary we'll start with you well i tell you what i did do plant trees and then then take stock off and allow trees to grow naturally i mean um i mean trees are great for all sorts of reasons that gregs touch on as well um and the comment i'd make though is this part of a diversified landscape and and so what type of trees becomes important as well so it goes back to the question it depends but um that's certainly what i'd start to do but i mean if someone's want to do the transition then yeah they some say automatically coming from where you're coming from market gardenings or whether you're coming from from um pasture but say say i take a market garden anyone because that's really hard then you need an area of grassland you might say which is your nutrient source or uh margin trees which is your nutrient source for your veggies that you're growing because you're taking a lot out of a small area when you're growing veggies and you need to get nutrients back into it so if you're not going to do it through artificial fertilizers and have all those sprays then you need to do it through either managing the grassland and bringing the grasses uh fertility into the uh market garden area which you can sort of do by catch cut and carry or then or use trees in an appropriately sided way that will accumulate and you've got to check where the water's flowing where the ground water's flowing and how that happens to get the nutrients to to the market garden area and that's not easy but but that's where that's been a good start thank you Greg one thing that you would do um i think the first thing that you have to do is understand that it is quite a mind shift and i think the way that you achieve that is probably by going and visiting another farmer that's you know already on the regenerative agriculture path and because generally you know i think that is the the hardest step to make because once you've made that step and you open yourself up to the possibilities you'll find that people that are already on the path and it is becoming a ground swell at the moment which is really exciting and you find that these farmers um are really excited about their farming and are really happy to share their experiences their learnings their failures and everything like that we've got these you know amazing groups like the quorum scents and i know taranaki northland hawks bay we all have our own regenerative agriculture facebook groups and ways of connecting and so first and foremost open yourself up to the possibilities and then you're on the way yeah i think with all of this regeneration um conversation the mind shift is is going to be the most important and probably the most challenging thing for us all to all to put in place um wonderful just want to thank you both again for taking the time to be part of this conversation today it's been wonderful to have you both on here we have come up to the top of the hour i wish we had more time to get through some of these magnificent questions but as i said we'll try to address them on the social media um please do join us next week for that regenerative forestry session i think it's going to be a super exciting conversation with dainan samund who's been doing a lot in space and dr david hall who's been producing quite a lot of work for pure advantage in this area along with ramona radford as well um upcoming webisodes beyond that um on the mondays uh trent yeo um and dr susanne will be talking um regenerative tourism um urban agriculture with um sheldon levitt sarah smuts kennedy barry bailey pairman and daniel sherman so that's representing people from all over the country working on urban agriculture and we'll be coming back with a regenerative economy conversation um as our final episode and we haven't yet finalized who those speakers are going to be so if there's anybody you want to hear again from please do send through um those recommendations so thank you so much again for joining us and we will catch you next week thanks again to our panelists thanks gary thanks