Regenerative Skills

Last month we wrapped up our series on regenerative water management, and today we’re kicking off a new series on regenerative animal management. Both of these series correspond to master’s programs that we’re currently building with our university partners here at Climate Farmers, and we’ll eventually be using these interviews as supplementary resources for the academic programs. The aim is to introduce regenerative management into agronomy and food science programs at universities around Europe, improving access to these concepts at a high level in education and hopefully helping to train the next generation of field professionals who can assist farmers in managing their operations more holistically and with a stronger understanding of ecological processes.

 

To kick off the animal management series I’m speaking with Maarten Sillekens, a former dairy farmer and current farm coach who brings more than three decades of experience working with dairy farms in Germany and Poland. During COVID, his discovery of holistic management and the work of people like Allan Savory and Gabe Brown changed the way he thought about the challenges he had spent his career trying to solve. He has since become a Savory-accredited educator and now works with dairy farmers across Europe, including around 55 farms through Climate Farmers and other transition programs, as well as Arla’s regenerative pilot farms in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.

 

In this conversation we look at what regenerative animal management can actually mean in the context of a modern dairy operation. Maarten contrasts the high capital costs and dependence on fertilizer, concentrates, silage, machinery, and fossil fuels of many barn-based systems with approaches that make much greater use of grazing, diverse herbal leys, better pasture management, and even mobile milking. More importantly though, we get into the process he uses to help farmers make that transition. Rather than starting with a prescribed set of regenerative practices, Maarten begins by asking farmers to define what they actually want their farm and their life to look like, then assesses things like sunlight capture, water and mineral cycling, biodiversity, animal health, veterinary and reproduction costs, and other indicators of how the whole system is functioning. From there it becomes a process of small experiments, careful monitoring, learning, and adaptation. We also talk about something that can easily get lost in technical conversations about livestock management: rebuilding farmer confidence and pride at a time when dairy farmers are facing enormous economic and regulatory pressure, and the role that farmer networks and peer learning can play in making these transitions possible.

Over the past few decades, farming has changed dramatically. Mechanization and increasingly efficient technologies have made it possible for just one or two people to manage areas of land that once required much larger teams of workers and animals. While this has brought major gains in productivity, it has also contributed to fewer people working on farms and, in many places, to the decline of rural populations. At the same time, a growing number of farmers and land-based projects are experimenting with a different direction: finding ways to bring more people, skills, ideas, and shared responsibility back onto the land.

In this panel, we’ll hear from three innovators who are developing different models for collaboration and partnership on their farms. We’ll explore what becomes possible when more hands and minds are involved, as well as the practical and interpersonal challenges that can arise. The conversation will look at different agreement structures, incentives, roles, and expectations, and draw out lessons from each speaker’s experience of building productive, resilient, and mutually beneficial collaborations on the land.

Since water management and landscape rehydration is a topic that I’ve covered in depth over years now, I wanted to try and dig into some of the often overlooked, and sometimes less exciting considerations for water.


Today I’m joined by my good friend and regular contributor to this podcast, Nick Stiener. He and I have both been working on a lot of projects for clients out in the field individually and with our growing team as well. We start out this session by giving an update of all of the new learnings, interesting projects, larger scale and collaborative work that’s been happening since we last checked in.


From there we start to break down the engineering considerations and practical puzzle pieces that one needs to think about from capturing water, through to transporting it, cleaning it, and different options for administration at the point of use.


In so many past episodes we’ve talked about managing water at a landscape level, by digging ponds and terraces, reducing erosion, and rehydrating soil, but for many people with smaller land bases and limited budgets, these interventions can be unrealistic or inappropriate, so in this episode we’re instead looking at how to choose a cistern or other water storage.

We’re talking about piping and pumping options, and how to get water clean enough to move through the system without clogging. Nick talks about his own home system works and why he set it up the way he did. We also touch on irrigation considerations, calculations for quantities, and a whole lot more.

As important as it is to manage the land well to create healthy and abundant produce, it's just as important to sell that produce to a market that values its quality. Many large scale markets buy volume at the lowest price with no regards for differences in how the goods were raised nor their quality.

These markets can also fluctuate wildly for reasons outside a grower's control. For reasons like these many farmers look for ways to sell to buyers who value these other factors and are willing to invest in more loyal and consistent relationships.

Join us in this panel as we speak to farmers who have cultivated different ways of selling their products that compensate them for all of the work they do above and beyond market standards.

We'll look at the benefits as well as the challenges of breaking away from commodity markets and wholesale buyers in hopes that you'll consider a sales strategy that better fits your way of farming

Wherever you’re listening to this right now you’re probably feeling the changes this summer in a big way. It’s not only us here in the Mediterranean region of Europe who are experiencing record heat waves, droughts, and wildfires. I’ve been watching news reports from all over the world and the other day my Mom in Spokane Washington even told me that fires had nearly reached their home.
I have no desire to go into the doom and gloom of climate reality, but we also can’t ignore two very important things. The first being that massive action needs to be taken to restore the damaged ecosystems of the world, and two, governments and industries just aren’t going to act fast enough. It falls to all of us to inform ourselves and get to work.
This episode today is meant to help you do just that.
Today I spoke with Lorenzo Costa who has been on the show a couple times already, but now that I’m in Italy and have been observing the effects of this severe summer weather, I knew I had to get in touch with him again and get his perspective as someone who travels the country working with growers of all types to restore the hydrological function and cycling of their land to build resilience in their operations. While it’s worth going back to his previous episodes where he talks about his own vegetable operation in the Chianti region of Tuscany, as well as the water projects he was doing a few years ago, in this episode we get an update on the patterns and learnings from all the new projects he’s seen and worked on recently. 

Now that we’ve covered a lot about the concepts and theory behind watercycles and how they interact and are affected by landscape management, as well as how my colleague Nick Steiner and I assess and read a landscape ahead of a project, we’re going to be focusing increasingly on practical restoration options and case studies from innovative farmers and restoration workers from around Europe.
So let’s jump right into this exploration of the current challenges and potential in Italy from Lorenzo