At the time of writing things are getting dry! Are we in for another dry spring? The last time the moon was in the present orbit was the 1700s and they had the same weather as we are experiencing now (so I read as I am not that old), going from floods to drought. They got through it then so I am sure we will cope! The importance for having healthy soil has never been more significant in my opinion, in order to cope with the extremes we are experiencing.
Fortunately, I am mobile again and have been out giving a lot of talks and on-farm consultancy: so nice to see different people’s approaches around the country, but all aiming to improve their soil while making a profit.
As Green Farm Collective, we launched our flour brand through Eurostar commodities called “Rise”, down at the International Food and Drink show, at the excel building in London. Attention around our certified Regen flour was fantastic! I was asked to speak on a Regen panel while attending with Claire Mackenzie (Six Inches of Soil), Andy Neil (Rothamsted research), Dave Smith (Fielden’s whiskey) and Henry Astor (Bruern Farm). Henry supplies Fielden whiskey with rye and wheat farmed with no cides.
We had great fun on the panel with lots of interest from the audience about regenerative produce. Whenever I give a talk to consumers, I always get the question, where can I buy this food? I have never really been able to give an answer but now finally I can say, here! This is just the start in my opinion; the right education needs to be given, and full transparency needs to occur. Consumers should have the right to see the full journey of their food and have the right to be part of the story helping to heal the planet in which we live. Change in my opinion always comes from the people; as together we do have power. Just the same, it’s always been one of my aims to unite farmers across the world as together we have power but as individuals, we have very little.
Tasting the pizza made from our flour was a true delight and one of the best pizzas I have ever had, which was probably helped along by the fact that the much-acclaimed Italian pizza chef, Marco Greco, making the Pizza. He made it look so easy, flipping the dough above his head etc, but of course it was all down to such a fine dough as you can see from the picture of my loaf of bread pictured. This is giving our growers a good premium of delivered bread wheat. We are still delivering carbon deals while still pursuing more avenues for our wheat.
Crops have come out of the winter well with roots getting down to good depths and biologically active. At the time of writing wheats had only received 20kg/ha of ammonium sulphate plus foliar applications of foliar nutrition in order to get them ready for an active immune system for the coming growing season. You can see from the picture attached they certainly are not hungry for N. It often horrifies me to see how much N has gone onto crops so early when the crop is not growing and a lot of that N could get converted into nitrate which is going to cause a lot of weak cell growth, which in turn, will lead to use of fungicides and pest attack. Supplying the plant with the right nutrition is crucial to allow photosynthesis and for plants to be putting out the right exudates to feed biology and endophytes within the plant.
I feel that biology invented plants in order to get fed and we can see from the planet’s evolution that fungi and bacteria did create the very planet in which we live, finding a superb way to store carbon within soil and marine undersea Algae, plants and coral, with 93% of carbon stored within our oceans making it the largest store on the planet. It didn’t take human beings long to mess everything up did it? With the human body containing 30 trillion human cells and about 38 trillion bacteria, so are we in control ? When you look at the difference having the right biology within our gut in coalition with health, the similarities between and our gut and soil health is so very similar in my opinion and obtaining the right mix for optimum health and production is paramount. I like the work of Dr Mary Lucero who has shown the benefits of using endophytes from plants that have the desired outcomes for the right environment, protection and yield. The possibilities of using endophytes are endless in my opinion and one that should be explored far more, which are far safer and more natural than the damage that gene editing or GMO’s can do to our health or the environment.
Biology has all the answers and mother nature will always win in my experience, but the sooner we start to work with Her, the better, rather than thinking we know better! All problems can be overcome with biology and nutrition. The problem is, there is not enough money in it to attract big business to develop it further and so we continue down the path of synthetic inputs and DNA manipulation, which to me is always to the detriment to the grower/farmer from a financial point of view… or am I just a cynic?
Seeing how work with fungi and the benefits biology can bring dates back into the 1800s I feel that biology has been ignored for far too long and that change is going to have to come from us, as growers, to get the shift that is required to make change. Change never comes from government or authorities in my experience, it always comes from the people or corporations that require change for financial gain. We have the power to create change, but we need to come together as one voice, in order to have the power.
