Down to Earth - Part One - Starting with the Soil
The first in a series of short films produced as part of the 'Down to Earth' project; a collaboration between Agricology, RuralPod Media and Down to Earth Media (funded by the Rothschild Foundation), which focuses on promoting sustainable agricultural practices being used on the Waddesdon Estate and beyond. The project looks at approaches being used to transition towards no/low input farming methods whilst highlighting the potential for agroecological innovation.
‘Starting with the Soil’ introduces Waddesdon Estate in Buckinghamshire which has been historically managed using traditional agronomic principles but over the last 4 years has been transitioning to more regenerative farming practices to help make the 3,200 acres of arable land more resilient. Olly Pemberton, Farm Manager and agronomist, and Chris Leach, Head of Sustainability and Conservation, describe the estate’s sustainability goals of working towards net zero, reducing environmental impact and increasing biodiversity, and the challenges faced, which start with needing to build the soil organic matter and soil fungal networks to support the crops. They introduce and describe some of the detail of the impressive compost-making process on the estate…
Narrated by Ben Eagle
Find out more about the project here https://tinyurl.com/7unsm9cp/
Highlights
- 🌍 Soil Crisis: The UK faces a decline in soil health impacting food systems.
- 🌧️ Climate Change: Increased volatility in weather affects farming resilience.
- 🌱 Regenerative Farming: Farmers are encouraged to adopt regenerative practices.
- 🚜 Estate Transformation: A Buckinghamshire estate shifts to sustainable methods.
- ♻️ Composting: The team utilizes wood waste and manure to enhance soil quality.
- 🌾 Organic Matter: Increasing organic content improves soil resilience and crop health.
- 🌳 Biodiversity Goals: The estate aims for net-zero impact and improved biodiversity.
Key Insights
- 🌿 Soil Health is Critical: Healthy soils are foundational for robust food production and biodiversity, influencing overall ecosystem stability.
- ⚖️ Balance of Inputs: Properly balancing carbon and nitrogen in composting is essential for creating effective soil amendments and promoting microbial activity.
- 🚀 Technology in Farming: Investing in composting technology can enhance efficiency, ultimately leading to reduced long-term input costs and environmental benefits.
- 🌧️ Water Retention: Soil enriched with organic matter acts like a sponge, improving water retention and resilience during extreme weather events.
- 🔄 Microbial Life Importance: Fostering diverse soil microbiomes is crucial for nutrient cycling and plant health, addressing past agricultural practices.
- 🌱 Long-term Sustainability: Transitioning to regenerative practices not only nurtures the soil but also supports economic sustainability for farmers.
- 🐄 Mixed Farming Benefits: Utilizing resources from both livestock and crop operations can create a more sustainable and resilient farming system.
Transcriptions
Beneath the surface of the UK's soils lies a silent crisis slow decline in condition that threatens the foundation of our food system climate change is leading to more volatile weather patterns wetter Winters and increased drought adding pressure to food production and biodiversity the growing regenerative farming movement is encouraging Farmers to change their practices but what can farmers do to improve the state of their soils what will it take to revive them won estate sits in the heart of buckinghamshire with its 6,000 Acres
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having been managed using traditional agronomic principles for decades however in the last 4 years the estate team have started adapting their practices to make their 3,200 Acres of arable land more resilient my name is Ole pton I'm the farm manager here so I look after all the arable cropping all the livestock and I'm also the agronomist for the farm my name is Chris leech I've been working here on the estate for 20 years and I am now head of sustainability and conservation for the Rothchild Foundation as an estate we've got some pretty big environmental challenges the global biodiversity decline is pretty well documented we have in the past been quite a heavy cultivation Farm which has its results on our soil health so our main challenge we're trying to solve now is building soil organic matters and building those soil fungal networks to support our crops we've got a variety of soils here predominantly where're clay over chalk with a fair depth of clay to be honest so drainage is a big issue for us and when they get wet they stay wet and when they get dry they dry really quickly and so we need to make them more resilient which is a lot of the reason why we're going down this more regenerative path resilient soils will allow us to work them in better time and will allow us to rely on them we're trying to make sure it hosts all the soil microbiome that are required we're trying to ensure that the soil is cycling nutrients efficiently we're trying to ensure that it's processing residues properly by the healthy soils we can grow healthy crops and when we get the soils functioning correctly and cycling nutrients correctly we can start to step back away from the synthetic gravy train our King sustainability goals for Waton are that we head towards net zero that we reduce our impact as much as possible on the environment around us and that we in continue to increase our biodiversity here on the estate [Music] if we can get more organic matter into these soils we make them more Frable we make them more workable but we also make them more resilient we make them able to tolerate large amounts of rainfall without flooding we know that the organic matter means that in a drought they hold on to that moisture for a little bit longer and so we can sustain crops through periods of drought organic matter adds resilience it also does a whole host of other things for the soil biology [ Music] to add this organic matter Chris and olle looked to their natural resources wood waste from the Estates woodlands and manure from the cattle operation they began making compost on a scale large enough to impact the resilience of the estate soils I think we're lucky that we have a mixed farming system here but this can be done on a non-mixed farming system just using grass you could use grass as your nitrogen wood chip you're going to have some kind of carbon and nitrogen ratio on your farm just find it utilize it this is the main Hub of our compost operation where all our ingredients are kept so key ingredients into this is going to be your cowm mark coming out your cattle sheds you want that as fresh as you can that's going to make up about 60% the next largest part is going to be your wood chip that's going to make up about 30% 35% of your material so basically what I'm doing here is I'm balancing my carbon and my nitrogen contents and then I'm going to add a very tiny amount of mimal into that mix because plants need minals and you want your bacteria here to start breaking down that mineral in the compost so it's ready for your plants when you put it out on the field the carbon nitrum ratio is really important because that is what's going to raise your temperature to a level where everything's going to decompose too much carbon your temperature is not going to go up quick enough too much nitrogen your temperature is going to go up too fast and too high it takes 50 days for this to be complete so not that long at all but during that 50 days you will have to turn a certain amount of times because I need to get my temperature up to 65 about day 10 I'll turn again day 25 I'll turn again and then day 50 we should be finished and it's ready to go on the [Music] field so this is the machine we finally decided on WE Tri a few different ones highspeed shredders Etc wood chippers but we found that this one twisted everything so it will take anything up to 8 in in diameter um breaks it up nicely and uh it's also got way cells on it so we can really fine tune our recipe everything's mixing round and pushing it Forward dropping back in mixing round pushing it forward so it's on a nice rotation so you get a really good uniform mix in there I would always suggest in this machine that you put your wood chip in first or your big heavy Brash in first because then that's going to act like a sandpaper and so any straw or other finer material that goes in afterwards it's going to start to really grind that down into a fine substance if we didn't have the technology it would be very labor intensive to make enough compost to get on this volume of field Farms shouldn't be afraid to invest because in the long run it's going to reduce the other kind of inputs that you have to put in so it's going to be a long-term sustainable saver economically and environmentally so the benefit of putting this on the field we're not particularly looking at your organic matter content or I'm not what I'm looking at is my bacterial and my fungal content as a Kickstarter to repairing our soils from the conventional system that we've been in over the years once we've Blended all the ingredients together in our particular ratio you'll end up with a mix like this very lumpy at the start and we will want that to break down and we want to mix that up a little bit more to get it to a stage where it will start heating up and [ Music] decomposing so you can imagine the the water attention on this would be just like a sponge that would swell up that just be holding water which is exactly what you want keeping that there but then you can see the everything's going to be moving through there nice and nice and [Music] easily just putting this out of the compost tap there you can see the the very small thing but the root depth on there already is is really good you can imagine what that would be like at a full grown plant that's just going to to keep going down and that's because of how porous that soil is but one of the things people worry about is the wood chip in there and it's oh it's going to take my nitrogen out but look what this is doing this root is literally going through the wood chip and pulling the nutrients out of that wood chip so the wood chip is so soft now it's penetrable and the roots are just pushing their way through it and actually using using that which is is great it's exactly what you want
