 My name is Elina Siegfried. I've been the author recently of a series called Our Regenerative Future, which is co-produced by Pure Advantage and the Edmund Hillary Fellowship and started out as a content series of stories of the people that are at the forefront of regenerative agriculture in New Zealand. And so this web series that we're running now is an extension of that, an opportunity for you all to ask questions of the people. And tonight our session is on walking the talk. So we're speaking with four of the farmers that are actually leading the work here in New Zealand on the ground at the moment. You'll see in the bottom bar you've got a little Q&A box. That is the place to please put any questions that you have for the speakers. And I'll be asking those questions live as we go through the session. Some of you have also asked some questions when you're registered, so we'll try to get to some of those as well. We do have a lot of questions coming through. We found with the last webinar we couldn't answer them all. So we'll do our best to try and get through as many as we can. And also know that we might ask the questions in the next webinar series. We've got at least four more of these coming up. Or we might be taking those discussions online onto social media in the coming weeks to try and get a bit of a conversation going there when we don't have time here. You will see a poll coming up very soon, which we'd love you to please just take a moment to fill out. It's multi-choice. It gives us an idea of who is on the call just so we can get an idea of how to frame the discussion today. So that should have come up for you now, that poll. I can see people are starting to engage in there. And you can also upvote the questions. So if you see a question in the Q&A box that you would also like answered by all means, give it an upvote. And that will help us know what kind of things people would like to know about from our panellists. I'm going to introduce them very soon. But just to give you a quick background, as I said, this is a series that we've done with Pure Advantage and EHF, which is the Edmontillary Fellowship. It started out as EHF were looking to showcase a few of their fellows that are involved in regenerative agriculture. And we discovered that Pure Advantage were also looking to look at soil carbon through the lens of regenerative agriculture. So there seemed to be quite a bit of overlap there. And we got talking and made a bit of a partnership to start this series. So Edmontillary Fellowship, I'll just do a quick shout out. They've got applications open right now for Cohort 6. It's a wonderful global community of entrepreneurs, farmers, changemakers, artists, different innovators who are all trying to make positive global impact. Their applications for Cohort 8 are closing on the 1st of June. And as I understand it, it's the final opportunity to apply for a global impact visa for those of you who are calling from overseas. So check that out. EHF.org is the website there. I can see that we've got about 80% of the people voted in the poll at this point. And about half of you all are farmers and growers, which is just fantastic. We've got a few other people from business and media and science and academia as well. And good to see that most people have at least read some of the stories, which means that you might be familiar with some of our panellists already. Okay. I think we will kick into things pretty quickly here. So without further ado, I'm going to ask our panellists to briefly introduce themselves. And let's start with Mark, if you'd like to introduce yourself and tell us what regeneration means to you. Hi, everyone. Welcome public and the other panellists as well. It's good to be here with you a good bunch. So my name's Mark Anderson. And I myself and my family farm 750 milking cows. We milk once a day in the Wara South catchment area in South Otaga. So we've identified regenerative farming as a model that presents us the least risk for the future for our business and a lot of other issues we face as well. So the changes we've made and the results we're seeing have left us wanting more. And regeneration to me or to us that we would love to move beyond sustainable into regeneration. So for us, that means regenerating our soils, our animals, our people, the land, human health, many things. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you for that, Mark. Should we go on over to Kay? Welcome. We just need to unmute you Kay. Kia ora. Kia ora. Kia ora. It's an honour to be here with all of you. I guess a short story is I've been an organic gardener for about 50 years. And for the last 35 or so outside of growing the family food and the family farm, I've been focused on saving our New Zealand heritage food plants, which includes fruit trees as well as heritage vegetable seeds. And just as importantly as saving them, which has been a huge learning, is learning how to grow them in ways that are regenerative of the ecology that they're in. So that's been another huge journey. So I guess for me over the past 15 years since we left Kiowoca and we've really been here where we are now, the good news is that we've raised the humus levels in the soil. We're on Palmer sand here from 4% to 25% to 30% in our seed gardens and our food production gardens. And we've raised the bricks of the plants from 4% to 6% to 16% to 20% to 25%. And we've been kind of focused on like building the soil and the bricks, but on that journey we've learnt so much else. And in order to, like Koanga, as well as for Koanga, as well as saving the food plants and creating regenerative ways of growing them, we've been focused on like sharing that knowledge to our workshops and through regeneration productions now we're doing online workshops, which have been really successful. But for me, if we're going to transform the way that we live on this planet and create a regenerative way of living, it needs to be measured by creating personal, community, ecological and economic health and wellbeing. So I really liked what Sarah Seller said in the last session about the importance of creating local food economies that capture value at every possible point and circle them back into local economies. I believe that some key things in order to do that are to create regional or bioregional research stations and demonstration centres with working models based on integrated land use design, which we're going to require many more people on the land and actually changes in land ownership and access models and investment, heaps of investment in all of the above. And I also see, as they discussed last week, that standards are going to be really critical for this because even for education alone, let alone marketing, yeah. And the Koanga Institute is like, that's what we're setting out to create. That's our job we see and to do, to create a research and a model on the ground to inspire and support others. So yeah, I kind of see my role in the in the local, creating local economies area. I know that everyone is doing it differently and there's lots of different ways of doing it, but yeah, that's my journey. Wonderful. Thank you, Kay. So fantastic to see such great results from you guys. Simon, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, hi. I'm Simon Osborne, obviously. 280 hectares of arable farming just next to Lake Ellosmere, which most people have heard of for its infamy around the environmental quality of the lake, which actually isn't quite reported correctly in the media. It has some peculiarities that don't quite line up with the reports, but anyhow, we've been no-till here for 46, 47 years. And when I came back onto the farm in 1992, I thought, well, what do I want to do with my life? And I thought, well, organic farming appealed to me because of the, I guess, the philosophy of it, but our soils couldn't withstand that type of treatment for cropping. And it was a 130-odd years of intensive cultivation. Well, no, not all the time, but that had destroyed them in the first place. So I moved into no-till with full residue retention, reasonably conventional for the rest of it, using chemical and fertilizer. I think we improved our soils a little bit. Organic metal levels grew, but mostly in the top part of the soil with the detritus because we were retaining all the residue. So we were building a good duff layer in the soil. I think probably it's an interesting challenge. As I got to the 2010s and beyond, I sort of thought we weren't seeing enough development in our soils and we weren't seeing enough biological activity in our soils, although they're still reasonably good at that point. So I started looking at other ways of doing it, and I think overuse of fertilizer has stripped the life out of the soils because, obviously, if plants can achieve nutrients easily, they don't bother—well, it's not a matter of not bothering. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but they don't tend to develop those symbiotic relationships that help them to feed. And those symbiotic relationships with the microbes, fungi and bacteria and other things in the soil are actually what build soil. So by putting—it's just a new way of learning to manage. And I think this is the key for people looking at regenerative agriculture. There's a lot of controversy around it. It's actually not controversial at all in my view. It's farming as a scientific endeavour, and it's also all about ecology and building a healthy agroecology ecological system is basically the fundamental reason for doing it. And it's building resilience and building health into the soil. I don't have a purest view, and I've come from the world of conservation, what I call conservation agriculture, which sort of has elements of conventional and organic sort of thrown into it. I'm not as scared of synthetic inputs as many people are over the years or later. I mean, obviously, I'd rather not use them if we can. And so I guess our endeavour is to try and work our ways how to reduce and minimise the use of those products and how to reduce the impact that they might have. And it's been an extraordinary journey of learning. And I just love soil ecology. I mean, I'm no academic. I was pretty bloody useless at school. I could barely read when I left, but man, I'm learning now. And, you know, once you get into the twilight part of your 50s to be still learning that, this is great. And I'm just enjoying every minute of it. But I do get concerned with some of the polarisation around the terminology of regenerative agriculture. And I want to see it as an inclusive thing. It's an educational thing. It's an opportunity to learn. It's an opportunity to reconnect. And it's an opportunity to rebuild our rural communities. And so, yeah, I want to proceed along those lines. Wonderful. Yeah, we've got our next session, next Monday at lunchtime, is diving much deeper into soil ecology with Dr Gwen Grille from Landcare and with Nicole Masters. So that'll be an exciting session too. Thank you, Simon. Finally, Hamish, I'd love to introduce you to briefly, invite you to introduce yourself and tell us what regeneration means to you, please. Yeah, my name's Hamish Spelsky. We're just, I don't know, five minutes away from Mark. South Otago, 300 hectares rolling to undulating hill country. Sheep and beef, we were cropping. But that just got too hard. So I left that to Simon. What I've learnt a lot is how grazing with livestock can actually really enhance our ecosystems. And I'm always trying to think what's our vision for our farm and business and life. And I think it's we want things teaming with life. We want soil teaming with life. We want our water teaming with life. We want our animals, our people, and our bank account just teaming with life. And so that's our aim here. I'm a bit like Simon. I'm not a purist. We're definitely on a journey to understanding, I think it's the big key here, regenerative farming, understanding what practices or what management actually degrades our environment and what practices improve our environment. And four years ago, I learned about regenerative agriculture and I was very, very stubborn in wanting to learn. I thought I was actually very sustainable. I genuinely thought what I was doing could last for decades. But what I learnt is can it last for millennia? That's truly true sustainability is your practice not using up non-renewable resources. So that's when I really started. The more I learnt, the more I realised that winter cropping, for example, and putting sediment into our waterways is not regenerating. It's degrading. That's scientific fact. So I had to work out if I wanted to do less winter cropping, I needed to grow more grass. How am I going to grow more grass and leave it in pasture 100% of the time? Well, that was learning how to graze my stock better. And so I went and researched how to grow more plants, have more growth, but also better animal performance. Because in my four-year journey, I have had some big failures in my animal performance by letting the grass grow too long. So as all these synergies were trying to work out, failure, success, failure, success. And I guess in this last year, we've finally cracked with some really good education how to improve animal performance as well as growing more grass and have the need for less winter crop. So it's all starting to come together. Over the last six years, we've probably lifted our stocking rate or our cowering capacity 25%. And we've never looked in a better position to be as profitable as we're going from here going forward. And just what I want to say before I go, this is our Facebook, Rehoboth Farm. Oh, no, that doesn't work at all, does it? Ah, because it's a... I need a mirror. We could see it, I think. Can you see that? Does that work? Yep, yep, absolutely. Okay, so that's our Facebook. Rehoboth, there you go. And below that is another initiative that is called Agwill, which is farmers actually working together to make our own jerseys, socks, clothing, carpets, wool insulation. So it's really exciting where the farmers actually put in our wool bales and we make all these products and the farmer gets a whole lot more money and the customer gets quality woolen products for better value that they can buy on the main market. So there's so many things happening, so exciting. So, yeah, let's go for it. Right, thank you for that, Hamish. You heard it here, folks, and Osisola has put those names in the chat window if you'd like to check them out as well. So let's crack into some questions now. We've got quite a few coming through in the Q&A box. So one that I'd like to pick out to start with is there's a question from Duncan Hum around why mainstream scientists and agricultural commentators claim there's a lack of science behind regenerative agricultural biological practices. So there seems to be sometimes that disconnect between the scientific world and the world of region ag. Does anybody want to speak to that? I'll have a go at that if you like. I think there's lack of farm systems research. There's no lack of research around individual facets of ecology and soil ecology. There's just a plethora of research, but I would also then ask the question, well, where's the farm systems research for conventional agriculture because it's not there either. It's a bit of a moot point, really. There's loads of science around all the elements of regenerative agriculture. You've just got to go looking for it. Anybody else like to add anything on that question? Yes, so can I just add that what we're finding is nature works in holes, patterns and synergies. So when we divide that up into parts, a lot of the science is somewhat based around the parts of the hole. So while we may treat part of the hole, we quite often have unintended consequences from treating a part. So we have the unintended consequences on the hole. So, yeah, we need a holistic view of science and how to approach things. I think regenerative ag really helps address that. Right, it's a little bit like looking at all of the complex moving parts of a farm system in terms of silos and individual metrics, whereas I think the regenerative agriculture looks at the much more of the hole and the whole functioning of the ecosystem. Fantastic. There's a question here and love to hear your comments from the individual panellists, but from Alexi Mallakin, how long does it take for a regenerative farm to begin producing in amounts similar to conventional farms? So I'm sure you'll all have different experiences with that. Would love to hear from each of you if you're open to chatting. Hamish, what do you think? I know we discussed when we had our interview, you're trying quite a few different things. The transition is more about the understanding of how things work and how quick you pick that up. So if I pick it up really quick and get a good understanding in education, you could actually keep going within one year and keep improving. The problem is with all my different trials and what not, and a lack of understanding, I certainly went backwards for about two years. It really hurt me, but once I understood it, the direction, the growth is huge. So I've just got so much more confidence now in what we have actually seen and experienced that it doesn't need to take too long. However, I think in a cropping situation, it may take longer, but I'll leave Simon to answer that. But Simon, when we go look over his farm, he's got his soils thriving, but that's over decades of work. But we are learning also, and Simon will say with cover crops and different diverse species, how quickly they actually recover the soil and turn things around. Simon, did you want to speak to the cropping angle? Yeah, I'm the sort of person that likes to go. I wonder what would happen if I did this and probably focus not enough on the bottom line when it comes to that sort of thing. But I think there are certain lots of challenges around arable farming because you can't just pick up what's been done overseas and scale it to New Zealand on a broad acre basis. I think generally the more biological the approach in an arable situation, the more resilience you build into the system. I haven't seen a drop-off in yield as such, but what we're really starting to see is a building of resilience around, you know, we're just not using any insecticides anymore and we're getting to the point where the fungicides are no longer prevalent and it's actually vastly more complex in an arable system to get an understanding of all these individual facets. So, you know, I've done a few spray-free trials with the likes of hybrid radish and had very good results, but it just takes, the information's just not readily there to pick up and run with it. You've actually got to do a bit of trial and error as well, which can be, you know, it can cost you. But hey, I'm life is for learning and I'm still alive, so I still want to learn. So that's actually the most important thing to me. I've probably got the most expensive education in New Zealand, I suspect. It's one way of looking at it, certainly. Kay, I know you've got many, many years of education and experience too. Do you have any thoughts around how long it takes to turn around? We'd love to also hear your, there was a sort of a related question around how long it took to and what was the method of getting your humus levels up, humus levels up that you mentioned. And also, I've learned bit by bit by bit, but I began, the way I began was by getting REM soil tests done and using fertilizer based on those soil tests. So I didn't go backwards, I only went forwards right from the beginning, but then I wanted to learn how to do it without buying fertilizer. I wanted to really create nutrient cycling and so I've learned how to do it now without buying fertilizer. I mean, I'm talking about horticulture, I'm talking about annual cropping really and forest gardens. I've got different strategies, completely different strategies, but I'm using trees and fungi in the forest gardens and and ramiowoodchip in the gardens. We're using ramiowoodchip now too, but so over the last 15 years I've slowly gone from using soil tests and I'm still doing the soil tests, but using fertilizer and slowly I've learned how to make compost that actually grows food, hivarix food and build soil and I've used a lot of biochar and clay as well and our sandy soils and I've slowly learned how to use local materials and local things so that we don't have to buy the fertilizer, but I'm basing it all on the science that I've learned from all the people that are teaching biological agriculture. So understanding the principles is really important, but it's a journey. So I guess starting off using industrial fertilizer based on the REM soil test meant I went forwards rather than backwards in the beginning because I don't think I could have, I didn't have the knowledge or the experience in the beginning to immediately know how to, I mean I'd be making compost for many years, but the compost was not good enough to be growing hivarix food, so I had to learn that and I learned it by testing doing so. I test every compost heap, I test the whole garden every six months, so I've done a lot of testing, I've learned a lot of science and I've learned now how to do it much faster, how to get there much faster, but you don't have to go backwards in an annual cropping situation, I don't think. Fantastic, thank you. Mark, did you want to add anything there? Yes, yes, thanks. So we've had many drastic changes so along this journey, we're conventional dairy for when only 26 years, 27 years, so I started to go down this path of regent egg probably three years ago, but then started getting into this grazing two years ago. And just last year we also went to once a day milking, so our cows are having to adapt to the once a day milking and the new systems of grazing and reducing and eliminating the toxic chemicals out of our system. So we're on a massive transition journey and I can see, generally with once a day herds, it may take three to four years to get production back up to where is a nice level. So we think complimenting that with the regenerative grazing and the management probably take us three to five years to have a full transition. But in saying that, we're already seeing increased soil carbon levels, so we're holding more water for increasing organic matter and the minerals in the soil are all increasing just under high stock density grazing. So now that we can see the power in that, we can really start to restore our land. We took on some eggs cropping land as well six years ago, so we're doing a lot of this. This will be our first year away from nobias soil. So this was another, I believe the faith. So we're intensely bale grazing on this eggs cropping land to try and get carbon back in the soil and get the microbiology having a gap with the cows. So it's a journey for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Step by step. It's great to hear you're getting some results and no bare ground this year. There's a question here and I know a couple of you have spoken into it already around being not not purists when it comes to the complete organics, but Rebecca Wright has got a question. What is the place of glycophate herbicides and regenerative no-till systems? Can you be regenerative and still use herbicide on a large scale and how do the different panellists hear this? Sorry, Hamish, you go. This is one of the most sort of biggest topics discussed even amongst us regenerative farmers, so we don't take it lightly. But what I'd like to say to people is I'd rather have 40% of farmers start practising regenerative management than 5% farmers being organic and not using glyphosate or tools that get us to where we want to go. So Simon's the same. He doesn't like to use glyphosate or Mark don't like using glyphosate, but it is a tool to get us to where we want to go in our transition. And the key that I want to get across to people is where you're heading, a trajectory. And I hope in 10 years, 5 to 10 years, I won't need to use it. I think it may be banned within 10 years, so we have to start thinking about how we're going to use it. But let me please make this clear. If we don't have glyphosate, then we have to go back till tilling the soil, which can be just as degrading. So I think cropping has some real challenges. I think in the livestock, sheep and beef and dairy, we can get away with it quite easily in the near future without having to use glyphosate or even tilling our ground just with really good grazing management and strategies. But please be patient with us in our transitions. And also, I think as the science comes to the fore, I'm not saying yes or no how bad it is. I'm obviously both sides of the story, but I'm open, but I'm also working positively towards not having to rely on it. Over to you, Simon. Thanks, Hamish. I couldn't have put it better myself, but I think in an arable situation where you traditionally use a lot of chemical, we're looking at strategies that we can do to eliminate or mitigate. So eliminate, reduce or mitigate and reduce. And I think glyphosate is classic. I use three litres of glyphosate or a kilogram of active ingredient per hectare instead of probably a hundred litres of diesel per hectare. Now, I think if I was challenged to a drinking race, I'd rather drink a litre of kilo of glyphosate than a hundred litres of diesel. But anyway, that's silly. But the point is our mitigation for glyphosate is to use fish hydrolysate with it or folvic acid, which is both microbial feeders, which sort of buffer some of the negative effects on the soil by ara, but also achieve the result. So remind fellow of these things, but where there's no established practice in terms of elimination and we're working on that, I will not go back to cultivation because that is the most destructive thing you can do to soil hands down. And so therefore for me, I've just got to find a way forward. And we're working on interestingly cover crops. There's huge possibilities using a mix of species designed for the particular following crop with the correct winter grazing. I think it's going to be possible to move beyond glyphosate in the future, but there's an awful lot of work to do to just establish a motive practice around that that's successful. Yeah, certainly a very complex and nuanced issue there. And I like what you said, Hamish, about rather having 40% of farmers on the right trajectory and at least a big movement of people going that way. I'd like to change tack a little quickly now. And there's been a question here from Jennifer Nicol around asking if there are any examples of multi strata agroforestry tree intercropping in silver pasture in New Zealand that we can learn from in this context. And Kay, I know that you have been doing a lot with introducing some silver pasture on your farm. So would you like to talk about that? Sure. I mean trees, trees and plants, but especially trees, are the mineral cyclers of the plant. We've wiped a lot of them off, but bringing them back is going to be for sure one of the key answers. I'm really excited about our chicken and pig forage paddock where we've got from when the early berries and fruit start ripening right through to when the acorns and the chestnuts and all the nuts fall. We're raising pigs. You've got to have the right breeds of course, but without any industrial food. And eggs, egg production is one of the hardest ones. Non-indust, regenerative egg production is a really big challenge. We're doing that on a small scale, and then for the cat. I mean we're actually integrating annual crop production, dairy production, pork production and egg production all into tree systems or tree systems into all of those systems, because that's where the mineral cycling comes from. And yeah, it's really, really exciting integrating land use. It's a very, very new field, exciting journey. And I mean that last question about the glyphosate in a way like it becomes a very personal journey, this whole thing. And it's such an exciting journey because you start to see that you're creating living systems and you're bringing back the life. You're starting to see regeneration happening and ecologies around us, and we're all learning in a slightly different way and from slightly different things. And so you can't make judgments about anything really. Everyone has their own journey, and as long as we're all moving forward, that's the only important thing. And so supporting each other to find, you know, to find our own way forward is the best we can do, I think, and trees have got to be. The trees are perennial. I mean, we grow all of our own food, and so learning which other perennials are much easier than annuals. And so like how do I use acorns and chestnuts and trees are such an important part of it, yeah, and integrating them with animal systems and with gardening systems. We're planting poplars and willows and alders around our gardens and coppicing them on a regular, some annually, some by annually, some trying every three years to produce rami a woodjip. And that's now our fertilizer because it's got balanced minerals and nutrients and it feeds the fungi, which really feeds everything. So there's lots of amazing new ideas coming through for incorporating and integrating tree systems and perennial systems into all of our animal systems and food production systems. There was beautifully put, I think, where everybody's on their own on their own path. Anybody else like to comment on silver pasture or agroforestry? Otherwise, we've got a question around inputs that I'd like to go to. I'll just quickly comment on the silver pasture. We're just so excited about getting into more of this as we go over the next probably decade or two. I mean, this is a long game. This is no quick fix, but we see so much potential in that. And there's enough farmers, I think, around New Zealand that if you search it out, you'll find them doing some really amazing examples. I just want to say the Billion Trees Fund. We would love to be part of that, but if we fence off our gullies and we want to plant natives, we have to plant just natives, but we want to plant fruit trees and timber trees as well. But we're disqualified. You get $1,500 a hectare plant pines. So it's just easier to go plant pines. There is no incentive whatsoever for us to think laterally about different ways of planting trees. And until that changes, we are just limiting the innovation about what we can do for the future. Government is far too narrow in their thinking for there to be huge progress. Yes. You have fantastic points here, Hamish. Thank you. There's a question here from Thirani Prakash around how do the costs of inputs in regenerative agricultural practices used by the panellists compared to those of conventional industrial agriculture? Are the inputs used completely natural or do you have additional other costs there? I think in the transition phase where you're using both conventional and biological inputs, it can probably creep. You can probably get a bit of cost creep, certainly in the arable sense, but as we learn, there's things like fish hydrolyzate, which mostly feed the soil, and then as you build the soil, it then feeds the plants. We're using, I've reduced my rates of fertiliser pretty dramatically. We don't use any, I think for me it's looking at what are you short of and what do you need to do. And I think with conventional ag over the years, we've mined out all the trace elements by putting on loads and loads of NPK and S. And it's more about calcium and trace elements now, and small quantities of trace elements are reasonably cost-effective. And we're not seeing any drop in production. In fact, still using a conventional soil test, our, you know, got the, the awesome P levels have gone up massively since I stopped putting on fertiliser, so I'm not quite sure what that tells you, that the biological function is coming in. Did you have something there that you wanted to add, oh, that shows him the biology is working. So that's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think in terms of costs, I think there's a bit of a paradigm shift around the way we look at it. I don't think it's about production per hectare anymore. It's about profit per hectare because you can have less production, but a lot less costs and you end up with more profit and it works better. So there's a lot of different ways of looking at it. In terms of the annual cropping, you can say, okay, keep your budget the same and get better production, but then over time switch to more. I mean, I think for me, the journey of a lot of people will start and I started by just switching to a biological version of what, well, I never used the chemical version in the beginning, but I used the organic version and there's actually a difference between a certified organic version and a biological version. And to me, the biological now is like the most important. But then you can switch from there to doing it more locally and more regionally using different strategies and different techniques. You just got to take the time to learn what works best. I think the key thing there, Kay, you hit the nail on the head with a, you know, it's the net profit. It's not the total amount you produce. It's what you put in your pocket at the end of it that's most important and, you know, conventional ag is all about maximising production because if you maximise production, you maximise the downstream profit for all the downstream industries. You don't make any more for the farmer. In fact, you usually make less because you're stuffing your asset in the meantime. Just on that, I mean, I'll be similar to Mark here. You know, we've increased our caring capacity 25%. We've actually dropped our costs from say 50% being the industry average down to 30%. Three years ago, we actually just stopped putting on fertiliser full stop and we, because once we understood our grazing, we now have higher stock densities. We go into taller pasture covers and now we say either third, trample a third and leave a third. So we're not now putting on fertiliser. We're now fertilising and it's a really big difference. We're not just changing our short grazing and carrying on not putting fertiliser on. We have our grazing management is very, very focused to say put down 30% of what we grow back onto the soil and it's making a compost and I'm sharing the same results as Mark, as Simon and as Kay. Our fertility levels in our soil and our herbages are either going up or staying the same. It's remarkable. So I'm not here to be validated by science in that field. I'm waiting for the science to catch up and validate what we're doing and start to understand what is going on here and they have to start to ask the same sorts of questions and be just inquisitive as farmers are. Yeah, I love it. Sorry, I just think the economic argument is probably the easiest argument to make from a generative egg actually. You're doing it with animals. Our fertiliser is all about cover crops and then incorporating grazing as well. So it's getting that biological function, leveraging your strengths and that's where it comes in. Before I stopped using fertiliser, I sent some soil samples off to Australia and said, well, what's the total amount of minerals that we have in the soil? And we have two tonnes of bioachievable phosphate per hectare. So why the hell would I put on any more phosphate? I've got enough there to last me till goodness knows when. And it's the same with potassium and sulfur and the one thing we're sure of is calcium. I think the other, the high analysis fertiliser in the agrochemicals leach calcium on the soil. We had a good conversation last week around the market mechanisms and what New Zealand might be able to achieve with premium products if we had a good standard in place for this kind of stuff. As you were speaking there, Hamish, it reminded me of a question that has come through in the registration that is one that comes up a lot that I hear as I've been researching this series and talking to people and an issue in New Zealand that a lot of farmers think that what they do in New Zealand already is regenerative because we have cows on pasture or animals on pasture year-round. So the question is, what differentiates regenerative agriculture from a non-mitrogen using rotationally grazed, high-porming sheep and beef farm that has a comprehensive farm environment plan? Okay, I'll start up. Actually, Mark, do you want to go? Yeah, yeah. So what we're saying with adopting the soil health principles, the fire principles, we're now not sending our soil out to the ocean. New Zealand loses around 200 million tonnes of soil per year attached to that phosphate and goodness knows what else. So adopting these soil health principles has really excelled our business and it's certainly moving us to another level. What was the question? I guess the question is really if you are not using nitrogen and you're rotationally grazing and you've got a comprehensive farm environment plan, is that regenerative or what's the difference in your eyes? Yeah, I guess you'd have to ask yourself the question, is importing tonnes of palm kernel regenerative, is adding petrochemicals to your land regenerative or the list is endless? We've got so many resources on our land whether that's wood chips for composting or recyclable materials that we could be using out of other industries or just returning food waste back to the land. We waste like 40% of food produced so yeah these things could all be regenerating back into the land. Yeah absolutely and Mark while we're speaking with you there's a specific question for you from Thomas. How do you test your soil to check how much organic matter you've got there? So I'd recommend taking a soil food web test to see if your soil is a fungal or bacteria dominated and then that kind of gives you a bit of an idea of where you need to go. We're taking soil samples now to 15 centimetres so not the standard 75, 7.5 sorry. So yeah yeah we're still soil testing through hills to get baseline data and we're also involved in another program with Gwen Gray and her team measuring soil carbon down to one metre taking one metre core samples. Yeah so that's where we're at. I'll just say a word here. So four years ago when I was confronted by Dr Christine Jones at a seminar and I fought with her all day about how wrong she was, how can this Australian woman from Australia come and tell us how to farm over here. I see sort of a lot of that same attitude coming out now. It's very defensive so I was very defensive and I didn't like to be told. I thought I was sustainable. After the end of the day she wore me down so I went and actually did some investigation and some research for myself and I started to understand some of the management practices that I was doing was not improving or building my soil or building non-renewable resources and it just comes down to just be honest with yourself and ask the questions is this degrading our environment? Is it degrading natural resources or is it building? And once you're open to that then you start the journey. It's a mindset to me. It's a mindset I'm not trying to defend. Look most of New Zealand farmers could well be regenerative. I mean who am I to say but I knew that I wasn't and that journey of understanding, you know I learnt more from ecologists than I have from agricultural scientists a lot of the time and going back to what Mark said the five principles of soil health is what basically is the foundation of what our business is built on. So no best soil, living roots in the ground, diverse species, animal impact, so we need animals in our environment, you know in broad acres. I mean Kaye's a different story and she still has chocks and pigs so that's awesome but it's a combination of everything and we need more trees. We get that but it's a mindset of understanding and just being open to what we need to improve on. Yeah I have no idea how much of New Zealand agriculture is regenerative like I agree with Hamish on that one and it doesn't much matter what I think on that scene but you know it's the frontier of opportunity at the moment. We've sort of reached an impasse in agriculture where globally agricultural incomes for people who are farmers are dropping and have dropped for the last 50 years and the Green Revolution is not about empowering or enriching farmers it's about empowering and enriching industry and you know leveraging off our biological capacity is the last what's it's a great frontier that we had and the potential is endless I mean I've in the arable scene I've only scratched the surface really and I just I just see so much potential what I lack is the experience to know how to to harness that but I'm learning quickly and I you know I think now that we we're sort of talking amongst the people who are interested in this sort of thing that we're learning even more quickly still and the potential is huge it's just huge and you know empowering farmers to have a culture of life around their farms and you start seeing things differently and it actually makes the whole farming experience really enjoyable and it just makes you realise how privileged you are to live here and and to be doing to be doing this and you know I didn't have that attitude 10 years ago I was actually feeling pretty worn out and bedraggled by it all because we were just pulling more and more crap onto our farms and and making less and less money and uh you know just that's that's a hiding to nothing we're having a conversation in two weeks from tonight I believe with with Jono Fru and Sam Lang about the community and the the mental health elements of regenerative agriculture so that's going to be a great conversation to dive into as well we're about four minutes from the end here so I think we've probably got time for for one more quick question I think yeah let's well let's give an opportunity for anybody else to answer that question around you know for those who have grown up around conventional farming systems do you have any other advice around how they can advocate for regenerative farmers for those around them perhaps their neighbours that are still very much entrenched in those conventional systems anybody else wanted to chat on that I just I just it's it's about curiosity and and getting farmers reconnected with their farms um and and having the curiosity to learn and and having that that wonderment of nature um you know go out and dig a hole digging holes on your farm is one of the best ways to reconnect with your soil because you learn all sorts of really interesting stuff and you observe what's going on under the ground what's going on above the ground is only it's already too late it's what's going on under the ground that you've you've you've got to use and it's just about curiosity and learning making decisions which creates regeneration in your environment is such a deeply profoundly like exciting and inspiring and in a way peaceful thing that you can't help but if other people see it and they feel it it's like tangibly feelable when you like plant trees and things that flower and they bring the insects and the insects bring the birds the whole ecology starts changing and it's like as human beings we've co-evolved in systems like that that are incredibly diverse and connected and it's in us it's totally in us on a cellular level that that is the way we've always been and we've disconnected ourselves in this industrial process of degeneration and starting to reconnect again is so powerful and it's so exciting and other people get to see it and feel it so all these farmers and all of us that are doing it now we're the beginning of like the research centres and the and the models for others around us and it just happens but we we definitely need like a lot more support from the government and planners and investors to take it further faster. Good point there and we'll be having a conversation later on in this series too around investing and and how we can have financial incentives to encourage more people into this. I think we're going to have to cut it off there thank you all so much this evening for speaking with us and thank you to all of our panellists for joining us. I'm really thrilled with the momentum that's being gained around this series so we have got another session coming up next week it will be at lunchtime at noon next Monday's session and I believe Ursula is going to put up a slide in the moment here that should have the details on there. You can also find out their information at pureadvantage.org all the details of the webinars. Again just wanted to remind you that applications for cohort eight of Edmondsbury Fellowship who are co-producers of this series is closing on the first adjourn so last chance to apply for that. You can see yeah we've got the Colmasters and Dr Gwen Grillay next week. The following week we have got the community and mental health session that I mentioned later on we have lessons from around the world with several people and then the investment session that I just mentioned and some exciting stuff going on there as well. Thank you all again for coming. This as I mentioned at the beginning will be answering some more of these questions on social media on the pure advantage pages on Instagram and Facebook, Edmondsbury Fellowship you can also find on Facebook and on YouTube. Lots of exciting stuff coming up so please keep an eye out on your inboxes for invitations to the next call. Thank you again all for coming it's been a wonderfully rich discussion and I hope you all will enjoy it. Thank you again to all our panellists and we will see you all again very soon.