Hi there and welcome back to the Deep Seed podcast.
In today's episode we revisit the key principles of regenerative agriculture but with someone who spent his whole life working on farms and especially on regenerative farms,
Nicolas Verscure.
Even if you're already quite familiar with the key pillars of region ag,
things like using cover crops,
reducing tillage,
reducing chemical use and all of these beautiful things that we've spoken about,
a lot of times on the podcast.
Well,
this episode will still teach you something new,
because the views that Nicolas is expressing in this interview are deeply rooted in practical experience.
He has spent his whole life and whole career,
so several decades,
actually working on farms as a farmer,
as a farm manager,
as an advisor,
as an agronomist.
So he has this extensive on-the-ground knowledge of what transitioning to region actually looks like.
And therefore,
he truly understands the complexity and the nuances that farming requires,
especially when we're talking about evolving from a simplified linear system into a much more complex and diverse one.
This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.
I am your host,
Raphael,
and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
So,
first principle,
we try to minimize the soil disturbance,
the tillage.
In many of my experience,
this is something that is implementable in different countries,
different weather,
again,
different crops.
So,
decreasing the number of passes,
decreasing the aggressivity of mixing the soil,
the different layers of the soil,
is what we are trying to do.
okay it doesn't mean that we don't want to uh to work the soil i think that in in a certain number of cases this is possible to really stop um touching the soil or nearly uh this is what we call the direct
seeding zero tillage but in many cases unfortunately we still have to
touch the soil to till the soil most of the most of the time because the mechanization we are using to harvest or to do the different operation that follows this the drilling the seeding is actually impacting the soil structure and so the tillage is
an artificial way of restoring the soil structure
And I haven't seen today,
unfortunately,
examples of...
a soil that is so healthy that it could be it could restructure itself without any tillage after a few passes of
heavy machinery for the harvest so first principle so so tilling just to sort of clarify uh so tilling is when you you really take the soil and you break it up into plowing yeah um and it has advantages like you said for the soil structure to make sure the the plants the seed can grow in that soil right and
the air and water can infiltrate and the roots have space to grow and all of these things but at the same time it's quite detrimental to the soil health
Exactly.
So the tillage is known to be an activity that is not helping the soil microbiology and the soil life to rebuild itself,
to thrive.
So we try to minimize that.
And it's important to say that during these last 25,
30 years,
we've seen a certain number of cases of farmers who were trying to...
implement or to apply this no tillage principle too dogmatically.
And I think that it's important to mention that because this can lead to some failures and in certain geography,
with certain weather,
certain crop,
this has been not a disaster,
but people had to...
go backwards because this pure principle of not touching the soil was not possible.
Yeah,
so I see.
The dream scenario would be that your soil is so healthy and the structure is so amazing that you could plant your seeds directly into it without tilling.
Yeah.
But it's almost never truly the case that farmers can do that.
And so there's different levels of how much tilling the farmer can do.
do so by reducing the number of you said the number of passes and the number of time you till a soil per year yeah reducing what the depth also yeah the depth the intensity the shape of the blade you use to avoid actually the different horizons of the soil to be mixed trying
to keep the the residues on top of the soil and not having the soil naked and and make the residues of the previous crop
integrate it in the soil.
Those are all very valid principles,
but they are principles,
they are not rules.
So the idea basically is to try and disturb the soil as little as possible,
so that the microbial life can thrive.
We have the earthworms and the mycorrhizal fungi growing,
all of these things,
and they're really,
really important for soil health.
And we're trying to disturb that as little as possible,
but...
we still need to our crops to grow without being dogmatic and having your shovel to check if you are if you have compaction in your soil and if the soil life is not able to rest to restructure that unfortunately you have to help this community
or life to do the job just a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the deep seed podcast soil capital so soil capital is a company that
accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve the health of their soils.
And God knows we need to accelerate that regenerative transition.
And that's the reason why
I'm a big fan of Soil Capital and I'm really proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.
Okay,
so moving on from soil disturbance and tillage to...
Yeah.
So second principle is the fact that we...
like to have the soil covered with living plants all year round so that's the the goal practically this means that in region act you try to have a
crop or what we call the cover crop between the cash crop in your fields living thriving growing in your fields all year round and
And that's,
again,
something,
a principle that has to be adapted because in the real life,
when you have harvested your field,
you need some time to apply compost,
soil.
to do some weeding to avoid to have too much thistles or other grasses.
If you want to reduce your herbicide consumption,
sometimes mechanical work will be necessary to control those weeds.
So practically between two cycles of crop or after one harvest,
you have sometimes a few weeks of soil without.
coverage and that's something in certain number of case we should accept what we are trying to advise to integrate in many of the farms we work with is to integrate what we call a permanent or semi-permanent pasture
so in a rotation with the different cash crop and the different cover crop between the cash crop we're trying to integrate every
10 years,
one or two years of pasture or so a moment where the soil is not touched,
is fully covered with the pasture.
That seems to be very efficient to give a boost of health to your soil.
In organic agriculture,
this is also a moment where we can produce nitrogen if you cover
your soil with legumes to produce some some nitrogen for the next crop so that's the second principle soil coverage yeah um yeah
Yeah,
I see.
Well,
you're talking about these short periods of time between crops where sometimes you have to keep the soil bare for a few days or a few weeks.
Yeah.
But the reality is that when I'm driving through the countryside in the winter,
almost everything is bare.
All of the farmland that
I see is actually bare.
What you're saying here is that...
um you should avoid that as much as possible and you should have your soil covered at all times with a living plant with a living root in the soil yeah um so maybe you could explain why that is so important the the reason for that um is
actually there are multiple reasons for that to be uh to be short uh you have to see a field that is green like a solar panel that would
produce electricity.
So a field that is green means that it's a field where you have plants,
crop who are active with their photosynthesis,
meaning that they are producing
transforming the sunlight into sugar and the sugar are feeding the plant but also feeding the soil and they are producing biomass they're producing potential food for the soil and the next crop so
each time you see a green field it means that this field is active okay if you don't have that that coverage if you see a brown field this means that the soil is not covered with plants not no photos
synthesis,
and therefore no activity.
The field is not active,
the soil is not regenerating,
the microbes in the soil are not fed,
and this is a soil that is actually,
in the best case,
in a standby situation,
but in most of the case,
in a potentially phase of degradation,
because on top of the fact that it is not
photosynthetically active,
is not also covered and protected from the rain to erosion,
from the wind to erosion.
And so this is a soil that in most of the case is losing fertility.
So that's the basic principle of a soil to be covered with living plants.
Right,
yeah.
I remembered something I learned in a previous episode with a soil scientist.
We were talking about mycorrhizal fungi so these are like the mushroom
networks in the soil that connect with the roots of plants right and they're really really helpful because they can go very very far away from the plants and collect nutrients and water and whatever the plant needs so they're super charging the the soil fertility and and health right and
i remember she she explained that the those fungi they cannot survive without a living root they need a living root as a companion to survive and so if you leave a soil bear for too long i guess
they cannot survive on your field and you lose all of them.
Another good reason to keep your soil covered at all times.
That's clear.
I'm not a soil scientist.
I'm not sure that they can't survive at all.
But it is clear that you will not go in the direction of development of those mycorrhizae.
And the first principle,
tillage,
and the second one,
soil coverage,
both principles are actually important for those.
mycorrhizae because the tillage is actually also damaging the hyphae,
so all the branches of those fungi.
So in the case here of soil coverage,
it sounds like it has only benefits.
It's protecting the soil from wind,
from rain and erosion.
It's producing a lot of photosynthesis,
which is feeding the microbiology in the soil.
The roots are growing everywhere in the soil,
so it's helping with soil structure.
I mean,
it seems to have only benefits.
What's the reason why you don't see that more in the fields out in the winter?
Those benefits are coming with a lot of challenges.
I was talking about slugs,
for example.
Slugs love to have fields or soil covered and protection to survive and to multiply.
So the first risk a farmer would see,
well,
not the first,
but one risk a farmer would see having a soil that is it.
covered is the is the slug problem is okay this is i'm actually multiplying a pest here so the next crop will be very challenging because you'll have all these uh little slugs uh willing to eat my my crop so that's uh first
thing uh that i have that is popping up in my mind the second thing is um a very uh simple challenge how do you seed how do you put a seed in a soil that is uh not
clean and bare like the well-plowed fields and we say in the common language a clean field a clean soil how do you put a seed in a soil that is covered with a lot of residues it's technically more challenging but this is also a
bottleneck for a farmer who as you said the common sense would push him to cover his soil but there is a technical uh right technical challenge
meaning that probably these farmers have to invest in a new machine that is able to cut the residues and to properly put the seed in the right place.
So that's one thing.
There is another important challenge,
which is the soil temperature.
In our countries,
in the North,
compared to Latin America and in the South,
soil temperature is a driver.
for the start of the crop,
for the germination of the crop.
So covering a soil with a lot of residue and having a seed that is supposed to germinate in this soil could be challenging because this soil will always be a few degrees lower than a soil that is bare.
So that's another challenge,
just to give you a few.
Yeah,
that's great.
That's what I wanted to know.
I hear so much about the benefits and I'm trying to understand what are the challenges and the price as well.
Yeah,
and just to be clear,
and we will not go into the details,
but those three first challenges,
we can tackle that.
The slugs,
you can organize your rotation differently.
You can also disturb your slugs without plowing the soils.
the soil temperature you can also compensate uh the lack of temperature with a little bit of tillage in the in the line of the seeds to open up a little bit the soil if you put certain micronutrients you can also give the boost that the the seed would have had
with the temperature but with a more of a micronutrient so there are ways to do but i mean this is more complex and to your question cky you had people not doing that uh it's so obvious
This complexity and the risk going together with this complexity is a reason why everybody's not doing that.
Right,
the complexity is really the key here.
It's really complexifying a system and it means you have to learn new concepts,
you have to maybe invest in new machinery,
you have to change the way you are doing things.
That's hard by definition.
Yeah,
that's not true,
I would say.
Yeah,
makes sense.
Okay.
So yeah,
we talked about the tillage and cover crops.
Yeah,
soil coverage.
There is another principle that we are trying to develop again in different ways.
This is the reduction of the agrochemicals,
the petrochemicals,
all the inputs that you apply in the fields that are coming from chemistry.
Not chemistry,
it is not probably the right word because everything is coming from chemistry.
but uh
that are based on petrochemicals,
I'm talking about the mineral fertilizers and the pesticides,
it is more and more clear that those products that we use to assist the crop to grow haven't been always developed
with the idea to not harm the soil health.
And so we are trying to minimize the usage of those products.
For some products like the fungicide and insecticides,
it's more obvious.
We understand that we want to develop the fungi of the soil.
If you apply fungicides on your crop,
it is highly probable that part of this fungicide will be actually...
apply to your soil or will end up to the soil and probably will harm the fungi of the soil that you are trying to develop or the insect of the soil that you're trying to to feed and to develop so this third principle of regenerative agriculture is again
not in a dogmatic way but trying as much as possible to decrease those molecules on the fertilizer this is also the idea so this is the other point
part of this group of when we talk about agrochemicals.
And we also understand that if you feed a plant with fertilizer,
it's like feeding someone with a
McDonald's or a fast food.
It's very efficient making people or plant growing fast,
but it comes with a lot of.
potential problem which we know in with the fast food and on human you're going to grow fast and you're going to be fat fast but you you better have to be properly equipped with medicines to uh to be resistant or at least to to assist you to not be
sick for the plant this is we see uh the crop we see the same so a plant a crop a field that will be fully depending on nitrogen and well-fed with mineral nitrogen.
is a crop that will probably be more susceptible in terms of fungi,
insects and so on.
It's a vicious circle.
The more chemical fertilizer you use,
the more likely it is that this crop is going to be susceptible.
Weaker.
It's going to be weaker,
his defenses,
and he's going to be more susceptible to have issues with fungi and pests.
Yeah.
So on this one,
practically,
What we do with our different project companies,
we're trying to be very pragmatic with the farmers because saying that we have to stop tomorrow,
it's very,
again,
dogmatic and drastic.
There is a lot of way to reduce significantly the amount of pesticides.
And the first way to do that,
it's just to see how we can optimize the spraying.
And it can be a bit shocking to...
to talk about how to optimize your pesticide usage or application.
When we come with the hat of RegenAg,
I was surprised and I'm still surprised to see how many farmers sometimes are not understanding properly how they could reduce the quantity of pesticides just based on the quality of the water they're using in the sprayer.
the weather conditions when the products are used,
the way they are being advised to use these products,
not by the seller of this product,
by an independent advisor.
So all these things...
We're trying to work with the farmers to say,
okay,
how can we leverage your different possibility to reduce your pesticides?
Yeah,
maybe it sounds shocking to some,
but I don't think so.
I think it makes sense.
The idea here is to try and reduce the harm you're doing to your oil,
to your ecosystem more and more,
and over time regenerate that ecosystem so that it relies less and less on those products,
whether it's the tillage and disturbance of the soil,
whether it's with chemicals,
whether it's with,
with,
other things like that.
Yeah.
I'm trying not to be dogmatic and extremist because this is,
this is working for a very small amount of farmers who are super convinced and motivated to take a high risk to go for a pure regenerative agriculture,
ticking all the boxes,
100%,
but this is only as very small numbers of farmers in,
in,
in a small number of conditions.
What interests me is,
how to get a bigger number of farmers,
conventional farmers,
how to translate those principles into something that is affordable for them.
And what we've discovered,
what we've experienced for these last years is that actually when you give the possibility to a farmer,
some tools or some recommendation to make the first steps,
as we do with soil capital and the carbon certification,
as we do with Cultivate with this.
market for the farmers who are implementing region act practices the farmer at least will have a first taste of what it is to have a soil that is going in a better direction and then if you if you succeed there the
pump is primed and things will happen much more positively constructively and naturally after this problem i think it makes a lot of sense
Us human beings,
we hate change,
right?
We're really bad.
We change.
Changing what we eat,
what we believe in,
the things we do or habits,
like changing anything for human beings is really hard.
And so
I can only imagine,
because I'm not a farmer,
but
I can only imagine for a farmer who's been doing things a certain way their whole lives,
because this is what society has asked them to do.
This is what's been advised by there.
agronomists and advisors and so on.
This is what their parents and grandparents were doing before them.
And then all of a sudden,
you come to them and tell them,
everything you've been doing your whole life is wrong,
and you should completely change your whole system.
It's probably not the best way to go,
and for very good reasons.
And therefore,
if you approach things from the angle of,
well,
here's a small change you can make,
and here is an attractive reward for making that change.
Yep.
that's a much more attractive proposition,
I think.
And if things work out,
and if that change turns out to be positive for the farmer,
then they might be inclined to do more and to go further in that direction.
And so that's why I think this is a really,
really interesting way to approach things.
Yeah,
it's an incremental thing.
It's not something that you can...
If you want to switch from convention to region ag,
you're going to take a huge risk.
Batifio
Draw a line and say,
okay,
I'm going to go step by step in the next five,
seven years.
It's much more natural and you're going to make this transition with much less risk.
And the last principle,
because we were still on the principle of region ag,
is what we call the diversification or the context-specific design.
we understand that introducing diverse
Diversity in your system is bringing resilience,
not only for your finance,
but also for your soil health.
And so it increases the duration and the number of crops you produce.
Introducing a perennial crop once every 10 years,
15 years,
trying to...
Sorry,
what do you mean by that,
introducing a perennial crop?
Sorry,
yeah,
this is what I was referring to,
the grassland,
the pasture.
so introducing a crop that would stay more than one year and not that is not an annual crop actually i don't think we call that the perennial crop a semi-perennial crop something that will stay or sometime a perennial crop when you talk about trees for example which
is a bit more extreme agroforestry is a way to diversify it's still very um unknown
and risky,
but introducing grassland for one or two or three years into your rotation every 10,
10,
15 years,
this is not something that is very risky,
very well understood and easy to do.
There is maybe the financial part that you have to manage because you're going to lose some productivity,
some profit.
The introduction of animals,
this is also something that many of your previous
speakers have mentioned.
So in many geographies,
you have some herbivores that you could bring to the land.
Again,
once every five,
ten years to have something grazed on your land is definitely something that is bringing value.
So all of this...
we put that i put that in the box of diversity which is the the last principle of today yeah
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