More learning on Regenerative Agriculture

I have to mention an important book published this summer on regenerative agriculture, written by Helen Atthowe. titled The Ecological Farm. From a my favorite podcast on regenerative agriculture, called “Regenerative Agriculture Podcast” by John Kemp, host John Kemp interviewed Helen in the July 6th episode. I learned that Helen has been practicing regenerative agriculture for years in her three farms. In this episode I was so impressed that Helen’s way of regenerating soil uses living plant mulch instead of animal manure, which is suitable to small farms in Japan (I think). BTW, I would like to emphasize that the reason why I like this podcast is John Kemp’s comments were based on scientific data, not his belief or assumption.

Plant symbiotic fungi Mycorrhizal mycelium as carbon sequestering system

Different episode in another podcast, The Catalysit, hosted by Shayle Kann, invited an author, Deidi-Jayne Hawkins, of recentoly published paper in Current Biology ¹, who found soil born symbiotic fungi with plants, Mycorrhizal mycelium stores in soil 36% of emitted carbon by fossil fuel consumption. This surprisingly high number encouraged me to study Arbuscular Mycorrhiza fungi. Since The Catalysis deals with a wide variety of topics related to decarbonization, the target audience must be more general, so that the interview was aimed to convey scientific findings to a public audience.ee must be more general, so that the interview was aimed to convey scientific findings into public audience.

Regenerative Agriculture in UC Davis

I’ve been looking for places working on regenerative agriculture research in UC Davis where I’ve been working. I found that UC SAREP got $2 M and opened a position related to climate smart agriculture. If anyone knows workplaces that I can fit, please let me know.

Yasu

Every month I’ve been talking with my friend, Yasunori “Yasu” Ichihashi, a group leader in Riken BioResource Research Center, Plant-Microbe symbiosis Reesearch and Development Team in Japan, about regenerative agriculture and related things. A goal of our conversation is to find scientific bases for regenerative agriculture in Japan.

Plant pathology

When you leave organic matter under your plants, you may worry about the organic materials turning into a source of plant pathogens. Probably Yes and No. To understand what is going on in my garden/yard/field, we need to identify plant symptoms and living organs such as worms, bugs, bacteria, and viruses. Some living creatures are beneficial for my plants and others are not, but there will be an ecosystem to balance out those living creatures, including plants (your plants and “weeds”). You need to believe mother’s nature’s power and be patient, similar to growing your child. Sometimes they need help, which should be slow releasing chemicals, typically organic fertilizer (like compost).

What data is needed for the initial step to persuade people (or farmers) that switching from conventional agriculture to regenerative agriculture?

• Soil health using conventional agricultural methods (tilling, chemical input, monoculture) is very bad and regenerative agriculture recovers soil health.

Regenerative agriculture lowers input of energy, labor (efforts), and chemicals and increases profitability to build Agricultural business models (change of the goal from productivity to profitability) Increasing usage of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides was used for increasing productivity, which was the major goal of modern agriculture.

• Effective transition from conventional agricultural methods to regenerative agriculture.

The most common mistake to switch traditional commercial agriculture to regenerative agriculture is steep decline of production due to poor fertility of soil that has been damaged by synthetic fertilizer and extensive tillage. Since soil structure has been destroyed by frequent tillagee, no-tillage itself is not sufficient to recover the soil structure. To do this, we need help from the plants and soil microbe community.

• Choice of cover crop.

I’ve been learning how to choose appropriate cover crops and how to use them as fertilizer. The UC SAREP (Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program) website had a list of cover crops. As Gave Brown and Helen Atthowe pointed out, a mix of cover crops is better than a single cover crop to increase plant diversity. I’ve been wondering if native grown plants could be superior to foreign species becasue those plants should be adopted to the local climate that needs less maintainance. As I tested in my yard, my California native plants did not need watering even during dry summer once established (see series of my Native plant project blogs).