(2/5) “One of the first things we did was stop ploughing. Every time you plough the soil you’re destroying the micro-organisms – the underground livestock - and leaving the soil bare and open to erosion. When it rains, it runs off and takes all the nutrients, sediment and any chemicals with it and this leaches into our waterways. With healthy soils, water can infiltrate and be stored for those drier months, making the farm more resilient to drought and flood.
“Secondly, we looked at how we graze. A conservationist called Allan Savory did a massive study in Africa and observed how you can build topsoil just by the way that you graze animals. We use electric fences to move the animals every day on the lowland flats and every few weeks on the high-country blocks. This gives the pasture time to recover and builds soil carbon. The more leaf you’ve got, the more photosynthesis can happen and that draws the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and puts it back in the land where it belongs.”
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