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GAME INDUSTRY TRENDS ANALYSIS 2024
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Regenerative Farming: From ‘lifeless Dust’ To Productive Farm
Regenerative farming: from ‘lifeless dust’ to productive farm
By Glenneis Kriel | 22 July 2024 | 2:05 pm
The use of regenerative farming practices has enabled Barry Meijer to restore the ‘lifeless dust’ on his farm and turn it into productive pastures for his cattle. He spoke to Glenneis Kriel about the transformation.
Bonsmara cattle are used to strip graze pastures. Photo: Glenneis Kriel
In 2010, when Barry Meijer bought Meijer’s Rust near De Rust in the Klein Karoo, the soil was bare and depleted.
Nevertheless, he managed to produce a small crop of barley and oats each year on the 14ha he had under irrigation, while he restricted his cattle to the hills and mountains, where they primarily lived off spekboom.
About seven years ago, Meijer realised he needed an ‘intervention’ to improve the water-holding capacity of the soil:
“The soil was nothing more than dust. It was dead and compacted, resulting in poor water penetration and a lot of run-off.”
This was a huge problem. The farm receives about 350mm of rain during a normal year but recorded less than 200mm per year for more than seven years, and below 100mm in one of those years, up until last year.
The drought seemed to be broken last winter, but water reserves came under pressure again this summer, when thunderstorms were not accompanied by their usual rains.
Meijer ascribes the lower rainfall to climate change:
“Climate change is real. It is resulting in lower rainfall in the Klein Karoo and shifts in the time we receive our rains. It is predicted to result in more extreme weather in future, such as droughts, heatwaves and floods, making it increasingly important to build a soil structure that can withstand these stressors.”
The manure, urine and movement of the cattle over the pastures helps to build topsoil, improve nutrient cycling and bring biodiversity to the farm.
Regenerative farming
Meijer’s search for a way to improve the water-holding capacity of his soil led him to a YouTube conversation between two regenerative agriculture pioneers, Buz Kloot and Ray Archuleta.
In the video, they discussed the importance of having ‘living roots’ in the soil and how this could improve soil structure and, in effect, the water-holding capacity of the soil. The video sparked Meijer’s transition into regenerative agriculture.
“I started reading as much as I could about regenerative agriculture and learnt the importance of building soil carbon to improve the soil structure, a favourable habitat for soil organisms, and reduce input costs,” he says.
Besides Buz Kloot and Ray Archuleta, other people who inspire Meijer’s production decisions include Gabe Brown, Dr Christine Jones, W Jehne, Graeme Sait and Dr Temple Grandin, an animal behaviour expert who advocates animal welfare practices.
Meijer explains that regenerative agriculture is based on four production principles. The first is minimum disturbance of the soil.
“In the past, I used to plough the land to loosen and improve the water-holding capacity of the soil, but this exacerbated erosion problems and resulted in a lot of topsoil washing away. These days I use a Semeato no-till seeder to plant my cover crops.”
Along with this, Meijer does not use any fertiliser or pesticide.
Diversity and living roots
The second principle is to have living roots in the soil for as long as possible, while the third emphasises the importance of having as much diversity as possible through, for instance, planting of cover crops.
Meijer plants a mixture of 16 species. This decision is founded on research results from the Jena Experiment of the German Research Foundation that investigates the relationship between biodiversity and different organisms, from communities of bacteria to mammals, as well as the impact of biodiversity on nutrient and water cycling and carbon sequestration.
Trials, which started in 2012, have found that the greater the diversity in crop species, the better the productivity, microbial diversity, soil health and stability, the water-holding capacity of the soil, and the availability of nitrogen and phosphorous.
“The Jena Experiment found that the best cover crop mixture consists of four grasses, four legumes, four tall herbs and four herb species,” Meijer says.
He uses the Green Cover Seed SmartMix Calculator to guide his planting decisions and the volume of seed that needs to be planted.
The calculator, which is available free of charge, s a custom cover crop mix based on inputs entered about the field in which the cover crops will be planted and the results a farmer wants to achieve.
The varieties Meijer planted in March 2023 and 2024, as winter crops, consisted of 3kg/ha hairy vetch, 6kg/ha winter peas, 8,4kg/ha faba beans, 9kg/ha triticale, 9kg/ha barley, 8kg/ha black oats, 8kg/ha cereal rye, 4kg/ha annual tetraploid rye grass, 4kg/ha annual diploid ryegrass, 0,8kg/ha kale, 0,6kg/ha rapeseed, 0,6kg/ha purple top, 0,9kg/ha Japanese radish, 0,7kg/ha white mustard, 0,5kg/ha plantain, 0,5kg/ha chicory and 1kg/ha of phacelia.
Livestock
Fourthly, livestock are incorporated into the farming system to improve nutrient cycling through their excretions and movement across fields.
“The cattle did not know what hit them when I moved them from the harsh mountains and hills onto the pastures. Today, they play a vital role in unlocking the full potential of the farm,” Meijer says.
Meijer currently has 100 Bonsmara cows, with a few calves, which strip-graze the pastures at a high density. Their movement is controlled with the use of an electrical wire.
Meijer does not like giving the cattle a lick but is using it now to improve the palatability of the pastures because of the dry conditions.
While reproduction is not manipulated, roughly 90% of the cows produce calves from June to September, when food is more abundant. The cattle are sold when they are about 18 months old and weigh 450kg.
His cattle pen is based on Grandin’s designs, aimed at easing the management of animals and improving animal welfare.
These include the use of curved walls to reduce stress by preventing animals from seeing too far ahead, no dead-ends, the use of non-slip floors and ramps that are not steeper than 25 degrees.
He points out that he has two breeding goals, namely fertility and temperament: “Cattle that do not have a good temperament are culled. You need to be able to work the animals easily and without any fear.”
Fruitlook
About five years ago, Meijer started using remote sensing technology, called Fruitlook, to help him make better-informed management decisions.
“I learnt about Fruitlook while attending a grazing seminar at the Outeniqua Research Farm and was surprised to discover it was fully subsidised and therefore free of charge.”
The technology gives weekly s of the biomass availability on the farm, in total dry matter of crop per kg/ha, which Meijer uses to gauge the availability of feed and in effect the number of animals he can stock.
Fruitlook gives weekly evaporation rates, which Meijer uses to guide his irrigation decisions.
“I try to replace about 80% of what has evaporated. I will apply 105% of the evaporation rate in the first few days after a pasture was grazed and reduce this to 70% once the pasture starts to cover the soil again. This, obviously, is not possible when you are stuck without water in a drought,” he says.
Fruitlook also gives weekly indications of the amount of nitrogen in the upper leaf layers of the crops. Meijer points out that the cattle spend about 12 hours on a 240x12m strip before they are moved to the next strip. To ensure the recovery of the pastures, the cattle only returned to the same strip 40 days after it had been grazed.
With Fruitlook, however, Meijer has discovered that the pastures are ready to be grazed again once the nitrogen content is about 50kg/ha.
“Fruitlook helps to take the guesswork out of my grazing management decisions,” he says.
Meijer says that Fruitlook pixels are 12x12m, so give an indication of when plants are suffering stress. When this happens, he goes to the problem spot to investigate the cause.
In most cases, the stress is caused by under-irrigation because of broken or blocked sprinklers.
Pastures are left to rest until a nitrogen content of 50kg/ha is reached.
The future
Meijer produced about 12t of dry matter per hectare when he started using regenerative farming methods and this has increased every year since then to reach 48t/ha in 2023. “I am producing much more dry matter now than I thought possible,” he says.
Meijer believes that regenerative farming is the solution to climate change, high debt levels and rising input costs:
“High input costs and debt levels have made it increasingly difficult for farmers to remain profitable, with bad weather making things even more difficult. To survive, farmers would have to start doing things differently and focus more on bringing life back to the soil,” he says.
“Regenerative farming often leads to slightly lower yields, but the lower input costs help to make up for that. It has the advantage of improving the health of your soil, which in turn renders crops more resilient, healthier to eat and means that your land will still be viable for future generations.”
Email Barry Meijer at Bmeijer@aol.com.
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