By Mandy Lieu
As part of my move to the UK and my adventure in food and farming, I’ve spent the past few months immersed in the wonderful world of responsible stewardship of the land. As a relative newcomer to the field, I’ve been reaching out to experts about the most effective ways to restore the natural world. There is a consistent theme that strikes me: nature is its own greatest conservationist.
We’re all grimly familiar with the major questions facing our planet: How do we reverse our planet’s catastrophic loss of biodiversity? How do we restore degraded land to its natural state? How do we put right what we – human beings – have done and are doing to the natural world?
Collectively, these existential questions are the single greatest challenge we face. They will, without a doubt, require the cooperation of governments, international organisations, farmers and ordinary members of civil society to fix. Since human activity is at the root of these problems, it’s tempting to look at ourselves, and our capacity for technological innovation, for the answers: carbon capture, vertical farming and many other state-of-the-art solutions.
Those ideas surely have their place. But the honest truth that I’ve gleaned from the experts in agricultural regeneration that I’ve encountered is a simpler one: nature itself is the solution to many of our problems.
Land that has been degraded and habitats that have been lost can be restored if we give nature the conditions to regenerate and flourish once again. To do so, we need to think holistically about how we manage the land. We need to go back to first principles and ask ourselves the basic questions. As the soil nurtures us, how do we nurture the soil? How do ecologies function, how does animal grazing interact with pastures and plants?
These are complex questions, which go to the heart of the natural world. But there are some fantastic trailblazers working to answer them. Allan Savory is an inspiration of mine, famed for building a framework of understanding and managing land through a holistic understanding of how people, animals and the land co-exist. His work laid the foundations for what we now know as regenerative agriculture and his ideas are carried forward by the pioneering farmers of today like Richard Perkins.
Perkins runs the leading small-scall regenerative farm in Europe, Ridgedale Farm in Värmland, Sweden. His approach looks to build a permaculture with closed-loop systems – ones where organisms nurture themselves with as little need for outside inputs as possible. One fantastic option I have explored for my own farm is mobile grazing systems – quite literally mobile chicken coops, for example – where animals can rotate around fields helping to stomp on, pick at and fertilise the land.
These systems help to regenerate the humble, unsung hero of agriculture – soil. Healthy soil allows for water to filter and prevents run-off, it helps to store carbon and provides a wonderful home for plants and other living organisms to flourish. You rarely see some farmers more enthusiastic than when they speak about getting to know their soil – touching it, smelling it, even tasting it. That might sound eccentric. But soil is our best friend for preventing habitat loss and creating a sustainable agricultural system.
Nor is the potential for restoring nature just confined to farms and traditional agricultural settings. I am a huge fan of Shubhendu Sharma, whose wonderful TED talk told the story of forest gardens. How we can create fantastic thick forests, teeming with life, quickly and in spaces as small as your back garden. Even the concrete jungles that many of us now inhabit – the purest expressions of how we have ‘tamed’ the natural world – can be returned to nature.
Sharma’s solution is eye-opening and empowering: bring elements together and let nature take over. By taking a step back, we can give nature the chance to thrive and let it go. No management, he says modestly, is the best management. In reality, there is a lot of skill in giving nature the right tools and environment to thrive. Once again, the right soil texture and moisture is key. But the knowledge, amassed by the world’s greatest ecologists, is there – it’s up to us to use it.
Consistent in all of these approaches is the idea of passing the mantle back to nature. Creating a sustainable environment that reinforces itself and regenerates nature is the key to unlocking the major ecological challenges we face. In the coming weeks, I will be incorporating the ideas of these experts and many others in my own exciting project here in the UK. By honouring nature, working with it not against it, we can restore our world.
(Syndicated press content)
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