Improving our soil, pest control, and other growing conditions makes sense. But by using regenerative agricultural practices this way, are we improving the right things?
Usually, we focus on solving specific issues, like pest damage, low nutrient availability and poor water infiltration into our soil. The problem with this approach to regenerative agriculture is that we’re not tackling the root cause of our poor growing conditions. Most of our issues with growing food are the symptoms of poorly functioning ecosystems within our vegetable gardens, orchards and fields. Therefore, we would be better off investing our time and money using regenerative practices to restore our ecosystems. Ecosystems are vital parts of our food production systems.
We can improve our ecosystems by restoring biodiversity. But have you ever tried to ride a bike without handlebars? Or to pedal without a chain? We don’t go far without all the bicycle parts connected! Growing food is no different. We need the parts, but the connections between plants, microbes, other animals, and their physical environment enable our ecosystems to work.
I am not suggesting we set out to rebuild all the complex connections occurring in natural ecosystems. That would be a challenge! But we can solve most of our issues with growing food by using regenerative practices to purposely rebuild the connections that provide these four key ecological services:
- Water, nutrient, and energy supplies to crops and livestock
- Pests and disease control
- Crop pollination
- Protection from extreme weather
Let me explain why
It is the connections between plants, soil organisms, and their physical environment that deliver energy, water, and other nutrients to our crops and livestock. Plants supply the energy source through photosynthesis. Invertebrates and microbes in our soil fulfil different roles in replenishing nutrient supplies. They consume plant and animal waste materials, breaking them down into smaller and smaller parts to recycle the nutrients, and they release nutrients locked up in the mineral particles in our soil. Communicating with our crops and other plants, they deliver the nutrients to them for reuse.
By growing plants that provide food and habitat for the pollinators and natural enemies of our insect pests, we create beneficial connections that improve crop pollination and reduce pest damage. We lessen the impacts of global insect declines that leave us hand-pollinating our crops and having no arsenal other than insecticides to control pests. As beneficial insects generally only travel 50 to 70m from suitable habitats, we improve the delivery of these ecological services by creating this functional biodiversity within our food production areas.
For example, Martin Lines has stopped using insecticides altogether in the UK by growing flower-rich grass margins in and around his fields to provide homes for predatory insects and pollinators.
It’s not difficult to take a step further and provide additional habitats for beneficial insects to colonise our food production systems. The changes can be as simple as growing plants with differently shaped leaves, flowers, and other growth forms. We can grow them as cover crops, living mulch, and by cultivating vegetable, grain and tree crops as polycultures rather than monocultures. Mowing grass less frequently provides shelter, pollen, and nectar from flowering plants and more abundant prey for our beneficial insects.
By improving functional diversity above ground, we naturally do the same in our soil. With a broader range of root exudates and plant and other organic waste materials, we supply food for a greater diversity of soil organisms. Our soil communities become more efficient at recycling nutrients and regain the capacity to maintain the soil infrastructure without our interference.
Using this approach to regenerative agriculture on our farm, we have enabled our soil community to transform heavy clay into a functioning soil ecosystem.
By creating more connections in our food production systems, we also provide opportunities for Nature to do the same. For example, many of the birds, small mammals, and frogs that used to be common in our gardens and farms return, feasting on the extra insects and life in our soil.
With functioning ecosystems within our vegetable gardens, orchards, and fields, our food production systems run better. Just like a bike with gears!
We provide Nature’s highly skilled workforce with the resources to employ their millions of years of on-the-job training. Instead of doing all the work ourselves, we benefit again from the complex plant-herbivore, parasite-host, predator-prey, symbiotic and other functional connections.
We can stop using fertilisers, pest controls, and other external inputs as substitutes for these free ecological services.
Our food security improves with food production systems that are better able to withstand and recover from pest and disease outbreaks, flooding, rain, drought, and other extreme weather conditions caused by climate change.
With all these benefits, it’s incredible that we are not all using regenerative practices to improve the functioning of the ecosystems in our farms and gardens.
AUTHOR Dr. Wendy Seabrook
