Written by: Erik Odendaal, a Chartered Surveyor (MRICS), a RICS Registered Valuer and a Chartered Forester (MICFor).
As a landowner or manager, regenerative farming can offer some low cost and simple solutions to enhancing long term cash flow and asset value. Regenerative agriculture does not only need to be about farming, it can also be incorporated into your overall business diversification strategy.
In essence, regenerative agriculture is farming with nature in mind. The fundamentals of regenerative agriculture are improved biodiversity, through better management of soils and water. It can take many years to achieve, but through careful implementation landowners and managers can bring their farm or estate into a state where all things equal a sustainable equilibrium is achieved.
The practice of farming has fundamentally changed post Second World War. To operate on a commercially profitable basis, our farming systems have become increasingly reliant on industrial type processes that achieve a volume of produce from an increasing area. Put another way, on a net input basis, yields are decreasing year on year. We also have to contend with climate change, manifested through erratic and volatile weather patterns.
We can still use nature’s outstanding resilience and capacity for recovery to make a turn around. We can use technological advancements, not to increase or maintain food output, but to
optimise and reduce our interventions in producing food. For example, using GIS to enable effective crop rotations, yield mapping and climatic scenario planning.
Other ways we can improve nature’s capacity for repair is by adopting culturally accepted management interventions such as crop rotations, organic fertilisers, minimum tillage, integrated pest management (IPM) and companion cropping. By bringing the growing cycle back to as natural a state as possible, we allow optimised conditions in the soil. Whilst Integrated Pest Management will not relieve you of pest and disease problems, it will help to establish a positive microbiome state and that is the foundation for life.
There is a lot we can do on a day-to-day management basis and throughout the year. We can also achieve positive change though peer to peer engagement and collectively we can make positive and sustainable change.
One of the biggest benefits of regenerative farming is that nature does a lot of the hard work for you.
Erik Odendaal is a Chartered Surveyor (MRICS), a RICS Registered Valuer and a Chartered Forester (MICFor). Erik is Managing Director of AGREN and has a lifelong interest in our rural environment.
