 brought to you by Private Property. My name is Malinuoco, your host every Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is another special edition of the Farming Podcast and we're speaking to a farmer who farms quite exotic plants. Some of them I've never heard of them before and his farm's name is called Thadmire Riverstel which apparently means farm more. So I think he's got such an interesting story to tell for us especially just what he does in his farming operations and the various commodities that he incorporates into his business and we're speaking to none other than Henry Finnemore. If you have any questions for Henry please feel free to drop your questions on the comment below and just comment about what you think regenerative agriculture is, what your thoughts on regenerative agriculture is and how we could diversify, you know, in this industry. We'd like to hear your engagements and continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel which is Private Property and for this specific show please go under the Farming Podcast playlist. Let's get straight into it. Henry, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing? I'm Mbali Yesam. Well, thank you. Hi to you and your subscribers. Thank you. Thank you. It's always great to speak to a fellow farmer because you know, people say farmers are always in their small corners in rural areas in very outskirts areas as well. So it's great to speak to another farmer and get another farmer onto this Farming Podcast. So Henry, you are the owner and farmer of Farm Favmere Riverstel. Tell us what is it that you farm and are you a first generation farmer or has, you know, the farming bug been in your family for four years? Mbali Yesam, my great grandfather started off with dairy farming. My grandfather continued and my father. But then the line was cut there. I think dairy farming, my dad always used to say it's a prison without walls. So I got another prison without walls. Protea farming is a bit like a jealous lover. It takes all of your attention, especially if you have a nursery, then things can become complicated, especially when you have fun times when FCOM switches off the lights and you've got to make plans to wet your plants. But I think you as a farmer will understand those hardships as well or difficulties. I think just to put you in the picture, Favmere actually means free range in France, which, you know, that's when me and my wife decided about seven years ago, we're going to say goodbye to Johannesburg and we moved down to Riverstel. Now, just to give you some background, you're a vegetable farmer or do you do other products? Yes, that's correct. I'm a vegetable farmer. Yes, well, then you must speak to my daughter. Well, I started a business in Benoni. It's called Field Fresh about 2006 and we started supplying cut vegetables, soups, processed beans, butternuts, anything you can think of with over 100 lines that we were supplying to checkers and spa. So possibly you can talk to her and you can do some business together with my daughter. She's still there. I'm not there. I sold my interests in the business and I then moved down to Riverstel. So just in short, regenerative agriculture came across my road for I think for lack of anything else, just the costs of the input costs. When I studied agriculture in 1984, we were all we were taught about fertilizers and even where they were made, you know, the different fertilizers in which countries they were made, etc. And when you start, when I was, say, long out of farming, coming back to farming seven years ago and just seeing how expensive input costs have become and also how the pest and disease list has increased, you know, for plants and for animals. In the time when I used to farm with my father, you know, just looking what he was doing, most probably the amount of pest and diseases were 20% of what they are today. So things have just become more difficult in terms of chemical requirements. So, you know, in general, everybody's farming chemicals nowadays and if you look at documentaries like Kiss the Earth and others, then you will see that, you know, there are only so many crops left before the elements in the soils are depleted completely. And you know, we keep on adding that just chemically and there are other solutions. You know, it was the farming the old way. Nowadays, you've got factory farming and you've even got big commercial form farmers. And I think some of them are also looking at alternatives, you know, like for example, no till has come into agronomy where they do that with grains, where you try and keep the stubble on the soil so that you can conserve the moisture in the soil and also build up your soil. But regenerative agriculture is farming the old way, you know, where people used to have the hens around the house, and you used to have pigs, and you had sheep, and you had cattle, and you had all of these elements in your farm. And without I think the old people knowing that these things were working hand in hand, you know, it's the way agriculture was intended was that, you know, you must have different animals on your farm so that they interact with each other. And then you get the benefits of that as the grower, whether it be the animal or the plant, because that interaction just means that you get healthier plants and animals. I think the more we have moved towards chemicals, the more dependency we have on chemicals, the more sick the system has become and also people in general, if you look at just the the the increase in cancer, you know, in people, it's just horrifying. So I think looking that's why a lot of people are looking and wanting to turn back to the old ways. But the problem is that you don't always get the remuneration for that effort you put in for growing things organically or more healthy. People are so bound by the commercial farming side. And even if you look at the price spread, you know, from your farm gate to your retailer, it is only economy of scale that keeps a lot of farmers in business. So you've got to produce a lot of something to eventually make money with it. Because if you look at a broiler farm, you know, you've got five in houses, each in house can take up to 10,000 chickens or fowls. So you know, you as a small farmer, if you're trying to farm with eggs or with meat broilers, you've got to compete with that scale of production. And that makes things difficult because then you need a client base that's actually willing to pay you for your product so that you can get the benefit of that economy of scale because you are producing a healthy product. And I think the closer you are to the cities, the more fortunate you are to actually have those LSM buyers that have got a higher living standard and that will be and they're looking at their life expectancy, they're looking after their life and their health. So they pay you actually for those, let's call it healthy products that you produce on your farm. And obviously, everything has to be certified, you know, so that adds an additional cost, you know, nowadays, if you want to export something, you've got to be good agricultural practices, you know, which is a good system. You know, everything is developed for the benefit of health. I will support. So just in terms getting back to my farm, when I started, I started off with cattle. We went through a slight drought period. The farm was too small. I then looked at alternatives and then there were not farmers in the area. And I had started a macadamia nut nursery. And that was producing macadamia nut trees and then eventually I planted trees for myself. And then eventually I planted pecan nuts and almonds. And my idea with that is if you look at the regenerative agriculture practices and the guy I follow the most is Richard Perkins from Switzerland. He's got the smallest, most intensive little farm I've seen in the world. But you can only do as much as what the climate offers you. So if the higher the rainfall in your area, and then I must also add, it must not be too high because then you're going to sub tropical conditions, but you also can't have too little rain. So you must sort of sit there in between, you know, in terms of rainfall, or you must be able to irrigate your fields from a irrigation system, you know, where you, where there's a dam that's providing you water and you are listed in an irrigation scheme where you get a daily or a weekly allotment of water and you can farm with that. Because that's the only way really where I can see regenerative agriculture working well. Because in your drier parts or your very wet parts, you know, there's other farming conditions you are limited because of the the the weather conditions, like for example, the Karoo, you can you'll only get niche spots where you can apply regenerative agriculture because you've got water. So in general, you need a good supply of water. You need good soil. And obviously the sunlight is for free. So then if you look at you look at the basic concepts of agricultural regenerative agriculture, it is you're farming with a soil. The animals you are using or the plants you're using in your system is beneficial to the soil. So you're the whole time you are building up your soil because you actually want those earthworms in your soil, you want you want the microresa in your soil, you want the microbes in your soil, you want the fungi in your soil, you want carbon in your soil. I mean, we all talk we all know about the the the big carbon problem in the world that there's too much carbon and what it's doing to the world that's heating up the world. So nobody taught me adversity that there's actually carbon in the atmosphere that you cannot generally you can harvest and put back into the soil. You must only allow grass to grow on your soil on your soil. So if you allow grass, grass is the biggest sink source for carbon can actually bind a lot of carbon. So in the past where I used to use roundup in my fields to spray the macadamia trees to keep the grass off the roots and out of the fields, I don't do that anymore. So what I do now is I do a chop and drop. So I would take a weed eater and I would cut, I would mow the grass, I would mow the weeds, and I would also I started to learn all the different kinds of weeds on the farm. So and I looked at the beneficial ones, you get soft weeds and you get hard weeds. And some of the hard weeds you they they irritate you but they put down the root systems that actually break up the soil. So that's beneficial for you. Soft weeds gives you a lot of leaf so you can if you chop it and it falls onto the soil, it forms that organic mulch that you need where you can actually build up the ideal conditions for worms to come in, funnily to start growing and your micro your microresa and you can also build up carbon in your soil. Now the scientists have proven for every 1% you build up the carbon in your soil, you're actually taking carbon out of the atmosphere putting it in the soil. For every 1% you increase the carbon in your soil, you increase the carry the water carrying capacity of the soil by 250,000 liters per hectare. So that means if you can build up your soil if you start off with a soil that's got 1% carbon in it and you can build it up to 5%, you've got an extra storage capacity of a million liters in your soil. That carbon actually makes the texture of your soil much better, the structure of your soil. So that means that the water can infiltrate much better and it gets stored for a longer period of time. So when your neighbor is experiencing drought during a drought period you will still have the benefit of that moisture in your soil because you've got extra carbon in your soil. So yes, that's things that I'm looking at you know like for example if you plant alfalfa, Lucerne in your fields amongst your trees, yes they are competing with your trees but they've also but they've got rhizomes on their roots that are actually collecting nitrogen for you and making it available to the other plants. So now we know about this web, this web of interaction in the soil between plants where they actually exchange nutrients with each other to survive. So there's this whole network in the soil where certain plants will have more selenium or zinc which are micro elements which other plants don't have and they will exchange it for a favor from the other plant, the other plant might give it some phosphorus or calcium. So there's this whole interaction in the soil that has got my interest and since I've been applying these methods of farming, bringing in chickens, I eventually want to bring in sheep as well. I haven't got sheep now at the moment because my trees are small so I don't let the sheep to damage the trees. So my trees must get a bit bigger then I will bring in the sheep then I don't have to mow the grass anymore the sheep can can utilize the the grass. So it's just it's that whole interaction between we we've got chickens on the farm at the moment they are you cannot believe once you start watching them in nature how much they how much soil they can move around, how much they can dig and how much they can add value to the soil by the by adding fertilizer to the soil. Yes it is raw fertilizer yes you must compost it and but just moving the hen houses through the orchard we can already see the difference just in that the trees in the areas where we are moving the hens just react much better they are healthier and they they just look happier than the other trees. So we are we are slowly increasing the amount of animals on the farm as we have increased the the nut trees. So production. Yes I don't know if you are familiar with a silver pasture silver pasture methods where they grow trees and then they have pastures underneath the trees but you thin out the trees so that you have the benefit of the grass and you've got the shading effect of the trees. The trees have got all the fungal growth on them normally when a tree breaks down it's got fungus associated with it. The grasses have the the rhizomes correlated to it so you've got the interaction of the bacteria the rhizomes of the bacteria and the fungal spores on the trees so you get this interaction that is all beneficial to the plants and eventually as I said if you've got healthier plants you've got healthier animals if you've got healthier animals and you slaughter them you're selling a healthier product to people and eventually you have healthier people you know if you look at and you have a healthy environment I think and you have a healthy environment at the end of the day because you know all the different elements are working within each other and just supporting each other as an ecosystem. Before you go into further technical info I Henry you know you've really unpacked regenerative agriculture quite well with different methods and obviously brought certain case studies of what you've done in the farm incorporating chickens and soon to be sheep. You know for a farmer who's thinking how do I apply these practices and I want to start you know just to to farm for a better tomorrow etc etc where does a farmer begin to get such information you know you seem like you've got such an extensive technical knowledge it's like you know you've you've really put a microscope in every level of your farming production how can another farmer adopt these regenerative regenerative practices do they have to do just research do they have to speak to institutions or do they have to use the services of an agronomist soil scientists or any other scientists as well you know how can one start adopting these practices by themselves and their farms. I think it's a combination of what you said if you look at the internet as a wealth of knowledge some of these world-renowned speakers on on the topics like for example Gay Brown who features in Kiss the Soil I don't know if you've watched Kiss the Soil yes I have yes I have okay Gay Brown is the farmer in America that shows how his neighbors land is flooded with water and where his land is not because he's applying his binding carbon in the soil so Gay Brown was in South Africa he was in Cape Town he gave a talk their different Richard Perkins has been in South Africa he gave a talk in Cape Town I must be honest with you I missed both he talks as well I only saw the programs after the fact you know after I but I've I watched their videos I listen to what they say and I apply what they say I also do a lot of reading of my own I do research I do a lot of research on the internet because most you know to go to your local library you're going to get such outdated information yes there will be good information but it will all be based on the past the commercial you know I'm not saying modern libraries are not modern but most of them have got computers as well now you just go and you you surf the internet so there's so much good information on the internet I think just read up about it and then get to know your own farm because every farm will be different the weeds the weeds on my farm is not going to be the weeds on your farm it might be if we in the same district but if we are in different districts different areas regions it's going to be different and then different weeds come at different times of the year so you must devise a strategy for every weed on your farm like for example I have double keys you know I just I just hate them because apart from that you you cannot walk in the field they just you know they they sting you wherever you go I still have to use chemicals to kill them off I haven't got any other solution for them or you must just chop them when they're very young but they such they so hardy they just regrow and regrow so you know you spend a lot of time with your weed eater in the field so you've got to learn the different weeds you've got to learn your soil you know your specific soil if you've got a clay soil a sandy soil or a loam soil I think always a farmer so lucky to have a loam soil because that's in between a clay and a and a sandy soil you know it's much better than than a pure sandy soil and a and a very clay soil those are the two difficult ones to work with so if you've got a loam soil which has got a mixture of sand and clay then you are very fortunate and then you can do a lot of things on your farm yeah so you know get to know your farm get to know your own conditions get to know your weather conditions I mean I use YR as an app a weather app I don't you can use any app weather app that matter but what I do is I always look at next week's weather forecasts so that I know when it's going to rain what you expect so that I can you know do my planning according to that as well yes yes and so you've mentioned that you've got nut trees chickens as well so the concept of having to bring the the protea plants was that also all forming part of regenerative agriculture or did you just see an opportunity with protea plants approach your flowers that you could start farming and trading with I think you know you spoke about COVID when we started off our affected everybody yes it was bad yes for the flower industry you know it was terrible you know and the thing is if you think about it logically you know people don't eat flowers they they they eat protein they want nuts maybe maybe they want meat first and eggs and milk and bread and then they eat nuts you know so flowers start becoming as a nice to have so it's it is it is a tricky business and it is also economy of scale so you know I think I think the flowers came across my my path as an opportunity because I just I love plants in general and I mean if you if you if you've seen a king protea you know you just fall in love with him it's just such a beautiful flower and I just wanted to to plant them so I've planted I've planted you know a hectare of king proteas and I'm going to expand further with the flowers but I always I want to keep a balance between the flowers and the nuts you know you know you never know what's the next COVID going going to do so I don't want to I don't want to get knee deep in into the flowers but the opportunity has come and yes we are making cuttings we are exporting cuttings to to Ecuador so you know there are opportunities if you look for them and to get back to to pin cushions the the scientific is name is a lucos spurnum so you can you can look them up on the internet but it's a it's a beautiful color it's got a variety of colors in it's it's you get them in deep red you get them in yellow you get them in in yellow with with with red little stamens at the top so you know it's it's different colors that you get and they are very exotic and they're one of our as I said one of our biggest export flowers uh is um uh pin cushions you know apart from the proteas um if even if you look at you know if if you look at the variety within the plant kingdom it is it is so wonderful I mean you know sometimes I'm just gobsmacked by the variety that you know God's creation has given us if if you look at you know some people will talk about proteas and think yeah proteas okay but they are you know there's there's almost commercial there's most probably 30 30 commercial varieties and then you still get many more you know pin cushions the same there there are so many commercial varieties and then there are so many more that you find in nature so um the diversity the diversity is tremendous and then I'm not even talking about you get the lu luca dendrons the cone bushes they are ornamental flowers that they're also using arrangement they make little balls um they've got little balls on them um and and beautiful to put into an arrangement so I think I've I've given you next time you go to the flower market you must go and go and check out all these new things I'm talking about yeah the pin cushions etc but Henry would you think that would you say that regenerative agriculture is quite an expensive farming process to adopt you know because um you know when you go through very very harsh climatic conditions and you can't spray chemicals and maybe you just don't have the budget to buy all these different things that could help you know the soil etc like invest in nut trees invest in sheep invest in chicken invest in far in flowers um you know if you don't have all that money and capital to invest in all these resources what do you do so is could one say that regenerative agriculture does come at a price for the farmer specifically uh I think you know now I've answered the question why I've got a nursery because that's cash flow so yeah okay you know everything I've produced in the nursery I can I can sell within a year so that gives me a yearly income so that allows me to extend on the other farming activities and yes we do eggs locally so we provide all the local restaurants and the road stalls with eggs my wife does that there was actually she did a um interview with one of the with another I can't remember who but but um uh yes I think I think yes you are correct um it's not as if we I said if I don't spray any chemicals so for example rust is still a big problem on nut trees so I will I will use copper and um sulfur in my in my arsenal um which are chemicals but it's more the old school chemicals it's not got the um the chemical components that you know we are trying to go away from I'm talking about the copper and the and the diethane he's almost a contact chemical it's not as if it goes systemic it does not it's not systemic so it does not go into the plant um and and eventually into the fruit or the nuts that you eat so they say roundup isn't everything is now say you can you can go and if every person analyzes a bit of his fat his stomach fat you will find a roundup in it yeah so that's quite bad as we say as we some of the show Henry what is just you've mentioned quite a number of tips as well and things that farms could do just maybe for a farmer that's just you know been farming for many years who's so used to their their farming practices and methods and maybe that just want to adopt more the organic approach or regenerative agriculture approach what are just some of the top short key three things or tips rather that you could advise to a farmer just to try and going out and experiment regenerative agriculture to see if you know they could save some money back at the end of the day so what are some of the top three um uh tips that you could give to farmers around regenerative agriculture or exploring regenerative agriculture as a farming option I think um you know like everything in life don't don't jump head head over heels into something new you know um adopt it slowly you know do it do it on a small scale I always say you know and I learned this lesson with when I started in macadamia nursery is don't do things on a big scale you know don't do something so big that you know it overwhelms you so um just just start of um small you know take one egg day on your farm take one egg day on your farm or ten egg days depending on the size of your farm and slowly start changing your um uh your practices there I think the I think the most the the most important key was something a professor told us at university said that and this is something that's becoming a saying in agriculture is you know the best fertilizer is footsteps in the in the field you know so um go into your field go and look at your individual plants look at their needs see how you can make life easier for them you know obviously if you have big trees I I see that by me on the farm as soon as you get bigger trees protecting smaller trees you get a micro climate so now the scientists are talking about they're talking about the the the macro rain and also the micro rain so you can actually create the atmosphere on your farm that's beneficial for rainfall because you are increasing the amount of foliage you're increasing the amount of humidity so um plants start protecting each other so you you'll also find in a garden try and start a garden or just with fine plants you know plants that are soft now the sun will take them on the third day so you know what you must do is first establish your tree and then you get go to other plants but to get back to your your question I think it's it's take it slowly see how you can improve your soil do an analysis of your soil see what the carbon content of your soil is talk to an agronomist find out how you can carbon is for free you don't have to buy it in a fertilizer format you can actually pull it out of the atmosphere and put it in your soil nitrogen is for free you know so look at planting those beneficial plants clover for example or or Lucerne you plant in your fields try and plant them so they don't compete with your main crop but then um I think a guy brown from America with a kiss the soil and they've got mixes of up to 12 to 14 different plants that they seed at one time so that they can establish a cover crop so that that gives the benefit to the main main crop plus it gives the benefit to the soil you know that that green green fodder that that you're looking for so I think yes look at the plant look how you can improve that plant's condition and as I said in the beginning we started off it's not for everybody because you you will find farmers that are farming in in difficult climate climatic conditions he's got a maize farm for example you know what can you do and you can't plant trees amongst your maize farm now to make it absolutely a better place for the maize yeah so you know you but maybe you can look at cover crops you know to improve your soil's health so you don't have to put in everything chemically but you can slowly start weaning yourself from chemical products and I've seen that you have on me if you get plants that grow in natural conditions without having too much chemicals they are just healthier they just work naturally yes they are healthier so but that it's it's it is a bit of a patience game and as you rightfully said is you know if you want to if you're a small scale farmer what I'm talking about just becomes more difficult because nothing in South Africa caters for small farmers yes the the implements are scarce the advice is scarce the competition is strong you know you've got to compete against big commercial growth so for a for somebody on a small scale trying to produce maize you know it is it's it's you're competing with a maize price that's that's being done you know on on a large scale so it just becomes more and more difficult but it doesn't mean you can't it doesn't mean you can't do it if you want to be self sustainable yeah but thank you so much for your time Henry I think all the tips that you've given are quite valuable and I agree with you that the agricultural industry in South Africa does cater especially more so for the commercial farmer and it's very important to also note that not all the regenerative agricultural practices or farming practices can be adopted in every single type of farmer you know because like you said if you're farming maize you can't plant trees and if you're farming maize the last thing you want today is cattle you know going in and about your maize and and eating your carbs etc so yeah I think that's quite detrimental but I agree with you I think research is the most fundamental thing maybe speaking to other farmers who also have adopted those processes but thank you so much for your time for your expertise and I wish you all the best with your farming venture and I will continue to maybe yeah I will actually reach out to your daughter because we're in the same vicinity so I know about your company but yeah thank you for the tips that you've given and shared on the show tonight okay thank you for having me on the show it's a pleasure it's a pleasure that was Henry Finnemore who is a farmer and we were speaking about regenerative agriculture I think the most biggest tips that I learned from him in terms of how we can adopt these practices basically starting small trial and error I think research is also quite important and you know just just listening to some some talks online on youtube listening to the farming podcast because Henry definitely dropped some serious gems on how he's adopted regenerative agriculture in his farm and also just some other tips like harvesting carbon which is for free who would have thought so I hope you really found this conversation quite valuable and keep subscribing to our youtube channel just to get more content around the farming industry and how you could improve your farming practices as a farmer once again go to private property youtube channel under the farming podcast playlist this is where you'll find this episode with Henry and yeah that's it for me and I wish you a very good evening and I will see you soon take care