The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.49: Truly Regenerative Agriculture via Pasture-Cropping

Episode Date: May 7, 2015

This episode: Australian farmer Colin Seis talks about the system of no-till pasture cropping he helped develop that allowed him to resurrect a 3000 acre farm on the edge of destruction and turn it into a thriving example of truly regenerative agriculture. Learn more about Colin here.

We need our farming systems that are regenerative, not just simply sustainable. We need to regenerate our landscape and that needs to be applied all over the planet. This is the Ruminant Podcast and I'm Jordan Marr. The ruminant.ca is a website devoted to sharing good ideas for farmers and gardeners. At the site you can find back episodes of this podcast as well as other stuff. Essays I've written, photo-based submissions from listeners, book reviews, that sort of thing. I hope you'll check it out. TheRuminant.ca. You can email me, editor at TheRuminant.ca, and I'm on Twitter, at Ruminant Blog. Okay, let's do a show.

Hey everyone. It's going to be a short intro again again as I just don't have a lot of time to record these things now that we're into the full-on farming season. Last week I asked you to consider writing me to let me know what you think of the podcast, good or bad. I mentioned that I don't get a lot of feedback and it's really nice to receive. And a few of you did write emails to me and they were really nice. I really appreciated getting them. So to the rest of you, please consider writing in. Let me know what you think.

Don't forget that I would love to hear your own ideas, advice, tips, that sort of thing that you have for other farmers. I'd love to record it. We could do it over the phone or Skype or whatever. So if you want to do that, you can text me at 250-767-6636 to let me know that you want to do that. You can record your idea at the Skype number 310-734-8426.

You can email me or get me on Twitter and just let me know that you want to record something. on Twitter and just let me know that you want to record something. It doesn't take long. And the whole idea is that, well, if you were at a conference and you were going to get up on stage and just share one simple idea with your colleagues, what would it be? What are you doing that you're proud of? I'd love to do some more episodes with listener submissions. So please consider submitting or like I said, just send me some feedback. What do you like about the show and what do you think I could be doing better? I'd love to receive them. Okay, so today the episode features my conversation with Colin Sace. Colin was a guest at Permaculture Voices 2 conference in San Diego this year and I was

blown away by his presentation. He's been farming for decades, and over the last two or three decades, he has developed a very innovative system of what he calls pasture cropping. Colin farms on thousands of acres on his farm in Australia, and through a fairly complex rotation of various crops, native grasses, and his 3,000 sheep, Colin has developed a system that is regenerative. He has seen his soils vastly increase their productive capacity over the years. And this is all done without irrigation. I'm going to leave it at that. Colin goes into it in detail with me in our conversation.

But it's really, really impressive what he's done. Really inspiring. And we talk a little bit about how some of his techniques could be applied in other contexts, like the North American context. So I hope you enjoy it. Coming up on the ruminant, like at the website, theruminant.ca, I did have a submission this week, a really cool one.

I had a listener who submitted a do-it-yourself plan for making your own, um, oh, what are they called? Like a plate seeder, a vacuum-based plate seeder that allows you to, to seed, uh, seedling trays really, really quickly with the use of vacuum suction and a plate with small holes to hold a whole tray's worth of seeds at once. God, I just butchered the description. But anyway, I'll be putting that up soon. I may even invite this gentleman on the show really briefly to talk about his adaptation of what is otherwise a very, very expensive piece of equipment. So stay tuned for that.

And I hope you like this conversation with Colin Sice. Here's his bio. My name is Colin Sice. I live in, I guess, eastern Australia or southeastern Australia, which is about 200 miles northwest of Sydney. I farm 2,000 acres here. That's mixed farming, I guess what you would call farming and ranching, and run merino sheep, about 4,000 merino sheep,

and grow crops on about 500 acres or a quarter of that. The crops we grow are mostly cereal crops, wheat, oats, barley, those types of crops. Colin Seiss, thanks a lot for coming on the Ruminant Podcast. Yep, thank you. Colin, I caught your workshop or one of your workshops that you gave at permaculture voices to conference in san diego and i i just found it fascinating essentially you summed up how over a number of years you and the people you farm with have come up with a very innovative system for no bare soil farming i i hesitate to simply call it pasture cropping because it's a very innovative system for no bare soil farming.

I hesitate to simply call it pasture cropping because it's a lot more complicated than that. And so today I'd like to ask you to take us through your systems and then speculate on how other people might mimic some of the systems you use in other parts of the world. So anyway, thanks. I'm really glad to have you here today. Okay, thank you. I guess to explain about pasture cropping, I probably need to go back to the reason why I changed and why I was looking or searching for a different way to grow crops and to plant crops. I grew up in conventional agriculture like that or traditional agriculture. I've been on this farm here or my family been on this farm here since the 1860s. My great-grandfather started

the farm here and so and then my father started I guess you would call it industrial agriculture in the 1930s of ploughing soil and then eventually putting fertilizers and then in the 1950s, pesticides, insecticides, all of that that goes along with the Green Revolution that was started after the Second World War. was started after the Second World War. So I grew up in that type of agriculture and even though it was crashing and failing on my father, eventually, mostly because of crop diseases and insect attack and poor crop yields, I did adopt, early days, I did adopt that type of agriculture and it failed with me as well.

I did adopt that type of agriculture and it failed with me as well. I then changed to what you would call now zero-till, but zero-till with all of the inputs, full herbicide application and pesticides and insecticides. And that failed on me also. That was in the 1980s I was doing that, that type of zero tilling. And it was a failure as well. We were getting more and more compacted soil and bare ground.

And it just simply, it just crashed on me. It just wasn't going to work. So then I started to search for another way of doing things. In the meantime, in 1979, I actually had a major fire, bushfire or a wildfire, you would call it, here which burnt everything on our 2000 acre farm, including all of the buildings and almost all of our sheep. About 3,000 sheep were killed. and almost all of our sheep, about 3,000 sheep were killed. So I was looking or searching for a low-input method of farming. I actually had to look at a no-input method of farming because I had no money at all.

And it was a survival thing for me. It was either cut my costs drastically or I wouldn't have stayed on the farm. I would have had to have sold the farm after that major fire. So I started to focus at that stage on full ground cover, on maintaining 100% ground cover 100% of the time. And things started to go well or go better when I started to do that. And the grassland started to recover, native grassland started to recover.

Then, I guess in the late 1980s, I'd heard of Alan Savory and Alan Savory's work he was doing with, I guess at that stage it was called time control grazing. And I adopted that or I trialled that and adopted that. And it certainly helped a lot in general direction. It certainly helped a lot in general direction. I still hadn't solved the problem at that stage of how to crop in a more, not just simply sustainable manner, but a regenerative manner, a method that would regenerate the landscape, until a friend of mine, Darrell Clough, and myself came up with just the thought of maintaining or keeping the

native perennial grasses on our farm while we were sowing crops. So we made sure we kept those perennial native grasses alive and then started to drill crops into them, crops like wheat and oats and barley, those types of crops. And that was the start of pasture cropping. And while I was sowing crops in this manner, we still had to maintain, I felt as though we had to maintain full ground cover, 100% ground cover. 100% ground cover. So what, I mean, you explain well that you really were against the wall when your farm burned and you lost all your sheep.

I mean, you had no money, but what, I mean, were there other, were there any other theories or instincts leading towards the new approach that you took? It was all instinctive because there was no one to help me develop it. And in fact, it was the opposite, actually. Everyone, especially scientists, especially scientists and agronomists, were quite almost aggressive when they heard of what I was doing. And certainly there was no support there from that at all, from them at all. In fact, the opposite.

And so it's a bit like you hear stories of anyone doing anything new, they seem to get criticism from everyone, not encouragement, but criticism. And so a lot of those early days, myself and Daryl Clough, fortunately Daryl Clough was also working with me in those early days, and we only had ourselves two supporters, like, just to bounce ideas off. Fortunately, I met a scientist,

it was Dr. Christine Jones, in the early 90s. And Christine is a raised ant ecologist and a soils ecologist and she understood it. She visited my farm one time and she understood what I was trying to do immediately and she ended up a wonderful support and Christine could always see things from a plant's point of view and what and what what was happening under the soil and she answered a lot of the questions that no one else was interested in answering or didn't know anyway I mean I'm talking about other scientists and and certainly Christine's support has been invaluable over the years. So, Colin, you know, in your first kind of major summary, I wrote down about eight follow-up questions.

But before I get to them, I think it's important to ask you just to take us through a year on your farm. I think that's the best way to give listeners an idea of what you have figured out and what what you've achieved so i don't care what what could you please start at the at the most logical time of year to start point out what season that is for you in australia and take us through your your production system if you don't mind yes that that would be fine to do that um if we start now before i start, I need to explain. The farm here is, the main enterprise is Merino sheep, Merino sheep for wool and meat. And growing crops is more of a secondary side, but an important side. but an important side, as opposed to someone that grows crops mainly and livestock are a secondary thing. Now, if we start in January or even December,

traditionally what was done to grow a crop in December, December, January is midsummer here in Australia. Traditionally, what is done is that people are either ploughing soil to plant crops or they're using herbicides to kill plants in preparation to plant a crop. plants in preparation to plant a crop. What we're doing in this situation is using livestock, specifically sheep, to graze in a time-controlled manner with above about 3,000 adult sheep and using those animals in that rotation to start to prepare the paddocks to plant a crop into, remembering that crop planting time is April, May,

and even into June. So in, say, from February on, we're starting to just graze those areas a bit shorter with that mob of up to 3,000 sheep in preparation to plant the crop. Are they grazing native grasses? Is that what your pasture is composed of? Yes, yes. Now these pastures are native grasses, mostly perennial grasses. In fact, there's 80% native perennials in these grasslands now. The rest are annual grasses and clover and that type of thing.

So we're using those animals. With a mob that size, they're putting a lot of dung and urine manure and urine onto that paddock as well so we're transferring nutrients onto that area as well which is going to be of great help to the crop that is to be planted in two or three months time so the animals are actually rotating around the farm remember we've got about 75 areas of about 30 acres each, roughly. So they're rotating around the farm.

Normally, we're trying to give at least three, maybe four months rest before those animals come back to that original area again. So they're going in a rotation with the aim of long recovery of these grass species before they're grazed again. Now in preparing to plant a crop, we're just leaving those animals on there a little bit longer and usually bring them back a little bit faster onto that area so there's not as long a recovery. And this is specifically to plant the crop. The goal of that is to remove as much of the leaf area to also prune roots back.

So you're removing competition from the potential crop to be sown. And very importantly, we're putting a lot of organic matter from that root material into the soil back so you're removing competition from the potential crop to be sown and very importantly we're putting a lot of organic matter from that root material into the soil and we're laying a lot of the dry grass as mulch onto the soil surface so we're preparing it almost like a garden or a vegetable patch or vegetable garden, as much litter or mulch on the soil surface as we possibly can achieve. Now, when it's planting time, and it has to be the same planting time as normally or traditionally used

for a particular or a specific crop. Zero tilling that crop into that area, usually without a herbicide. If we have enough mulch and litter on those paddocks that's been created by the animals, enough material there, we generally don't have any weeds on it. And then drilling into that mulch that's been created. Okay, so I'm just going to interrupt so that I can confirm. You've grazed them for sure the one time.

Have they been back and grazed again? Like are you talking about after the first grazing or after the second grazing generally after the second grazing yeah i missed that that bit after the second grazing it needs to be mulched reasonably well the the canopy of the grass needs to be opened up as well to prevent too much shading on on the newly emerging uh crop that's that after it's been planted. Okay, so that means are we now into like March, April, when you're planting this crop? Yeah, April. Depending on what we want it for, it can be March or April,

especially if we're planting a crop for forage, for animals. Okay, so great. Okay, so if you could pick it up from there then, just choose a crop that you would be planting at this time and explain what you're doing. You've developed a special planting drill, haven't you? That's right. It is. I developed it mainly to keep the costs down,

but any zero-till drill is fine. It doesn't have to be any specific, but I developed my own with machinery that I had here just to reduce costs. At this time of the year, because I'm trying to generate stock feed to feed animals in mostly our winter period. What I'm sowing now, what I've been developing now,

is multi-species crops. That's still pasture crop, multi-species pasture crop, and still drilling these into that grassland and into that grass species. Before I... I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. What's very important in pasture cropping is we need to be sowing a crop into a grassland or a pasture where the majority of those species have gone into dormancy or are going into a grassland or a pasture where the majority of those species

have gone into dormancy or are going into into a natural dormancy in our case here the the majority of the the native grasses that we have are summer growing warm season grasses that go dormant as the weather gets colder. And so as those species are starting to get shut down or go into dormancy, that's the time where we're planting these crops. The crops that I'm growing now, as I mentioned before, are multi-species crops, and they're made up with the base of oats and then a combination of as many different species

as I can think of to put in there and that combination that I'm actually sowing at the moment is with oats I'm putting a forage brassica in which that particular one is a crust between a turnip and kale, just a normal available forage brassica. Veg is also in that mixture. growing annual clover and also a field pea and lupin as well and some tillage radish. Now, so I'm drilling that in now and you need to remember that this is sown into a grassland or a grassland that has gone dormant. So you've got, at any time, you've got something actively growing.

If it isn't the grassland through that summer period, it is a mix of many species in the crop as well. Now, a lot of these ideas for the multi-species, not the pasture cropping side of it, but the multi-species actually came from the time I'd spent with Gabe Brown, who many Americans would be aware of and Canadians would be aware of. Gabe Brown is in North Dakota and Gail Fuller is in Kansas. Also some input from Dave Brandt in Iowa. They grow multi-species crops for

many reasons and soil health benefits on those. Now I've just turned this around a bit and multi-species crop in North America is used generally to prepare the soil. It's almost like a biological primer to put the main crop in, which is often corn. Here, the cover crop for me, or the cover, is actually the grassland itself. And the crop is the multi-species. So it's turned it around the other way and then that didn't confuse everyone no no i i'm following you and i'm going to provide a summary at the end just to make sure i have it right but is this forage this multi-species

forage crop um is it for true foraging then like you'll send the animals back out you're not harvesting this stuff to feed them in there in the barns or anything like that i i imagine that that you're sending them back out to graze this down at some point that's right yeah i need to be aware that yeah and explain to your listeners that uh it is different here in australia because because we've got a lot warmer climate especially as you hit north and into canada uh uh our winters are still okay and not that cold, certainly not cold in relation to sort of the northern part of the U.S. and into Canada. Our crops will still grow through our winter period.

The climate is more like, say, Kansas, that type of climate there. From what I can understand. It's closer to the climate of, say, Kansas than, say, North Dakota, for example. Now, yes, these crops, they're used still as a dual-purpose crop. They're used for forage, and it's very, very good quality forage. I've found that that mix of multi-species will fatten animals, either sheep or cattle, very, very quickly and it's very healthy for the animals, a very healthy mixture. There's no feeding issues or health issues on it at all. The other great benefits of it is soil health, of that multi-species,

especially when you start to combine this with the native perennial grassland as well, in that the soil becomes far more friable. You get greater depth, penetration depth with something like tillage radish. With a legume in there like vetch and field pea, you're adding nitrogen also for that crop and a future crop as well. Now, what I've found,

if we get the right species mix with oats, those broadleaf species will not tolerate as much grazing as something like oats will. August, and then the oats will still make grain, and we can still harvest oats off these paddocks as well. So we can have your cake and eat it too. We still can harvest grain and do harvest grain off these crops, oat grain, and we get all this good stock feed as well. Wow. Plus, as you point out, just the benefits to the soil. So by this point, if I have you right,

if you take one of these 30-acre plots that you're rotating the stock through, they visit the one paddock twice before you plant your multi-species forage. They ultimately visit it a third time, and you still have time to let some of the species like oats then go to seed and harvest the seed that's right except what we tend to be doing is using these crops just specifically to finish lambs to fatten and finish lambs or surplus stock we're so we're using them often to, well, most of the time, not so much with the 3,000 sheep at this stage, but with specific ones we want to fatten and sell.

And is that to say that, are you kind of pointing out that for for the multi-species forage crop is that the stocking rates are a bit lower is that is that part of why you're telling me that yes um you certainly could graze all of all of the sheep on that that that's not a problem it it but we find we can uh from a from an income point of view we use them more specifically to fatten and finish animals. Then we get far better money for those animals when they're in. Because all of the animals then are really all grass-fed. There's no grain given to any of our animals here. So they're all grass-fed and grass-finished,

either on the crop or on the native grassland. Okay, so Colin, before you continue taking me through the season, as an aside, I just want to ask you, if I have the term right, because I'm not a livestock producer, what is your stocking rate per acre compared to, say, I happen to know that one or both of your brothers farms conventionally right next door to you. How do the stocking rates differ? In other words, the numbers of animals you can graze per acre, are they different? Are you seeing benefits in that respect? Yes, I carry double the number per acre than my neighbors do.

And that's partly because of the way we're sowing the crops, but also the way we're grazing our native grasslands as well, with a rotation or realistically managed grazing. And this kind of information is not just you stretching credulity. You've had a lot of scientists visit you because of your innovative practices, haven't you? That's right. It's been suggested that, and I think it's right, that my farm, Winona, is one of the most researched farms in Australia.

Now, after all this time, the scientists have eventually become interested in it and now wanting to do research work on it. Like, for example, our main research organisation here in Australia, which is called the CSIRO, has done work here. Universities have too, the Sydney University and Canberra Universities have also done, and Melbourne University as well, have also done research work on my farm. So, yeah, all this is well validated, including soils and soil health

and carbon measurements and all of that, and soil microbial measurements as well. Right. Okay, so Colin, can you take us back to the production year then? So you've now put this multi-species forage crop on you've you've grazed it you even in a good year you have you still have time to to take a harvest of oats off of that same crop um okay then what then then we must be somewhere in september october by now i imagine yes yep now need to remember while all this is is going on, while we've got crops in, about a quarter of the farm gets planted to crops. Most of those are multi-species, but there's some that are single-species oats,

like all pasture crop, all into grassland, which we harvest grain off, specifically for grain, or it can be wheat. Sometimes we grow wheat and cereal rye as well. So the grazing is still going on in the meantime on all of the rest of the farm that we don't have, well, that either their crops aren't in or we're using those crops specifically to finish and fatten animals on. Right. So if we're up to September, well, September we shear our Merino sheep here in early September.

We generally cut about 20 tonne of wool off them. We get 20,000 kilograms or whatever that is in pounds. And that generally takes about two weeks out in September. October, our ewes are having their lambs. They're lambing in October, which is sort of towards the end of our spring and then harvesting our crops in in generally in november right okay and so and then where does the where does the harvesting of the native so so i would imagine in september october the native grasses come back on and um you ultimately this is what also is so fascinating you've you've developed a special

harvester to harvest the native grass seed at least in some of the paddocks so but is there first are you also grazing that native grass before you ultimately take the the seed harvest or do you do the seed harvest first and then set them out to graze or how does it work yeah we're harvesting the the native grass seed before they're grazed. And we sometimes prepare or generally don't graze those areas we're wanting to harvest native grass seed off. We generally are not grazing them quite as much through the year but generally what happens when we have a have a an oat crop or a wheat crop in in that area we can then as soon as the crop

is well as the crop is harvested the the the native grass will go will produce seed and then we harvest native grass seed off that as well, within a month of harvesting the grain off the crop within harvesting native grass seed. Another thing, too, that I did miss at the start of describing what was happening, we're usually harvesting native grass seed in the area before we start to prepare that area to plant the crop in.

So we're often getting two harvests of native grass seed off those areas. And one thing I wanted to ask, Colin, it seems like some of the crops in your multi-species forage mix, given that you're not irrigating um you're really depending on on this really i imagine very rich mulch slash litter that preserves the moisture that allows you to grow things like certain certain brassicas that you mentioned and stuff like that like that was also really impressive to me when i heard that you were growing stuff like that in the system that you were dealing with. Yes, yes. One of the problems, well not problems, one of the things we have to deal with in Australia is even though our rainfall appears quite good rainfall, our evaporation rate is very,

very high. Our summers are long and hot. And our winters, we never snows here, so we've got evaporation virtually right throughout the year. Anyway, so... And many of our farms in Australia are crashing because there's not enough ground cover maintained on them, either in cropping farms or grazing. So it's very important to maintain that mulch layer and little layer

and then start to build soil and organic matter and then associated carbon from that soil carbon. And that's certainly what's happened here. And now we've doubled our carbon levels on the soils here since I've changed to these methods of farming and grazing. And consequently, our water holding capacity on soils here have now doubled with that. Things like, but it gets even better than that in that traditional agriculture has always depleted the landscape right from 10,000 years ago. It was always going to deplete the landscape.

Well, destroy ecosystems really is what agriculture has done all around the world. And farming, especially ploughing to grow crops, has been very destructive. Since I've reversed this and developed a regenerative method of agriculture, not only have our soil carbon levels increased, but all of our soil nutrients have increased. And traditionally, as far as science goes, as far as science goes as far as they know

agriculture has always depleted soil nutrient levels and it's just been an accepted thing and also it's just accepted that we're going to get loss of soil or soil erosion now if we start to get full ground cover with almost a living mulch, with something growing there all the time,

we can reverse that around and we can actually increase soil nutrients or we can improve the soil chemistry. We've increased all the nutrients here by an average of 172% on this farm. So while we're producing all that wool and growing crops, all of the nutrients are increasing. And Colin, do I need to ask if your farm is profitable? It certainly is far more profitable. Yes, it is profitable.

It certainly is far more profitable. Yes, it is profitable. And it's far more profitable than it was when we were farming in a traditional way. And the main reason why is that we're saving, on average, $80,000 a year doing what we're doing now compared to when I was farming more conventionally with, I guess at the time, we still best practice agriculture, but it was a very destructive form of agriculture. So we're saving all that money to start with. And our crop yields are about the same as conventional agriculture, but our carrying capacity has greatly increased, as in the number of livestock or the number of sheep we're running,

that's far greater. So that's, I mean, as you pointed out, you're talking about the $80,000 you save in expenses each year, I mean, that's got to be a comfortable, even like a middle-class income in Australia is worth of savings. That's right, yes. Yes, it's made a huge difference and certainly taken a lot of pressure off, financial pressure off, wondering where the next dollar is coming from.

Keeps the fridge full of beer. Yes, that's exactly right. I didn't mention that bit about pasture-grubbing being developed over quite a few beers with my friend Darrell Clough. There's no end to the benefits of a good brew. That's correct. Colin, I want to ask you, I mean, to sum it up now, and this is often the case when we talk about when we talk when we hear from people like you, where it's almost intimidating to or it's just awe inspiring to see what you've achieved. But and it seems unattainable.

But I have to imagine it wasn't it wasn't, you know, all roses going along. There must have been failures along the way. I mean, did you have, were there many techniques and approaches you tried that didn't work, or are there any other failures that happened as you figured out the system? Yep. What was surprising, the first time that Daryl Clough and I tried it, the first year we tried it, it worked straight away. It was quite, that surprises. We just expected to just produce some

stock feed but we actually, first crop we grew we got good grain off it harvested grain but in saying that there has been some failures along the way and that was in the development stages, start developing anything new or different

things like manipulating the grass land is has been a real learning curve and that's why i place a lot of emphasis on grazing and how it's grazed like for example i tried growing growing crops into tall grass even though it was going into dormancy but into really tall grass and and it didn't work anywhere near as well and that was because there was too much shading from it and i hadn't pruned it really done much root pruning um and and mulching with the animals on it so yeah there has been some failures along the way. Where I see failures, because I do a lot of, I guess, training people now on how to use these techniques,

and that's around the world I do that. What I get people to do is not just jump in to anything new, and this included just switch from a traditional thing straight into anything new. There needs to be a transition period. You need to be able to just move into this gradually because any transition period is financially risky. because any transition period is financially risky. So it's very important just to ease your way into it and work out what applies on your farm. And so what I recommend is to do small areas when you start and to reduce the risk of the change.

Right. So on that note, Colin, I wouldn't mind spending a few minutes talking about whether this can be applied in, let's say, places with hard winters, and if so, how? So I have some specific questions, but you must have an answer right off the bat. I mean, you must have a sense of whether these principles can be effectively applied in a place like, you know, Canada. Is there a modification to the system that you've seen used to achieve the same essential result of no-till agriculture, of no-till regenerative agriculture?

Yeah. The Brewer principles can be applied, providing there is whatever you're planting into is at a dormant stage. Now, that's really, really it. Gabe has been trying to work out how to fit this in in North Dakota and he's still struggling with it in that it doesn't seem to be a big enough niche a big a long enough niche where where there's a dormancy and a long enough time to get that crop to grow and finish so it is a problem in in those types of climates if there isn't a big enough dish

but in saying that nothing's impossible it's just about thinking about how to do it and changing well it's all about changing our heads really and changing the way we approach things and if you get further south in the US in further south I think in some of those areas around

Kansas and further north of there as well I think it'll work better in those areas than it does here in Australia in that when it gets cold in those areas, it shuts your warm season grasses down very quickly, whereas our grasses don't shut down quite as quickly as they do in those areas. Right. Well, see, I remember asking you, I was so pumped up when I saw your talk in San Diego, and I even, I put up my hand and asked you to evaluate this scenario and it's it's a bit far out there I mean I'm it's not just the climate I'm dealing with which is you know

not a severe winter like on the Canadian prairies or the American Midwest but it's it's a cold winter I mean minus we had some minus 20 celsius this winter yeah but not only that but we don't have animals on my farm and we're much, much smaller. Still, it's fun to think about how your systems could be modified. So I'll ask you again for the benefit of the listeners to speculate on this scenario. We have an eight acre hay field on the farm that we normally get three cuts of hay off of, but that's with irrigation. So I have wondered if, if theoretically that we could treat the hayfield in a different way, um, and perhaps just let the spring rains irrigate the hayfield, um, take, take, take a cut off of the hayfield, perhaps a little earlier than we normally do.

Um, so in, in, you know, late spring to early summer, early summer um and and then perhaps let the grass grow back a bit but by this time it's getting very very hot and dry and dry here in my climate um so i have wondered if i could mimic the effect of the of the stock by by using a flail mower which is very um feasible on such a small acreage to to chop up the leftover grass really fine to create, to mimic that kind of litter layer, that mulch layer. And then ultimately just try planting, you know, perhaps just as an example, broccoli or kale into that litter and seeing what results. We could irrigate it, although that would just encourage the grass to come back. But I'm wondering, is that getting too far out there or do you think it's worth experimenting

like that? Yeah, I think it's quite possible. That hay area is grass, is it grass species? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, right now it's also got some clover and some alfalfa, but it's also got a few grass species in it. I don't know if I'd call it the native. I mean, we irrigate every year.

So I think the native could be encouraged to come back or could be replanted, though. Yes, okay. I think it's worth trying, especially if there's enough time to get things growing, especially something like a brassica, like kale or those species, because they're more tolerant of cold. And I have found that they are happier growing amongst other grass species than, say, something like another grass-type crop like wheat or oats or barley.

They're more compatible with other grass species like a brassica is than a cereal crop. Right. If you know what I mean. I think it's related to the different root systems or the different types of plants to start with. So they're more likely to work than most other things, like the kale or brassica type species.

And Colin, I just want to go back to kind of something, a couple of things you said earlier. One is that you said you experienced a lot of doubt from others, from, from, from main, you know, other conventional farmers, from even from ag scientists, when you started talking about and then trying to implement these ideas. And, um, that really struck a chord for me just because, you know, mainstream agricultural science has been responsible for some incredible breakthroughs in terms of food production. But there really does seem to be, I guess I would call it an arrogance to mainstream science that people like you encounter. It sounds like you were forced to just do it anyway.

Sounds like you were forced to just do it anyway, but I imagine it must be responsible for really discouraging others sometimes who think they're on to something, but who face a bunch of people telling them that they're crazy. Yes. Yes, I've been called a lunatic more than once, but that's okay. When they're calling you a lunatic, you know you're just about on the right track. Fortunately, I had no choice, and so I had to take it through. I was forced to change financially from that fire we had.

The main critics have been scientists. Fellow farmers have generally been okay. Well, I mean, some of the thinking farmers have been very quick to adopt it because they know straight away if it's going to work or not. And they'll often try, but the scientists seem to...

Yeah, I don't know whether it's just an arrogance or arrogance ego or professional jealousy type thing seem to, yeah, I don't know whether it's just an arrogance, or arrogance ego, or professional jealousy type thing, or what it is with them, or whether we have a unique band of scientists in Australia that are more that way or not, I don't know. But generally there wasn't any, very, well, virtually no support from farmers, sorry, scientists, only criticism early days.

Now there's a lot more support than there was. But I think it's quite common with change. You've only got to have a look at what, with Charles Darwin 200 years ago, that the criticism he copped when he he was developing or sort of discovering a lot of his things and and so i i think it's fairly normal and and i and if people are developing something new or different they need to just realize that they're going to cop a bit of criticism it's just it's so weird because like there's a fine line between persevering, you know, you really think you're onto something, and there's a fine line between that and actually being a bit of a fool. Like, sometimes they're right when they tell you it's crazy.

And I know that well because I started farming only about eight years ago, and let me tell you, I've done many, many foolish things. Yeah, that happens. One of the advantages, I guess, when I talk to groups of farmers, what I try to get them to do is to actually form a group within an area of like-minded farmers as a support group so that when they start doing things, not only have they got a support base that they're not one idiot on their own, they've actually got a group of idiots together.

At least they've got each other to bounce ideas off and discuss their failures and their good things that have happened and it's certainly a lot easier if you've got a few other people around that are doing similar things and that I think is the better way to create

change rather than trying to do it on your own you're certainly going a lot further forward and faster with a group of people. Right. Well, it's good advice. And that's kind of how I'd like to end this conversation. We can step, if you want, we can step away from the topic at hand.

But I would just love to, mean you you you're obviously very very experienced with rotational grazing and i know i'll have some listeners who are at various stages of of using rotational grazing and this is an open-ended question but i'm just wondering if you have any advice or tips for those who are struggling with it are there any key pieces of advice you have for those who who want to do more rotational grazing on their farm? Yep. The main thing really is make sure that the perennial plants are fully recovered before they're grazed again. You can't express that enough.

in a rotation, in that rotation, it's so critically important to have those plants fully recovered. Don't graze them before they're fully recovered. Otherwise, you'll start to just wind everything backwards. And a lot of that's in the planning of either, obviously not carrying any more animals than your farm will carry, but also having, I guess, small enough areas for the numbers of animals that you're carrying. But that really is the main thing, and just make sure there's a long enough recovery for the type of plant you've got. There's no answer on how much recovery that you should have

because it's on different plant species and in different areas around the planet. But the plants will tell you whether they're recovered or not. They need to be fully recovered but not necessarily going to seed. but not necessarily going to seed. And Colin, is there anything you would like to promote? I mean, are there any ways that you interact with the public? Do you have a website, anything like that, that people should know about if they want to learn more about what you're doing?

Yeah, my website, and people can contact me anyway, my email address is colin, C-O-L-I-N, at winona, W-I-N-O-N-A,.net,.au, so they can email me if they wish. My website, I've just been upgrading it, I think it's finished, is winona, W-I-N-O-N-A,.net,.au, is myona.net.au is my website. Okay. Well, Colin Sykes, I can't thank you enough for making the time to talk to me. I think what you're doing is so impressive and inspiring, and I just appreciate that you took some time to tell us about it today. Oh, it's a pleasure. No problems at all. Colin, we're done. Thank you. That was great.

We're done unless there's something you really think I left out that you want to talk about. But other than that, we're done. Yeah, not really. I guess probably what I didn't place enough importance on is we need our farming systems that are regenerative, not just simply sustainable. We need to regenerate our landscape, and that needs to be applied all over the planet. And that's probably the main thing.

It doesn't really matter which method of agriculture we use as long as it regenerates our landscapes and our farms. Do you share the opinion of permaculturalists like Alan Savory who argue that animals are essential to that, or do you think it can be done without animals? I don't think it can be done long-term without animals because animals do a lot more than just eat grass in that they cycle nutrients

they're part of the process and they also are with a mulch they're also putting that mulch layer onto the soil surface then to start driving soil health and that type of thing breaking down that material

so I think animals are a very important part of it. I'd fully agree with Alan on that one. And it's really simple. I mean, a lot of this is very simple, really. We just need to mimic how nature did it in the first place, really. And animals were always a component of that. Colin, thank you. Okay, good.

Thank you. Okay. Thanks to Colin for that great interview i hope you enjoyed it folks and i hope you'll consider getting in touch either just to give me some feedback about the podcast editor at the ruminant.ca or to make a uh a submission of some kind you can contact me at the email or at ruminant blog on twitter or at my cell phone number 250-767-6636 you can send me a text that way or i have a skype number 310-734-8426 and that's if you want to if you want to line up a chance to just record a short piece of audio in which you talk about something innovative or cool you're doing on your farm or in your garden

that you want to tell your colleagues about I'd love to hear from you have a great week Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces.

out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Bye.