S2 Ep3 System A and System B go to a Farming Workshop

Have you ever been to a sporting event when the teams have run onto the ground, but the game isn’t on?  Amanda took herself off to various Agricultural workshops and field days in country WA in February and March. She mills around the packs, does a bit of crumbing work, and wonders where the ball is - all the while attempting to work out who’s playing for who and what a goal might look like. This is her attempt to make sense of the state of play.

THE TWO SYSTEMS

There are two systems at play in the Agricultural zone:

One is conventional broadacre industrial chemical farming – let’s call this System A.

The other, System B, goes by the name Regenerative Agriculture.

There are plenty of fuzzy edges and crossovers between the two, and inside each separate system, But they ultimately represent divergent mind sets and land management practises.

THE PACE OF CHANGE

What I am struggling with is the pace of change as we transition from System A to B. There is incredible inertia within System A. Well of course there is. When times-are-a-changin’ there will always be resistance from the status quo. It is a sad aspect of my personality that I am still triggered by the adaptosaurs within System A. These are the people who adopt the buzz words of the emerging transition, step neatly into a ‘it can’t be business-as-usual’ space, and then carry on business-as-usual under a light glaze of change language.

Joel Williams at Muresk, March 2023

Joel Williams, a soil scientist educator, nailed the most-mealy mouthed of these positions for me. He was presenting on soil microbiology, specifically the Carbon/Nitrogen balance, at Muresk on a day organised by Carbon Sync in late March. He addressed his own position on change, saying he was happy if he saw incremental shifts in practise – say, a farmer trialling a two species crop over a season, instead of going with a monocrop. But - there was a but. Joel likes change to occur within the context of a bigger understanding of how ecosystems work, otherwise the danger is that you are ‘doing the wrong thing, better.’  Thanks, Joel, exactly.

 WHERE’S THE ARGUMENT?

I was labouring under the misapprehension that the divisions between System A and System B were of a philosophical nature – but a page of writing from Arden Anderson stopped me from wasting any more time on this fruitless thought.

Any discussion between Systems A and B, says Arden, need to be based on an understanding of how natural ecosystems function: coming from this perspective means it is about ‘management and economics’.

 In his words: *‘If we balance our soils nutritionally, which infers also biologically, this means we won’t need poisons to rescue the crop or super-hybrids to resist the poisons.

He continues: Poor nutrition is the nemesis. Nutrition informs genetic expression. Balance the soil. Feed your fellow man and transform the world.’

A BREATH OF FRESH PROFITS

There we go. Let’s talk about transformation, System B style, rather than incremental systems creep. Let me introduce you to Kevin Elmy, a cover cropping specialist from Saskatchewan, Canada. Kevin has been in Perth for a few months now, and has been on the road getting a feel for WA agriculture – and I tell you he is a breath of fresh air for those of us struggling with the glacial pace of change in some sectors of the Agricultural industry.

Kevin is a practical, can-do, kind of a guy and he likes to keep things simple. He is keen to show farmers the potential System B management has to restore economic and environmental abundance, as well as the sense of play, curiosity and satisfaction that is the true gift to the farmer who sets out on this different path.

So Kevin’s been out and about sharing data from a study done in Canada that compares two farms working with two different management plans. The study covers a four-year period and is presented on spreadsheets with detailed costings inputs and expenses and returns, including yield, price and revenue.

Farm A oscillates between planting canola and wheat with the full chemical applications common to Conventional farming, System A.

Farm B plants oats and fava beans one season, canola/pea the following, a varied cover crops in the third season and a wheat crop with the addition of a sub clover and Italian rye in the fourth season.  

Even though Farm B receives no income from cover cropping in the third year, this farmer comes out ahead in the profit stakes once all expenses are accounted for over the four years.

Part of Kevin’s MO is he never stops looking for ways to value add what he is doing. He suggests that by adding livestock grazing, Farm B gains an extra margin at minimal expense. Then it is possible to layer carbon credits over the top as a bonus.

By keeping living roots in the soil for longer and continually boosting plant biodiversity, Farm B is helping to fix other production issues including weed pressure, hard pans, slow water infiltration and soil erosion.

It’s not just a breath of fresh air, it is a breath of fresh profit, and it is making an impact with producers. And if you are inclined to dismiss the study as irrelevant because it was done in Canada – half an hour with Kevin will convince you that the principles of soil health and nutritional balance are adjustable truths.

TRIGGERING

I want to talk about Asparagropsis. This is a word that for me neatly encapsulates the distinctions between Systems A and B, and is relevant to the pace of change that started this whole podcast rolling and that I am not quite ready to let go of yet.

I know when Asparagropsis crops up that we are back in the land of change that isn’t really change. And this says nothing about Asparagropsis itself - which is a completely inoffensive seaweed currently being trialled as a crop for a number of valid reasons. For the purpose of this story, if the seaweed is mentioned in Ag circles it is usually offered up by a Systems A adaptosaur as a solution to the ‘problem’ of methane gas from cattle emissions. Asparagropsis is offered as a food supplement to help stop methane-laden cattle farts and belches from warming the globe.

I have read that methane is a greenhouse gas 10 times more disastrous for the warming of the planet than CO2, and its concentration in industrial cattle-raising enterprises has been used to great effect to discredit the meat-producing industry.

 This has been one of the more significant skirmishes in an uphill battle to shift peoples’ mind from the idea that it is not the animals that are the problem, but the way that animals are managed. You might have heard the one-liner: ‘it’s not the cow but the how’.

 There is no methane problem if cattle are grazed on nutrient and plant rich paddocks where they can choose their own living food. Plants grown on biologically rich soils produce secondary compounds that reduce that type of digestive reaction. System A science places a plastic bag over a cow’s ass and measures the methane levels, where the results look understandably dire.

System B science examines how methane cycles within a living system, ie gives it some context in terms of how the gas functions in complex 3D relationship with the physical world, and a different picture emerges.  What I have gleaned from a lot of daunting science is that cattle are like humans, if we can all choose what we want to eat from a range of different plants, grown in fertile soils in pleasant surroundings – our digestive processes work a lot better.

THE NON-PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE

So the presence of Asparagropsis as a ‘solution’(air quotes) for methane gas emissions becomes for me an example of the need to distinguish between the two Ag systems when we are contemplating the matter. Seaweed as a crop grown somewhere else and shipped in as an input to address an issue is System A thinking. Growing plants with the help of grazing animals, or possibly, just not killing the plants already growing in a paddock is System B thinking. And this reminds me of something Tim Wiley said. Tim is a respected Ag ecologist, and he got very excited about trials testing the methane-busting capacity of Eremophilas. Eremophilas are a dryland plant species common in Ag and pastoral zones, and naturally available to grazing animals.  Maybe you’ve got one– the silver-grey leafed and purple flowered Nivea is an Eremophila I regularly see in Perth gardens.

Fred Provenza in his book Nourishment talks about complementarity of plants. How cattle, if given the opportunity and choice, naturally choose to eat the foods that give their digestive systems a good chance of health.

 And, can I add, I am not denying the cruelty, waste and inhuman scale of the cattle and meat industry – just taking issue with the mindset we use when we approach problems. The bigger the thinking, the better the chance for positive change.

THE CARBON TAKEAWAY

In a couple of the info days for farmers I attended recently the Carbon Market has been front and centre.  The idea of counting Carbon molecules is very System A  – think counting calories as part of the weight loss industry for a classic non-holistic approach.

Taking a whole planet, drilling down into its component parts, finding the most abundant element, carbon, and measuring it in land, sea and air is reductive thinking. Then thrashing out a totalising theory involving the distribution of carbon in all its forms that explains why ecosystems are crashing and the climate delivering crisis after crisis…we have all heard the problem defined and solved under the heading of Carbon capture or sequestration .

CO2 is the problem; the solution is simple. All we need to do is to remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and store it somewhere else and we will be averting ecological collapse.

Even if that was the whole truth, even if we could invent a machine that removes all CO2 from the atmosphere overnight, I think we would find that the problem runs deeper than this simplistic but complicated idea.

CARBON AS A GIFT FOR FARMERS

And this is me speaking as a fan! I have been sold on the idea that the Carbon Market was a gift for farmers, and by extension for the natural world.  I saw this as a chance for land managers to get paid for restoring aliveness to their soils and farms. Farmers are perfectly placed as the custodians who can help restore natural cycles by encouraging plants to bring their full photosynthetic capacity to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Sunlight, water, soil, and a diversity of plants are the creators of the basic units of nutrition for all life on earth.

We expand into System B when we maximise the capturing of carbon, because the co-benefits are legion. Farmers reclaim their sovereignty by restoring water retention, biodiversity, fertility, and aliveness in all its forms because they are in partnership with nature. Working within resilient natural systems is going to serve humans a lot longer and better than anything a chemical company can dream up as an alternative. 

THE UPSIDE OF THE CARBON MARKET

And, the kicker, the carrot, the incentive for change, is that farmers can earn an extra income in the form of Carbon Credits. ‘Icing on the cake’ is the approved term. The cake being the food and fibre they are already producing and the little silver balls on top of the icing being a potential premium price for products that are nutrient rich, something that is getting citizens like me, excited.

But the story of abundance and ecological repair that got me engaged has been run off the road. The Carbon message has, not surprisingly, been given the full reductionist treatment, and in some cases has been neatly slotted into business documents without raising the spectre of real change on the ground. The fullness of the story has been lost and replaced with buzz words like Zero Carbon and Net Zero.  

SHAMEFUL CREDITS

The other side of the Carbon Market is the carbon emitting businesses trying to do the right thing by buying emission reduction credits. This is where if you are really System B minded as a carbon-emitter things can be a bit shameful as the real-change-on-the-ground projects struggle to get the funding or organisational structure necessary to get going. There are some projects where people are paid to say - not cut down trees. Or to plant limited species in plantation-style rows. Or to reduce off-gassing from landfill. Or to produce a bit more canopy in the woody weeds that make up the bulk of the biomass on someone’s severely degraded pastoral property.

This is the stuff that is making people feel cynical about the Carbon Market. Millions of dollars are changing hands, while ecological systems are still not being repaired or are still being actively destroyed at a frightening rate.

 GOOD NEWS

Let’s give the Australian government credit for doing sound work in developing rules and regulations that ensure that an Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) has integrity and represents a solid investment into foundational regenerative work on the ground.

Backing up our government efforts are global organisations developing protocols with long acronyms that will ultimately affect the way growers do business. Farmers and all other businesses and services will need to prove that they are changing their practises, as in measuring carbon emissions or capturing carbon because of their changed practises, or their products will not be able to be sold into any markets. Unless they want to forge their own radical local pathway – and that is another story - farmers are going to have to jump into the Carbon Market – to try to optimise the carrot and reduce the stick factor.

CARBON CREDITS AND THE FUTURE

The nature capital and biodiversity credit story is also on the rise. From several horses’ mouths I have heard the prediction that the Carbon Credit Units will eventually roll in with the biodiversity Credit Units – which is a much broader metric. From a System B perspective, the idea that Carbon Credit Units are considered separate from Biodiversity Credit Units when it comes to building carbon is a reductionist stance even weirder than counting Carbon in the first place – but having set out on this story line let’s be optimistic and speculate about a happy outcome.

The Carbon credits that attract the big premiums down the track will be the ones that go hand in hand with stories that are deeply grounded in restoring culture and social benefit to communities – because if you are talking Biodiversity, where else can you go except outwards and onwards and upwards?  It’s a strange pathway isn’t it, in that it takes us to what could be seen as a spiritual understanding – the space where we acknowledge that everything is connected, and everything is included. 

 Am I messing with own neat System A and B distinctions here?

 Anyway, don’t despair. Because despair is definitely a function of a System A mindset. It goes hand in hand with the fear that comes from scarcity thinking. Let’s go with the idea that there is a lot of potential for repair of all kinds in the Carbon and Biodiversity market – it doesn’t have to be empty calories.

 THE EXPANDED BEAN COUNTER

To hammer the whole counting carbon and biodiversity credits home, at a recent info day in Badjingarra set up by the West Midlands group, I should mention the final presentation from Richard Brake detailing his investigations into Natural Capital Accounting.

New bean counting systems are being set up to account for the new metrics. From yield to whole farm fertility. From bottom line to a much-expanded bottom line – one that is starting to be fleshed out in real life, real time and with real world consequences.

 COMPOST HOPEFUL

I went to another field day at Coorow on a 2000odd hectare cropping farm run by Winston and Darren Broun. This was a fantastic day for me. It was a small, informal gathering, with a nice mix of folk and centred around a demonstration of the mysterious workings of the Johnson-Su Bio-reactor. Composting is a rich area of experimentation open to land carers. Bio-reactors are easily constructed and fed using material readily available on any farm. In terms of inputs, it is a cheap option for farmers interested in injecting more biological life into their soils using biowaste and worms.

Darren Broun with his worm composting system in Coorow, WA

Darren is an ebullient and entertaining soul. Clearly having a good time mucking around with compost extracts and worm juice but keeping a toe in the conventional world of Ag through GM canola cropping. He was determined he wasn’t going to get involved with any livestock – not counting his shed full of earthworms. ‘It’s not going to happen’ he said firmly when the more regeneratively minded of us hinted that water and carbon cycles are hard to kick into full capacity without the benign influence of tightly managed grazing animals….That aside, what struck me was his statement that he was enjoying himself because the biological approach had taken a lot of the risk out of the operation by reducing the need to apply chemical inputs.

Coorow is not known to be a hot spot for regenerative farmers, so I asked him if he got any flack at the local pub when it came to harvest time. He was amused by the question: Do I look like someone who would get picked on? Good point. The bloke is sized like a rugby player and exudes self-confidence. He added that boasting about yield size at the bar tells only part of the story. It’s profit that counts, and on that metric his Dad and him were kicking goals.

HOMEOPATHIC

Stuart McAlpine presented, both at Coorow and Badgi. He is a big thinker and an experienced farmer across both conventional and regenerative systems.

A big takeaway for me was his understanding that with biological additives – less is more. Seed coating or creating a foliar treatment with a biological solution is less about giving the soil and plants what we think they lack, and more about stimulating the microbiome’s phenomenal capacity to work their relational magic and keep the whole system cycling. This stuff is beyond human understanding.  Dr Christine Jones and Joel Williams are regularly proving to us that we barely have a clue as to the intricate dealings of the underground workforce that drive the aliveness of soil. Christine’s last bombshell was to tell us that every single seed comes with its own personal workforce of billions of microbes. Who knew?

It’s Systems A thinking to think humans need to supply the soil with the range of biological organisms necessary to grow plants. If you allow new information to adjust the way you act, the System B farmers’ role is a humble one- to work out how their interventions can be steered to assist rather than inhibit unknowably complex biological processes. They can start to think of themselves as conductors of a vast orchestra of beings, rather than Field Marshalls in a skirmish with unseen enemies.

Interventions can be done with homeopathic-size injections.

Less is more.

THE EARLY ADOPTERS

We’ve certainly gone past the point where Regenerative Agricultural people, my System B, are the new crazies on the block. When I first started writing about Agriculture as a complete novice to any growing systems about 15 years ago; meeting proponents of non-conventional farming was like meeting Che Guevara. I kid you not. System A has been well and truly breached.

The time when Di and Ian Haggerty were the fabled guerrilla farmers, working in deep cover on hidden pastures who very few had seen, but many in this space were whispering about…those days are gone. System B is out and proud for those who wish to embrace the change.

For my own trigger-prone nature, I wish that at field and information days we could insist on a clear context for what is being measured, trialled and presented. Let’s allow for what Nicole Masters’ calls the Brave Space, where values can be aired. Say, for example, the organising principles of an Ag project are a desire to build carbon, then let’s frame enabling questions that bring it all down to earth, to real repair, restoration and nutritional health covering a broad range of metrics.

Here’s my framing question.

‘Will the project you are proposing inspire farmers to bring more aliveness to their soils and their farms?’

On that note…thanks for listening.

*Arden Anderson: Biological Soil Management Manual

OPENING PHOTO: Kevin Elmy presenting at Muresk, March 2023 at a day organised by Carbon Sync.