By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Mollie Engelhardt’s farm looks messy.
Every inch of Sow a Heart Farm in Fillmore, Calif., is growing one of more than 300 types of plants. In between the rows of fruit trees, Engelhardt has got organic peppers, garlic, broccoli, and cauliflower, all covered with a thin layer of grass or clover. On a recently harvested plot, chickens and sheep are eating the scraps, churning the soil so it’ll be ready to plant again.
“The neighbors' farms are perfect rows of the exact same thing with bare soil underneath. The trees are managed by spraying herbicides,” Engelhardt says. “You can see that every inch of my farm is covered.”
The chaos is all by design.
This farm is an experiment in regenerative agriculture, intended to grow healthier food at the same time as tackling climate change.
This is still far from the norm in farming – less than 1% of American farmland uses regenerative ag techniques. But this year the Farm Bill, a major piece of U.S. agriculture legislation, is up for renewal, and regenerative agriculture practitioners hope that could change.
“Folks in D.C. are already starting to think about what they want to see changed in the Farm Bill,” says regenerative agriculture expert Arohi Sharma with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The fact that we're talking about soil health, the fact that we're having hearings on regenerative agriculture, is a huge step in the right direction.”
The world’s oldest carbon capture technology
The term regenerative agriculture refers to a handful of practices that create healthy soil. The most visible is the wild mix of plants in Englehardt’s lush, chaotic plots. She carefully picks what grows where so the plants work together to thrive.
“Fennel is actually an insectary. So the fennel is keeping the bugs off of the kale without spraying any pesticides or anything,” she says.
She grew corn next to young avocado trees a few years ago, so the tall stalks could provide shade during a hot autumn. When she harvested the corn, she planted fava beans, since they’re good at restoring nitrogen in the soil
Englehardt’s also keeping the ground covered and hand-harvesting her crops. All of that makes the soil healthier.
“By diversifying what you grow, you're providing different kinds of nutrients to the soil. It’s like diversifying our human diets,” Sharma says.
Better dirt means more plants photosynthesizing, sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, pulling it into their roots, and shoving it into the ground. That makes it a useful climate change tool. Sharma estimates if every farm in the U.S. operated this way, it would remove as much carbon as shuttering 64 coal plants.
Englehardt says the climate benefits don’t stop with carbon capture.
“Not only are we sequestering carbon, I'm recharging the aquifer far more than the neighbor is,” she says. “And the water filtering through my soil is clean, has no glyphosates, has no Roundup, it has none of that.”
In drought-ridden Southern California, Engelhardt’s soil is better at soaking up whatever water it gets. After the giant storms last month, her dirt roads were flooded but her plots were just soft and damp.
The future of farming?
Making regenerative agriculture a mainstream practice has been an uphill battle.
“It's an overhaul of our food and agricultural system, which is rooted so deeply in our commodities, in our subsidies, in our insurance policies, in our financial system,” says Jesse Smith with the White Buffalo Land Trust just north of Santa Barbara, which does trainings and courses on regenerative agriculture.
Sharma agrees: “From the 1970s onwards, decades of agricultural policy have prioritized unsustainable farming practices over regenerative ones,” she says.
Take the way crop insurance is structured. Right now, a corn farmer who had a bad year can claim the loss on that crop, and the government helps them out. A farmer growing corn and soy would write two claims. But what if you, like Englehardt, grow 300 different crops?
“It's a lot harder for them to write an insurance policy or claim insurance rewards because of just the number of crops that they have to keep track of,” Sharma says.
Plus, farmers using these techniques need to pay for more labor, because mechanical harvesting harms the soil.
Englehardt says she grows more food per acre than the conventional farms next door, but four years in she still hasn’t turned a profit.
“You can't expect to be making money right away in any business. The guy down the street? The first four years, he had lemons and avocados planted, he certainly wasn't making money either,” she says.
But convincing a farmer who’s currently turning a profit to change their practices even though they won’t make money for a few years is a tough sell.
Still, Smith says he’s seen an increase in people coming to the farm for their regenerative agriculture trainings and courses.
“We’ve had cowboys from the Midwest, young up-and-coming farmers from the inner cities, to grandparents looking to figure out what to do with their property, to people who don't have land looking to get into agriculture, to people who are in computer programming, figuring out how to put their skills in service of natural ecosystems,” he says. ”It’s such a broad range of people.”
The farms trying it so far are small, Smith says, not like the thousands of acres devoted to Smuckers jam or Cuties mandarin oranges.
While some farmers wait on the government to make regenerative agriculture more profitable, Smith says it’s catching on with people like Englehardt prioritizing their positive impact.
“There is a misconception that this is a fringe niche movement. And it's not. People are transitioning large, large swaths of land,” Smith says. “It may not be a windfall, but in the hearts and minds of people who are watching, what is being demonstrated is greatly impactful and will set the stage for the coming decades of agricultural production in this country.”
Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.
get more stories like this via email
By Ellie Kuckelman for The Reader.
Broadcast version by Deborah Van Fleet for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
On a small farm in Omaha, spring is making its presence felt. Patches of snow melt, flowers rise from their beds and a pair of Canadian geese nest in the tilled fields.
"It's the same pair, and they come back every year for about three weeks," said Mark Brannen, co-owner of Benson Bounty.
From the outside, the 1.5-acre homestead, bordered by homes and a car lot, may not seem like much. But since 2015, Mark Brannen and his wife, Michelle, have managed to foster a complex ecosystem amid the variety of herbs, vegetables and other produce they grow and sell. By rotating crops, planting cover crops, using homemade compost and limiting outside inputs, they've created a sustainable system - and they've done it using many of the key principles of an agricultural approach known as biodynamic farming.
"One of the biggest things for me ... is the focus on the farm as a whole system," Brannen said.
Biodynamic farming utilizes the relationships between plants, animals and soil to turn one's waste into another's energy and eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Practices include only treating crops with compost and water as well as setting aside land for biodiversity and natural habitats.
Not only do these practices create more sustainable farms, but they also could help fight climate change. Organic farming, closely related to biodynamic farming, requires significantly less energy and produces less greenhouse gasses, such as nitrous oxide and methane, than conventional agriculture. And while these practices represent a tiny portion of all farms in the U.S., interest is growing and advocates say the mission couldn't be more important.
"It's about healing the earth - the plant communities, the animal communities, as well as the human community," said Evrett Lunquist, director of Certification for Demeter Association, Inc., and co-owner of the Common Good biodynamic farm near Raymond, Nebraska.
The Missing Piece
While Lunquist studied agronomy as a college student many years ago, he came across biodynamic agriculture in a comparison study between two farms. The idea that farms could work with, rather than against, the environment clicked with him.
"It was the piece that had been missing in my college studies," Lunquist said.
The early concepts of biodynamic farming were articulated in 1924 when Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures to European farmers who were noticing a quick decline in soil conditions, crop quality and animal health after using chemical pesticides.
Steiner presented the farm as a living organism sustained by the relationships between its crop growth, soil vitality and livestock. In 1928, The Demeter Biodynamic® Standard for certification was established and is currently regulated by Demeter International.
Today the number of biodynamic farms is on the rise, increasing globally by more than 47% between 2000 and 2018. There are currently about 140 certified farms in the U.S., according to Lunquist, and just two in Nebraska. Those numbers don't include farms such as Benson Bounty, which implements many biodynamic practices but is not certified.
The Demeter Biodynamic Farm Standard requires the whole farm be certified, not just a specific crop, which could be the case on an organic farm where single fields can be certified at a time.
While organic certification mainly outlines the materials that can and cannot be applied to the soil and its crop, biodynamic certification looks at how all the components of the farm interact, outlining both requirements and principles.
In addition, biodynamic farms must dedicate at least 10% of their land as a wildland reserve, generating the farm's own fertility. They also use biodynamic preparations, such as field sprays, composting and cow manure, to fertilize crops and control pests with farm-generated solutions rather than insecticides. The end result is not only higher-quality food, but also an improved ecosystem as the farm recycles its own resources.
"Instead of having a huge carbon footprint, you're actually refocusing on having a carbon-negative footprint," Lunquist said.
For Beth Corymb, the approach aligns perfectly with Nebraska farmers' long-held commitment to stewardship of the land. She and her husband, Nathan, run Meadowlark Hearth, a 540-acre biodynamic farm in Scottsbluff. About 150 acres of the farm is a nature reserve. In 2010 the Corymbs also started a biodynamic seed company.
Corymb said biodynamic farming encourages farmers "to look at the earth as a living being."
"That thought process helps to approach the earth in a different way," she said.
Though the number of certified biodynamic farms is tiny in comparison to organic (an industry that comprised 17,445 certified farms in 2022), its practices can still have value without a certification.
For Brannen, biodynamic practices have made a big difference in his soil health. By composting his farm's plant and animal waste, as well as using sustainable planting practices, he's not only getting the nutrients he needs but is also promoting a lively ecosystem below the soil.
"If you just worry about creating a healthy environment for soil microbes, then everything else kind of takes care of itself," Brannen said.
Lunquist said that's the fundamental inspiration behind biodynamics - recognizing that soil produces more than just a chemical reaction.
"If you're taking chemical fertilizers and putting it on the soil, you effectively have a hydroponic crop production system," Lunquist said. "There is nothing that the soil is providing to the health and vitality of the plant."
Buying Biodynamic
Biodynamic products can be purchased through a variety of channels.
The Corymbs sell their produce at farmers' markets, as well as through Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. In these farm-run programs, consumers purchase shares of the coming harvest's crop in advance and then during harvesting season they receive weekly boxes of fresh produce.
While Lunquist and his wife have used farmers' markets and CSA in the past, their current channels consist of email lists, retail stores and grocery co-ops, such as Open Harvest in Lincoln, which has sold their eggs, produce, meat and plant seedlings for more than 24 years.
Benson Bounty sells its herbs to local Omaha markets and restaurants. The Brannens also send out weekly emails for what they have in stock.
"We have a lot of people who shop from us in the neighborhood, so they will bike or walk down," Brannen said.
He said customers have noticed a difference in the herbs from their farm - they are fresher than the majority of herbs in the U.S., which are imported from foreign markets.
Lunquist also sees the value in buying locally, especially when customers become acquainted with the farm's name.
"When you eat the food, it's nourishment," Lunquist said. "But then there's another nourishment that comes from eating food where you have either been to the farm or you know the farmer. It is part of the experience."
Obstacles to Biodynamics
Because biodynamic farms are diverse and self-sustaining, they often require more labor than conventional farms that specialize in specific crops or animals.
Space can also be an issue.
"One of the challenges is being able to produce all the inputs that we need here on the farm because we are on a smaller space," Brannen said.
While Benson Bounty has chickens, housing more animals such as cattle and goats would be impossible without more room.
Organic and biodynamic farming also often produce lower yields than conventional farms - as much as about 20% lower, according to a 2014 study from the University of California, Berkeley.
This has led to scrutiny of whether alternatives to conventional farming practices should play a larger role in the global agricultural system. However, studies show despite lower yields, biodynamic farming is more profitable, creates more jobs and is better for the environment. Additional research to close the yield gap, or changing consumption patterns to more plant-based diets, could make alternatives much more palatable.
Public policy could also help transition more farms to sustainable practices as the global population, demand for food, and the effects of climate change increase.
"We are looking forward to more sustainable growth," Lunquist said.
'A Continual Learning Process'
The Brannens' first taste of biodynamic farming came while working on an organic farm in Panama in 2012. Eleven years later, they continue to implement the biodynamic practices they learned there as well as share the knowledge they've cultivated with others.
The rewards have been bountiful. They're shielded from the risks of outside markets while creating a healthy, productive farm that's been their full-time job for close to a decade. Now their three kids, ages 8, 6 and 2, are helping by planting crops, churning compost, collecting eggs or doing any number of other odd jobs.
It's harder this way, Brannen said. Working without shortcuts means more trial and error, but the more you listen and adapt, the more the land can give back."That's what farming is," Brannen said, "a continual learning process."
Ellie Kuckelman wrote this article for The Reader.
get more stories like this via email
Contact
