Welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast.
Last week,
I visited a beautiful regenerative farm in Portugal called Monte Silveira.
It was Joel Valente,
the owner and manager of the farm,
who brought us on a complete tour of the farm and gave us loads of explanations about how his system and his farming operation work.
This week,
I'm staying on the same farm,
but this time I'm talking to Diogo Pinho,
who's the research manager of the farm.
We get a bit deeper into the science behind regenerative agriculture with focus on topics like soil health,
biodiversity,
water cycles,
nutrient density,
and economic prosperity.
This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.
I'm your host,
Raphael,
and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
So it would be great if you could start by introducing yourself and explaining what your role is here at the farm.
Okay.
So my name is Diogo.
I work in the Montesilveira farm as the research director of the farm.
And I have been working here since the last three years.
And my main role is essentially to bring research for the farming reality.
so
We have
16 R&D projects running in the farm.
Most of them focus on regenerative farming in different perspectives that are mostly related to soil health,
to biodiversity,
water conservation and also focus on how the farming practices can be...
profitable and at the same time have a positive impact in the system.
Great,
so maybe you could zoom in on some of these projects.
Maybe we could start on the topic of soil health.
What have you been measuring and what have been the findings and the results so far?
So in terms of soil health,
what we have been measuring runs from chemical perspective
physical perspective but also biological perspective and we have what we have been seeing since the last six years is an increase on organic matter content so this is like our main soil
metric that that we measure is organic matter because if we we build organic matter and over the years we improve organic matter we are improving.
The soil biology,
we are improving the soil chemical perspective,
the soil physical parameters,
like higher organic soils tend to be less compact.
That is a problem that we have in the farm and we have been seeing.
It is a problem that we still have and need to work a little bit more.
And it is these projects that help us to get this data to understand.
where we can improve and how we can or what we can do to keep going the farm and at the same time regenerate the soil.
For the viewers and the listeners who are really new to this topic,
could you maybe explain as a microbiology expert what is soil organic matter and why it's so important to soil health?
So soil organic matter is essentially
composed by degraded material.
And this degraded material is mostly transformed by the soil biology.
So,
and by soil biology,
I mean in the soil we have like what is called a soil food web,
that the bases of this soil food web are the plants itself.
What the plants does,
the plants convert
carbon dioxide through the sunlight,
fix it in the soil,
so sequester in the soil,
and these root exudates,
so mainly sugars,
they will feed the soil biology that is in the soil.
In turn,
the soil microbiology take this sugar,
these root exudates,
and then they will
Also help the plants by releasing and making available nutrients that plants need to grow.
In this process what happens is there is always material that stays in the soil,
that if it stays,
let's say,
on the surface,
it can be easily released as carbon dioxide,
but through biological process these,
let's say,
residues are converted in more stable compounds that
have a complex structure and this is what we call organic matter.
So it is essentially a degraded organic material that stays in the soil and keeps feeding and is also the house for all this soil biology.
After the soil biology we have what we called the microfauna.
So it is let's say the next trophic level within this
food web that feed for example from the bacteria and from fungi for example or from the organic matter itself also after the micro bracrofauna we have the mesofauna that is between let's
say the macrofauna and microfauna that for example can include small soil insects and stuff like that and then we also have the soil fauna that the most known one
is the heartworms.
The heartworms are essentially and they can be compared as the soil engineering.
So they build galleries,
they transport nutrients to the different parts and it is this complexity that we try to understand through this research project.
That's why it is so important.
That's great,
thank you.
We have a lot of sheep around behind you.
right now and maybe that's a great opportunity to explain how grazing sheep on a pasture like this contributes to improving soil health and soil organic matter.
Okay,
besides the crop production we also have a grazing operation and this grazing operation has has two main functions.
It is
Of course,
in terms of economic,
to be profitable and make money to eat,
to keep running these kind of farms,
these regenerative farms,
but also animals are essential tool to improve soil health.
And how they do it?
Basically,
we do it through rotational grazing or regenerative grazing and it's essentially we keep the animals very
close so we do like a short term intense grazing with long times of or long periods of resting and by that this allows this the system and especially the soil to recover from this impact so absorb all these nutrients that
are released by the by the animals and also will feed the soil microbiology and
will make nutrients and structure the soil even better and of course will also contribute for the soil organic matter building that is very important.
As we don't have predators here,
what we do is the animals when they are,
let's say in the wildlife,
they don't stay for too much long.
in the same place because they need to run away from the predators.
And in the other hand,
the animals,
they compete with each other to have as much food as possible.
And in this way,
the animals also contribute to increase the biodiversity because as they feed or they graze from all the species without selection,
we keep promoting this kind.
this kind of biodiversity that is also important for the soil because if we have,
let's think,
imagine in a pasture,
if we have a high diverse pasture that means we have different plant species injecting different compounds in the soil and this one will benefit the soil biology because as the subbiology.
It will also be diverse because
you have different kinds,
different sources of different materials.
The more diverse our diet is,
the more healthy we are.
So it is exactly the same with the soil.
The more diverse we feed the soil with the diversity of plants,
the more diverse will be the soil biology and then the more resilient and functional will be the ecosystem.
Great,
thank you.
What have the measurements shown so far in terms of soil health,
soil organic matter?
What have you been measuring and what are the actual results of those measurements?
So,
in terms of soil health,
we measure different parameters.
One is specific,
it's organic matter.
Here in this area,
in the Mediterranean region,
it is very difficult to build organic matter,
but still we have been improving it.
in a quite rude pace.
So in the last five years we were able to increase our organic matter in 50%
and right now we have around 2%
on average in the farm,
2%
of organic matter.
Just to have an idea in this region and also all over Portugal the average organic matter
is around 1%
sometimes less.
So having 2%
is quite a good achievement because here we have two main factors.
So we still have a good amount of water,
but still we don't have water every single year.
So in this region we have quite hot summers that even if we don't protect
this organic matter through maintaining the soil cover,
we can easily release this organic matter and lose this organic matter.
That's why the practices we have been applying,
like cover crop,
keep the soil covered as much as possible,
bring diversity to the soil,
have been helping us to increase the organic matter year after year.
And I can say with a little bit of proud,
having
2% of organic matter in a large-scale system like this,
in these climatic conditions,
is already a quite good achievement.
It's amazing,
in just five years and you still have...
We used to have like
1%,
1.5%, now we have on average around 2%.
percent but if we go
to Montado these values are much higher because it is a totally undisturbed system so we don't we don't touch the soil at all not even to seed and in Montado we
have some areas that we already have five percent of organic matter so this is a huge value that have been helping us to increase the number of animals so
to increase the impact,
the positive impact that the animals have in Montado and at the same time be more profitable because if we have healthy soils with healthy pastures and high dense pastures that means we can bring more animals to the system and
we can generate more profit from it.
It makes sense,
yeah.
And what about biodiversity?
What do you monitor?
what have you observed so far?
Yeah.
In the previous project that we ran here,
it was like a local project called Montado Plus.
We were able to assess the biodiversity that we have in Montado.
And one of the metrics that was most important for us,
it was the diversity of plants that we have in Montado.
We were able to
to identify more than 100 different species in Montado and some of them were very specific of Montado.
So they are endemic species that normally we just found in healthy and sustainable Montado and we were able to identify species that are nowadays very difficult to find Montado but but
here hundreds of years ago,
they were quite common in Montado.
So it shows like the kind of grazing that we are doing is promoting these endemic species that were previously found in Montado that nowadays
are being lost due to the Montado decline,
but we are able to,
only by grazing,
and the right grazing times,
the right grazing resting periods,
we were able to increase this biodiversity and bring back to life these endemic species from Montado.
That's incredible.
How do these improvements in
biodiversity and soil health contribute to an increase in economic efficiency.
So if you think,
and this is just a small example on how promoting biodiversity can increase the economic perspective,
if you focus for example on the pollinators,
if we create the conditions to increase the pollinators,
you are increasing the pollination rate and if you increase the pollination rate you are likely to develop more crops more food because you are increasing the chance for these plants to
to to be pollinated across across them other example and it is also related with economics it is if
over the years you increase the biodiversity,
if over the years this diversity can convert material into organic matter,
that means the soil will act like a sponge.
If you have more organic matter and the soil acts like a sponge,
that means you will be able to infiltrate more water and to
keep this water,
hold this water in the soil.
It is a cost that you can decrease all over the years by promoting the biodiversity,
because biodiversity means building organic matter,
and organic matter means water infiltration and water retention.
And of course this one also prepares us for these current contexts and that
will be worst in the future year that is the climate change that we need to be ready because the what is happening is even if we have the same amount of water per year this
water is not so distributed all over the year so is more intense in vents so you have the same water but very heavy rains and if we have a soil
that is covered with full grass or full crops and if these crops are very diverse,
you can infiltrate more water,
you can prevent also soil erosion through the water and that means also you can keep more organic matter and more nutrients in the soil.
By that you don't need to fertilize so much the soil or the crops.
because the soil has the resources that the crops need to grow and to produce food.
Fantastic.
That was very,
very clear and informative.
Just a really quick post to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seed podcast,
Soil Capital.
Soil Capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health or biodiversity.
It's a company I...
personally really like and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the podcast.
There's probably three,
four hours worth of conversations to have about the 16 different R&D projects you have,
but to close this conversation,
maybe you could tell us about one more that you find super important and that you would like to share.
Yeah,
one that is very,
very important for us and it is affecting our region here.
It is the Arboinova project.
So,
Arboinova project is a five years project that was initially founded by the
Avena Foundation and what we built and what we want to show in this project it is related with the installation of intensive almonds and olive production.
Most of these intensive systems,
they don't care about biodiversity,
they don't care about soil health,
they essentially are focused on one target,
that is profit and return to the investors.
So in this project,
What we are doing is,
we have established an almond plot here in the farm,
that we are testing different approaches on how we can manage an almond orchard.
So,
the system,
it is exactly the same,
so the number of trees,
it is exactly the same,
the number of trees per hectare,
but the way
that we manage these trees,
it is completely different the way our neighbors,
for example,
do it.
Just for you to have an idea,
just in the installation step,
so when we established this plantation,
we were able to save
50% of the costs that the normal,
conventional almonds normally do.
The kind of practices that we are testing,
they range from cover crops,
so we are testing different cover crop mix to make sure we are building soil organic matter,
but also we can use these cover crops that we grow in the interline to put them in the line to have this weed suppression.
This technique is also important to show to the tree crop industry that they will be able to decrease,
for example,
the application of herbicides,
that is also a problem for biodiversity and for soil contamination and probably also for food contamination.
And we are testing different approaches that can be
that we want to show they are positive in terms of environment,
in terms of soil health and ecosystem health,
but also in terms of economics.
So,
in the long term,
what we want to show is like you can be positive in terms of environmental impact and at the same time and probably be more profitable compared to a high input system that
only the great biodiversity the great soil and of course the great these the region where we are located in okay very interesting i actually have one more question for you and then yeah but
I read on your website that your olive oil has a really high polyphenol content which is really good for health.
And we're sitting here in one of your beautiful olive groves and I wanted to ask you this question.
Well,
first of all,
what is a polyphenol?
And second,
how do you explain this high content?
So here in Montesilveira we produce extra virgin olive oil and as you mentioned very well with high phenolic content.
So,
high phenolic content olive oils,
they are essentially composed,
or they have like in their content,
high level of phenols,
and phenols,
they are already scientifically proven as they have health benefits for human consumption.
So essentially,
they decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
they also make better the lipid profile of our blood and also they have antioxidant properties that for example if we think about cancer,
so they also decrease the changes of developed cancer because of these antioxidant properties related with the high phenolic compounds.
I see multiple
or several explanations to reach this kind of level.
One of them it is the way that we take care and we manage our olive groves.
So essentially we don't touch the soil at all in the olive grove and I can bring it back related with organic matter.
In the last five years we were able
to increase our organic matter in our olive groves in 150 percent,
so it's more than double.
And how we did it?
We essentially,
all the prunings that we do,
In the olives,
we shred them and we keep them in the soil,
so it can be decomposed and converted in organic matter,
so it is food for the soil that then will be again food for the tree.
Also,
we keep a high diversity of pasture within our olive grove that again will feed our soil.
our soil biology and also most important is the way that we recycle the nutrients in our olive grove.
So we have the animals that graze and the animals are the best nutrient recyclers in the world.
So basically they convert the grass,
the pasture in manure that then will feed the soil and also will feed the tree.
Other factor that make us able to produce high phenolic olive oils is because the time of harvesting.
So instead of letting the olives to rip too much,
we harvest the olives still quite green.
Because the olives when they start to ripen,
so when they start to be let's say more brown and black,
the phenolic content starts also to decrease.
So we harvest it quite early,
so our productions are not,
or our investment is not in high production,
so high quantity of production,
but instead high quality of production.
So our production is lower,
but it is of high quality,
that's why
we also can reach this kind of phenolic content.
And one last point that contributes for the phenolic content,
it is the water management.
This is,
let's say,
easier to achieve high phenolic content in traditional olive groves.
And why?
Because in the summer the trees are not
not so able to get access to water,
so they are a little bit under water stress and this water stress promotes the production of phenolic compounds because it is also a way that the tree has to defend itself from this water
stress.
So this is like,
it's not a factor that make us able to produce a high phenolic
content but it is several combination so the holistic management that make us available to produce this extra vision olive oil with high phenolic content that
was great thank you so much diogo for your time for all of these great explanations thank you thank you thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode.
I really hope you enjoyed it.
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Thank you so much in advance.
Take care and see you soon.