You can listen to this podcast here.
World Soil Day celebrates the importance of our soils for healthy food, flood prevention, tackling climate and biodiversity emergencies. To mark the occasion and find out about how regenerating soils can help us fight climate change, we got together for a discussion of “Kiss the ground“ documentary on 26th of November, 2020. We were joined by three experts who provided us with local Scottish context to the material covered in the film:
- Peter Christopher, PLANT Community Gardener and horticulturists with over 30 years gardening experience, talked about how the regenerative methods can be applied at our Tayport Community Garden and in growing food at home.
- Dr Jennifer Brown, a soil expert from Ecological Department of James Hutton Institute, provided a research perspective on how regenerative farming can be applied in Scottish and UK agriculture. Jennifer is happy to contact you with any follow up questions via email jennifer.brown@hutton.ac.uk.
- David Aglen, Farm manager at Balbirnie farm in Fife spoke from the hand-on farming point of view on using regenerative agriculture methods on his farm.
The discussion was lead by Kaska Hempel, Digital Storytelling and Carbon Conversation Coordinator from PLANT and Helena Simmons, PLANT Carbon Conversation Facilitator and Community Gardener at the Ninewells Community Garden, and we were joined by over 30 participants from Fife, Dundee and beyond.
You can listen to the recording of the discussion on our PLANT Voices podcast here. This is an edited recording from the discussion on Zoom and the sound quality is variable because of connection problems with a couple of the particpants.
Resources
- Kiss the Ground website has a range or resources on the topic of regenerative agriculture. You can watch the movie on Vimeo (£0.78) or Netflix (free). You can also arrange for free screenings for comunity groups and schools.
- The Highland Good Food Podcast episode on regenerative farming in the Highlands
- World Soil Day Website
Suggested reading list from Dr Jennifer Brown:
- Building soil: a down to earth approach: natural solutions for better gardens and yards by Elizabeth Murphy. The author is a soil scientist but is a very practical book.
- The soul of soil: a soil building guide for master gardeners and farmers. This one is a bit old but still very good.
- A wide range of information about soils in Scotland on Scotland’s Environment website.
- Greenhouse Hamburger (PDF). This paper talks about the impact of livestock farming, it’s based on systems in the USA but I thought that some people would like to see the comparison in emissions between different farming animals.
Resources shared in the chat by participants
- ER Balfour “The Living Soil”
- No dig technique for gardeners following lead of Charles Dowding
- As a model for profitable farming in cold climates you can look to the Krameterhof by Sepp Holzer up on a mountain in Austria and Ridgedale farm in Sweden by Richard Perkins, the author of the book called Regenerative Agriculture. One of Richard’s strongest messages is about how to practice regenerative agriculture on a large scale using cows and chickens in as profitable a manner as possible, and more profitably than conventional herbicide-based farming. You can also look at Polyface Farm for regenerative meat production story.
- Alan Savoury’s Holistic Management Technique involving cattle grazing and it’s critique
- Why do Kangaroos produce less methane than cows and sheep?
