 Kia koutou. Welcome to this website on urban regenerative agriculture. My name is Alina Siegfried. I'm the author of the Our Regenerative Future content series produced in partnership with Pure Advantage and the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. This is our 10th webinar this evening in this 12-part series, which followed on from a 15-part written content series that was published back in early May. And together we've been able to take a real deep dive into the world of regenerative agriculture over the past few months. It's been wonderful to see such momentum and energy around these conversations. And now we've expanded the remit a little bit from purely regenerative agriculture into other primary industries, including forestry, horticulture and tourism as well, which is going to be next week's webinar. This is partially in recognition that we all have a role to play in the regeneration of our environment, our social systems and our economy, and that we need integrated approaches to bring about systems level transitions in this rapidly changing world today. So in today's webinar, we're going to be exploring the opportunity for regenerative agriculture in our towns and cities. And we have a fully stacked panel of experts to answer your questions. So I'll introduce them briefly now. Daniel Sherman is CEO of Biologics. After growing up in a family whose sole business was based in intensive horticulture and studying at Massey, he became focused on plant breeding and was successful in removing all the insecticides and fungicides from the plant breeding program there. He's got an interest in urban farming movement about reconnecting food production with the urban population, working with farmers who want no part of agrochemical methods of the past and help improve the viability of this truly regenerative food system. Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is an artist, regenerative farmer and originator for the love of bees. The Urban Farmers Alliance and new educational platform, Regenerate Now, which all of our panelists are involved in. She has helped to establish Rongua Garden in Griffiths Garden. OMG, a profitable 500 square metre teaching farm in Simon Street. Compost hubs around Auckland and pollinated plantings in public parks and schools. Sheldon Levitt is the farm and compost manager at Kaisycle Urban Farm in Newtown Wellington. And Kaisycle is an urban farm community compost project established in 2015 which collects all its compost by bicycles, which is pretty fantastic, sustainable transport for the women. And Sheldon is interested in the way that urban farms and community compost projects integrate and can help reimagine urban ecosystems and community cohesion. And finally, Bailey Perriman was the co-founder of Cultivate Christchurch, where he worked with disadvantaged youth to make compost and grow healthy food in a city, Christchurch. He's currently now working on a new composting project, starting a PhD on land remediation and fulfilling a contract with the Christchurch City Council, activating food initiatives within the Otakura Avan River corridor, which was formally known as the residential red zone. So wonderful to have these four very knowledgeable and talented speakers on our panel this evening. It looks like we have over 80% of you have voted on the poll. So thank you for that. Looks like we've got about half the people involved in either agriculture or horticulture in bit of culture. That's the area of regeneration that we're most interested in, and then 31% interested in urban, which is fantastic because that is of course today's conversation. And over half of us on the call this evening actually are living in a town or city in New Zealand. Fantastic and welcome to the 13% of you who are from outside New Zealand. And looks like people have read at least some of the our regenerative future content series, which adds a lot of context to some of the conversations we'll be having this evening. So thank you for getting involved in that poll. You'll notice that there is a Q&A box at the bottom. You can access that from the bottom bar. Please feel free to put your questions in there for our panelists this evening. We'll be putting those questions to them along with some that we've prepared. And also we'll live on Facebook this evening too if you wanted to share it with anybody. And we're recording this call as well just to let you know. All right, I think without further ado, we're going to crack into some questions for our panelists. I think let's start with quite a broad question. I think people living in a lot of New Zealand cities are quite often disconnected from where their food comes from. So I'd love to hear from the panelists. Maybe you can introduce yourselves a little bit as part of your answer. What do you think are some of the implications of this disconnection between food and our communities? Let's start with you, Sarah. Well, actually, I prefer Bailey if you would start with that question. I just think, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I think first of all, cure everyone. Thanks for joining and thanks for taking me into this one, Sarah. But I think the short of it is it's massively disempowering. The result of that disconnection means that we're making poor food choices, can't distinguish between foods that are good for us and or otherwise. And I think it runs a lot deeper than that, and actually is reflected in I think inequities in the structure of economy and educational outcomes. And I've mentioned outcomes already. It all comes back from disconnection from the land. And so I'm third generation now effectively removed from being owning and operating an agricultural operation. And it's been an interesting journey back, starting in a urban context and trying to find just a simple connection to having hands in the soil. But that was really the start of my journey about 10 years ago was actually just realizing I wanted to learn to grow food. The earthquakes here in Christchurch around about 2010 when they kicked off to 10 years ago, that was a major catalyst to woke me up big time as to where is my food coming from and what if supply chains are cut off? What am I going to do? And still now to this day, I don't really feel like I have anything like food security. So it's an ongoing battle and I'll leave it at that. Yeah, I think food security is certainly a very pertinent discussion at the moment with disruptions to much of our supply chains as well. Well, Sheldon, I'd love to go across to you if you can speak to any implications you see with that disconnection. Kia ora everyone. I'm Sheldon. I think I would agree heavily with a lot of Bailey's thoughts and I think the thing I would add is that shock to the system that Christchurch had during the earthquakes, Wellington is very susceptible to similar shocks with the single supply chain in and I think COVID in Wellington has germinated a lot of people into wanting to grow but people just don't know how. They don't have the skills that our ancestors would have held for a very long time, which is leading to this disempowerment for everyone, whether they have food available or not. I think health for me is definitely the long-term thing that we're going to see dropping off. Thanks, Sheldon. Daniel, what do you think are the implications between that disconnection between our food? Good evening everybody. My name is Daniel Sherman. I think it's basically the crux of it is what we talk about, urban rural divide and so we have not really a great understanding in that of how food is produced. That leads to a mistrust in the urban population of the food and where it comes from and how it's produced. Some of it obviously is grounded in some truth but there's also a lot of misinformation in regards to the food production and impacts of it for argument's sake. Obviously a big part of that is driven through fear of food security or that fear has been, I guess, propelling the interest in urban agriculture of late. But yeah, that disconnect is a major reason why we often have these discussions about the urban rural divide and not actually understanding what goes on in the food production side of the rural economy for argument's sake. Absolutely. Yes, that's why I love hearing about your initiatives getting people going in the cities given that they don't have access to those rural environments. Sarah, anything to add? Yeah, so I think that sort of brings us to speak about why we've actually created or supporting the flourishing of an urban growing sector is that for, it has multiple purposes. What initially had us really see that as really important to create an urban farm in Auckland, for example, was really to demonstrate to people that it is actually possible to grow at scale in ways that are beneficial to the environment and we had the project for the love of bees so we wanted to show you could grow at scale commercially in ways that were safe for bees. So it has been able to demonstrate that these systems actually work, that regenerative agriculture is a really viable way of growing. For a lot of people and most of New Zealanders do live in cities, they need to be able to see that. They actually need to spend time around them, learn the systems themselves, get comfortable with this. This isn't a pipe dream. This is a very real proposition and it is being done. So that's one reason. So that is potentially also, with a big chunk of the population in cities, we do need to grow new farmers. So we see that our urban farms is being a space where we can actually grow a new generation of farmers that will actually potentially move out into the countryside. So capacity building. But over COVID, we started our projects a year ago with a primary driver for us collectively was around climate change mitigation. And really looking at regenerative horticulture, I suppose, is really a very credible way to fast-track climate change mitigation and repairing ecosystems. But very quickly it's turned to food security issues, as well as waste recovery, which is another massive climate change mitigation problem being sold in these urban farms where organic waste is being turned into fertility in local ecosystems. But the food security one was really massive and our urban farms continue to supply families over that lockdown period, in fact, even in lockdown level four. And obviously at the moment our country is looking at food security big time coming down the wire in October. It's expected to really kind of peak. But also local jobs. So we see these urban projects as been teaching models, data collection centres, research centres, but also spaces that are actually very actively and very quickly within months, able to attend to local food security while generating local jobs. On our 500 square metre site in Simon Street, we are now paying one farmer almost $1,000 a week to farm and we're looking at taking on another person. So this is real job creation and at the same time generating climate change mitigation outcomes too. Fantastic to see those sorts of integrated solutions. Sarah, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the development of the Urban Farmers Alliance and what was the appetise behind that consolidation or connection? Well, primarily capacity building. So I mean, it's all very well for us to have a will to create urban farms, but it's a highly skilled sector. So what we wanted to do was to create a strategy for like-minded early adoptive projects around the country to actually be able to fast track getting to the KPIs that we are all really committed to. But not only that, we really wanted to consolidate what those KPIs were. And so we started, I guess, Bailey, Daniel and I started doing conversations here in Auckland about the possibilities and the potential of urban agriculture. We were invited to go to Wellington where we met Kai Cycle. Within months, we were actually meeting and formalising a concept with Urban Farmers Alliance, which is essentially a peer-to-peer mentoring platform which is managed over WhatsApp. It gives people a chance to ask a question and have that question answered at the level that they require it. Within 10 minutes, sometimes a couple of hours, and Daniel over sort of oversees it, but however, Foundation members are now really contributing to each other's learning. We're now supporting over 110 growers and composters around New Zealand through that platform. But the idea really is capacity building. How do we as quickly as possible become highly skilled practitioners delivering the KPIs that we're really interested in delivering? Fantastic. Thank you. I'd love to get into the nitty gritty of the urban agriculture very soon. And just to remind everybody, you can put questions in that Q&A box for the panel. But first, I'd love to just go to horticulture a little bit more generally. Daniel, a lot of the conversation that we've been having around urban agriculture, both within this series and in general, seems to be quite focused on pastoral farming here in New Zealand. Can you speak a little bit to the effects of intensive agriculture on our soils in New Zealand and what is the nature of regeneration of those kinds of systems? Okay. So I'm assuming you're talking about intensive horticulture I guess rather than just horticulture. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously a huge amount of talk in around, as you say, around pastoral systems and a lot of sort of toing and froing about how positive or negative those are. There are obviously two sides that are arguing that case at the moment. But my experience of having done soil analysis right across New Zealand for many years and particularly one of the key things we measure, for example, soil carbon, which is obviously a big part of that conversation about regenerative ag, is that quite often pastoral systems actually have reasonably good carbon levels for argument sake. So you often don't come across carbon and soils just to give you some sort of idea of less than sort of six or seven percent. There are a few exceptions to that around the country, but that generally the pastoral be over seven, eight, nine, 10 percent of total carbon in the soil. When you start measuring intensive horticultural producers and conventional terms, we very often find levels below three percent. And three percent for people that don't know is basically zero because carbon, you don't find soil without any carbon in it. But what you do find at three percent, the carbon cycle no longer functions. So essentially that level, what we're dealing with at that point is what I consider a pretty much a dead soil. A soil that has no real biological activity, no nutrient cycling really able to happen because it simply doesn't have enough actual soluble carbon in the soil for that process to function. And this is this is the thing, I guess, that many people don't seem to understand or have conversations about. But those are the most degraded soils in New Zealand. Typically, I found under those are really intensive vegetable production would be, I guess, if you wanted to put it in a box because you don't find that fragrance like so much in kiwi fruit or orcharding or long term, but we get really frequent heavy cultivation tilling of the soil. We find that soils that have been remarkably considered, you know, very important soils in the country, often we find incredibly degraded. So, you know, very, very low levels, without looking at toxicities or anything else like that, just looking at some of the basic soil health indicators, you know, forget finding worms, wouldn't even bother trying to count in most cases when you've got nothing there, there's nothing there to feed them. And these are the soils that we throw huge amounts of fertilizer on to actually grow a crop because there's nothing there to grow the crop. So, and what you find as a consequence is that, is that you have a lot of nitrogen is required often to grow these, you know, heavily leafy and green crops. But as soon as it rains, there's nothing to hold that soluble nitrogen in the soil. So they have to, in many cases, that single heavy rain event will destroy a crop. From the point of view of the nitrogen's gone, they can't get on the field to put any more on because the field has no soil structure to it. It's just, you know, you drive a tractor on it, you destroy anything that there's nothing really to destroy the tractor will disappear into the field because there's nothing to support it. So, you know, that's the extreme end of what we're talking about. But there are literally thousands of hectares in New Zealand under intensive horticultural production that are our most degraded soils and what we were once considered our best soils. Thank you. And my understanding is that the regeneration process is significantly longer for these kinds of horticultural soils than turning around, say, a sheep and beef farm. Well, in many cases, the sheep and beef farm kind of has to modify their behaviors or improve with the knowledge that we're understanding how we can improve the process. But they're not starting from a really low point. So, yes, in terms of how far you've got to go, time is not necessarily such a huge issue. There are ways of, I guess, because we're not talking, in many cases, like sheep and beef, we can be talking, you know, some customers in excess of, you know, 1200 hectares, 20,000 acres in some of those stations. Obviously, you're very limited as to what you can do on that scale. But we've got a large scale of vegetable producer, you know, there might still be 700 hectares, but they've got other tools available to them to address that quickly. But they're certainly starting and I use that carbon analogy as a difference of starting at 3%, which essentially is zero versus someone starting at 789%. Very, very big difference. Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Sheldon, I'd love to put to you a question that's come through the box here from Alex McCall. How important is the role of soil in urban agriculture? Strikes me as pretty important. I guess, yeah, I mean, if you're going to grow plants in the ground, soil is number one, not dirt, but soil. But I guess it brings up this idea that we grow our food soillessly in hydroponic or aeroponic or aquaponics systems, which would use a lot of infrastructure to do. But we have the soil available. We've got huge amounts of so-called waste in our cities. Humans love to seem to still create that, but we can harness it very easily and build soil if we need it. But cities do also have lots of soil available, I think. In terms of the regenerative side, it's making sure that we treat the soils properly with a good eye, and usually someone standing behind you like Daniel, to watch what you're doing, and then keeping it alive and running and your way laughing, really. I don't personally have a lot of comment on the non-soil growing. I've only ever grown in soil. Right. Yeah, seems no shortage of compost scripts that we could use. And there is a question here from John McLean about asking about the role of the urban compost bin and making green waste into beneficial enrichment from urban garden. So is there a role for, you know, just, you know, someone who's got a standard old compost bin in their backyard? Sheldon. Yeah, I mean, I guess urban agriculture also includes potentially connected backyard systems or different mosaics than what we're talking about at scale urban farming. But I guess one slight downside of thousands and thousands of little compost bins is it's maybe not quite as efficient as bringing it together at a street level or a suburb level and producing really high quality living compost that can be used right down there to create quite a large garden. But all composting in the city is going to have a benefit to the soil around it. Yeah, and perhaps there's a role there that technology might be able to play in the future in terms of connecting people that are composting near each other. Bailey, I'd love to come to you with a question actually now from Lucy Mary Mulholland. And I know you've got a background with Cultivate Christchurch and working with disadvantaged youth. So how do you see a need for social regeneration to be interwoven with this ecological regeneration? And how do you integrate these two streams? It's a really good question. And first and foremost, I just don't see them as separate. So in an urban context, the work of the urban farm is fundamentally social. Even from the standpoint of if you were just having your own operation in your backyard or a network collection of backyard sites, you would have to be dealing with other people whether it's your neighbours, your own family, or the people who own the other bits of land and give you access. So fundamentally, relationships are involved. They need to be given time. And there's a lot of communication and education that comes through in those ways. But that's sort of the soft end of the spectrum at the much harder edge of, I guess, social issues, whether it's where society is dysfunctional, is where you find the more structured work and the more purposeful initiatives which are very much designed, basically, to collide with people who are experiencing all kinds of basically symptoms or side effects of disconnection from land, disconnection from nature. You're basically just trying to collide them with some kind of experience of the power of the life forces that are running through nature. And at the moment, yeah, it's remarkable how fast that can happen, though, how in the most vivid experiences for me personally at Pultivator with working with teenagers, some of whom have been in, say, the Care and Protection Services since from being a newborn, they're fundamentally disconnected. And there's some instances when with a case within a couple of weeks, you would see somebody going from complete shut-off with maybe a hood drawn over, and then something starts to trigger and you just start to see this person lift up who comes off, and the world is literally opening up in front of your eyes. It's tough to get any of that spark to happen, but it's really rewarding when you start to unfold. It's literally like a blossoming happening in front of your eyes. I would also say that what we're noticing at OMG, which is our farm in Simon Street, is just like we have a full-time farmer, but we have at least 70 to 100 volunteer hours a week that happen on that site. I'd say, you know, Chi Cycle has similar experience. So where the public are able to use those sites for their own, you know, for multiple reasons, but a very common one is mental health. And in Simon Street, we have a young man, Levi, who was our farmer. So obviously, whoever is farming changes the quality of that farm, but we have a lot of men in their 30s and 40s who are using that site as an in-between space. They wouldn't necessarily go to counselling, but they like the highly skilled nature of the work. They like it's the extreme productivity of it, but they actually will come every day for a month and then suddenly disappear. They go back into life. But these urban farming projects do serve multiple functions and I think the sort of social cohesion, the kind of the natural ability of nature to heal people is a very well used, you know, it's one of the major uses of these sites in the cities. Yes, fantastic to hear of those sorts of integrated solutions. Sheldon, I know you're integrating sustainable transport into your model. Can you tell us a little bit about that decision for Chi Cycle? Yes, so Chi Cycle uses bikes to collect 50 tonnes of green waste. Bikes with trailers, right? Yeah, and they're electric. Wellington will be an interesting petal power. Indeed. Helly mission. I guess the decision to do that really came from Wellington's not great for cars already. It's not really designed in the best way and so adding trying to get around in a vehicle would have been a nightmare stopping and starting and but also looking at, you know, if you're going to integrate something into your model, what are the other effects of doing that? Just like various activities on the field could be detrimental in the future. The activities that we do off the field also need to be taken into account and it also gets other people thinking when you, when people start to see you biking around collecting food waste, they wonder what else could we do using this method of transport and is there other ways to move stuff short distances in our cities? Which is encouraging to see about two or three more businesses start in the city purely based around bike transport systems. That's fantastic to hear that you're having that kind of community effect. I'd love to go to a question now in the chat from Edgar Henson and this is a question that's aimed at Sarah but I think would be great to hear from other panellists what's happening around the country. But Edgar says Auckland Council has a lot of available land but only two community gardens. Where's the opportunity, what's the opportunity there? Well there's massive opportunity. There are actually more community gardens. I'd say Auckland actually has a lot of community gardens but one of the things that we're really talking about is quite distinct from community gardens into urban farms and what we say is gardens grow plants and farms grow food. So what we're talking about is and all of the farms that we are helping emerge are using the CSA model which is a community supported agriculture. So looking at so for example 500 square meters we know can produce 40 CSA boxes a week that's feeding and each box should feed four people so that you know you can extrapolate out how many people can be fed from a certain size. We're looking at the moment to try and get farms in Auckland and in fact around New Zealand and Wellington at well between two and a half thousand square meters, five thousand square meters where you're suddenly looking at 400 CSA boxes a week and then you're starting to look at being able to employ 10 to 15 people. You are generating a really good revenue so these projects need seed funding and then actually they become self-sustainable within a year to 18 months. So there's a lot of land in all of our cities actually and our vision is to have an urban farm every one kilometer that's what it's going to take for us to actually get the critical mass to get the KPIs that we're interested in and so there are resource managers you know there's a whole lot of bylaws that need to be changed to make it be able to potentially sell from council-owned land but there are also land there's churches there's there's a lot of land. Land isn't the issue it's actually having a vision and imagination for the transformation of what that land can do and the seed funding to enable those projects to actually start and be successful in the period that they need to be to actually support people. We at the moment have been looking at Albert Park for a five thousand square meter farm that looks like it might be too tricky but at the moment we're looking at Fraser Park which is in Parnell but already with the White Metallocal Board they have been really thrilled with OMG and its capacity to become a self-sustainable business that's meeting all of those KPIs and there's a real will to and I know Wellington Council similarly are really excited about the capacity of these urban farms to you know attend food security climate change mitigation waste recovery but there are some there are some changes that have to be made and these things do need to be seed funded and we're really hoping that government see the urban farmers alliance strategy we have the recovery farm package that we we put out at the you know lockdown level four which really I think is a very credible way for you know fast-tracking ecosystem restoration food security that isn't food banks but actually long-term food security but actually also generating quite substantial jobs yeah you've got everything in there by the sounds of it you've got waste recovery employment climate change mitigation mental health and on mental health we had a really great community and mental health conversation much earlier in the series with John O'Fru and Sam Lang I think there was yeah we're episode four if anybody wants to check out the recording a really rich conversation around around how getting involved in the lands can be very beneficial to mental health I'd love to come back to that question of finances and barriers in a moment but I just want to give Sheldon and Bailey the opportunity to speak to whether what sort of opportunities they see in Wellington and Christ Church yeah I'll jump in I'm saying my my current role on part-time contract with Christchurch City Council some may or may not be aware that as a result of the earthquakes there was 400 hectares of housing cleared alongside the Avon River which stretches from the center of Christchurch City out to the eastern suburbs and for reaching the ocean and that land is deemed uninhabitable for housing but is essentially a river corridor that is speaking very clearly that it needs to be recovered so my role is to look at the areas within that total land area which are more suited to productive land uses everything from community gardens through to there have been independent independent reports looking at different agribusiness options for that land as well and horticulture is definitely coming out on top there so there's the potential there for a continuous productive urban landscape and of course even before that before he made a mess of it as an urban settlement that was used as a food basket and harvested from by Manifinoa like in particular and so there's a fantastic array of land uses that are going to open up there that'll be not just for those who live immediately by the area still but for the rest of the city and of course as an exemplar to the world really what's possible for the use of this kind of space within an urban area. Okay thank you. Sheldon what opportunities do you see in Wellington? I think there's there's a similar potential of a large roll out of urban food I think Wellington one thing it lacks is lots of flat land so I think some big potential there is is really honing in and and getting some good skills on hill-based farming that is as productive as as the flat land there's a lot of of hilly land that is that is around and I think as well not far from from the edges of the city limits is quite large quantities of intensive market gardens and so how can the the urban farms connect in with those relatively close regional farms and maybe I'll I'll leave my comments for the for the barriers question. Okay thank you. Daniel I'd love to ask you a little bit there's a question here from Katrina Wolfe it'd be great to hear if there are businesses and corporates backing urban farming projects or if it's dependent on the sort of funding used by community gardens I wonder if you could speak briefly just to the the the financials of urban regenerative agriculture. Yeah sure I mean the there are businesses certainly participating within the urban farming sector so there are businesses like carbon cycle fragment sake which are large supporters otherwise previously known as the New Zealand box composting system but you know it's obviously there are those type of companies involved and there's a range of them I mean including ourselves but yeah it's largely being funded through you know local government support really Sarah can probably speak much better to to that experience along with the others than than I can. Sorry but to answer the other side of that question is looking at the economics I guess around you know how do these urban farming projects sort of stand up and that's an area that I do have a lot of involvement in because trying to get for these farms to be stand-alone so once although the funding might have come from various different sources actually thinking you know the companies Fenton billboards of course it gave a lot of support has given a lot of support in the past to like the OMG project there in Auckland and the Flava bees but to look at the economics I want to look at it from a business purely business point of view as to how do these businesses remain sustainable so the model that they would require continuous funding for aglentsake from communities associations and local councils to me was kind of flawed because there's obviously we've had the perfect example lately with COVID-19 that the vast majority of the funding that was going to be available some of these projects has just literally evaporated overnight so it really highlighted the fact that we had to build business we had to basically have a business model it was sound and it was based around in my experience of auto culture it's all about productivity many people do focus on you know like maximising the the price that they sell a product for but in actual fact success in an auto culture and agriculture systems my experience is pretty broad with that around the world as well as it's actually all about productivity and so we had to make these systems incredibly productive because they don't have massive area so generally what you find is the larger the scale of the agricultural businesses the less efficient they are per square meter so as you bring these things down to 500 square meters obviously you haven't got any room to waste you haven't got time to waste you have to have that thing producing at incredible levels and to put it in real dollar terms is what we try and get people to help to understand is that you know if you're looking at and I won't talk about pastoral systems because they're on a very different scale but on other horticultural systems the best you can probably hope to that I see in turnover is maybe 300 000 a year at best for say gold kiwi fruit and there'll be some growers out there that find that hard to believe that they actually someone's achieving that because the average is well it's probably less than 200 but that's kind of the best you know avocado we we know how expensive that fruit is but at best they're doing 100 000 a hectare from an avocado orchard and most are much much lower than that we're looking at say the OMG model for argument sake at the moment it's modeling around if you extrapolate it per meter out to a hectare so we're comparing apples with apples you're talking about 1.3 million dollars per hectare and we have projects in the system that we've measured I think 1.6 was at the upper end of that per hectare you know so what we're talking about is incredible productivity can be achieved and you have to remember that in the vast majority here we're talking about without fertiliser the nutrition support is basically through composting and through understanding the soil biology system and this is the essence of regenerative agriculture is actually working with the soil system and understanding that soil biology mmm those are some those are some uh very compelling figures in terms of productivity do you think that's uh scalable on a large on a large scale the business model and it's hard sometimes to get your head around it when like myself you come from very conventional business in terms of how you measure profitability and success and and although in real terms you're talking about profitability you know the actual sustainability of this has been able to pay the farmer we're looking at a minimum of 25 an hour we're looking at that sort of being based on a 40 hour week and we're looking at what that farmer can produce within that space and so that might be 50 percent of the total turnover is going towards labour but in actual fact when you look at it that way is because the larger the scale gets so when we get up to 5 000 square meters for argument sake we have a bit more automation coming into it you know so there is a bit more in there but the we're talking about a model at the moment that is is quite labour intensive but that is kind of how the urban that's how those that the people in that environment actually connect with the soil you know they have no love of they're not going to get in it you don't talk about the scale we're getting in a GPS guided tractor and the person actually never sets foot in the field you know and covers 100 hectares that's of in per square again as we're talking about per square meter we're talking about very low returns and to give people an idea because people think of you know I think one of the questions before talked about you know how much I guess thinking how much land is actually available well you've got 4 000 parks in Auckland alone in the 25 regional parks Auckland has 42 000 hectares now this is all within the community land so we're not all talking about turning all of that into food production by any means stretch the imagination but like Sarah says land is not the issue here it's how we're utilising how we're farming and how we're utilising and how we're managing that soil it's it's all at a much more basic level but the the opportunity is about so the the key to supporting these projects is that csa that community supported agricultural model where somebody wants food you know from a local source because like the omg our target is basically everybody that would hopefully buy get their food from omg from these csa boxes could arguably walk there and pick it up you know we're not we don't want to put it on a courier and ship it you know across the city or anything like that that's that's not the model that we're talking about this is very much localised food production but as you know if we keep pointing out here is that this this makes an awful lot of people much more passionate about their food and interest about how their food grows and you can see as we go through this process that we can scale we can scale it up but the fact is the more people involved and the more that I like the actually get and we do have people in that model now that are talking to us you know that are more larger scale market gardens so 10 12 hectares or you know or larger sort of following along and these no-till regenerative practices got it thank you um let's come to that question of barriers um Sheldon what do you what do you see as some of the the big barriers to scalability or to your work in general and and what are the roles that perhaps local authorities um councils or others can can play to help remove those barriers um one one barrier is possibly this this issue of imagination when we look at at these green squares dotted over our cities um and then archaic hangovers of of legislation um those people are long gone but um there's there's lots of bylaws um both at the the council level and at the state level that they never thought in in a wildest dream we might want to grow food in the city and so we now have to go back and look at at someone's legislation and allow it to to have some of these things done on it particularly the reserves act there's one that yeah in one interpretation you could easily farm as long as you don't have any goats but in other interpretations it's quite narrow purely because urban farming wasn't around in the 70s but I guess in Wellington in particular um I was in a meeting today and and there's a draft um report due to be submitted to the council soon that that recommends a lot of these things that recommends that our work stream is developed in Wellington to to basically understand what land is available who owns it what what state is it and um and create a mandate to a community um food council to begin um allowing some of that policy work to be undertaken so I think Wellington is potentially really beginning to push your head and and see the potential here but the biggest barrier is at the moment for us is policy and and bylaw got it um I'd love to come back to goats in a minute but um Sarah I'm curious to hear if you've noticed any any difference um with a slightly different council structure than we see in most of the country with a consolidated super council as such has that um has that meant meant any changes in terms of um the way that you have to work with local authorities thought you're on mute um I just say it's just super complicated um being a super city um what what we're finding post-covid is that there's a really massive conversation happening in all areas of Auckland City around um the opportunity for urban farming to to um you know attend to food security as a primary thing um a lot of marakai um projects and but they're all at that kind of conceptual stage and what's really missing is an integrated um policy or plan for enabling these things to happen um last year you know we were all involved in a climate change action plan just discussions about you know what could happen in our city to make us climate change ready uh there's just been so much talking done and so little action really the action that's been taken by our communities um and they're massively under resourced so while people are talking about these things um communities like ours are just um you know there's burnout there is a frustration that you know we can't get funding from MPI we can't get you know the ministry of um of environment has actually been really supportive but I would say you know Auckland Council is in a really bad place financially right now uh and there's never been more need for these projects to be you know actioned we have in South Auckland there really is a food desert out there and and there's and there's a serious serious issue around access to nutrient dense food um but also we have a massive issue around um waste recovery and in Auckland we have been looking and investing in a biodegester to take our organic waste um and ship it down country and turn it into um into heat essentially and we just see that that is a massive waste of resources that actually the very same um organic waste could easily this you know a better investment is to keep it in the environment where it has been created and to turn it into opportunity and climate change mitigation opportunity but also um you know uh jobs I mean jobs are the next big thing we need to be thinking about one of the things I think it would be a super shame not to mention um by the time we had ended this is just how um how amazing these farms are at in terms of um carbon capture drawdown and while there is a lot of conversation at the moment around you know sequestering carbon and soils what um is really possible to measure is the above ground biomass that is actually you know is captured carbon and um you know the and that's measured by productivity and these the systems that we are encouraging people to take up in the urban farming have massive productivity and massive above ground biomass which really um Daniel I wonder if you might um just share some of the data around that because I think in terms of getting your imaginations triggered and feeling really inspired about the opportunity for regenerative urban agriculture to make a big difference in regards to our drawdown requirements um that's what has me be in this project are those opportunities Daniel could you speak to that um yeah sure I mean there you know there's a huge amount of I guess conversation around this whole um carbon sequestration um and and that's you know particularly we hear that coming through from the pastoral side of things and and and how effective um these um regenerative systems can be and actually increasing the amount of carbon but often yes we are only talking about more often than not measuring the carbon in the soil um but one of the systems and the name just escapes from the top of my head at the moment but essentially when you start embracing this sort of um this whole process and you create these um healthy soils that have this um you know healthy carbon cycle nutrient cycle process happening in the soil is you create a massive abundance above the soil and the vast majority of the carbon in the world is actually holding plant material actually above the soil um that's where our biggest carbon um store is the the soil follows that but um you know the sort of examples that are talked about and I'm just trying to think of the research that came out of New Mexico University there regenerative agricultural sort of research facility there I mean they're talking about as much as 19 tons of carbon per hectare per year in a fully activated biological system so you know when you've really got this regenerative process happening versus what's happening in our conventional systems often you're talking that is five or six times um these these regenerative systems can be five or six times higher than what we're currently achieving in our conventional agricultural approach um to it so there's a lot you know there's a lot of science being a lot of study being around there and there's some people really leading the cutting edge of that but it shows true potential of creating a food system which is incredibly carbon positive rather than having these conversations about how negative our food system is to the carbon and we can argue one way or the other in many times but in these sorts of systems it's so overwhelmingly carbon positive from from the amount of carbon being captured not only in the ground but above ground that there is little argument to be to be had yeah sounds like there's quite the opportunity for a reframe there and and and if we change our processes a little um I was going to ask about the involvement of animals I know we've only got a couple of minutes left though so um if anyone wants to weave that into their last 30 second thoughts that would be great but I would love to give you all the opportunity to just um yeah say anything that that's still on your mind up Bailey you had your hand raised there yeah I mean there's uh interesting we've we've touched on some of the bylaws and policy and plan and constraints but it's the the river corridor I've mentioned a couple of times there's a whole regeneration plan and that has then um created overlays in our planning framework and there's a rule within that that animals grazing is allowed in that area up until the 1st of July 2024 and I can't get a clear answer from any of the planners yet about why that date I'm imagining that it's something to do with the overall vision for the space is ecological restoration and they see animals in there as being counterproductive to that so they've time limited where the animals can be used in that space the the the area is large enough for us to dream of and implement uh some kind of rotational system where we have stock um closely cared for and probably brought back into shelter in the evenings by a caretaker in residence who's looking at a continuous area of around 40 sometimes maybe even 50 or 60 hectares the most efficient way to manage that landscape would be to involve animals and the most efficient way to achieve regeneration of the land and soils to that area would be to involve animals as well so I would love to see um I would love to see integration of of animals and I'm starting to do some work with uh staff at Lincoln University about that so yeah it's got a huge role to play fantastic um Sarah instead of um giving you your 30 seconds I'd love to put to your quick question that's come from Annabelle Angbean um can you advise I know you mentioned there around food desertification and there was a question around that earlier um the viability of providing low cost produce to low income households and free food banks or schools oh you're on mute again we'll just have to unmute you uh it's it's absolutely huge I mean the thing about these farms are so productive that you can actually produce enough food to actually sell enough to pay all your wages and have plenty to give away um and that's that's one of the um one of the things that we've been doing modeling around we already give two CSA boxes of our 40 a way to um a group called Athena Mai who we've been working with in the who are Māori with lived experience of homelessness um but also that community gets to be um kind of we're really looking at the moment as what does urban farming mean um in relation to um you know uh Māori um you know and um Mara Kai um Mara Mataka so you know in terms of what I would say about the urban farming movement and why we're here is that it's extremely joyful it's incredibly optimistic we feel like we um are really making a difference and we can see that happening and I think being able to make this available common unity are a classic example in um in Wellington who are you know really are feeding their community by growing locally um but the opportunity is I see that we need to take this out of being in a voluntary sector into being a new economic sector so we're really looking at systems that can enable you to actually have a business and feed your local community and if that includes giving some of it away then if you were that productive that's a possibility fantastic thank you Sarah I love I love that making it a real economic um industry um we rapidly run run out of time a little bit over here so Sheldon 30 seconds any final thoughts from you um maybe just uh just adding on um um briefly to um to Annabelle's thoughts um I yeah I fully agree with Sarah that um a lot of these farms were already social enterprises Chi Cycles being um providing huge amounts of food for the last five years um to a organization called Pi Bosch um but I think as well looking at um at things like living food banks there's many cities around the world that they the food bank doesn't buy food it employs a farmer um one one example that would be the Ottawa food bank and then schools um you know rather than shipping in food we could just have a garden on the school field um and easily integrate children into into that um from from a really early age um so I think this is all possible um and this is definitely an underlying thread and a lot of the conversations um in this movement thanks Sheldon Daniel any final thoughts um yeah a lot but I should have summarized it in the 30 seconds the um yeah I mean the key when you're starting to talk about when I started the conversation about productivity uh being the underlying sort of driver to being the sustainant what drives the sustainability success of these projects you know there are projects out there where already the goal is they're giving away more than 50 of the food so they're only actually basically having to recover their costs once they recover the costs um by selling whatever percentage of food they need to do that whatever else they produce is simply given away or sold at a very low cost into needy communities that's a very strong part of um you know of some of the projects that we're looking at here and in my uh when I'm working with um projects and trying to help to develop their business models we try and produce a uh a model where they're able to give away 25 percent or in some cases we're talking about a model where we've got give your csa so somebody might buy two boxes and and one gets donated so the farmer isn't necessarily is compensated for his cost of producing the food but the food's still being given away to somebody or families that need it so it's it's you know this this is all about a change to our food system and it's very much driven by the social um need and the whole idea that we can grow you know I get a real problem where it's the organic and regenerative production that it just wants to be focused about how they can get more money for their food when I already look at what food for many people is already too damn expensive if you want to make more money and be more successful as a farmer learn how to actually be more productive um and not focus on some sort of um you know marketing influence that can mean you can charge if two or three times more for your food because it's regeneratively growing regenerative is is the key being regenerative is the key to actually achieving that productivity very good point um all about healthy food healthy people thriving communities healthy environment but also can I say one last thing is that actually a lot of those communities in need actually would love to be able to learn to grow and so this is why we've created the regenerate now platform is that you know anyone who wants to participate in this urban farming sector I believe should have access to the knowledge that they need and so we've been trying to um that's part of the urban farmers alliance but it's also part of the regenerate now is that actually this is highly skilled um highly skilled work but it's work that can be learned in in months wonderful hey thank you so much to all our panelists this evening and thank you for sticking with us I know we've gone a few minutes over this evening um it's been fantastic to have everybody along with us this evening um so please do join us next week we've got um a conversation around regenerative tourism with Trent Yeo from um from down in Christ in Queenstown rather eco trek zip tours Dr Suzanne Beckon from over in Australia sustainable tourism professor and Larissa Cooney from Bay of Plenty tourism that'll be a really interesting conversation given the the situation our tourism industry finds itself in and then finally we've got our our series finale for the our generative future series and it's an episode where we'll be drawing everything together around forestry tourism agriculture horticulture and exploring the topic of how we can move toward a regenerative economy for New Zealand and particularly for New Zealand's primary sector we'll have Rod Orham, Dame and Salmond, Mike Taitoko and Hamish Bilski on that call which all panelists we've already had in this series so it'll be really drawing together um a lot of big picture thinkers that will be a 90-minute special episode so we'll be able to dive a little bit deeper into into that one please do join us for the next couple keep an eye on the Pure Advantage and Edmund Hillary Fellowship Facebook Instagram pages for all the details or you can go to pureadvantages.org or ehf.org for details thank you so much again for joining us it's been wonderful to have you and thank you to all our panelists once more Ka kite