Regrarians: Changing the ‘Climate of the Mind’

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For over 20 years, Lisa Heenan, Darren J. Doherty and their three children, Isaebella, Pearl & Zane, have been traveling the world sharing their knowledge and infectious passion for regenerative agriculture and the regenerative economy. Together they have worked on thousands of projects with over  2,000 clients. In 2016 alone, they held 13 x 10 day Regrarians (REX) conventions in six countries, training 350 people.

A REX convention includes training in all aspects of regenerative farming, including design, business management and hands-on farming practices.

Darren is a fifth-generation farmer, developer, author and trainer who has worked on projects in about 50 countries. He has trained over 15,000 farmers in regenerative agriculture. Lisa Heenan is a multi-award-winning producer/co-director, actor and singer/songwriter. She recently produced “Polyfaces,” a film that has won multiple awards around our Global Village. Most recently she won the WWF Award for Best Awareness Documentary at FICMA, the oldest Environmental Film Festival in Barcelona.

Darren and Lisa, along with their daughter, Isaebella, are directors of the organization Regrarians Ltd., which provides design and training for farmers and other stakeholders who have an interest in  regenerating, restoring, rehabilitating, rekindling and rebooting communities, landscapes, farms and most importantly soils. As Darren explains it:

Our primary responsibility is to the regenerative enhancement of the biosphere’s ecosystem processes. Our secondary responsibility is to provide the potential for people to be informed about the regenerative economy, whether it involves their work in agriculture, land management, corporate life, domestic services, manufacturing or other activities that are within the reasonable domain of humans.

The term “Regrarians” also refers to a growing movement that has sprung up around the REX conventions.

Regeneration International (RI) talked with Darren and Lisa at last year’s fifth REX convention in Sierra Gorda, Mexico in May 2016. In this interview, Darren and Lisa walk us through the principles and methodologies behind the Regrarians platform, Regrarians as a tool for farmers to mitigate climate change, the climate of the mind and how keyline is a game changer.

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Interview with Darren Doherty and Lisa Heenan

Watch the video

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Regeneration International (RI): How did you come up with name Regrarians?

Darren J Doherty (DJD): Regrarians was conceived in about 2012 as a word. It was something that we’d been working towards for a long time trying to actually give ourselves an identity that fit with our values and what our interests were. The word comes from regenerative agrarian. “Agrarian” is  a very old word.  So is “regenerative,” although we see this word being used a lot more these days. We’ve been involved with the regenerative agriculture field for a long time, so those two words combined sort of fit as a brand to identify the work we do.

RI: What are the defining principles of Regrarians?

DJD: That there’s a process to all of this, at least there has to be . . . that there is not so much a start and a finish but, at least when you’re looking at design and projects, there is a starting point. And for us that’s the climate, both in the literal sense, and in the more figurative sense—the climate of the mind. A lot of our work is based on keyline design which was developed by the late great P.A. Yeomans back in the 40s and 50s. Yeomans wrote a book in 1958 called the “The Challenge of Landscape: The Development and Practice of Keyline,” and in that book he talked about the ‘Keyline Scale of Permanence’. So we found that as a really good basis for what we then called the Regrarians Platform, which is based on the scale of permanence. But we also added economy and energy, and brought in the emphasis from holistic management and other social and economic methodologies.

Lisa Heenan (LH): As Darren says, the climate of the mind is the hardest thing to change. It can be especially so when you’re working with farmers. So the climate of the mind is a really important part of the work that we do. What do we love to do, what is our passion, how can we bring our skills, talents and pas

DJD: We also wanted to create something that was quite thorough and that people could see a process to, a methodology. Our approach is really that we’ve created a methodology of methodologies.

RI: How does Regrarians help farmers mitigate climate change?

DJD: To start with, Regrarians helps farmers identify the concerns in their immediate environment. We start with the climate. Climate has such an influence over what agricultural outputs and management strategies producers choose to undertake. But then there is also the climate of the mind. How are we going to mentally deal with the adversity of climate change?

For us in Australia, climate change is a real and current threat. It’s something we are very familiar with. Australia also has a reliably unreliable climate because of its geography since it’s surrounded by sea. Overall, climate change is getting worse and getting harder, especially as soil carbon levels decrease. The capacity of the soil and the landscape to remain humid and retain water becomes even more difficult with less carbon. So for us, it’s about adaptation and mitigation. Focusing on the soil, but also focusing on the economics. What is going to give us the biggest bang for the buck? How can we use the resources that we have – economic, social, landscape – so that we can work within the restrictions of climate change? What can we do to mitigate climate change?

RI: You’re giving farmers a toolkit to increase their resiliency.

DJD: Correct.

LH:  Many tools. Darren says you’ve got to have blue, which is water, before you have green, which is vegetation…

DJD: And money, cashflow. Before you’re green and black. So, black meaning profit and carbon. So you have to be blue before you’re green and black. That is a climate change adaptation strategy.

RI: One of the critical components of the Regrarians Platform is this notion of Keyline. Could you tell us about Keyline and why it is so important?

DD: When P.A. Yeomans released his first book, “The Keyline Plan,”  in 1954, it was an instant best seller which is unusual for an agricultural book. And it was the first book ever written on broad scale functional landscape design. That was pretty revolutionary.

Keyline is fundamentally a farm planning system whose primary objective is the control of water. The control of water within an agricultural landscape is the control of your destiny, as much as anything else. Obviously your management is very important, your attitude, the way that you manage your books, all of those things are important. But the management of water is absolutely critical, particularly in seasonal rainfall environments, which basically all of Australia is. And now that climate change is accelerating, more places are becoming like Australia. So  we are finding that Keyline is taking a place in a lot of other environments. Rainfall patterns were much more reliable than they are now.

That said, most farms are not well designed. In fact, they are not designed. They just happen. They are the result of incremental development of positioning of fencing, positioning of roads, ponds, or dams and all sorts of other infrastructure. Keyline creates a plan which is based on the climate and its relationship to the geography and the topography around where you place water, where you place roads, where you put trees, where you put buildings, where you put fencing. And then how do you quickly create living soil out of dead topsoil which Yeomans was another great exponent of through his keyline pattern cultivation techniques and also as an early adopter of Voisin’s rotational grazing and electric fencing and all of those sorts of things. That’s the fundamental basis of it.

RI: So you use the Keyline plow to create disturbance in the soil, that’s a part of this Keyline process?

DJD: It is one part, I wouldn’t say it’s the whole part. When people think of Keyline, they think of the Keyline Plow, and I think that’s reasonable. But for me, Keyline is a farm planning system. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the management and the practice of farm planning.

RI: What methodologies tie into Regrarians?

DJD: Regrarians believes that there is no one methodology that a producer or a person should have to follow. There have been some great minds and communities who have come up with some fantastic methodologies such as permaculture, biodynamics and holistic management. Most people tend to follow a single methodology, whereas Regrarians encourages people to use a combination.

LH: Think of Regrarians as a toolbox. You don’t usually have just one tool. The thing with the Keyline Plow that’s different from other ploughs is that it’s not turning the soil, it’s going in and aerating. It’s a totally different style of plough, it’s much gentler.

Watch the full interview

Learn more about Regrarians.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the interview series with Lisa Heenan and Darren J.Doherty.

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Alexandra Groome is on the coordination team for Regeneration International, a project of the Organic Consumers Association.

The USDA Is Trying to Help Save Native Grassland in Ore

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | January 27, 2017 

The USDA recently gave $225 million in federal funding to 88 environmental projects across the country, including a program in Oregon to help improve the soil health in Wallowa County, home to the Zumwalt Prairie, one of the last intact native grasslands of its kind in the United States.

The prairie consists of about 330,000 acres of native grassland that once covered 10 million acres stretching across the Pacific Northwest. Today, the prairie is mostly owned by area ranchers and farmers, along with The Nature Conservancy, which owns about 40,000 acres in Wallowa County.

The goal of the project is to create opportunities for private landowners to apply integrated crop and livestock production systems to improve soil health while reducing the use of chemical inputs, increase water efficiency, and prevent the further fragmenting of the native grasslands.

The Nature Conservancy, a charitable environmental organization headquartered in Virginia, is the project’s lead partner. They’re joined by local non-profits Wallowa Land Trust and Wallowa Resources, along with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

According to Jeff Fields, The Nature Conservancy Project Manager for the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, the approach involves finding the sweet spot between ecology and the local economy.

“We’ve been focusing on not just the ecology of a place but the economy as well and socioeconomic issues that surround management by private owners,” says Fields in a phone interview with Modern Farmer. “Wallowa County has an awful lot of innovative farmers and ranchers who are thinking about soil health, supply-chain diversification—including grass-finished beef products—and getting away from commodity markets.”

KEEP READING ON MODERN FARMER 

Sustainable Agriculture, Better-managed Water Supplies, Vital to Tackling Water-food Nexus – Un

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Published: January 26, 2017

Highlighting the challenges associated with the inextricable links between water and food – the so-called ‘water-food nexus’ – for food security, as well as for sustainable development, the United Nations agricultural agency today outlined steps that can be taken to improve water sustainability for current and future needs.

“The magnitude of the water-food nexus is underappreciated,” said Pasquale Steduto, UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Regional Strategic Programme Coordinator for the Near East and North Africa regions.

In his briefing during an event at UN Headquarters in New York, the FAO official also pointed to the fact that a person needs between two to four litres of water for daily consumption, and for domestic uses (washing, etc.) between 40 to 400 litres per family.

But for food and nutritional needs, the requirement is between 2,000 and 5,000 litres per person, depending on diet, or “roughly one litre per kilo-calorie” he explained.

He further emphasized that the nexus is particularly significant for strengthening food security given that the world population is estimated to cross the nine billion mark by 2050, another 50-60 per cent food would need to be produced over current levels to feed everyone.

“This would imply having at least 50 per cent more water – which we will not have. Estimates show we can mobilize up to 10 per cent more, [highlighting] the issue of water scarcity,” added Mr. Steduto.

He also stressed the significance of water for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) explicitly calls for ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, water is a key component for other Goals including those on poverty (SDG 1), hunger and malnutrition (SDG 2), and climate change (SDG 13).

Thus, highlighting the need for intensification of sustainable agriculture, Mr. Steduto called for improving efficiency in the use of resources; protecting and conserving natural resources; having a people-centred approach and protecting rural livelihoods; strengthening resilience of people, community and ecosystems, particularly to climate change; and ensuring good governance to safeguard sustainability for natural and human systems.

KEEP READING ON UN NEWS CENTER

Regenerative Soils Act – Vermont

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Published: January 28, 2017 

Soil4Climate today announced that Vermont Senate Bill S.43, “an act relating to establishing a regenerative soils program” — originated by Soil4Climate Advisory Board member and Shaftsbury, Vermont farmer Jesse McDougall — has been submitted to the Vermont Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. The proposed bill aims to encourage farming practices that improve soil health and to incentivize ecosystem restoration. It will also provide a host of additional economic and environmental benefits, including “increasing the carbon sequestration capability of Vermont soils [and] reducing the amount of sediment and waste entering the waters of the State.” The legislation was sponsored by Senator Brian Campion and co-sponsored by Senators Bray, Clarkson, Pearson, Pollina, and Sears.

Increasing the amount of carbon in soil boosts fertility and its ability to hold water, resulting in less need for fertilizer and reduced water pollution. Importantly, keeping nutrients in soil can eliminate the eutrophication plaguing Lake Champlain and other Vermont waterways. Further advantages include increased biodiversity, enhanced drought resilience and flood resistance, and improved forage nutrition.

The Vermont proposal is precedent-setting in calling for the creation of a Director of Regenerative Soils to oversee the program. Regular soil testing will be used to certify farms showing a steady improvement in soil health (i.e., carbon content) and/or quantity (i.e., depth). This proposed bill follows on the heels of other pro-soil health legislation enacted in recent years in California, Oklahoma, and Utah.

KEEP READING ON SOIL4CLIMATE

Applying the Circular Economy Lens to Water

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Author: Nick Jeffries | Published: January 26, 2017 

Water is in many ways a poster child for circularity. For the last 3.8 billion years, the earth’s stock of water, a constant 1.4 billion km3, has continuously circulated through the many stages and processes of the hydrological cycle, powered by the energy of the sun. In the last hundred or so years, a blink of an eye in planetary time, human activities have started to disrupt this well-tuned circularity in ways that risk our future prosperity as well as the health of the planet.

Water is a remarkable substance. Its apparent simplicity belies its raft of peculiar properties, many of which are crucial to life on earth. These idiosyncrasies include the fact that its solid state – ice – floats on its own melt (insulating any life beneath it); its boiling point is much higher than similar hydrogen compounds (so it exists at a liquid within a temperature range ideal for life); and it dissolves more substances and stores more energy than any other liquid (making it an extremely useful medium for many of life’s processes). Water’s strangeness not only supports the processes of life, but is a major constituent of it – a new born child is 75% water. Perhaps oddest of all, water in its purest form (two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen) is hypertonic: if imbibed, it will strip the water out of your cells and could kill you.

“WATER WATER EVERYWHERE, NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK”

We live on a blue planet, but most water is not in a form or a place that can fulfil easily the basic needs of humankind. The great majority of it is seawater – only about 2.5% is freshwater and most of this is out of reach, locked up in icecaps, glaciers or deep underground. The actual percentage easily accessible to us is more like 0.007%. Luckily, this is a small fraction of a very large number, so there is in fact more than enough volume to meet the needs of the human population. The challenge lies in managing this water well.

In many areas of the world this challenge is not being sufficiently met leading to a multiplicity of lost opportunities and negative impacts. These consequences inevitably become more severe as the level of economic development reduces.

In 2014, a drought in California led to the loss of 17, 000 part-time or seasonal jobs and $2.2billion in agricultural revenue. In the UK, leakages from the water network is equivalent to 20% of the nation’s water supply or 21.5 million people, thereby increasing the cost of providing water. During a recent dry period in Sao Paolo, low rainfall and polluted reservoirs meant daily shut-offs to urban water supply, electricity prices to rise by 80% and businesses to scale down or even close. In China, a major problem relates to the contamination of surface water and groundwater by industrial effluent, driving water scarcity and creating a significant public health risk. It is estimated that 11% of cases of cancer of the digestive system may be attributable to polluted water.

However it is the poor who suffer the most extreme consequences of inadequate water resources. In many African countries, people must walk for many hours each day to fetch water from sources that are often contaminated. This task often falls to women who are vulnerable to attack, or to children compromising their education. Poor quality water causes illness, leading to a loss of work productivity and requiring expensive treatment. Worse still, according to the UN, water or waterborne diseases lead to the deaths of over 3.4 million people per year, the majority of these deaths are children under the age of five. The rising severity of consequences as economic level falls offers a good illustration of the paradox: the poorer you are the more you pay for things, relatively speaking.

Considering all of this it is easy to understand why the World Economic Forum cites “a global water” crisis as the biggest threat facing mankind in the next century.

Therefore we should ask whether the circular economy, a new framework for thinking about the economy that has already helped identify potential solutions to other big global resource challenges, could contribute to creating a better relationship between people and water: one that is resilient, regenerative, and works in the long term.

KEEP READING ON CIRCULATE NEWS

Cultivating a Regenerative Food System

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Authors: Martin Stuchtey and Morten Rossé | Published: January 28, 2017

The agricultural story of the 20th century was one of unprecedented success: due to more intensive and specialized cultivation, farmers markedly improved productivity and kept food prices low. However, this industrialization has created problems of its own, and may — unaltered — be running out of steam. In 2010, for the first time in a century, the growth of global grain yields fell below that of the global population growth
That is why it is time to move away from what has become a “linear food system”: a take, make, dispose system in which, too often, synthetic inputs go into the land; the land gets overused, and a huge proportion of the food produced is wasted and ends up in landfill. In addition, many nutrients never make it back to the field, stacking up in contaminated sludge. The goal should be to move toward a regenerative model in which land is restored as it is used and in which nutrient and material loops provide much-needed inputs, resulting in a healthier food supply.

In terms of how to get started on the circular path, there are a number of promising approaches.

Retain and restore natural capital

Restoration of large, damaged ecosystems is possible and the commercial potential is already proven. One famous example is the Loess plateau in China, where 3.7 million acres of degraded land have been restored since the mid-1990s. This project lifted more than 2.5 million people out of poverty, almost tripling their income, by replacing low-value agricultural commodities with high-value products. Per capita grain output rose 60 percent and the perennial vegetation cover doubled from 17 percent to 34 percent. In addition, flood control, water use, employment, biodiversity and carbon absorption all improved.

The Savory Institute, based in Colorado, promotes a process that emulates nature. As the institute describes it, managers control the livestock so that conditions mimic the predator-prey relationships that were in existence when the grasslands evolved. This involves dividing land into smaller paddocks, putting cattle in large herds, and moving them frequently across the property. The land benefits from the cycle of use and rest — the same pattern observed in grazing animals in natural grassland ecosystems. This approach has regenerated more than 6.1 million acres.

KEEP READING ON GREEN BIZ 

In America’s Heartland, Discussing Climate Change Without Saying ‘Climate Change’

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Author: Hiroko Tabuchi | Published: January 28, 2017  

Doug Palen, a fourth-generation grain farmer on Kansas’ wind-swept plains, is in the business of understanding the climate. Since 2012, he has choked through the harshest drought to hit the Great Plains in a century, punctuated by freakish snowstorms and suffocating gales of dust. His planting season starts earlier in the spring and pushes deeper into winter.

To adapt, he has embraced an environmentally conscious way of farming that guards against soil erosion and conserves precious water. He can talk for hours about carbon sequestration — the trapping of global-warming-causing gases in plant life and in the soil — or the science of the beneficial microbes that enrich his land.

In short, he is a climate change realist. Just don’t expect him to utter the words “climate change.”

“If politicians want to exhaust themselves debating the climate, that’s their choice,” Mr. Palen said, walking through fields of freshly planted winter wheat. “I have a farm to run.

Here in north-central Kansas, America’s breadbasket and conservative heartland, the economic realities of agriculture make climate change a critical business issue. At the same time, politics and social pressure make frank discussion complicated. This is wheat country, and Donald J. Trump country, and though the weather is acting up, the conservative orthodoxy maintains that the science isn’t settled.

So while climate change is part of daily conversation, it gets disguised as something else.

“People are all talking about it, without talking about it,” said Miriam Horn, the author of a recent book on conservative Americans and the environment, “Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman.” “It’s become such a charged topic that there’s a navigation people do.”

Mr. Palen — he plays his politics close to his vest but allows that he didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton — and others here in Glen Elder and across the state illustrate the delicate dance.

Farmers like him focus on practical issues like erosion or dwindling aquifers. “When you don’t get the rainfall, it’s tough times,” he said.

Regional politicians and business leaders speak of pursuing jobs that clean energy may create, rather than pressing the need to rein in carbon emissions. A science teacher at a community college — whose deeply religious students sometimes express doubts about the trustworthiness of science that contradicts biblical teachings — speaks to his class about the positives of scientific discovery (electricity) in order to ease into more contentious subjects (global warming).

And an editor for a closely followed agriculture magazine, Successful Farming, recently made a controversial move, drawing a flurry of angry letters: He broke with longstanding policy to address climate change head-on.

“Some readers thanked us,” the editor Gil Gullickson said. “But some wondered whether we’d been hijacked by avid environmentalists.”

KEEP READING ON NEW YORK TIMES 

Agriculture Is Part of the Climate Change Solution

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Author: Lois Ross | Published: January 24, 2017

Small farmers face pretty much the same issues no matter what part of the world they happen to till — access to land, seed, financing and more.

I learned that lesson while rolling through the hills of northern Nicaragua, acting as an interpreter for a brigade of Canadian farmers hoping to transfer their skills to support local farmers. At that time mechanization for many small farmers in Nicaragua seemed to be the main impediment. But thinking back to the exchanges I translated, the lack of tractors, chemicals and artificial fertilizers presented challenges but also possibilities to explore.

How do you grow food in a world where resources are limited? For small farmers in developing regions, resources have always been limited. These Canadian and Nicaraguan farmers wanted to learn from each other, and the challenges each group faced related to producing food, farming methods, and taking care of the soil and their communities. The question was how best to do this in a global system based on profit and not on stewardship. At the end of the brigade’s stay, it would be fair to say that the Canadians learned as much if not more than their Nicaraguan counterparts. Both realized that the problems facing agriculture were much larger than farmers themselves. Still, they persevered.

These progressive farmers knew that agriculture could be part of the solution — for community, health, food security and much more.

Agriculture and climate change

Despite the attempts of certain farm groups, for many years agricultural practices in so-called developed nations have been environmentally destructive. We have been told that the industrial model of agriculture is necessary to ensure production and food security. It’s an old story, one that has created a false reality. And the North has promoted that false reality. Aid programs targetting developing nations have long tried to transfer the industrialized model to smaller, poorer countries. Industrial agriculture has been supported as the only model that is successful. The costs have been huge.

The time has come to look at how agriculture might actually be a huge part of climate change mitigation.

Agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it is going to mean putting stewardship and food production ahead of profit and expansion. It is possible.

KEEP READING ON RABBLE

Savory Institute Ignites Consumer Revolution

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Published: January 24, 2017

News Release

At the forefront of the fight to save the world’s grasslands, the Savory Institute is taking a bold step towards ecological change on a global scale. Savory’s new Land to Market verification program will enable consumers to buy food and fashion items derived from livestock properly managed through practices verified to enhance water availability, soil health, carbon sequestration, and wildlife habitats. A recent Indiegogo campaign raised over $44,000 in support of the initiative.

Addressing the true cost of fast-food and fast-fashion, Savory’s Land to Market is a grassroots and collaborative program designed to create a market and production system for products that regenerate land and human health. Savory’s program will equip and support producers while providing brands and consumers with an efficient and transparent mechanism to guide their purchases of regenerative food and fiber items.

“Currently, regenerative producers are unable to position their products advantageously and differentiate themselves in the market place. Additionally, there is no outcome based verification mechanism to back claims of regenerative land management,” explains Savory Institute co-founder and CEO, Daniela Ibarra-Howell. “We’ve engaged with partners across the conservation and academic spectrum to develop an Ecological Outcome Verification tool to allow robust measurements of key indicators of ecosystem health, to be analyzed, verified, and compared across contexts, and the data utilized in retail programs,” she notes.

Michigan State University (MSU), a Savory hub, is taking the lead in aggregating the data from the program. Hub leader, Dr. Jason Rowntree, says, “We are hoping to create one of the largest global databases for monitoring ecosystem services, with MSU serving as the data analysis arm”. Savory’s goal is to positively impact 1 billion hectares (2.47B acres) of grasslands through Holistic Management by 2025.

KEEP READING ON SAVORY INSTITUTE 

4 Per 1000 | Soils for Food Security and Climate

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Human activities release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This intensifies the greenhouse effect and accelerates climate change. The world soil contains 2 to 3 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Increasing this storage of carbon by 4 parts for 1000 in the top 30 or 40cm of the soil could stop the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the proposal of the “4 parts for 1000, soils for food security and climate”.

LEARN MORE HERE