Regenerative Skills

After the biodiversity panel from the last episode, I got to thinking about how protecting biodiversity is so often reduced to the life forms that humans value. The ones we find beautiful, friendly, or otherwise useful to us directly. Cuddly mammals, majestic birds, colorful butterflies and flowers, etc. 

In many ways though, these living beings are only able to survive and thrive if the critters that we dislike are abundant ...

This month we’re tackling the challenges and benefits of wildlife in all its forms. Wildlife and wild spaces are often spoken about as if they're at odds with the goals of farms. We often talk about battling weeds, deterring predators, and eliminating competition from undomesticated forms of life. It doesn't need to be this way though, and as farmers build beneficial relationships between all forms of life around them they're...

It’s been over a year now since Climate Farmers let go of its Carbon credit program, and yet I know that many people who’ve been following our company don’t know the full story about how we got started in the carbon market, why we let it go, and what we’re continuing to do to help improve carbon markets to assist farmers in their transition to regenerative management.

Today I’m going to fix that as m...

The only real way to learn and gain experience in farming is to get your hands dirty and put knowledge into practice. For that reason farms play an essential role in training others to get into this sector and navigate the challenges and learning curves of making a living on the land. While most of the farms in our network have shown interest in offering educational opportunities, actually becoming a school is outside of the capaci...

In today’s deep dive episode we’re taking on the behemoth of a topic that is the broken system and relationship between academic institutions and farmers on the ground. For a long time there was traditional and experiential knowledge that helped to guide farming practices and cultures based on eons of experience and place based relationships. As agriculture became more technologically driven, traditional practices beg...

In this panel session, we’re exploring one of the most practical and underused opportunities in regenerative farming and rural life: learning to see waste streams as life streams.

Across farms and villages, huge amounts of biological “waste,” offcuts, by-products, and overlooked materials are still treated as problems to be removed, when in many cases they could be transformed into fertility or new forms of value....

Welcome back everyone to the second of the Deep Dive episodes. In this new format the intention is to bring complexity back into the conversations around regenerative agriculture. Myself and many of my peers have been observing the discourse online, and especially on social media devolve into catch phrases and buzz words with little meaning and I want to embrace the complexity and many perspectives around many of the topics that ge...

Welcome back everyone to another panel session. In light of all the stories of extreme weather and emergencies around the Iberian peninsula and other parts of Europe in the past months, we’re going to take a closer look at the realities on the ground for our farmers. These storms and floods are becoming more and more common and frequent, and though we’ve talked in the past about the need to adapt to an increasingly err...

Welcome to episode two of season ten of the Regenerative Skills podcast. As I mentioned last time, the show is changing this year: we’re moving to two episodes a month, and I’ll be alternating between two formats. The first is the panel conversations that have become a favorite over the last couple of years—three guests, three perspectives, one question that keeps surfacing inside the Climate Farmers community. Th...

To start off the year, I wanted to explore a topic that often gets swept under the rug. Mental well-being, or the lack of it, in farming communities has reached epedemic levels. Farmers in Europe face a nasty mix of chronic overwork and poor recovery, high uncertainty and low control in their work, and heavy admin/compliance pressure, often while working in social isolation with a culture that can discourage help-seeking. Those pre...

There’s no way around it, governance of the agricultural industry has a massive impact on how farms and the agrifood system are managed. Policy, regulations, and incentives are driven by many forces and stakeholders. Yet the political machine is slow and heavily influenced by financial interests. Where does this leave farmers themselves, and most notably, farmers who strive to steward their land and ecosystems in ways that po...

Welcome back to another episode in our panel discussion series. In this edition we’ll be focusing on the challenges and opportunities of climate adaptation with examples of farmers in different key and representative zones of Europe. There's no question that the climate is shifting in severe and unpredictable ways. The question is how can agriculture adapt to this new reality. Like all systemic challenges we'll take a look ...

Alex got a chance to follow up with Luwayo Biswick in Malawi. Luwayo had been on the Regenerative Skills podcast when it was still Abundant Edge for episode 71 in 2018. 

As the Founder of the Permaculture Paradise Institute, Luwayo and his family have built an enterprise that helps local farmers throughout the whole country learn how to integrate regenerative practices. The Institute works on a trainer model that helps farmer...

In our tour of Sub Saharran Africa, Alex followed a recommendation from Thiang’o to talk with Ripura Hewick. Ripura is based in Namibia, and manages a dryland farm for the non-profit Steps for Children.

Ripura started as a traditional Agrobusiness management student University of Science and Technology (NUST) graduate with a Bachelors of Agriculture  but left conventional agriculture, disappointed in the business. After...

400 episodes down and some big changes coming.  It's been almost 9 full years since I started this little show and I'm amazed at the journey that it's accompanied me on, from my apprenticeship in bamboo building in Guatemala, to starting a homestead, leaving it to move to Spain just ahead of the pandemic, and where I am now, putting down roots in central Catalunya on my little farm with my partner Alba.  This is hardly th...

Welcome back everyone and welcome back to the monthly panel sessions. In this session that I hosted with Climate Farmers, we dive into the lives of three passionate farmers, Julia, Anne, and Mateo, who are not only dedicated to regenerative agriculture but also deeply invested in their communities. Each farmer shares their unique journey, challenges, and successes, from establishing cooperative farms to activities that bring people...

You may remember a handful of weeks back when I interviewed Kristina Villa about the work of the Farmer’s Land Trust, and how they’re helping to make farmland affordable as well as giving new options to retiring farmers to preserve the legacy of their farms. Today will be a continuation of that discussion but with a practical example. I’m joined today by both Ian McSweeny, the co-founder and co-director of the Fa...

Thiong'o Gachie is a permaculture trainer in Kenya, focused on inspiring smallholder farmers on how to apply permaculture principles, such as crop diversity, to strengthen their yields and build greater community.

Alex sat down to talk to Thiong’o about his own process about setting up a small 1 acre farm, developing community, and understanding the larger agriculture-sector wide changes happening in Kenya, such as seed sove...

Though there are only a handful of bugs and invertebrates that humans consider edible, productive, or beautiful, they are an essential element in any healthy ecosystem. All too often the ones that we don’t derive beauty from or direct use from are considered an annoyance at best or actively destroyed and eradicated in all too many cases. It’s long overdue that I highlight just how valuable insects are to out world and o...