Regenerative Skills

Welcome to the 9th of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. In this session I hosted a discussion on regenerative arable farming with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organization working to build the infrastructure to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe.In this panel I invited three of the most experienced and influential educators in the field of arable farming from the USA, Brazil, and England. Arable farming is often the first agricultural practice that comes under fire with criticisms about industrial ag, the troubles of monocropping, tillage, chemical use, and many of the other management methods that need to be abandoned are most closely associated with large scale grain and legume production. Yet cultivation of annual crops, especially grains, are some of the oldest cultivars from the dawn of agriculture itself. Though it’s still common practice to destroy the ecology of a piece of land to produce these products, there’s still potential to regenerate that ecology if we can move beyond the paradigm of recent decades and learn from natural biological processes. Don’t forget that if you want to hear the full, unedited version of this interview with the entire Q&A session at the end, be sure to check out the different subscription options on the Regenerative Skills Patreon page.Since these discussions are longer than the regular weekly episodes, I’ll keep the intro short and jump right into the introductions for our panelists. Links: https://soilhealthacademy.org/ https://groundswellag.com/speakers/ademir-calegari/ https://www.regenben.com/ https://treeyopermacultureedu.com/chapter-6-trees/alley-cropping-and-silvopasture/ https://www.agroforestry.org/the-overstory/337-overstory-261-alley-cropping https://regenerativeskills.com/eric-toensmeier-outlines-the-roadmap-to-implementing-the-carbon-farming-solution/

Today’s episode has been a long time coming for me. I’ve followed Eric Toensmeier’s work since I first started learning about permaculture and I found his first book “Paradise Lot” about his work in transforming a tiny suburban dirt patch into a perennial food oasis at his home in Massachusetts.  Since then Eric has written many other titles that have kept an eerie pace with my own work and focus over the years. “Perennial Vegetables” was great fodder for my learning in Guatemala with indigenous plant cultures and companion plants to coffee and avocado. The Carbon Farming Solution” helped to turn my attention to the potential of regenerative agriculture at scale, and his contributions to “Project Drawdown” helped me to put agriculture in perspective with the rest of the essential steps to addressing the climate crisis around the world.  In this session, because of its relevance to the work I’m doing with Climate Farmers, I decided to focus on the conclusion of “The Carbon Farming Solution” Part 5, which outlines the implementation of regenerative, perennially based, agriculture. We’ll explore Eric’s three point plan for scaling up carbon farming, his ideas for ways to support farmers and organizations in the transition, effective financing, removing policy barriers, as well as strategic next steps. We also cover some of his work with Project Drawdown in looking at the global picture and where regenerative agriculture stacks up in the priority list they’ve created to reverse the effects of climate change.  There’s so much more I could say in an introduction to Eric and his work, but instead I’ll put all the links to learn more about him and the projects he’s involved with in the show notes for this episode and I’ll jump right into the first question to start this discussion off. Get the resource packet for this episode! Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: http://www.perennialsolutions.org/ http://carbonfarmingsolution.com/ https://www.drawdown.org/

Welcome back everyone. Today I’m going to explore a topic that has been important to me for a very long time, but that hasn’t been explored much on this show so far. I’m talking about personal health and fitness.  Now of course this is a very multifaceted subject, and everyone will have their own ideas of what diets, exercise plans, mobility routines, as well as mental and spiritual practices are essential, and that’s great. This interview is going to focus on physical fitness and what it means to integrate exercise and strength training into a holistic health plan that suits your own unique needs and goals.  Those of you who’ve been following this podcast since it was called Abundant Edge will likely remember me talking about my own struggles with digestive health and how I’ve had trouble for most of my adult life due to gut dysbiosis and related symptoms. In the past when I’ve felt hopeless and that my nutritional health was beyond my control, I would focus on the areas that I could still influence.  Since I was constantly traveling for most of the last 15 years, I focused on calisthenics and bodyweight exercises that I didn’t need any equipment for. As I began researching how to train my body without gym equipment or weights I quickly found the inspirational work of Anthony Arvantakis, the founder of Bodyweight Muscle and the author of many bodyweight training books. I was immediately drawn to his focus on whole body fitness and functional strength above aesthetics, and his own personal journey of transformation is truly heartwarming.  Over the years Anthony’s exercise programs and online community have helped me to get out of various depressive funks which have had transformative effects on my life beyond just my physical fitness. The routines have helped me to manage my time better, gain motivation for other goals in my life, and focus on holistic fitness. These qualities, while not unique to any one health program, have served as the spark to recommit myself to many of the virtues that I hope to continue to improve upon and one day even exemplify. Together they all tie into a much more complete and robust concept of holistic health as a lifestyle rather than an end goal.  In this interview Anthony shares his story of the accident that had him bed ridden and immoble for years, and the mind and body transformation that helped him regain control of his life. We talk about the mindset and discipline necessary for a holistically healthy life, and how to look beyond your physical fitness to strive for optimal health in many aspects.  I’m hoping that this will be the first of many conversations on these topics and I welcome you to suggest other experts and perspectives for future interviews on the discord channel, but for now, I’m pleased to get this discussion started with Anthony. Get the resource packet for this episode! Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdnGq7_Y2r8&t=2797s https://www.bodyweightmuscle.com/ https://www.instagram.com/bodyweightmuscle/ https://www.youtube.com/c/BodyweightMuscle

Welcome back to another interview from the skill exchange calls that I’ve been running with Climate Farmers for our regenerative farming network in Europe.  This is one of the many community building activities that I’ve been organising to help to connect farmers around Europe to some of the best emerging information available, and to get their most important questions answered from around the world.  In this session I had the pleasure of speaking with Harriet Mella, an independent research scientist from Austria known for her work uncovering the unexplained phenomena of plant growth and development. Informed by her background in microbiology, mycology, and biochemistry, Harriet has a unique capacity to describe little-known connections between emerging biological research and agriculture. Her objective is to use the scientific background that we have to introduce agricultural methods that are more resilient and low input for farmers.In this exchange call we take a look at a wide variety of topics surrounding plant health through soil biology. Harriet does a great job of summarising very complex aspects of cutting edge research into practical applications for work on the ground.  At the moment, she’s probably best known for the Carbon Micro Cycling course that she teaches on the Agriculture community platform Kind Harvest. She has worked a lot with John Kempf from Advancing Ecological Agriculture and refers to him a few times during this interview.  Before we get started I want to remind all of you who would be interested in attending one of these skill exchange calls live in the future, all you have to do is be a registered farmer in Europe to receive the invitations and call links that we have coming up. I’m planning a session with Charles Dowding about No-Dig market gardening at the beginning of October, so don’t wait too long. You can register now at climatefarmers.org Links: Harriet Mella on Linkedin https://kindharvest.ag/courses/ra-cc-carbon-course/ climatefarmers.org

Welcome to the 8th of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. In this session I hosted a discussion on how to make and analyse high quality compost with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organization working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe. In this panel I invited three of the most experienced and influential educators in the field of compost production and biological soil amendments. This is an area where there is still a lot of contention as you’ll see in any online forum on the topic. Differences in opinion about bacterial or fungal dominant compost, hot thermophilic decomposition or cooler and slower techniques. Whether compost teas actually work or if prebiotic food is more important. This is a new and emerging field so there are new discoveries all the time, but rather than get bogged down in technicalities I organised this panel to cut through the confusion and talk about what really works and results in improvement of soil health for growers. Now one mistake that I have to own up to is that I screwed up a bit on the scheduling coordination with the speakers, and for that reason Charles Dowding and Adreinne Goldshalx didn’t show up until the end. We’ll get to hear a little bit from Charles in the last 15 minutes, but Adrienne only comes in during the Q&A portion which isn’t part of this episode. Don’t worry though, I have plans to do follow up interviews with them both so we’ll hear from them in some of the episodes coming up. Luckily Troy Hinke of Living Roots Compost Tea was a real hero and carried the discussion and all the questions I had all the way through. Don’t forget that if you want to see the video of the full event, you can check it out on the Climate Farmer’s Youtube channel through the link in the show notes for this episode. Since these discussions are longer than the regular weekly episodes, I’ll keep the intro short and jump right into the introductions for our panelists. Links https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9BQ2a952wEchjyRSZPV6-Q https://www.livingrootscomposttea.com/ https://www.instagram.com/livingrootscomposttea/?hl=en https://charlesdowding.co.uk/ https://www.instagram.com/charles_dowding/?hl=en Check out these previous episodes on soil health https://regenerativeskills.com/gabe-brown-on-how-to-restore-soil-and-ecological-health-on-a-massive-scale/ https://regenerativeskills.com/regenerating-the-biology-in-your-soil-expert-panel-4/ https://regenerativeskills.com/robert-pavlis-soil/ https://regenerativeskills.com/matt-powers-regen-soil/

Welcome back to another interview from the skill exchange calls that I’ve been running with Climate Farmers for our regenerative farming network in Europe.  In this session I had the good fortune of introducing Stefan Sobkowiak to our group. Many of you who’ve been listening to this show for a while will remember the last interview I did with Stefan in the last season during the series on agroforestry. Stefan is one of my favorite sources for practical and honest techniques for managing the whole ecology of an orchard from propagating new tree species through maintenance, pest management, harvesting and even processing and marketing your products. His film, the Permaculture Orchard has help people around the world to transition towards diversified, resilient, and more profitable models of running their tree crop businesses. His YouTube channel goes even more in depth as he’s always creating videos about the innovations and even struggles that are going on at his orchard Miracle Farm in Canada.   In this session we cover a lot of ground in a short time.We talk about How to manage pests and diseases by improving soil health and biodiversity in the orchard. How to care for the health of your trees for better yields and profit. Integrating other crops and animals into the system for ecological and economic resilience. And how to adapt common methods to your unique climate and context.  There’s a whole Q&A session that happens after the half hour interview on these skill exchange calls which are exclusive to the Climate Farming network here in Europe. So if you’re interested in attending these calls in person to have your own questions answered by the experts and tap into the growing community of farmers, consultants, and educators around Europe, you can register right now at ClimateFarmers.org Come and learn Syntropic agriculture and profitable agroforestry with me in Spain! This is the first announcement that I’m making for an exciting course that I’ve put together with my friend and Syntropic agriculture specialist Jacob Evans. I interviewed Jacob last season about his experience applying syntropic principles and design to the challenging ecology of Andalucia in southern Spain, and how even with the harsh heat and bone dry conditions that they face there he was able to establish an eden of productive perennial crops and support species on degraded former farmland.  Since that interview Jacob and I have been looking for ways to collaborate and so I invited him to come and teach with me at the farm of our good friends and Climate Farmers, Carlo and Coralie. The two of them have been developing their new orchard a few hours south of me in Barcelona and are super excited to experiment with Syntropic agriculture for all the incredible benefits of mixed biodiversity and ecosystem services that it has the potential to develop. Together we’ll be hosting a group of learners for 5 days in which we’ll not only go through the principles and theory of how these systems work, we’ll be putting it into practice directly on the land as we install syntropic orchard rows on their site. I’ll also be going into the practical side of ensuring that this innovative way of planting matures into a profitable venture that can accelerate the development of your farm. We’ll cover soil testing and plant health, seed saving and plant propagation, alley cropping and animal integration, and a lot more. There will be team building activities, incredible food from the surrounding community, and much more in this 5 day intensive learning experience. So whether you’re excited to develop a large farm with agroforestry, or just see the opportunity to plant delicious fruit trees in your back yard or neighborhood, you’ll leave this course feeling confident to go out and start planting no matter what climate or bioregion you live in.  You can find all the details of the workshop at thegreenrebel.org or find them on instagram at thegreenrebel.

Over the last handful of weeks I’ve had the pleasure of managing an ambitious new project in my role with Climate Farmers, an organization working to build the infrastructure to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe. We call it the Pioneer Program. What this is essentially is a collaborative effort between us and some of the most prominent and experienced educators in regenerative agriculture. In this first program we partnered with Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden and his online masterclass to guide farmers from all around Europe to redesign and transition their farms and businesses towards regenerative models. Through the incredible education provided in Richard’s course and guided facilitation from our team and other knowledgeable practitioners around the world, we’ve helped our group to develop their holistic context, analyse new enterprise options, and map a course for a regenerative future for their land. In a short time we’ve seen dramatic transformations and progress in both the farm ecology and the mindsets of our program participants.  During this journey I had the pleasure of interviewing Will Harriss of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia and guiding a Q&A session with our Pioneer farmers.  Since Will does a great job of giving his own introduction early in this interview I’ll cut this preface short and jump right in. Don’t forget to stick around till the end where I’ll tell you how you can join the next Pioneer Program with Climate Farmers and now I’ll hand things over to Will Harriss. Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: https://whiteoakpastures.com/ https://www.instagram.com/whiteoakpastures/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-6RVpGF4tM https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTmheMIkvmt2T2k62oo-Yfw https://youtu.be/nnYR7onhwc4

It was a couple months ago that Nathan Fournier joined the Patreon community and we began a correspondence. I quickly realised that he had followed a similar path as I did in getting into ecological design. Nathan first studied engineering and pursued that career path only for a short time before realising that there was a lot missing in the pursuit. Fast forward to today where he’s running a successful ecological landscaping service offering edible gardens, tree planting, and much more to a wide range of clients in his community.  I’ve often thought about getting into landscaping work myself and nearly started a company before some different opportunities came up, so I was excited to hear about Nathan’s journey into the profession and what he’s learned in the process.  In this interview, we unpack all of the potential in offering ecological repair and optimisation services and just how many interests and skill sets that it can accommodate. Nathan gives some great insights into the business end of things which is often where permaculture design courses and other ecological learning leaves off. There are also a large range of side businesses that can help to support the transformation of whole communities through the production of high quality seeds, trees, compost, tools, and much more, so this really serves to open a range of options outside of just farming and gardening for people looking for career paths to support this movement.  I really hope that you find some inspiring information here, but I’ll start from the beginning with the story of how Nathan got started.  Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUh-ip5MTw Links: https://www.homeharvestcentralma.com/

Welcome to the seventh of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. In this session I hosted a discussion on the importance of restoring proper hydrological function in a landscape and the steps to achieving it with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organisation working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe. In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators working on this from a farming perspective. Since landscape hydrology and its proper function is often overlooked in its importance in regulating global temperature, I wanted to focus on this specifically. I was lucky enough to bring together three of the experts that have most guided my learning in this field, Zach Weiss, Nicole Masters, and Mark Shepard.Don’t forget that if you want to see the video of the full event, you can check it out on the Climate Farmer’s Youtube channel through the link in the show notes for this episode. Zach Weiss is the protégé of revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner certification directly from Sepp. Zach went on to create Elemental Ecosystems to provide an action-oriented process to improve clients' relationship with their landscape. Elemental Ecosystems is an ecological development, contracting, and consulting firm specializing in watershed restoration and ecosystem regeneration. The firm’s work includes Aquaculture, Agroforestry, Water Retention Landscapes, Terrace Systems, Spring Development, Natural Building, and more. Mark Shepard is the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC, founder of Restoration Agriculture Development LLC and award-winning author of the books, Restoration Agriculture and Water for Any Farm. He is most widely known as the founder of New Forest Farm, the 106-acre perennial agricultural savanna considered by many to be one of the most ambitious sustainable agriculture projects in the United States. Nicole Masters is is an independent agroecologist, systems thinker, storyteller, educator and author of the book “For the Love of Soil.” With over 20 years of practical and theoretical experience in regenerative agriculture, she is also recognised as a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker on the topic of soil health. Her team of soil coaches at Integrity Soils work alongside producers in the U.S., Canada and across Australasia supporting producers and organisations who cover over 24 million acres, to take their landscapes to the next level in nutrient density, profitability and environmental outcomes. Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: https://www.integritysoils.co.nz/ https://www.elementalecosystems.com/ https://www.waterstories.app/ http://www.restorationag.com/Check out some of the previous expert panels: https://regenerativeskills.com/the-broad-applications-of-the-holistic-management-framework-expert-panel-6/ https://regenerativeskills.com/farm-economics-with-mark-shepard-and-michael-ableman-expert-panel-5/ https://regenerativeskills.com/regenerating-the-biology-in-your-soil-expert-panel-4/

Today’s session is an interview that I’d been looking forward to doing for a while. Since last year in fact, when I found Shane Simonsen’s blog and began corresponding with him online. That correspondence turned into one of the most popular and talked about episodes from that season due to the ingenious way that Shane approaches farming his land in Northeastern Australia.  In that first interview Shane gave an overview of the experiments in biological succession and food production on his homestead. His blog follows these experiments and speaks from a deep understanding of plants and how they live. In my opinion, it’s one of the most original approaches to large scale food production that I’ve come across in a long time and asks the simple question of “how might we still be able to produce enough food for ourselves and our communities if we no longer had access to all of the inputs and fossil fuels of our modern times.” In this episode we get to pick up where we left off last time and see how some of these plant breeding efforts have paid off. Shane speaks about how he’s shifting phases at the homestead and focusing more on refinement of his system rather than broad experiments and the increase of diversity. Now that he’s seeing results from his consistent efforts over the last 5 years, he has a better idea of what thrives, what fails, and what’s worth pursuing to greater fruition with his limited time as the primary caretaker of his land.  Beyond that we get to talk about a new book he’s writing which is something of a post post-apocalyptic future sci fi novel based on biological advancement rather than technological, which normally defines the genre. Though he’s still early in the manuscript, I loved talking about the concept of a post global collapse that envisions how our species might recover by returning to our reliance and relationships with the living world.  This conversation meanders through a lot of topics so I hope it’s not too tricky to follow along. For plant nerds like Shane and I, I think it’ll be a real treat. So let's jump right in Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: https://zeroinputagriculture.wordpress.com/