Last month I made clear why the dairy industry needs to evolve to more sustainable practices, hopefully provoking you to contemplate that pastures can save the planet, and concluded with a promise to explain how to achieve highly productive, earth-friendly pastures.
Before we launch into the ‘how’, I feel compelled to introduce you to some of the ‘who’ behind the groundswell of regenerative agriculture, that is, the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
Conventional agriculture, which has got us into the strife we are now in, is rooted entirely in a single voice — that of Justus von Liebig.
He was the guy who offered the ultimate reductionist theory that underpinned all of agriculture henceforth — that organisms perform only to the limiting nutrient. Liebig’s deathbed remorse was that he had led agriculture down the wrong path.
There is a growing cohort of scientists, advisers and farmers around the world, trained (as we all were) in Liebig’s reductionist theory, exposing its weaknesses and converging on the principles and practices that comprise modern regenerative agriculture.
I am talking of the likes of Rudolph Steiner, Bill Mollison, Graeme Sait, Christine Jones, Elaine Ingham, Nicole Masters and Hugh Lovel, to name just a few.
These independent thinkers are united in their willingness to embrace the dreaded ‘C’ words — Confrontation and Change, and they have done the hard yards.
Agricultural change-makers have gifted us tried and true methods for soil and pasture improvement. I do not need to tell you how difficult change is.
Nevertheless, we may need a further push and numbers talk, so let’s start with the maths.
Begin with the total cost of all your fertiliser, chemicals, fuel, labour, irrigation, pasture-related maintenance. Without exception, the recurring number shocks the pants off farmers.
This is just the cost of maintaining pasture yield, and most of these costs are incurred simply compensating for degraded soil.
Now examine the tools in the regenerative toolkit — mixed swards, compost, soil/plant stimulants, plant growth promoting microbes, strip till, lime and gypsum, and so on — and decide which best fits your system as a first step in the transition; a toe in the water.
The goal is diversity as it leads to directly to the holy grail, ‘biodiversity’, so mixed sward options are a great starting point. Plant growth promoting microbes are another sure bet.
They are inexpensive and easy to implement, there is no wrong way to do either of these, and no such thing as a bad outcome from their uptake.
Just get more microbe diversity into your soil and more unrelated species into your pastures to support them (your weeds will tell you which ones to include) — the soil will respond, the pastures will improve, and animal health and production will lift immediately.
The cost of implementation of regenerative ag tools is offset by the massive savings: P fertiliser is gone and N will drop significantly, and herbicides are massively reduced. (And you must stop using glyphosate. Yes, it is convenient, but the damage it does to the world of microbes — a cow’s, the soil’s and our own — is devastating.)
Once the soil microbiome regenerates, plant yield and quality improve and this leverages into other benefits — further reductions in fertiliser, no cultivation, reduced irrigations, more soil water retention, improved animal health, improved plant health, lower P&E maintenance, and ultimately more C sequestered and less fossil fuel consumed, directly and indirectly.
In summary, there is ultimately no choice in matters soil and environment, just a matter of when. We must change. We will be forced to change!
It is much better to do so on your own agenda while your dairy business is thriving providing the time and money to transition on your terms. The enviro-wolf is at the door, and it is hungry!
Dr Les Sandles is a renowned thought leader and provocateur in the dairy industry. Best known for his role in revolutionising nutritional and pasture management practices, Les has turned his attention to the ‘last frontier’ — transmogrifying the forage production system into a C-munching machine.