Over the past few years, at Mindrum, we have focused our regenerative farming journey on the soil, the ground and the part we play in this system. Whilst I suspect, this is an inevitable response to the fascinating challenges associated with a fundamental change of management system, I’m beginning to think that the social landscape within which we are operating has changed. That change is not trivial!
To give you a bit of context, we have just grabbed a couple of weeks in one of those elusive convergences of a gap in the diary and a gap in the weather to visit Italy as a family. The ‘children’ are on the point of fledging, and we thought it would be an opportunity to combine a bit of family time with a chance to explore some different ground. I must confess to being something of a nightmare to go on holiday with, as I am fascinated by how people operate in different contexts and can rarely resist looking over hedges or fences in search of insights and inspiration. Inevitably this does tend to take us off the beaten track and into areas where life isn’t driven by the tourist experience.
One of the most striking things for me is the way that many of the Italian communities are still connected to the ground. Whilst there are the inevitable grumblings from some of the senior generation that the ‘young’ are less interested, it was clear that the communities remain incredibly grounded and connected. We went to a local fair to celebrate the role of wild boar in the local economy, one evening. The event had drawn many locals and was peppered with family groups with several generations surrounded by orbiting swarms of small children. The food was clearly locally sourced as it was in the local shop. Chatting to some long suffering locals in my embarrassingly non existent Italian, it became clear that where many seasonal staples are concerned, the community is pretty self sufficient and folk seemed surprised that this was surprising to me!
Whilst it’s clear that regional history, property law and politics have resulted in fragmentation of many landholdings with the challenges that this brings, i was struck by the strong culture of local and home production, with locally produced food evident in shops and supermarkets. Most folk seemed to be growing food of some description. I’m not that old… but it reminded me a bit of my childhood when everyone at home grew many of their own vegetables.
Nowadays a few people at home have small gardens, but I’m not aware of many folk (apart from my amazing mother) who routinely grow an own significant proportion of their food. Whilst we have a few raised beds in which we grow a few vegetables and some fruit in season. I’m afraid we still depend on the supermarket for our staples. Even the communal fruit trees we planted along the back of the farm cottages for the cottage community go largely untended and their fruits largely lie unharvested whilst people, presumably, spend their hard earned cash on fruit flown in from other parts of the world.
On the other hand, I’m continually inspired by the small number of friends and associates who are highly effective or at least enthusiastic producers, whether in gardens, allotments or even clusters of window boxes, but these enlightened individuals seem to be the exception rather than the rule!
As a community, we seem to have have changed the way we consume. This does have advantages in terms of choice and availability of out of season products, but we seem to have distanced ourselves from the ground, and I’m not sure that is a good thing!
Like every gardener and farmer… I am adamant that what we do grow tastes better (obviously!). For years, I have always secretly assumed that this was actually a figment of my Imagination…. But having learned a bit about regenerative farming over recent years, and watched livestock on naturally grown diverse pasture, I’m beginning to see that it might just make sense to link taste and the production system!
We have started some permaculture and agroforestry projects, and are experimenting at small scale with approaches like biodynamics with a view to deciding whether they might support the wider regenerative organic farming operation, we are beginning to learn how to knit together the amazingly diverse set of tools in the regenerative toolkit at a production level. In short, we are beginning to see how a profitable, (genuinely) sustainable regenerative production sector might really look and looking at the part we might play in that sector
I’m also beginning to really understand, on the basis of watching my livestock performance and behaviour, that the link between nutrient density, natural production models and health is worth taking seriously. A combination of observed evidence and supporting reading has led me to care more about what my food ate and how it was produced. There are many excellent and accessible books and papers on this. It’s increasingly clear that the impacts of this in terms of health and global sustainability are likely to outweigh short term nutrition.
What I’m less certain about is whether we, as a society, have the collective will to change our shifting lifestyles, habits and expectations so that we can reap the benefits of a renewed relationship with the ground.
I don’t mean to sound negative,but society is so incredibly well served that it see that we are losing sight of our own roles and responsibilities in this ecosystem. We expect our rubbish to be removed, our sewerage to be processed and carefully selected food to appear on supermarket shelves. We complain about water companies’ lack of performance but think little about flushing non degradable wipes down the loo or pouring fat down the sink. (As someone responsible for keeping these services working in our tiny on farm system, people would be shocked if they realised how easily it is to identify perpetrators from their flushed unmentionables in a blockage!).
We are all part of a bigger picture and everything we do or fail to do, may have an impact, whether or not we can see it. It’s easy to become disconnected from the rest of the system we share, but this doesn’t mean we aren’t having an impact or responsibility for those impacts.
This in part is a function of the way we access our food. The economics of scale associated with large scale food retail drive a buffer between food producers and consumers. This brings convenience, global access and suppressed costs. The real price we pay, however, is that our food is selected by criteria that serve a highly competitive retail sector rather than our direct interests as customers.
As customers of large retailers, our position and power in the ecosystem shifts from consumers of product to consumers of a product curation and delivery service. The more powerful the retailer, the more the products will reflect retail objectives, rather than our customer objectives. That might be an acceptable price to pay, so long as we are happy with the true cost …and trust the retail sector to really act in our interests. That is a choice we all make when we choose our retailers.
A few years ago, every high street sported a number of butchers, bakers, fruit shops and the like. They would all have the things they we good at and many would source direct from Farms and local, often amateur, growers. This retail layer has largely disappeared as we have switched our spending power to large retailers. We haven’t just lost our local retailers and our high streets, we have lost our link to the ground. We never noticed, at least not until it was too late.
As an example, today in the UK, every cow that enters the food chain is issued a passport within days of birth which accompanies it through its entire life. If it is not clear at the point of purchase how and where your beef was produced, then question whether your retailer, whatever they may claim, is really interested in delivering a quality product or whether they are actually farming you and your wallet or purse! Ironically, any good high street butcher will know where their meat came from and what kind of system it was produced in. Why not ask next time you visit a supermarket! The traceability is there if we choose to demand it. If a butcher can’t tell you where your meat came from, can they really claim to be delivering a quality product?
So where do we go from here….? I’m not sure there are any silver bullets. I do think, however, that we all have a part to play. We do need to think through the impacts of our decisions and try to inform our choices. This isn’t easy, but by taking an active interest in what we are consuming, whether a food or a service, and how it reaches us, we can increase our connection to the wider ecosystem of which we are, ourselves, both part and product.
There are many crocodiles swimming round canoe at the moment, locally as well as globally. A glance at history shows that whilst government policy is important, it is unlikely to be consistent or reliable in meaningful timescales if we don’t engage on the ground. Taking an active interest in how our food is produced is a great first step!
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