Stephen Newman will make 16 tonnes of compost this season for use on his 10-hectare farm. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
Imagine soil like a sponge, crawling with worms, beetles dragging dung down from the surface and a riot of vegetation on top.
It's not everyone's idea of paradise, but it's like heaven for Kaukapakapa farmer Stephen Newman.
Newman, a founder of the Kaipara Regenerative Farming Group and a member of farmer-led network Quorum Sense, told Country Life he used to farm very conventionally, until "the penny dropped" a few years ago, when he watched a programme about regenerative farming.
Since then, he has experimented with different regenerative methods on his 10-hectare block north of Auckland city.
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Trials included sowing cover crops, introducing stock for a short period of time to feed on long cover, rearing dung beetles to help transfer the nutrients in animal faeces further down the layers of soil and composting.
He started the Kaipara Regenerative Farming Group about three years ago to help farmers improve soil health, enrich biodiversity, increase water retention, and reduce reliance on fertilisers and pesticides.
"Everything we do with the regenerative approach is all about soil biology, creating that life in the ground."
Stephen Newman experiments with several ways of composting. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
He said more farming discussion groups had started to spring up in the region, meeting to discuss holistic grazing methods and how to make farms more resilient in the face of increasingly intense weather.
"We're also looking at employing someone, possibly two days a week, to go around the district and convert conventional farmers to regen farming... to create that sponge in the soil to absorb the water, to stop instant flooding, to stop the runoff down to the creek and we're doing it here."
His paddocks have fared fine during dry periods too, he said.
"There were cracks through the soil and I threw bucket loads of compost on, and it's just full of life, insects and everything. It was incredible."
He pointed to a paddock with a budding crop of 16 species, which would be grazed soon by his small beef herd.
Newman also wanted to make small-block farming a profitable venture, so landowners were not forced to go off-farm to work. Lowering costs by letting nature do its thing all helped.
A "converted" farmer may not even be interested in carbon drawdown or climate change, but loved the result for the bottom line, he said.
"What we're doing is showing them how to use stock density to create fertility and diversity. You're doing a quick impact, pounding the soil.
"The biology kicks into life and, all of a sudden, it repairs the paddock really quickly as well, so you're not going down to mud, so you're leaving a carpet, a layer that's pushed down, so you've still got length in the grass or the species.
"If you keep cover over your soil, not grazing down to bare minimum, one, you're keeping the roots down deep. Two, you're keeping cover of the soil, so the temperature doesn't rise and, three, the soil biology retains the moisture in the soil."
Newman is also part of the City to Farm project, and takes regular deliveries of fermented food scraps from schools, a rest home and cafes, which he integrates with other organic matter to make compost for spreading on his paddocks - 16 tonnes this season.
Pipes feed air into layers of organic matter to speed up composting. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
He has trialled several composting methods intent on saving time and labour, which you can hear more about on the Country Life podcast.
"What I'm doing costs hardly anything, so if this mucks up, it doesn't actually muck anything else up.
"It doesn't make anything go backwards and the inputs are low. You can do as little as you like.
"You could just use cattle and holistic grazing management. It depends on what you want to achieve and, you know, what are you doing?
"What's your context? What are you growing?"
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