RESTORING PARADISE
Regenerative agriculture offers a future for the sustainable farming of meat in line with nature’s needs, by using holistic grazing and organic/biodynamic practices and even sequestering carbon in the soil – so important in the fight against climate change. At Mangarara, in New Zealand’s beautiful Hawke’s Bay, Greg Hart and his family are in the process of restoring 1500 acres of land, conventionally farmed for over 150 years, into the paradise it once was.
Focusing on diversity of animals, plantings and practices they are creating not only a beautiful landscape but also a beautiful place for animals and people to live and thrive. Holistic grazing keeps the grass long in order to build soil biology, sequester carbon, reduce fossil fuel inputs and keep animals naturally healthy. The neighbouring farmers might think it’s a wasteful practice, but as Greg says in the film, “Waste is a human concept. Nature doesn’t do waste.”
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A great story from a country with the space and idealism to carry it out. The cattle could be kept to a minimum. Solar power and electric transport could be added, plus the most important – small, sustainable family size.
Hopefully this will encourage more farmers to change their practices to a more ecologically sustainable approach, moving away from the high input model. Climate change and end of fossil fuel era will bring this disruption in any case, and it’s farmers like these that will help to foster the transition. Interesting point about N African phosphate. It’s mined in Western Sahara, which has been taken over by Morocco, and is considered by many to be a conflict mineral. A large shipment bound for NZ is currently being held in S Africa, pending a legal determination of it’s status. So farmers having total reliance on it is not a good thing for many reasons, including, as mentioned, all the polluting ‘travel miles’. Also great to know where our AirNZ carbon offset $ have been used!
Totally agree! Imagine what the world would look like if all farmers transitioned to this model. I guess in the future this low input model will become the best way to farm as those external inputs become harder to obtain and more expensive.
I’d love to read some whitepapers or journal articles about the actual methods he’s using. Could you point me to something? or even the terminology, so I can look it up?
Hi Dave, the Savory Institute has a bunch of info on their website about these farming methods https://www.savory.global. You can also Google terms like ‘holistic grazing’ or ‘regenerative agriculture’ to find out more.