Proper ecological disturbance — whether to our land via an act of nature, or to our minds via a conference with like-minded farmers — leads to regrowth, recovery and, ultimately, regeneration
Well-intentioned city folk sometimes make the comment, “It must be great to be an ecological farmer who only raises livestock seasonally and whose trees go dormant in the winter. You finally get some downtime to relax and enjoy life!”
But those of us who are farming or ranching realize that there’s really not much downtime. What we do changes in every season, and sometimes we have to make the time to relax and enjoy life — ideally, by going to the Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conference every December! While there, we reconnect with old friends, make new ones, and exchange information and ideas to help solve problems and to prevent as many as we can.
For me, the Eco-Ag conference provides the opportunity to summarize the past season’s highs and lows, and in most years there is something that happened on the farm that sends me directly to one of the vendors or elders for their advice, tools or products.
This year is no different in that respect — although things are different. For one, Acres U.S.A. was bought back from “corporate America” by a farmer — a young one at that. Historic as well as newly generated content of Acres U.S.A. has been in the process of being digitized and made available to those who interact with their world via computer and cell phone. Additionally, a new feature that has been added each month is a brief article on ecological principles. If we are going to be ecological farmers and ranchers, we need to have a foundational understanding of how nature actually works. This will help us to determine what makes sense to do, where to do it, and why.
Since the beginnings of life on earth, ecosystem processes have been functioning. Every location on the planet is subject to ecological disturbance. Plant life has colonized the bedrock and deposited sediments, and plants have been episodically disturbed by grazing organisms large and small. Landslides, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions have disturbed these living systems, along with wildfires large and small. The plant and animal communities of each location on the planet have come to adapt to the “disturbance regime” that is common to a place.
It is in our best interest, as a matter of adaptive human survival, to understand what disturbances have been historically common in the places where we live. The need for us to adapt our lifestyles and culture to nature’s disturbance regime is nowhere clearer than the wake-up call we have gotten this fall with the devastating hurricanes and subsequent flooding that have hit Florida and the Southeast. The natural ecosystems of those regions are adapted to such disturbances. Their ability to regenerate and regrow has been “trained” into them through the millennia. A truly ecological farm experiences damage during such events but has hardwired into it the ability to recover from, and regenerate after, such a disturbance.
As an example, while at the time of this writing I have no idea how much damage the people or facilities at Will Harris’ White Oak Pastures have sustained, I am confident that their farming system itself will be just fine. White Oak Pastures is an ecological system. It operates according to the “Nature OS” — nature’s operating system. It will regenerate. The grass will regrow, the trees will sprout back, the understory forest will be released to become the next forest, decomposer populations will boom, and a flush of nutrients released from the decay will boost the recovery.
The perennial plants in the system will persist. They don’t require tillage or weed control in order to make a crop. As soon as the clouds clear off, the grass and the trees resume their photosynthesizing and the grazing animals go back to work. Pest and disease populations momentarily crash as the ecosystem experiences a short-term setback, yet they too will recover and jostle for position in space and time as they consume living and dead plant matter, as well as one another. Blown over trees and shattered branches will trigger a massive release of nutrients to the system that will aid in its recovery.
Through it all, the topsoil continues to grow in fertility, depth and structure. Even in areas that may have experienced erosion, or in newly deposited materials delivered from elsewhere (exogenous deposition!), succession continues on its merry way. The new land surface will become colonized by plants, and the animals will follow. The age-old pattern continues — disturbance, regrowth, recovery; disturbance, regrowth, recovery. It happens faster in moist and warm environments, slower in cold or arid ones.
Not all of us have 100 percent perennial farming operations, though, and many of us never will. Those of us growing annual crops (grains, legumes, vegetables) employ nature’s “first responders.” In the face of disturbed soil, nature throws out annual plants — fast-growing, producing tons of biomass, and yielding some of the heaviest crops of seeds of any plants around. The tons of root exudates, roots, stems and leaves produced by annual plants begin the soil rebuilding process and utilize the nutrient release from disturbance.
Whether your operation is totally perennial or somewhere along the way, perhaps you would like to assist the ecological recovery of your ecosystem and boost certain aspects of the process. The Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conference is the perfect place to help you along the way! There will be dozens of workshops led by experienced practitioners and researchers on all sorts of topics, from soil health to plant health, animal health and human health. You’ll meet folks growing similar crops and livestock as you and will be able to get tips and advice from REAL PEOPLE with real experience innovating on the actual planet, instead of from AI algorithms that merely regurgitate that which is the most popular.
At the conference you’ll find the tools you’ve been looking for, even if they don’t exist yet! Some of my most enjoyable conversations have been on the trade show floor with equipment dealers and manufacturers as we brainstorm what kind of device we could craft that would harvest this or process that. How do I get this crop into a package that looks like this? How do I market that? Soil amendments, testing, marketing ideas, you name it. It all can be found at the Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conference.
One of my goals is to meet with some Central and South American eco-ag growers and have a late-night discussion on whether papaya is one of the perennials producing the heaviest crops of seeds around. Or is it coffee … or is it …?
We’ll see you there!
Mark Shepard is a land designer and consultant and is the author of Restoration Agriculture, Water for Any Farm and the Water for Any Farm Technical Manual. He will be a speaker at this year’s Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag Conference: conference.eco-ag.com.
