The 9 Most Important Regenerative Agriculture Techniques For Large Farms

Hi everyone,

I have written a brief overview, with links to more information, of what I consider to be the 9 most important techniques for transitioning large farms to sustainability, or for improving already sustainable large farms.

http://sheldonfrith.com/2015/12/15/a-brief-introduction-to-most-important-techniques-in-regenerative-agriculture/

Here it is in text format (with all of the links broken and no pictures). I recommend you check out the actual article.

These are some of the most effective and important Regenerative Agriculture techniques. They can dramatically improve most farming and ranching operations. Most of them can increase profits, if applied correctly. And they are almost all guaranteed to regenerate land.

1. HOLISTIC DECISION MAKING (A.K.A. HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT)

Holistic Decision Making is a method managing complex systems (like farms, families, nations, companies, etc). This decision making framework has been tested on thousands of farms and ranches around the world for decades. It works. Holistic Decision Making takes into account the financial, environmental, and social aspects of every decision. It also offers methods for changing decisions that aren’t going as planned. And it is simple enough for farmers in rural Africa with absolutely no education to use. This is #1 on my list because most farms and land managemers fail because their decisions do not adequately address the social and financial and environmental aspects of their situation. Holistic Decision Making is a basic prerequisite to long-term sustainability. Read this article for a more detailed explanation of Holistic Management.
Holistic Decision Making cannot easily be explained in a short blog post, so I encourage you to read the foundational book: “Holistic Management: A New Framework For Decision Making” by Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield.
Bunched Bison

2. PERMACULTURE DESIGN

Permaculture is a philosophy, a design science, and a global movement (read this article to understand those three aspects of Permaculture). The design science of Permaculture is an invaluable tool for farmers and land managers. It is basically landscape design, but unlike most landscape design it is tailored to the needs of agriculture, and it also takes into account the principles of ecology. A Permaculture farm will tend to be more efficient for the farmer, it will tend to have better functioning ecosystems and water cycles, and it will tend to be beautiful as an added bonus.
Permaculture Design, like Holistic Management, cannot be easily explained in a single blog post. I encourage you to read the founding text “Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual”, as well as more contemporary guides to Permaculture like “Gaia’s Garden”, “Restoration Agriculture”, and “The Resilient Farm and Homestead”.



3. THE SOIL FOOD WEB

The Soil Food Web is not a farming technique, it was not invented by anybody. It is simply the natural process which allows plants to grow when chemical fertilizers are not around (ie. for the past hundreds of millions of years). Elaine Ingham has been the soil scientist who has done the most to reveal the critical importance of the Soil Food Web. The Soil Food Web refers to the microorganisms in the soil (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, etc) which extract nutrients from the soil and provide these nutrients directly to the roots of living plants. Elaine Igham has shown that by managing the the Soil Food Web on your farm carefully you can dramatically improve your plant growth in very short periods of time. This usually entails a one-time application of well-made compost or compost tea, followed by a change in management to protect the health of the soil organisms in the long term (no-till, organic, perennials, etc).
For a brief intro to the Soil Food Web watch this inspiring video. The book “Teaming With Microbes” is probably the first book you should read on the subject, followed by Elaine’s more technical guide to making compost “The Field Guide For Actively Aerated Compost Tea”.


4. PROPERLY MANAGED LIVESTOCK

Only recently have we begun to understand how to manage livestock in a sustainable manner. The key is to mimic the behavior of wild herds in nature. In nature large, heavy herbivores bunch together into herds in order to avoid predators. This bunching behavior has several side effects: the animals move constantly, and do not return for a long time to the same piece of ground.
To keep this article short I have written a separate article with more in-depth information about managing livestock sustainably, including some external resources for those of you who have livestock. Read it here.


5. NO-TILL CROP PRODUCTION



“Tilling” refers to any major physical disturbance below the surface of the soil (plowing, cultivating, roto-tilling, etc). Tilling is the most damaging thing that you can do to soil organisms. It is even worse than applying pesticides, fungicides, or other chemicals. With new methods for controlling weeds and planting seeds that do not require tilling farmers have begun to transition to no-till production. When a piece of land is not tilled the soil organisms are able to establish a healthy soil ecosystem. This has tremendous benefits: looser soil (decompaction), increased nutrient availability and soil fertility, fewer soil-borne diseases, faster water-infiltration rates (ie. less soil erosion and flooding), etc. A healthy soil will actually increase in depth each year.
To learn about no-till watch this inspiring video about no-till farming… whether you are a farmer or a consumer, it offers tremendous hope for our future. If you are interested in applying no-till techniques on your farm the “No-Till on the Plains” website is a great place to start.


6. PERENNIAL CROPS

Perennial crops ensure that there are living roots in the soil 100% of the time. This prevents soil erosion, reduces compaction, feeds the soil food web, and pushes the soil profile lower (creates soil).
Perennial plant roots can grow very deep over time, allowing the plants to access nutrient and water stores that annual plants never can.
All trees are perennials. Tree crops provide many environmental benefits including wind reduction, temperature moderation, wildlife habitat, etc.
To Learn more about how to viably transition farms to perennial based crops read the excellent book “Restoration Agriculture” by Mark Sheppard.


7. POLYCULTURE

“Polyculture” refers to growing many different species of plants (and animals) in one area. Traditional agriculture employs “monocultures”, which means only one or two plants are grown in a given area and all other species are relentlessly exterminated.
Monocultures are not found in nature, they create a very unbalanced ecosystem which leads to countless problems: plant diseases, insect imbalances, reduced soil fertility, reduced wildlife habitat, reduced crop resilience to drought, heat, etc.
Plants growing in a polyculture with many other plants are more healthier and more resilient. Watch this video for some very clear evidence about the benefits of polyculture cover crops. These books are excellent resources for those of you wishing to apply polyculture yourselves. This article and this article also have some excellent information about polyculture-based agriculture.

8. THERMAL COMPOST



Most agricultural soils have lost a huge percentage of the microbial soil life which is necessary for a healthy soil food web. In the absence of these microbes plants develop nutrient deficiencies, are susceptible to disease, and are more vulnerable to stress like drought and insect damage.
Dr. Elaine Ingham, and others, have achieved tremendous results on large scale farms by applying carefully crafted “thermal compost” to the soil in order to replenish the missing microbe populations. A one-time application of compost or compost tea is usually all that is necessary as long as destructive farming practices (tilling, fertilizing) are stopped.
Elaine has an excellent introductory video to the benefits of thermal compost here. The book “Teaming With Microbes” is a good introduction to the practice of making compost. The Rodale Institute also has some excellent in-depth material, as does Elaine’s website.


8. S.T.U.N. BREEDING

A lesser known technique, but incredibly powerful. STUN is an acronym for “Sheer total utter neglect”. Basically the idea is to breed plants which will produce food without needing to be constantly cared for and babied by the farmer.
Mark Shepard is definitely the pioneer of this technique (he coined the acronym). His book is a great resource. However, if you don’t want to read an entire book you can also get some excellent information in this article, this podcast, and this podcast.

9. KEYLINE SUBSOILING

A potentially very powerful technique. I am not as familiar with it as other Regen Ag techniques, which is the only reason it is at the bottom of this list. Basically it is a method for cheaply capturing water that would otherwise run off a piece of land. It also is able to increase the depth of soil very quickly. It is a non-destructive practice, unlike most plowing, and does not destroy the soil food web or existing plants growing in the area. The plowing is usually done in a very specific pattern in order to spread water evenly across the landscape.
For more information I would recommend reading this excellent article first. Then you can dive into the book which started it all: “Water For Every Farm”. When you are actually ready to implement Keyline on your property I would highly recommend getting some professional advice as the process must be done just right in order to work (The Yeoman’s Plow company is probably the best place to go for advice).

It's been 10 years since this overview was written. I'm wondering what's changed, and what's stayed the same.

I do know that Mark Shepard changed his acronym to "Strategic Total Utter Neglect" and I approve. I know how many Maple keys my trees throw in an average year, let alone a great year, and yet, how few of those seedlings make it. Most of us simply can't plan for those sorts of losses. However, I also know the former owner of our land relied on constant irrigating and the work I've done, weaning trees off that water, improving both the soil itself and the microbes, has been totally worth it.

On the sad side, Dr. Elaine Ingham passed recently. Yes, her work has been amazing, and hopefully people who learned from her will carry that torch forward.

I also know that an experiment was tried in my area in an effort to demonstrate whether Keyline plowing was a technique worth using in our ecosystem on our compacted glacial jumble we pretend is soil. This thread has reminded me that I should follow up on whether they have any long term results available to the public. It is important to recognize that techniques work differently depending on the ecosystem, and that some ideas can have unexpected results - not necessarily bad, just not what one would have predicted!

Sheldon has either changed into a computer whiz or has stopped writing about Reg Ag.

Anyone in the Pre-Cambrian shield (the Laurentians of Quebec in my case) has had success with this type of agriculture?

It's heavily compacted soil overrun with competing root systems and rocks that make hand digging nearly impossible; I normally remove a three inch thick layer of the 'top spoil' and replace it with store bought organic earth. Works but not so well because the growing season between not just last frost but warm-enough soil temps and first fall killer frost is approx. 90 days in a 'normal' year.

A short growing season likely hinders normal soil living and non-living elements from contributing to soil nutrients. Increasing the amount of sunlight will involve removing lower tree branches - mostly dead or dried up branches on the numerous evergreens facing the early morning sun.

So I'm looking for a 'fast-acting' compost or compost tea that can either be activated before application (how is that done?) and applied probably more than once, as well as pollinator attracting flowers and bushes.

Best wishes for the new growing season!

George Mogil wrote:...It's heavily compacted soil overrun with competing root systems and rocks that make hand digging nearly impossible; I normally remove a three inch thick layer of the 'top spoil' and replace it with store bought organic earth.

I read of someone on the west coast using bails of newspaper to build raised beds on top of the rocky outcropping.

From your description, I suspect most of the tree debris is conifer? If you have a source of deciduous wood, you could try building Hügelkultur.  

George Mogil wrote:

Anyone in the Pre-Cambrian shield (the Laurentians of Quebec in my case) has had success with this type of agriculture?

It's heavily compacted soil overrun with competing root systems and rocks that make hand digging nearly impossible; I normally remove a three inch thick layer of the 'top spoil' and replace it with store bought organic earth. Works but not so well because the growing season between not just last frost but warm-enough soil temps and first fall killer frost is approx. 90 days in a 'normal' year.

Some years ago, I watched some videos by Jack Spirko, from the survival podcast. I can’t find them right off, he has a lot of unrelated content to search through. He was in Texas, on nearly solid rock with maybe an inch of soil. I believe he worked miracles with pioneer trees (like locust) planted on contour. Maybe he also did hugel? Can’t remember but you might try tracking him down for soil building ideas.

George Mogil wrote:...It's heavily compacted soil overrun with competing root systems and rocks

This reminds me of a garden I had 20 years ago on the shore of a small island off the outer coast of Vancouver Island.  The competing entangled roots of conifers WERE the “soil”.  They covered the bedrock projecting out of the ocean.

They get 144 inches of rain a year.  

Being from arid conditions, I marveled at that.  I used to stand there and look up, imagining a column of water 12 feet high, all of it going to rinse through the rocks, sand and decomposing tree fragments that formed a mat over the bedrock of the island.  It seemed near impossible to build up any fertility with all that leaching.  Clay might have helped, maybe, a little bit.

I pulled drifting kelp out of the bay and stacked it.  

Huckleberries and salal grew there, wild roses and the occasional Hawthorne tree.  We planted some rhododendrons.

What a person could grow there was very limited!  The soil was very acid.  Blueberries come to mind, but they need more than acid soil.  I would have liked to try them, but there were bears there.  Very small chance I would have gotten any berries, and no meed to invite them to that specific location.  

I was only there for 6 months, but it was an exercise in limited resources.  We could go to other islands where the currents had deposited sand. Sure, but imagine the effort involved.  With no dock, we would have to bring a row boat.  We would have to carry buckets of sand out into the water to that row boat, row the boat to the bigger boat and hoist it into that bigger power boat.  Then lift all that sand out again, at our destination. We did have a dock so handling it from there allowed the use of wheels at least.  That’s a huge investment for a “free” yard of sand.  🤣

We could pull the occasional log out of the ocean, drag it back.

As I consider it now, we might have gathered enough logs to build an above grade Hugelculture mound. And we might have covered the mound with material that shunted much of that leeching rainfall aside. I think that could have worked.

It was two to three hours by boat to get to our cars, and another two to three hours to get to a town where gardening supplies might be bought.

The man I was wwoofing for grew huge incredible oysters.  I did use any shells from oysters we ate as soil amendment.  

There, I learned about using reflective material under plants to increase the amount of light the plant receives, thereby increasing photosynthesis.  Oyster shells are excellent for reflecting light.  Crushed egg shell would also work, or white rocks if you could get them.  Anything white or a light color.  Shredded paper comes to mind, but what leaches out of paper you might not want in your soil.

Urine became a precious resource.

It’s a situation that does not lend itself to broad acre farming, and I don’t know that broad acres even exist in that micro region!

I had no idea of what permaculture was at the time , but this experience was an exercise in training a permaculture perspective.  

“What can I do with what I have, and in the broadest sense, how can I make this work?”

George Mogil wrote:Sheldon has either changed into a computer whiz or has stopped writing about Reg Ag.

Anyone in the Pre-Cambrian shield (the Laurentians of Quebec in my case) has had success with this type of agriculture?
So I'm looking for a 'fast-acting' compost or compost tea that can either be activated before application (how is that done?) and applied probably more than once, as well as pollinator attracting flowers

    A few Comfrey rows with the leaves being used to chop on drop on your growing area might be useful for building good soil layer, also growing some legumes species and letting the plant die and fall and decompose there, like beans or if you don't want a crop, clover. Clover is a very under estimated legume, and is an excellent nitrogen fixer as well as good forgage for animals and polonators. It's edible to people too, and makes a pleasant tea.
   
    I also make a version of compost tea that has been around for a looong time, but seems to have been forgotten by the world. It's basically called a "Stank bucket" and involves a large bucket with a lid, a N source (i usually dump a few cans of sardines in water in, as well as occasional urine and comfrey leaves, fish heads are traditional) a "brown sources" like Sawdust or crushed leaves, and a greens source like kicthen scraps. I also like to add home made bone meal and banana peels so that it will provide some P and K as well.   Fill up your bucket about half way with your material, then all the way with non chlorinated water. Soak it in water at least 2 weeks with the lide on.
   
     Dilute your "tea" 1:10 with water, 1:5 max for really nitrogen hungry crops like watermelon, try not to get it on the leaves. I use an old yogurt container, which is 1 qt, to measure out 2qts and then add that to a 5gal bucket I fill, but if you are doing it weekly for poor soil over a large area that can turn into alot of work, i now have irrigation channels I dump a bucket into in 3 locations and I'm done. Every month or so top it off with some more material, and with water as needed, giving it a swirling when you do. Dump out the sludge (or only most of it) about once a year and renew the process. (I do this in fall so the super potent sludge can sit on fallow beds and mellow before spring planting, and the new bucket has all winter to get established.)  This stuff is incredibly potent, and will make massive growth on anything and burn some things if you aren't careful. Tomatoes love it. Never apply it to beans. It will also drastically decrease your decomp time if you dump it on a mulch pile or compost, although i don't like to waste it that way most of the time.

      My soil was not even an inch of soil above pure rocky clay when we first moved in. This stuff, combined with constant "mulch" in the form of grass clippings and leaves and the gleanings from the neighbors hay field and chicken coop bedding have finally made my soil good enough that I have a thick layer and things will just grow without being babied. It took 2 years, but i only use the "tea" on my nitrogen hungry things now, except for a few times in the spring.