Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
309 Bridget Emmett – Moving over carbon soil compaction is the real issue in agriculture
A conversation with Bridget Emmett, a principal scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and a board member of the EU Mission Soil. Bridget shares her inspiring journey from a passionate botany student to a leading soil scientist, revealing the critical, yet often overlooked, intricacies of soil health. We explore its complex structure, teeming biodiversity, and indispensable role in sustaining life, all while diving into the cutting-edge technologies like remote sensing and digital twins that are revolutionizing soil monitoring and conservation.
We'll discuss the urgent need to expand regenerative agricultural practices beyond early adopters to the broader farming community, tackling challenges such as rising costs and climate change. Bridget stresses the importance of effective communication and tailored advisory support from policymakers, shedding light on how these elements can facilitate a smoother transition to sustainable farming methods.
From the strengths and limitations of satellite technology in soil health monitoring to the groundbreaking potential of digital twins, in this episode Bridget delves into the critical issue of soil compaction and the role of advanced machinery, robotics, and sensors in preventing it. We'll also examine the intricate balance between farming practices and their environmental impacts, the transition to plant-based diets, and the concept of a circular economy in agriculture.
This podcast is part of the AI 4 Soil Health project which aims to help farmers and policy makers by providing new tools powered by AI to monitor and predict soil health across Europe. For more information visit ai4soilhealth.eu.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This work has received funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant numbers 10053484, 1005216, 1006329].
This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
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A conversation with one of the leading soil scientists in Europe on the EU mission soil and what's the role of technology remote sensing, digital twins, etc. And what role policy should and could play. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet.
Speaker 1:This podcast is part of the AI for Soil Health project, which aims to help farmers and policymakers by providing new tools powered by AI to monitor and predict soil health across Europe. For more information, visit AI4SoilHealtheu or find the link below. Welcome to another episode today with the principal scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and a member of the board of the EU Mission for Soil. Welcome.
Speaker 2:Bridget, Lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:And we always start with a personal question and how do you end up focusing I usually adjust it a bit, Like most of your awake time basically on soil. What's the journey into that? And we hear many, many different versions, of course, from people born on a farm to absolutely not born on a farm but stumbled into it. But I love to start with that question how do you end up spending most of your awake time talking about soil, researching soil, thinking about soil and all of that?
Speaker 2:So I actually started as a botanist. My degree is in botany, so it was plants I loved first, and then I was inspired by a professor who managed to convince me that plants can't do anything without soil, and so I did my PhD in soil and then you just get pulled in. I mean it's one of the hidden wonders of the world, but not very loved. I mean, as kids we tend to love playing in muddy puddles and getting all messy and digging in it, and our experience is when we show kids all the little animals that are in soils, they just love their amazing looks frankly weird and scary looks. They love it. But we kind of lose this when we're adults and we just think of soil as dirt or mud.
Speaker 2:And for me perhaps there's something about there's lots of people fighting for tigers and pandas and biodiversity and what have you. But in soil there's a real job to do. There are not so many champions for soil and so that means that if you move into it there's a real opportunity to make a difference. And for me at least, I want to spend my time doing a job where I can actually help make change and move things along. I'm not a core academic where I just want to do things so that I understand it myself. I actually want to make a difference in the world, if that doesn't sound too awfully pretentious. And in soil we have a big job to do, and so, by chance, I suppose, I moved into an area that really has got a lot of opportunities to make that difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I mean, I think the neglected piece is what attracts many as well to regeneration in general within the climate discussion and biodiversity, and there's a lot more attention for electric mobility and for energy transition and food and ag is really not on the list. It's changing, but then you still need to like it because otherwise you're not going to spend decades in something that needs to be done and not many people are doing it, but I'm not really interested. That's not going to fly. So what is so intriguing and what keeps you working on something that is objectively needs to be done and not very crowded in terms of space, but still it needs to be something that pulls you in as well, otherwise you're not spending most of your awake hours and not talking to me as well on a Friday after a very busy week.
Speaker 2:I just find it's fascinating the sheer length of time that it takes to build soil and then when you go and actually look at it, they're hugely variable and within that space you just can look at it and go, oh, it's brown or it's red or it's what have you. But when you really start to unpick it you have to work at it to sort of understand it's got structure, it's like a house, it's got you need it to be, and have air holes and water and what have you, such that then all the microbes and animals can live in it. So every time you keep looking at it you go well, the physical structure is going to be right and the chemistry or, if you like, the food has to be right, such that the soil can actually be alive. And for most people the idea that soil is alive is just not really there. And yet we know 25% approximately of global biodiversity lives in the soil.
Speaker 2:So I like the fact that the more and more you go into it you actually expose more and more. You can just look at it and say it's just mud, but what have you? But whenever you start to study it it just opens up whole new worlds of things that we need to understand, and we do understand a lot, and that's one of the frustrations. I think we do need to have new science and technology and understand it more and I have that side of my life but we also know quite a lot already and we just need to make those things happen to protect them and restore our soil. And it's that thing of actually now trying to get some of our knowledge into the real world and actually making a difference, which is where a lot of us are now sitting, that we have our academic work exploring soil and understanding how it works, but we really really need to make that translation into making a difference out there, because we know we're in trouble.
Speaker 1:We've just forgotten about soil for so long that we now have quite a job of work to get to do to get it back to full health and if you look at like the things we know in the, in the lab or in science, but we don't know, let's say outside what's the biggest piece, you would tell. Let's cut this in two pieces To farmers and land managers that people should really know, that are actively managing our soils, and then we'll go to the policymakers, et cetera. But let's start with people that are actively working the land, managing land. What is the piece that you would love them to to know tomorrow that we already know in science? Let's say, but isn't common knowledge yet on who's managing the land?
Speaker 2:well I think some amazing farmers and land managers are already getting this that it isn't just a medium. It is a an alive thing that if we work with it it can help us. It is an alive thing that if we work with it it can help us. And so in a way, we've kind of circumvented a lot of the natural processes in soil using the plow and using inorganic fertilizers. So we basically tried to sort of say, ok, we can still just do monocultures, have compaction. We don't need to work with legumes which can fix nitrogen in the atmosphere, because we can circumvent that and add in inorganic fertilizers.
Speaker 2:I think what particularly farmers doing regenerative agriculture our understanding is, if you take a step back and that's a huge risk to take if it's your livelihood, then you you know some if you do more rotations, more mixtures, building legumes into your system, give a bit of space for nature to allow natural predators to happen, soil can actually reduce your costs over time and also increase stability of your yield.
Speaker 2:So one of the things when I've talked to farmers is overall production of course is important, but predictability of the yield you're going to get is really important. And if we work with our soils such that we're not just plowing, plowing, plowing chemicals, fertilizer, but more letting those natural processes happen production. You might not have some of the really big peaks, but you'll have a more consistent and more resilient yield. So it's that what I'm hoping is more and more farmers can be supported in taking that transition to working, I mean, with nature, kind of put some people off, but just working with the natural processes rather than just trying to circumvent them with the plow and fertilizers. That's what I think many of us are trying to circumvent them with the plow and fertilizers.
Speaker 1:That's what I think many of us are trying to achieve here yeah, and I heard somebody say yes two days ago like I'm using nature and of course using is an interesting term here but to do a lot of the very expensive pieces for free, or at least in a in a different, in different way, do you feel that this message of working with nature or whatever words we use there because words are very important and can put people off immediately or not, that that message the last years is starting to land in a different way? Of course I'm in the bubble of regeneration and it seems like it, but it also could just mean that my little bubble is getting slightly bigger. And but you, within another bubble of the science piece and the policy piece and with the EU, et cetera, does it feel like some momentum, at least with the farmer world, to the importance of that six inches under our feet?
Speaker 2:Oh you're going with the six inches. Yeah, I think there is definitely something happening. So that population, that little bubble that you were describing, is getting bigger and it's interesting because that, how it seems to propagate through the farming community, isn't governments beating people up and, you know, academics telling people what to do, it's farmers going. Well, I tried it and it seems to work. And look at this so that peer-to-peer learning does really happen.
Speaker 2:So creating those farming clusters such that people can learn together, supported by really high quality advice, I think really matters. So, for example, if you go into herbal lays, there's quite a lot of things that mean you have to you can't do you have to do a whole system approach in your farm about how you manage your animals, how soon you can put them on the land, you know, how quickly you need to take them off for the winter. You know there's quite a lot in that space, over and above of just saying perhaps herbal lays is good for soil and good for more resilient stuff. There's then, well, how do I manage that to make it work?
Speaker 1:What is a herbal lay just for people in the back?
Speaker 2:Sorry, a herbal lay is where you have in your rotations you create, you put in not grass species but other species such as particularly leguminous clovers and things like that, to just help rebuild the soil. So you basically give a gap in your rotation to allow some herbs and legumes to help build organic matter and nitrogen up into the soil, and that grazing is good quality for your animals. But, for example, some of the herbs are not quite as robust as some of the grasses, as a farmer was telling me recently. So he has to delay putting his animals out a bit later and bring them in a bit earlier, and that means he needs to have somewhere else to put his animals early on. So you can't just do it at a field level, you have to think about it as a whole farming system, if you like.
Speaker 1:And beyond the farm yeah, I think I'm just really inspired with a lot of almost forces people to think in clusters with neighbors and start really thinking um, like this is very difficult to do on a farm level, depends on the size of your farm, but like, let's say, in general, um, like competing with your neighbors, for for many things it's just not going to work. Like, how do we, how do we get out of that um system and and into much more shared processing land in that sense because you need to go somewhere with your animals uh, machinery there's, there's a lot of things that we shouldn't be doing, uh, one by one, but should be doing in a more collective way. Um, anyway, sorry, that's a bit of things that we shouldn't be doing one by one but should be doing in a more collective way. Anyway, sorry, that's a bit of a side step, but it is a big limiting factor.
Speaker 2:It is, and of course, machinery, at least here in the UK, people have. Very often, you know, one farmer buys it and then they rent out to each other. This is not new. But going back to that whole population, we are not going to shift this by. I'm going to give a percentage here, the 20 percent, which is a very generous number of farmers doing regen ag here in the UK. We've then got the middle lot of farmers who are just keeping going with tradition. You know it's a tough world and they're just carrying on.
Speaker 2:And then I am going to say that we do have a poor tale of farmers that perhaps are really not doing the right thing, break regs and spoil it for everybody.
Speaker 2:And what we've got to do is get that top 20% that we often invite these farmers to give talks on.
Speaker 2:It's very expiring, but unless that 10, 20% becomes 80% of the population, this is just not going to change the EU as a whole and we really need to get on top of the ones at the bottom who do get the fines and just break the regulations. And when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about people who do it on purpose. This, you know, there's scientists that breach our rules of how we're supposed to act as scientists. So it's not like farmers are unique in having a few bad eggs. We all, all our communities have them and we need to get on top of that, because that just doesn't help bring the public along if they see farmers doing the wrong thing, and it's a small percentage, but we need to get on top of it. But moving on is this big lump in the middle of farmers who we have to encourage and help transition, learning from these early adopters that are already in that space, and some people have been doing it for a couple of decades now, which is just so impressive.
Speaker 1:And so, getting to the policy side, is that a similar message? You would say, like science knows, plow inorganic fertilizer. There are many ways to reduce, like we we talked about what to tell to farmers and that big lump in the middle, um, should see it, probably with their own eyes and getting inspired every day. You see farmers getting to the, the big festivals, like scrap, like groundswell, getting inspired on youtube, getting inspired by their neighbor, etc. Etc. And going on the journey. Of course, there's a lot of support needed there to to speed that up and to make that way less bumpy and way less difficult. But on the policy side, um, what? What would you like to communicate? Let's say, in a room full of of policymakers, they say look, science has established this actually quite a while back. It would be nice if everybody knew this. What would be that message?
Speaker 2:So that message, because of course, here in the UK we are trying to recreate CAP all by ourselves now and I'm quite involved in both what the English government is doing and the Welsh government is doing, and I'm not sure we're finding it any easier than the EU is saying, because the farmers are had a really tough time fertilizer prices, commodity prices, climate changes really creating extreme events. So I think it's about the main thing is about communication. So I think we're all not we're failing at the moment because there can be a bit of a top down approach from government trying to tell say, we know what's right and we're going to pay you to do this, rather than I think we've got a gap where we really need advisors and people to go onto the farms and sort of say so for this farm, what's needed, you know what would work with you. And some of the governments are trying to do that to try and find the options that we know work. They're not snake oil salesmen, you know. They're not overselling things that we know work. They're not snake oil salesmen. They're not overselling things that don't work. They are actually proposing things that work but that would work within the farm system for that location and with the resources that that farmer actually has, because every farm is different. They have different levels of debt, different levels of capitalization, different levels of skills, and I think also with some of this, we just forget that bit. And that's where the peer-to-peer learning comes in. Where do we have the skills and how can we help people learn which technology to invest in going forward?
Speaker 2:So my big messages to government are only fund things that actually work and that you know.
Speaker 2:Don't keep funding things that we just know don't really deliver at scale. And the second is when you're trying to bring these new schemes in, we need to do it together. We need to do it in partnership with the farmers rather than just top down. You know saying it because with the green finance available now, there's a real risk that farmers will just vote with their feet. They've been very used to the public payment system, but green finance is coming along and they might just walk away from government funding anyway and take the green finance and then government loses all control over what's actually happening. And some green finance is great and we can go into that, but you know, if government wants to influence this, we really need to get these public payment schemes right and supporting and working partnership with green finance, rather than people just giving up on the public, you know schemes and just going with green finance which unfortunately sometimes can be just about chasing one thing which is at the very often carbon and soil health.
Speaker 1:And what we need in whole sustainable and resilient farming and forestry schemes, I would say, is over and above just carbon, which tends to be where the green finance is at the moment, which worries me yeah, it's a fascinating point if, if you don't redesign incentive structures, a big risk is farmers will go for other finance structures, and that could be solar parks, it could be ecliptus plantations somewhere else probably not in the UK, but it could be a very singular piece because that's usually how some other finance schemes are designed. So people will turn somewhere else if you don't keep them engaged and they're not obliged, obviously, to use government incentives. And so I never thought about you you might lose your influence if you don't design that properly, which is super difficult because it has to be context-specific, like you mentioned before. It has to be location-specific and we know how difficult it is to design something that works everywhere and works in every context.
Speaker 2:And I think we've lost. Well, it was really fascinating sitting on the EU mission board nearly every country when so the UK used to have advisors, a whole system of advisors who would come onto your land and they would be super respected people who could really help, and we lost them. There's no accredited independent advisory service really, and actually that was quite common across EU countries. So one of the things that you'll notice in the EU mission is that whole suggestion that when we go and ask farmers or foresters they want to do and there's an intersection there with agroforestry and they say we really want to do the right thing. But what is it? Where do you go for that advice? There is no, and you know, at the moment, when you actually ask a lot of farmers where they get their advice from, they'll say, oh, it's from the tractor tire company that comes because they visit me every year. Or the fertilizer company. They visit me every year and they advise me.
Speaker 2:Is that really where we want the advice to come from? No disrespect to those people. They're doing their job, but we're looking for whole system changes and I think we need to think about how we support farmers to do the right thing, and I think we need to think about how we support farmers to do the right thing they can't. Yes, peer-to-peer learning, but we do know quite a lot. And couldn't we train up a whole other generation of consultants who really are trained in this? More systems thinking that could help farmers at a cluster level, perhaps Farm by farm by farm is quite hard because there's so many farms in the EU.
Speaker 1:But if we can deal with that at cluster level, where they have an advisor that knows what the evidence is and knows what the particular situation of that cluster is. That just seems to me that it would accelerate this transition that we need. And what do you see the role of technology in this transition or in this help? Specifically, of course, we look with Mission Soil on the open source side, we look at digital twins, remote sensing, like a lot of things that seem to be possible now that weren't maybe five years ago or cost 10 times or 100 times as much a few years ago. What do you see this role of technology for this transition, or how to enable more complexity on the land and more farmers to go on this journey with the comfort or with the confidence let's say, that actually they're doing something that is meaningful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's quite a lot in that space, so let's break it down. So if we first of all do remote sentings, so satellites, LIDAR, things like that. So there's two levels. There's some fabulous work being done in some of the countries of the UK these days where they're combining satellite information with LIDAR information to give specific individual maps to farms to say, here's your farm, here is where you have ephemeral streams that will really cause potential flood and erosion risks. And also, if you've got soils data that is going over a particular piece of soil that's stuffed full of nitrogen and phosphorus and it just brings it alive to a farmer to actually have a map of their own farm identifying risk areas and what have you, so that they can then farm it a bit differently. So satellites can really help in suggesting and it's particularly the LIDAR, because it shows the lay of the land and where water likes to run. And of course, one of the issues is where soil is. We need to keep soil on the field and not in our rivers. And the soil that does go to the rivers it really, really must not be stocked full of nitrogen and phosphorus, because that affects our waters and our coastal and our fish. So there's really useful ways that it can be done at a local, for a farmer level. And then, if I jump to the national level and EU level, satellites can help us monitor how we are doing. Are we achieving our goals Now?
Speaker 2:First of all, satellites can be oversold. Sometimes Satellites cannot see beneath vegetation canopies, so they are never going to tell us about the status of soil. They can tell us how much bare earth we have, bare soil, which is not great, and they can tell us tillage, when something's going in and out, so they can tell us the level of tillage. And they can also tell us which crop type we have or land use we have. Those are all really important drivers of soil health change. So satellites can also help us track the drivers of soil health damage and also improvement. But one of the things that all of us, including the JRC who run the Lucas soil monitoring program, is we will never. Satellites will never replace going into a field and taking soil measurements, taking samples, sending them to the lab. Satellites just cannot do that. It will never tell you how much nitrogen you've got in their soil or how many contaminants you've got in the soil or how many earthworms you've got in your soil. It might be able to tell you whether the land use you're doing might be driving that up or down, but we just have to be really careful because it has been oversold.
Speaker 2:I have been asked you know it just sounds like really old science, Bridget to go out into the field and take soil samples. Really, are we not better than that? And you know satellites can do it, and I spend my life telling people no, we bring these things together. There are great scanners where you might be able to take your core and then scan it in the field rather than putting it to the lab, but it's an amalgamation of those great sensors with the classic field, with the satellite we need, and that. Those days of where one or other is trying to fight for all the money I really hope is gone. We need all three and the days of overselling satellites. I kind of hope has gone, but they're absolutely fabulous. What we're doing with satellite now is great, so I spend my life going. They're great, but they don't do everything If that doesn't make isn't that too complicated a message.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely, because I think for investors and people in the space that are looking at this with an investor hat, it's often difficult I mean, you mentioned snake oil already before but often difficult to see, because they see this text, this presentation, this PowerPoint where the world is soiled. Let's say this is easy peasy, you're in your office, you can see everything two feet down, it doesn't matter. But if you don't have the technical background, if you don't have the technical background, if you don't have the scientific background, it's very difficult to to filter the noise for the real music, let's say, and I think what often happens is either you fall for it, which is a problem because you lose money, most likely, or you just get sort of, um, you get pushed away like it's too complex to to understand, because I don't have the mental frameworks to to understand, so I won't do anything. So you got sort of paralyzed and I think both, both of those are a problem, because both of those means that there's not going to be action where we want action, um, so it's very good to just keep repeating satellites can do a lot, but don't get too, too enthusiastic, um, and there's no magic there. But they get better and better and we can look closer and closer and more details and and all of that. And there's no magic there, but they get better and better and we can look closer and closer and more details and and all of that. And there are amazing layers, um, but you, yeah, it doesn't replace at all getting into into the field measure, which is getting better as well. We get to see in-field measurements now starting to take off.
Speaker 1:Finally, because sending stuff to the lab is not only very costly but very timely as well and just doesn't give you the immediate management decisions you might need to take. Because if it takes two weeks for things to go back or more like infields, bricks, millimeters and sap analysis is a revolution or will be a revolution as well in terms of at the plant level. So a lot is happening there. And then what is still missing? We'll get to the other technology pieces. Let's go there actually first, like digital twins, which is a whole different suite of creating, if I understand correctly, creating a digital twin and a virtual digital twin of a farm or of a landscape as well, to follow, of course, what is really happening and see different scenarios or what could happen or might have happened if you do different practices and things like that. That seems also a relatively new technology because of computing power that has just become so much cheaper and so much more powerful.
Speaker 2:So digital twins the words tend to be used, the words tend to be used. So we've always had modeling right which allows you to look, you know, to look at current, you know past trends and look into the future. As I understand digital twins, it's about trying to bring together the data streams we really have with the models to sort of say this is happening and then, if your data stream starts to deviate from what your models are doing, because no model is right I'm just going to emphasize what a model is is our best hypothesis now, ok, and it's a simplified hypothesis. So the digital twins are ways of bringing up that. So models tend to be all equations and data was over here and digital twins kind of bring the two of them together and so we can kind of look at real time what is going on and try and track it Now. Yes, then you can run your models into the future.
Speaker 2:But digital twins are almost like about real alerts, about consolidating continually how your data and your overall understanding is happening at whatever spatial scale you want. That can be at farm level or that can be a national level or a regional level. So it's really, in a way, it's new, but in a way it's just combining. It's like the satellite. It's about combining technologies we already had, and the power of computing and data science means we can just do it in near real time now. And it's that efficiency of bringing together data and then visualizing that data in ways that are useful that could help us.
Speaker 1:And then, what does enable that for a farmer to do differently than before? What's the use case? But what's the most exciting piece?
Speaker 2:Well, for me, one of the things is looking at so a lot of what we're looking at. So there are acute events you know maceration event that's just an absolute nightmare. But a lot of what we're looking at is very slow, chronic change, and so digital twins can kind of warn you. You're doing this just slowly, year on year, nibbling off your soil carbon and arable systems. So that's what's happened. It's actually a really low, slow rate where we've lost soil carbon in our arable systems. It's 0.4 percent per year. You know I I can't as a soil scientist, I can't detect every year 0.4, but over a period of time it's measurable. So for digital twins, it's where it can provide early alerts and warnings. As to the management approaches, you're doing is slowly driving your system upwards, which is great, or perhaps downwards, and it's a way of consolidating all the different data you have, such that you can see that you are actually improving or not improving.
Speaker 2:Now, to make that work at a farm level is actually, I think, really challenging. Most digital twins I know are about are more at national level, because when we say, you know, to actually model a farm system is actually really hard because you're trying to model the soil, all the different crops, the economics, everything. So, within a digital twin, you have to decide what is a digital twin of. Is it a digital twin of soil health? Is it a digital twin of production? Is it a digital twin of what is it?
Speaker 2:You're talking about climate extremes. You know what is it a digital twin of? Because we've got models that do all those things and some models have tried to bring that all together and then it's just enormous. So it's quite challenging. Bring that all together and then it's just enormous. So it's quite challenging. And I just want to manage expectations of digital twins at individual farm levels and I rather think that some of the things I was talking about were individual maps. Risk maps of, say, erosion and eutrophication risk might be at least an early start of what we do. But digital twins at the national scale to just enable countries or funders to know we are slowly driving our soils into the ground or we are turning a corner, improving them, and we know that, not on a 10-year cycle but in a more near real-time approach.
Speaker 1:That means that we can take earlier action when things are not going as we want and do you see examples of regions and or countries that are are doing that, um, that are starting to take their soils? Let's say seriously, um, and and as their one of their main assets and one of their main, which is slowly eroding in most places, literally and internally as well? Who is taking this most seriously of the ones you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a few countries, but in a way I kind of sort of say, if you're not monitoring your soil, you're probably not taking it seriously. And in the EU, I'm now going to quote which I hate to do numbers, but there's very few countries in the EEA that actually have a national soil monitoring program. And if you're not monitoring your soils you can't be taking it seriously, because we can't manage what we don't measure.
Speaker 2:Nobody is the answer I think it's less than 10 countries have a national monitoring program. Germany have national monitoring. There are countries the UK has a national monitoring program. Germany has a national monitoring program. Germany has a national monitoring program but, as the EU mission says, we've got very little, so most countries aren't monitoring it. Those countries that do monitor it, they have very little regulation and incentive and policies wrapped around soil.
Speaker 2:The lack of a soil directive basically meant that if you were strapped for time and money and what have you as a government, you just went oh and so if we look after biodiversity and water and air, soil will kind of look after itself, because it is at that nub in the middle. And what we've discovered is that was absolutely false. By the time you have water damage, the soils are completely broken. For nutrients to leak through soil, that means you've saturated every pore in your soil with nutrients and then it leaks to water. So there was kind of a misunderstanding that if we just monitored everything else, soils would look after themselves. And that is how we've got into this space where we now know that waters didn't tell us anything about carbon being lost from soil and a lot of countries had no idea as to what their erosion levels were, which was one of the big issues Contaminant levels.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a required reporting requirement, so I'm not sure you know there's a few countries that are leading the way in terms of you know I'm just going to speak up for my own country.
Speaker 2:It's, at least in our, one of our national indicators.
Speaker 2:So in Wales, where I live, there's a legislation called the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and that has over 40 national indicators, which is economic indicators, health indicators, all the things you would think of.
Speaker 2:Soil is one of our indicators at a national level of how we are doing as a nation, and we think there's a very small handful of countries around the world that actually has soil as one of its indicators as to how well they are doing, and Wales is one of them and I'm very proud of it for doing that. Now, whether we are actually doing better than anyone on the ground is a whole nother thing, but at least we've got policy in place that says we're going to track our soils and we're going to try and shift it to at least be the same, if not improve it, and we've got a monitoring and program in place to be able to report on it, so that all seems elements of what you need to take soil seriously. And now in Wales, as with many other places, we've got to actually now help the land managers, whether that's in forestry or in urban or in farming, to take the actions needed to move that signal forward, because at the moment the signal of soil health is not actually shifting.
Speaker 1:We've perhaps stopped further decline, but we're not improving things. And coming back to what you said before, like, we do know a lot of things in science, but there is a lot we don't know. Imagine we're doing this in a room of impact investors, or investors in general, people managing wealth. What would be your piece Actually, what would be amazing if we knew this and this and this? What you should really look into funding would be X, y, z. What are big areas that are top on your list if you would be able to nudge, let's say, some people that are managing resources to uncover Is it the earthworm side? What are pieces that are absolutely top on your priority list to discover, to dive into?
Speaker 2:So I think some of the new technologies with respect to machinery and sensors and robotics and things like that are going to be transformational. One of the things that I get very upset about is soil compaction. It's very unsexy. So everyone gets very excited about an earthworm, but basically and we all spend money on eDNA and soil, molecular, but we forget that all these microbes and animals have to live in a house it's called soil, and animals have to live in a house it's called soil. And if that soil is completely squished, become just a really heavy, dense bit of soil, then they've got no space to leave, there's no oxygen, they can't move plant roots can't get to depth what have you? So compaction is a massive issue and we have a lot of farm machinery that goes onto the land and we our climate is getting, we're getting wetter winters and drier summers. That's the uk scenario. So trying to find machinery, robotics and what have you that just saves us from going onto the land with these, with our traditional vehicles that just completely compact the land is really you know. I just think that's one of the areas and it's coming along.
Speaker 2:There is, there are things there and also new technologies that will help match fertilizer need with crop need would be just really great. So at the moment, as you say, if you have to take a soil sample, send it away, and actually many farmers don't even do this to check what fertilizer they need to add. So actually many farmers don't even do this to check what fertilizer they need to add. So a lot of farmers don't even do that. They just say I always put 100 kilograms on this field. They don't even check whether they need it.
Speaker 2:But it would be great if sensors could actually say more, what we do, and that, of course, is totally available to the big arable farmers. But we don't really do that in our grassland systems and our extensive systems. So just trying to make some of these technologies more routine and available to all the farming sector rather than just the big arable farmers, I think is something that we should really do. But I do think technology in terms of machinery, sensors and robotics is an area that I think that could be a real game changer in many ways.
Speaker 1:And if you would be, let's say, at the helm of an investment fund of, let's say, a billion sterling like a lot of money what would you focus on? I'm not looking for exact pound amounts, I'm not looking for things behind the comma, but I'm definitely looking for what you would prioritize. Where would go the biggest chunk of your investments? Could be very long-term investments, but it has to come back at some point, preferably. What would you focus on?
Speaker 2:So I'd probably go back to trying to create a risk fund or a payment scheme to enable people to do the scary transition at a whole system level into more rotational, diverse systems with very scarily probably less livestock, Because the ruminant emissions are just really hard, are going to be really hard for some of us who have grassy nations to compensate for. But in a way I want to push back on the question. The idea that there's one silver bullet is actually what stops us doing things, because everyone's looking for the big silver bullet and I don't think and the EU mission. We have a suite of ambitions and aims for a reason because we've got to do it from multiple levels. We need to change the whole understanding of soil and soil literacy and appreciation of soil, so we have that whole side of things. We need to provide the support and advisors to people who want to do the right thing to do it. We need to fund farmers clusters so that they can do peer to peer learning. We need to fund the new innovative technologies to do it. So the idea is like when we were trying to find a way through for fossil fuels, we went there's going to be one technology that will get us away from fossil fuels, and actually what we've worked out it was about more efficiency, some solar, some wind, some this, some that.
Speaker 2:Looking for one silver bullet is actually what stops us just saying we'll have 10% of this and 20% of that and 5%, and then that all adds up to the whole piece, and so it probably doesn't. Well, it shouldn't do. I was on the mission board that created the list of actions and I totally believe them. It goes from the social right the way through to the technology, with the land managers in the middle and all between. I think. So at 1 billion, I would put 20% here, 30% there, 40%, Because if you just focus on one thing and say, oh, technology is going to do everything, I think if we don't change social perceptions and soil literacy, people won't take up the technology because they don't understand that. They won't fight for it. So I'm pushing back slightly on the question, I'm sorry, is that I think.
Speaker 2:If there's a billion. It would be across those different things, recognizing if we don't take people on the journey, nothing's going to happen. Technology is going to be really important, but we need the people as well and we need to support people. So it's not a single bullet. It would be to spread that one billion across those kind of various areas and this isn't in the mission, but I'm going to say it.
Speaker 2:I do think that that small tail of people who perhaps bring farming or forestry into disrepute you know, cause massive erosion events, do the wrong thing. I do think we need to show that we're willing to tackle those people, just so that the good. Why should you do the good stuff if the bad people never get pulled up about it? So I do think ensuring current regulation and making the ground floor is actually working is important as well, but that's not in the mission, that's a personal issue that I think everywhere else we, every other industry, has to deal with that, and farming actually, to just focus on farming actually doesn't so much and I think we need to. Just it's an industry and we need to get it on a par with other industries. With some of these things, you know, the polluter pays. That's kind of a thing that is out there for every other industry and perhaps we need to think about it for our land industries as well.
Speaker 1:You know, I completely agree, and actually the billion pound I mean a diverse portfolio makes a lot of sense, but also the focus. You could take a small amount of that and focus on the worst offenders's say and use the remote sensing and underground research to figure out okay, where, because probably a big chunk of the damage um, I don't know if it's an 80 20, but there's definitely a big chunk of the damage come from a very small percentage of the farmers and land owners and land stewards, and a bit of legislative action there would definitely not hurt. Um, and and you mentioned ara and grassland and I didn't really grasp your answer Would you focus more on the livestock side or less on the livestock side?
Speaker 2:So I think we've got to. And this when it comes into more societal issue and we come to diet and the costs of our diet in the western world on our healthcare systems and the planet, and so, if I just retreat back, so the uk is fundamentally and particularly wales where I live is a very grassy nation, so we rely a lot on our agriculture, on ruminant animals, and the greenhouse gas emissions from those are really really high and it's very challenging to work out how to get to net zero whilst we have the number of ruminant animals we have. So one of the issues, but if we just reduce the number of animals we produce which we could do, I mean, that'd be it One, it'd be really affect our farming system, livelihoods, our languages, embedded in the agriculture. But the second thing is, if we don't change our diet, we just offshore that animal production to other places. And one of the things that I'm really proud of in the mission is, whereas the Green Deal does not actually mention or it didn't at the beginning I might be behind the pines now that we would not just export our problems to other places, the soil mission does explicitly say we need to understand the global soil footprint of the changes we make. So the analogy I often quote is we can't just create a green and pleasant land for ourselves you know where, with lovely recreation, woodlands and what have you, and just push all the food production and the animal production particularly to other nations globally who are not as economically robust as we are. I know it doesn't feel like we're rich nations currently, but relative to a lot of the world we are actually. We're in the top 10 economically, aren't we in the EU?
Speaker 2:So one of the issues with the livestock is I don't think we can treat that in isolation to how we change our diet and what food waste and how we used food waste and all that system. So at that point we blow the whole thing even wider. It's not about just a systems approach to the farm. We need to have a systems approach between the farm and the food sector, thinking about whether the third of food that we currently waste can be brought back into the farming sector to help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, which is, I mean, the climate crisis is real. We have to get to net zero, otherwise, one of the industries that is going to most be affected is farming and forestry. You know, we're already seeing the effects of climate extremes.
Speaker 2:So I heard a fascinating talk by I'm going to try and just find her name, forgive me Professor Hannah Van Zanten from Wageningen University, who specializes in the circular economy and food waste and how to bring it and reconnect it back into the farming, and she just inspired me that there's a lot to do there that we're just not currently doing, which could really start to reduce some of our footprint in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. So that whole food waste and circular economy, I think is really quite an exciting area to explore as well. But the whole issue about what we have in our diets I'm sure you've heard of the planetary diet and that should be more plant based and what have you how do we achieve that whilst not just exporting our footprint to other countries who just don't have the environmental regulations and welfare regulations that we have?
Speaker 1:especially rumen livestock industry. We have to really, really drastically reduce the emissions and the co2 equivalent in most cases from feed and fertilizer seem to be the biggest drivers there. What do you see happening there? If, if that's something of focus, because it seems like so it's such an important lot such a key one to to really drastically improve uh, reduce there and improve grazing, improve feed, like, because otherwise we're just importing and exporting a lot of the, the shit, literally yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think this whole issue of increasing efficiency so that we can have more from less, um, and so there's a whole lot of things about feed additives, but the numbers, I see it quite varies what the suggested reductions in greenhouse gas emissions might be. And also, that assumes that the ruminant biology doesn't evolve past that. The ruminant biology is an amazing system, right, it has evolved over millennia and if you think about a comparison which might not be valid antibiotics, they constantly evolve ahead of us, right, it's like COVID keeps evolving away from our Well. The rumen even if now we can suppress some of the greenhouse gas emissions per feed intake and maintain the kilogram production biomass produced feed intake and maintain the kilogram production biomass produced, will the rumen just sit static or will it evolve beyond that? It's just one of those things to think about. And then but there are other things as well, about how we spread slurry on the land. Do we acidify our slurry? Does that help things? So there's a lot of work in this space to try and just think about how we create a more efficient and quality livestock sector, and you know there's a lot of people working in this field and it's amazing stuff.
Speaker 2:If I've got my pessimistic hat on. I don't think that fundamentally changes that we need to reduce the amount of meat in our diet that we currently have, at least here in the UK. Even if we can knock off 20% or 30%, the numbers don't add up. We cannot plant enough trees to soak up all this greenhouse gas emissions from the ruminants that we currently have. And if we switch to what's called white meat you know, chickens and pig and what have you which might be better for our health?
Speaker 2:Here in Wales, we've actually had a disaster in that area because the phosphorus associated with intensive chicken farming has just destroyed one of our major rivers because there wasn't enough regulation in place. Meat, let's move to chicken and pork, let's do. You know and it doesn't get, it doesn't tackle a fundamental problem that for our own health and our health systems, we probably just need to move to a more plant-based uh approach. So yeah, I think a lot of work needs to be done there, but it goes way beyond what the farming sector, the farming sector can't drive this. That's a societal issue that needs to be right, from education to health to other things. You know, it's quite, and then that's quite complicated, isn't it?
Speaker 1:but yeah, but it's a perfect bridge to a final question. We love to ask is if you had a magic wand? Maybe it goes in that direction, maybe somewhere completely different, but if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be?
Speaker 2:so I I think it would be to try and create more systems thinking at a farm level, working with nature rather than circumventing it, and I would. That whole systems thinking is exactly kind of where I've just come from, which is that needs to also link up to the whole food waste issue. I mean, a third of our food is wasted, that so we spend all this time and producing for and the farmers do all this work and then we throw that needs to also link up to the whole food waste issue. I mean, a third of our food is wasted, so we spend all this time producing and the farmers do all this work and then we throw so much of it away. And I just think that systems and linking up the farming to the food the away from you know every farm is their own island into this more systems thinking from the farm level to the cluster level, to the regional level, to the whole systems approach of the whole food chain, and even linking into the forestry chain, because a lot of what the forestry produces, it can help capture ammonia emissions. They produce wood chip that can be used for bedding for animals emissions. They produce wood chip that can be used for bedding for animals. So building more woody features into our landscape can help with landscape air quality. It can provide organic mulches for the agriculture. So that whole separation that we've had for generations of agriculture here, forestry's there, food's there we need to bring these three things together in a far more integrated way, and some of it is happening now.
Speaker 2:It really is the whole push for agroforestry. Where we have some of this is, I think, is the way to go. It's just how to do it whilst keeping the economics and the social, cultural elements of our farming and our forestry sectors together. Because at least here in the UK, we lost the skills for managing the small woodlands. We had big forestry and we had farmland, but the farmers didn't have the knowledge of how to manage the small woodlands and the foresters didn't have the knowledge of how to do these small woodlands and these woody features, and those two things need to intersect. Which brings me back to some of this is about social skills, you know, training and things like that. If we're going to move on, it just won't. We can't just magically expect people to work this out for themselves. We need to help them, support them, advisor skills, investment, capital to change this investment capital to change this.
Speaker 1:Do you see that lens of of this holistic view or the holistic approach, let's say, starting to land in policy level as well, like this is is or is that wishful thinking still? And? And if so, how do we? How do we change that? What are? How do we bring people to places, or not make them see, but sort of awake? That, um, that angle of okay, this is, this is like one measurement or one incentive, is not going to change this, this super complex system, but we need system thinkers at the same time. Like it's a very complex question, but how do we, how do we get especially people in power to see that interconnectedness and not get very depressed and not do anything? So paralyzed.
Speaker 2:So I think, yeah, paralyzed, absolutely. So getting away from payments, of going for this field, do that for that field over there, do this to more, go in and go. Do you want to come into this? Yeah, we're going to give you a payment to build a whole new systems approach and that will be part of a collective which sounds a bit communist, I know, but you know what I mean where we will provide funding where groups of farmers are getting together at a landscape scale to work together and some funding. There are funding schemes from governments which do focus money not just on an individual farmer but within the context of a bigger group coming together so they can do that peer-to-peer learning and a more systems approach can be done. So those kind of funding elements are being developed, but I don't think they're the core of what the public payment schemes are and perhaps that might be a shift that is needed. But some of those payment schemes are available which encourage that more social capital to be built up such that people can learn together and build up more systems approach. So overall, if you're asking whether I am positive, I think the direction of travel is the right one now, but we have got a lot of challenges because, as we've seen, there's a lot of. It's a really challenging space at the moment with a lot of climate and economic barriers, and so you know it's slight frustration that we should have done a lot of this when things were a bit easier and now we're trying to do it at a time when it's actually really hard. But perhaps that helps focus the mind, perhaps that helps focus.
Speaker 2:I don't know about across Europe, but it's been such a wet winter. A lot of farmers are actually saying, well, I can't go through that again. I couldn't get my animals out because the land was too wet. This climate change thing it is happening. I need to rethink. My fertilizer costs are just enormous. I need to rethink because I cannot afford this fertilizer. So sometimes not that I wish bad times on anyone bad times can help people to rethink what they're doing and with help and support, perhaps, you know, we can make this into this very tough time, into a positive yeah, that will definitely be a bumpy ride, because these transitions and you mentioned the, the energy one as well are never easy and there's there's a lot at stake and we're always too late.
Speaker 1:That's the, that's the gist of it, thank you. I want to thank you so much for for your time today coming on here and share about your journey, what you've been doing and, of course, what you are doing at the moment. Thank you so much for what you do, what you bring to the space and, of course, for coming on here to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, it's been fun.
Speaker 1:AI for Soil Health is funded by the European Union and has received funds from the UK Research and. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.
