Regenerative Agriculture
Four times a day, give or take, Paul Slomp — owner of Grazing Days Farm in St.-André-Avellin in Quebec, near Montebello — walks into one of his 40 fields and opens a gate. The response of his 210-strong herd of Angus cows is immediate. They begin moving from the field they’ve been in, pass through the gate, and are soon grazing contently on grass in the fresh field they’ve entered.
“I just open the fence and call them,” Slomp says. “As soon as they see me, they move —two, three minutes would be all it takes. And then I close the gate.”
The cows seem all too happy to co-operate. After all, this constant movement means they are always eating only the freshest and sweetest of grass.
This process of regular movement is something called mob grazing, a technique that mimics the grazing patterns of herbivores in the wild, which, free to move, will take a bite or two of a grass plant and then move on. Often, herds in the wild will be spooked by predators and move as a group to fresh ground. The point is that they are never in one place long, and never over-graze a patch of grass to the point that the plants require significant time for regrowth.
“It’s quite simple,” Slomp says. “You move the herd as soon as all the plants have had one bite removed. The plant doesn’t have to go dormant but continues its photosynthesis — and over time, a very thick grass mat develops.”
When a large herd of cattle moves, it creates what Slomp calls a “mini-earthquake,” which shakes up the microbes in the soil, effectively waking them up. Some of the grass is trampled into the earth, where it decomposes and adds fertility to the soil.
The thick mat of grass that develops insulates the soil, the microbes and the plant roots from the elements. This evens out the soil temperature and the grass can continue growing even when the ambient temperature is above or below the optimum level for good plant growth.
In 2016, a summer of drought in Central Canada, many farmers in Ontario and Quebec found their grazing fields brown and inhospitable to their herds — but Slomp and his wife Josée Cyr- Charlebois grew more grass than they ever had before. What’s more, with the insulation of a thick mat of grass, their fall growing season has been extended by three weeks, from Nov. 15 to Dec. 9 last year, for example.
Slomp says the weight gains his cattle make are in the same range of what feedlot owners achieve, roughly two pounds a day per animal. Even better, the increase in soil fertility is such that far more animals can be pastured on a given piece of land. Slomp expects to be able to double his herd to more than 400 within the next five years. His farm will produce more meat and his revenues will correspondingly rise. He also raises smaller numbers of pigs and chickens, the meat from which is for sale, by subscription, in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.
Because his cattle eat such fresh and nutritious grass, they have become highly robust. Slomp says not a single animal has needed antibiotics this year.
He takes comfort in the fact that the flourishing grasses and other vegetation on his farm are absorbing unusual amounts of carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas.
“So many people believe that you have to become vegetarian if you want to help the environment — but the more nuanced view is that, with good animal husbandry, livestock can actually help the environment.
“What we are doing, I firmly believe, is as good for the planet as it is for our animals.”
All of this would elicit an affirming nod from Ananda Fitzsimmons, president of the board of directors of Regeneration Canada, a Montreal-based non-profit organization that promotes land-management practices that regenerate soil health in order to mitigate climate change, restore biodiversity and support a more productive food system.
“Conventional, industrial agriculture, through use of fertilizers, pesticides, tilling and other means, achieves short-term increases only,” she says.
“Right now, the world is developing new and better farming methods based on ever improving understandings of the soil ecosystem,” she says. “This is not a return to premodern agricultural times at all, but a kind of New Green Revolution,” an improvement over the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s that increased agricultural production worldwide — but only through use of fertilizers, pesticides and other means now discouraged by proponents of regenerative agriculture.
Industrial agriculture is based only on the chemical needs of plants, she explains. But there’s far more to look at — factors that had not yet been discovered 50 years ago, especially the bacteria and fungi in the soil microbiome. Those micro-organisms form a web known as the mycelium, composed of branching strands that thread through the soil. Tilling the soil destroys the mycelium and greatly reduces fertility. Chemical fertilizers, which are saltbased, inhibit the growth of micro-organisms and pesticides, and fungicides kill them.
With gentler treatment of the soil, plant life can regenerate. In some cases, areas that had seemed destined to become deserts are brought back to life. Crop yields improve.
Some of the best effects are on the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is removed in the process of photosynthesis, in which plants release the two oxygen molecules back into the atmosphere, and pull the carbon molecule down into the roots and on into the soil, where it feeds micro-organisms and helps plants assimilate other nutrients.
Research suggests that the world’s soils have lost 133 billion tonnes of carbon since humans first started farming the land 12,000 years ago, a rate of loss that has accelerated since the start of the industrial revolution. Crop production and cattle grazing contributed almost equally to global losses.
Some researchers suggest that if all agricultural land could increase their carbon stores by a mere 0.4 per cent, the resulting boom in flourishing plant life could absorb all the excess carbon now going into the atmosphere through the burning of hydrocarbons.
“And of course, given the current environmental situation, we have to use every means,” Fitzsimmons says.
Is she hopeful, given the grim prognostications of many climate scientists?
“I am. You need to be,” she says.
Regeneration Canada spreads the word about good land management practices through symposiums, workshops and film screenings.
The small group, led by founder Gabrielle Bastien, still has “a long way to go,” Fitzsimmons says. “We’re definitely a minority, though a growing one.”
Canadians are slowly developing a new awareness of the issue of soil regeneration, and the Trudeau government seems to have an interest. “But whether the government will actually put money in is another thing — and we’re still working on that.”
In the run-up to the federal election in October, the organization has placed a petition on its website urging political parties to develop vigorous climate action plans.
“If we pull together, I think we can work along with nature’s plan and optimize it,” Fitzsimmons says. “We can do a lot. At the very least, we can more than feed the people we need to feed without having to take over more land.”
Grazing Days
567 Rang Ste. Julie E., St-André-Avellin, Que.
grazingdays.ca | 613.898.9136 | @grazingdays
Regeneration Canada
106-5605 de Gaspé, Montreal, Que.
regenerationcanada.org | @regencanada
