How Regenerative Agriculture is Humanity's Connection With the Land | Byron Joel | TEDxFremantle

Australia has long been perceived as the fortunate, democratic, modern and prosperous country and, as long as the usual socio-economic conditions are maintained, will probably continue to experience some of the highest standards of living in the world, however, this way of life in the What we have become so accustomed to is far from sustainable In 2015 I had the pleasure of being invited to northern Morocco by an NGO group called Integral Morocco to teach practical courses in permaculture and

regenerative

agriculture

in a village in the local lakes. wada in the foothills of the Rif mountains. It seemed like a dream opportunity and I got to work building a curriculum.

As soon as I had some doubts about it, I was thinking: what the hell am I, a 34-year-old guy from south-west Australia, going to do to teach an old country town about whatever he just did? It doesn't make sense to me, but you know, I did what I could, I built a study plan and, fast forward a few weeks, I remember arriving in Morocco and, after 35 hours of travel, reaching the top of this ridge and seeing in front of me these arid and dry hills of the

land

scape in which the farm was located the sun was setting and my heart sank I remember thinking what the hell am I doing here and I went to bed with very low morale I remember that the next day I woke up class It was at 9:00.

It was in an old circus tent on the shore of the lake and I introduced myself to the students. There were about 25 villages. I remember looking at my notes as I was getting ready to start the course and letting out a big sigh and following my instinct. and I put my notes aside and realized that without me understanding their context, my work could be almost useless, so I asked them: do you mind if I ask you about yourself? At first they seemed reluctant, but finally they agreed and so I began their investigation. I asked them who are you, how do you refer to yourselves, do you identify family, do you have a village, a tribe, a nation at a regional level, how do you see yourself? themselves and how they live, how they grow what they grow, how they earn the money they need, we mapped monthly input/output products and waste list and I had a very clear idea of ​​what they were about and how they lived.

Then I asked the older ones what it was like when you were kids, if it was different and they said, well, yes, actually. The lake it was on in the late 80s was a valley and the Moroccan government had built a hydroelectric plant and the once green and rich valley in which they had grown their trees, raised their animals and grown their vegetables was now dozens meters underwater and I realize that these people had gone through a shock, a trauma, they had been separated from the

land

they belonged to and they were fighting to recover who they were, they were fighting to recover the fact that they were a valley town that is now trying to learn how to be a freshwater town.

There was a big moment for me in the relationship between humans and the land they inhabit. Only after two or three days did I feel comfortable teaching them. any permaculture. I knew him pretty well now and we went to their houses and made little diagrams and models and plans on how to best design their properties and I knew I was on to something good when the young people started showing up to class. The next day, after he had made his own designs without being asked and, in fact, after I left, I received an email from the director saying that the villagers had been holding meetings to talk about reinstating their old customary law system, which had not been implemented. in use for generations, it had a real effect on me that trip and I remember that when we returned to Australia we felt like new eyes.

It was like the last 15 years before that I studied permaculture and

regenerative

agriculture

and all that ecology stuff. Anthropology had merged into this new lens through which I saw

humanity

in direct relationship with the planet and the beautiful dance that can occur between the two or not so beautiful in some cases and I looked around Australia and realized So that contemporary Australian cultures are severely maladapted to the ecological realities of the continent and more than that is that the land itself and the people of Australia suffer from a lack of meaningful

connection

. This slide shows a group of young women in New South Wales in the 1890s playing tennis and croquet. and the midday sun with a full English costume, such as petticoats, stockings, caps, long sleeves, the jobs I doubt would have been very comfortable, but it was as if they had not yet finished due to the fact that they were not in England and we were still I do it in many ways and the cultural practices that were insisted upon in this landscape were very degrading to the ecology, they were very lucrative to the empire, but as a result there was very rapid and acute ecological degradation because Australia is very different, it is incredibly different .

Antarctica is the most anomalous and extreme continent on the planet, after that it is us, we are the driest, the flattest, the oldest, the climate is completely different, the hydrology, the geology, the soil of the fauna, it is totally unique. I remember I was in Morocco, an old woman. wondering where exactly are you from Byron and I thought to myself, well I said no, we're really exotic, just Western Australia and she looks at me with that and her jaw dropped and she said, are you kidding me? That's super exotic. That is. It's like the Congo Basin or the North Pole, it's as exotic as it gets and I thought: yes, you're right, it's quite different down there, but we don't fully appreciate that we haven't taken it for granted and we haven't learned how to live here from sustainably and it's understandable why, because the genesis of European Australia was quite complete, I mean, these people were taken off the streets of their home countries, stuffed into the hulls of big ships fed our rotten bread and brackish water for eight months and those who survived found themselves on an alien and with us used as slave labor to build infrastructure for the Empire until they died was not the most optimistic of beginnings and since then they have survived survived survived survived with well-being for the mother England how to get ahead with bootstraps, you know, and then those economies in the industries that we developed have all been extractive.

Conventional agriculture is extractive logging, extractive mining, we have not learned to live in symbiosis and in relationship with the land that returns to us. when necessary and of course the loss of indigenous Australian culture to the extent that it has is an unspeakable tragedy. 80,000 years, I mean, let that sink in into an intimate, deep, sacred relationship born of thousands of generations of trial and error between people and the landscape thanks to works by artists like Bruce Pascoe and Bill Damage, although dominant Australia You are now beginning to appreciate the reality of that sacred and elegant relationship between indigenous Australia and the land, and in my opinion we must humbly ask that the indigenous community share with us what is left of those lands during practices for the good of all Australians and the country itself.

On earth there is more good news, although there is a movement known as regenerative agriculture and I have been involved in it for the last 15. Odd years and I am lucky to have been because it is fascinating, but what is regenerative I see as a spectrum. We are currently in a state of atrophy or degeneration in which we use more resources than our natural world. It is the base, the primary economy is ecology and it does not keep up with our withdrawals, the next step on the rung is sustainability and I would love to be there and there is a lot of talk about it, we are not there yet, but It's not even the ideal. ultimate goal because it's kind of like floating on water, you know, it's a break-even point, it's like just a thousand dollars a week, but spending a thousand dollars a week you don't get anywhere, we want to aim for a regenerative space, so what regenerative is a dynamic state. where a system, whether ecological, financial or social, by default of its own processes, actually increases its own resource base and that can be done, that's what nature does, which is why regenerative agriculture is the study and practice of systems that provide

humanity

with all our needs. whether it be food, fiber, water, shelter, etc. and at the same time increase the abundance, resilience and beauty of the natural world, which is our resource base, the amazing thing about regenerative agriculture is that Australia Australians are considered opinion leaders in this field internationally, in fact, many of the pillars The fundamental pillars of regeneration are, as they are sometimes known, our Australians.

This is a property known as his Barney in New South Wales, developed by geoengineer PA Yeomans in the 1950s, he designed it and developed the keyline design system that informed the design of this landscape. and it is a system that seeks to use water and topography in such a way that Australian properties are seemingly drought-proof. You can also see how beautiful the result is. Unfortunately, it is not taught in Australian tertiary landscape design, ecology or agricultural studies, another aspect of the key strand. Movement is the key subsoil plowing in which Deacon compacts the soil and allows the roots or rhizosphere of plants to rise and store carbon.

It has been like this for years and years and after the next rains that occurred the seed bank was there it just needed a little compaction D holistic management is another pillar. I found a fundamental pillar of regenerative agriculture and seeks to emulate the ways in which These large herds of grazing herbivores, such as those seen in the Serengeti and David Attenborough documentaries, move across the landscape as swarms that have a beneficial impact, in They actually help improve the land, they cut everything, they crush everything with their feet, they purr nervously and loudly. packed because as predators around it they fertilize it and fertilize it then they go ahead and abandon it and they may not come back for years and years and after the rains the plants grow back and can make more carbon stores in the soil , regenerating the soil and leaving it. better than before permaculture, another pillar of orogeny is another Australian development developed in the 70s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.

David Holmgren is actually from Fremantle and it is a design modality that allows us to place the elements of a design in relation more efficiently and effectively. each other creating regenerative human settlement systems, then from here, well, almost every community has one or two permaculture organizations and they are becoming very popular, so if you are interested, I urge you to go find them and meet them . They are an incredible introduction to regenerative agriculture. Take your children with them. Kids love these things. I have three children. They have been raised with this stuff and I love it.

It's second nature to them and I would love to see them bring these things. in schools if ecology is the basis of agriculture and agriculture is the basis of culture, why don't we teach our children about our foundations? We must also support and advocate for regenerative agricultural principles to be implemented in the agricultural community that we must support. the farming community is the one between a rock and a hard place, creating food for us all in this harsh Australian climate and on the other hand the realities of a commodity based industry, so yes Australia is different, It is very precious and rare and it is also a great challenge, but we now have many tools at our disposal to help create a regenerative future if we so choose.

I mean, can you imagine what we could create here? Permaculture has been called a revolution disguised as gardening and I think that is very appropriate. but I would go a step further and say that this whole movement is actually the means by which humanity can take these embryonic steps towards a meaningful

connection

with the earth, the planet, which is both our home and our mother. Thank you.