Regenerative Farming, Rewilding and Tim Williams. WORDS_ Iain Graham
We take our first of several looks at regenerative farming on three Cornish farms. Farmer Tim Williams talks to us about regenerative farming and rewilding and what this all means.
I first met Tim this summer, a good friend had put a bunch of us together as she often does, curating good conversation. Everyone was very much post lockdown excited, so the conversation flowed, all of us interested in each others tales.
Tim looked like an outdoors guy right from the get go. He was introduced to me as someone who was changing the face of farming in the area. Quite an intro so I made a beeline. His expertise, regenerative farming, was something that I was already starting to dip into, but was, and still very much am a layman. Tim was very down to earth, matter of fact, exactly what I like.
We are going to follow Tim and his family on their journey over the next 24 months as he regenerates and re-wilds three farms in Cornwall.
Tim was born a farmer's son, his Grandfather was a farmer, and his Father before him. He spent the first 5 years of his life on their original family farm, before his parents struck out on their own in the early 80's when they moved to their very own farm.
Much of his childhood was spent working on their farm, school holidays were spent ploughing fields, making hay or dealing with animals. As Tim got older he began working for neighbouring farms over the summer holidays. During school term he wouldn't get home until around 4pm, but would still jump on a tractor for a couple of hours in the summer, or be out feeding animals in the winter.
“It was all I knew really, and I loved it, my Dad was a hard worker and I pretty much spent my childhood shadowing him, learning from him. Learning what to do, and not what to do!”
It was a very tough time to be in farming, the family never really had much cash, and after some pretty stressful years, Tim’s parents went their separate ways. It was in the late 90's, and eventually they ended up losing the farm.
“Feeling a bit despondent I went off to Uni to study Viticulture as there was no longer a farm for me to come back to, I dropped out after a couple of years, took some time out working on a commercial Lobster boat, realised that wasn't for me and ended up returning to finish Uni with a degree in marketing. Randomly. “
Surprisingly Tim never really thought about farming as a career and headed to London to work in marketing. It was only after working in London for a few years that he got a yearning for the freedom that farming brings and managed to convince his new British bride that a return to NZ and the countryside would be a fun thing to do.
Although at the time, they weren't quite ready for the quietness that new Zealand brings, Tim was definitely ready for the countryside and together they worked out that if they could farm in the UK, they could get to hang out with their London mates that they so dearly missed, it would be the best of both worlds.
That was ten years ago.
Tim didn’t originally make a conscious choice to start regenerative farming.
“When I returned to farming here in the UK just over a decade ago, I had already witnessed some pretty terrible farming systems, so at that point in time, I made a conscious decision to only ever work within ‘organic’ systems. Following my organic pathway, it just so happened that I stumbled upon Regenerative Agriculture after managing an organic farm back in New Zealand about 5 years ago.”
Whilst managing a large farm, Glendhu Station, Tim heard of a man called Joel Salatin who had recently come to Glendhu to talk about this 'new' style of farming (although, it wasn't new at all, just new to us). His boss at the time was very much into the likes of Joel and also folk like Alan Savory, Christine Jones and so he lent Tim a few of his books.
"It kindled something in me, resonating with my own personal style of farming, so I was interested but not overly. I struggled with the 'Holistic Management' nature of the Savory work, and found it to be almost like a religion.
“I was handed a textbook on it and to me, the approach didn’t seem to be something that you could define in a textbook. To me it was just farming in tune with nature.”
But it was not until Tim was managing Mangarara Station, again back in New Zealand, that he truly understood the full concept of a Regenerative system, Mangarara being one of the original regenerative farms in NZ. Whilst there, Tim was lucky enough to meet a leading agro-ecologist and fellow kiwi, Nicole Masters, who he had been chatting with over social media and at one of her workshops What she was saying just made sense. She explained to a roomful of staunch kiwi farmers that you don't need all these chemicals, these fertilisers, these artificial inputs, you just need to understand how soil actually works. It turned soil science from chemistry into biology. It was something he understood from almost a decade of organic farming, but embarrassingly, even after studying organics at a postgrad level, he still didn't have the level of understanding he came away with that day.
“My time at Mangarara was an amazing learning experience, after meeting Nicole, I heard from and met Dr Christine Jones, another leading soil ecologist, I met Darren Doherty, a regenerative farm designer from Australia and I also met Ian Mitchell-Innes, one of Alan Savory's original students.“ Everything culminated into this huge uplifting experience that brought his lifetime of farming experience and knowledge together.
So what is Regenerative Farming and why does it seem like such a revolution?
“There are a few definitions knocking about, but to me, regenerative farming is about a restorative way of producing food and fibre, rather than a destructive one. In very simplistic terms it's based on five principles around maintaining soil health - minimal tillage, soil armor (Soil armor means keeping the soil covered as much as possible), diverse crops/pastures, incorporating animals, maintaining photosynthesis etc. but it goes far far deeper than that. It's about being at one with the land and truly understanding that piece of ground. Imagining the land as your partner, what do they need to reach their full potential. Support, respect, love and harmony.“
Ever since the invention of the plough we have been depleting our soils and we now understand why. Add to that the industrialisation of the food industry, the addition of agri-chemicals, made by the same processes as the chemical weapons of the First and Second world wars, a heavy reliance on fossil fuels and the push for yields over nutrition and you can see why our food system is broken.
“Regenerative farming is about healing the damage that has been done. And the great thing is, it also produces nutrient dense food, enhances soil health, increases biodiversity, captures carbon, limits floods, empowers farmers and reignites rural communities. It's an act of reparation.”
Hence the revolution.
It’s amazingly sad to hear how far from the point we have come and how this whole process is what we should and could have been doing all along.
“It's not necessarily a new thing though as it is how much of our food would have been produced pre-industrialisation, and how many indigenous cultures around the world continue to produce food today. “
Tim is now firmly based in England in Cornwall, as we chatted all those months ago he told me of his three projects, based around three properties in the area.
Tim was giving a talk in Cornwall, whilst briefly over from NZ he had been asked to speak at a conference. Correctly reading the room after his presentation, Tim cheekily asked if anyone would be interested in him starting a project for anyone with any spare land. The look on Tim’s face as he tells me this, is priceless and I can see why the owners of Antony Estate went for it too. A few weeks later the estate contacted him to see if he was keen to take on a portion of their land.
“Erth Barton is a true regeneration project, it has had a history of soil abuse, no doubt unwittingly, but abuse nonetheless. Intensive potato production, daffodils and cereals over the last two decades all with heavy tillage and chemical inputs causing a huge amount of damage to the soil and the soil biology. The project aim is to completely reverse the damage done and reignite the natural processes to kick the biology into action. We will be monitoring improvements in the surrounding biodiversity too, and the increase in soil organic matter, which roughly translates into carbon sequestration. “
Tim plans to bring back livestock into the process, by introducing diverse 30 seed cover crops and adaptive grazing techniques returning the land to a perennial systems as opposed to the current annual one.
Instead of using chemicals and sprays Tim is working in conjunction with The Land Gardeners to produce a composting system where the microbiology can be extracted and added to the land.
The Neighbouring Estate is Ince Castle, not a Castle in the conventional sense but a large manor house built of brick. The estate owners heard what Tim was planning to do with Erth and wanted to try to do something similar too. The difference with Ince is that it is already a perennial grassland farm, although it too has had similar chemical inputs, with heavy doses of artificial nitrogen.
“At Ince we want to increase the diversity of plant species, undergo some tree planting and also use the compost extract to enhance the biology. We have a stunning herd of traditional Aberdeen Angus cows which will graze the pastures, again on an adaptive rotational grazing system, in order to encourage a greater plant diversity, increase insects, encourage more birdlife and create a vibrant ecosystem overall. “
With two large regenerative projects back to back you would have thought that plenty take on in one hit, however Tim is helping to oversee a re-wilding project: Grove.
He calls it a “little” rewilding, but with 100 acres at his disposal, this seems like a massive undertaking in itself. Like the owners of Ince, they also got wind of Tim’s arrival and set about asking Tim to rewild the land. At first Tim was keen to get them into a more regenerative approach but now he has settled into rewilding the space.
“I'm excited about how the farm will transition within a re-wilding context. Re-wilding is somewhat different to regeneration, in that you are letting nature take her course, and revert back slowly over time. It's not about the production of food, but more about increasing and enhancing biodiversity, a practice which definitely has its place.”
The diverse cover crop
Having already consulted with an ecologist they are looking at the possibilities and benefits of releasing Beaver back into the area! They have 10 cows and 4 pigs roaming the wilding 100 acre farm too.
Of course, Tim has a side project too, with Chef Dan Cox. Tim and Dan are working together to produce sheep within a system of vegetable rotation. Dan's a specialist grower for Natoora, and they are developing a regenerative production system that creates beautiful nutrient dense, and consequently super flavoursome produce. It's been a challenging year, as Dan’s farm, Melilot farm generally supplies direct to chefs via Natoora, a market that has all but disappeared over the last 8 months with the onset of coronavirus. Although this has been a major restriction, they are both pushing ahead anyway, making continued and gradual progress.
“I’ve got a few other bits and bobs bubbling away too, so watch this space!” We will be!
I wondered if Tim had met any resistance from local farmers. As with most new systems isn’t there usually someone who takes it personally? To his credit Tim is unaware and to be honest uninterested:
“I don’t really have much to do with staunchly conventional farmers, I have always been a bit of an outsider so haven’t really cared for what other people thought too much, only those that I care about. I guess the more traditional folks that I bump into will always think I’m a bit mad, but the reality of the situation is, the movement is growing at pace because it has to.”
The stark reality is that we need to change our farming systems, the current system is broken and even conventional farmers are well aware of that.
Now several months into the process on all three farms, Tim is already seeing his changes take shape, but where on earth do you start when you have several hundred acres to asses?
“I guess I would look to the history of the land, assess the capability, and try to get an understanding of what that ground is seeking. Take Erth for example, probably the worst thing that's happened in the past is continuous heavy tillage or ploughing, the soil structure is shot to hell, and the biology is gone, there's no space for it to exist. If you look to the hedgerows and the permanent pastures that have been left relatively untouched, they are surprisingly healthy and productive. So I know the capacity is there for quite a productive system, it just needs to be healed. “
When you plough a field, many bad things happen - you break the fine strands of mycorrhizal fungi, the amazing networkers which stretch out from roots hairs and work in harmony with plants, you expose the soil to air, which speeds up the biological activity and burns off soil carbon as CO2, the structure of the soil is broken which means the little aggregates which create air pockets for biology, get smaller and smaller, they are also less likely to be held together so you increase the chance of erosion, and it just generally disrupts the whole soil system.
“Soil structure comes from complex root systems and the glomalin (glue) from carbon, excessive nitrogen burns out carbon. So to begin with I want complexity, hence the 30 way grazeable cover crop, and I want to maximise photosynthesis as this will introduce carbon to the soil the quickest, so I graze the cover crop... animals also introduce biology the fastest. I then enhance the complexity of the soil biology with the compost extract... that’s the starting point.”
Biology is crucial in developing the soil food web, which in turn increases the above ground biodiversity, insect life, bird life, and onwards and upwards until you have a super thriving ecosystem.”
Cover crop seed mix
One of the first things that Tim and I spoke about was a Cover crop. A Cover crop is a deliberate planting of several species of plants, each one designed to carry out a specific function for the land, rather than for the harvester. Nitrogen fixation and mineralisation, building soil structure and breaking up compaction are all part of what a cover crop can do. The more complex the needs of the land the more complex the cover crop can become and vice versa. Tim has carefully developed his cover crop with a seed merchant, with a mix of deep rooting plants, legumes, cereals and herbs and a selection of grasses. Diversity is the key!
Tim’s sheep taking full advantage of the cover crop
I asked Tim “So when I see a field of sheep with green grass, what are they missing and what is the land missing?”
“Diversity is key, they're no doubt bored senseless of eating the same thing. They may be lacking certain minerals as grasses tend to have lower minerals than clovers or herbs, and they're probably missing out on secondary plant metabolites, the things that increase their immunity. If it’s a bright green colour, it'll be in its growth phase and will be probably too high in nitrogen, protein, which will cause their rumens to function poorly, they may be lacking energy and if its being grazed tight, they're probably starting to eat parasites from having to graze near their poop which will compound the issue of immunity, and the cycle continues...
“Grazing tight is not about animals per acre, but more about the time they spend in the field, you can have 10 sheep on one acre and they will eventually graze the grass to nothing. In contrast, I’ve had 300 head of cattle on 1/4 acre at a time and moving them on hourly just to get mob impact. Timing is everything.”
I asked Tim about how its all going, I am curious as even idyllic projects have some hard yards involved too.
“Each of the three projects kicked off around the same time, although it took a bit more time getting the animals, around late summer/early autumn.”
Having sown 120 acres of cover crop at Erth its all looking good. The earlier sown crop is doing well and the later sown crop struggling with a little cold and damp. Ince now has 30 Angus cows and their off spring and they will be out on the land for the Winter, Tim has just bought some organic meadow hay for them, to diversify their diets and last them through the winter months. Grove, the simplest of the three projects is progressing well, the animals have been allowed to do their thing and are roaming the farm at will.
“The simplicity of allowing nature to do her thing, at Grove, is definitely lovely to see, but for impact and true regeneration Erth has undergone the biggest transformation, and that's only within the last few months.”
There is still lots do be getting on with over the coming months, lots of fencing, building some yards, weaning, calving, lambing, sourcing over a hundred cattle...
And whats your proudest moment so far?
“To be honest, it has all been a bit of a blur so far. I think once everything is in place, the crops are flying, all the animals are in place, we're creating compost, the sun is shining, the compost tea is going on, the biology is buzzing... once all these things are in place I hope to host a daytime dinner party, in the summer, in the sunshine, bringing together all the great people we've meet along this special journey, in a field somewhere, amongst the cover crop maybe, it'll be then that I'll feel my most proud. “
What I find is that everything Tim is saying Just. Makes. Sense. None of it is rocket science but real attention to detail and caring enough about the whole picture, the animals, the earth and the plants. Understanding what they need.
It’s wonderful that three property owners were all willing to take a gamble at the same time, all be it a fairly safe one, on a relatively new and uncertain system, I hope this is a vision of the future. If it is I feel very happy having someone like Tim at the helm.
I look forward to rejoining Tim on his journey again soon.