Walking the land: regeneration starts with presence

Walk the land

You talk a lot about “walking the land”, which is interesting because this also comes up in our ASAPP project case studies. It might be hard to walk the land when you have a very large farm. Do you think that such practices are only applicable to smaller farms?

For me, the question is, why is it hard for you, as the person who stewards or manages the land, to be there every day? And it’s often because other tasks get prioritised. Often, we unlearn to walk the land, and we’re driving on the land, thinking, “this is good enough”.

What I realised is when you walk through your land – even if it’s just some parts of it, if it’s while changing the fence lines or while checking on your crops or whatever it is – you get a different relationship to your land, especially when you actually stand on the land and not drive through it, and you slow down. Because when you slow down, you also hear all the small animals coming back, and you notice things.

I think that’s why livestock farmers are closer to walking the land because they have to look after their animals twice a day, so they will at least go where the animals are twice a day. That does not mean that they walk the land, though.

Is it all the land? No, probably not. So, for me, to walk the land, it does not matter how big the farm is. I have friends that I talk to in South Africa – they have 50,000 hectares; in Australia, up to a million hectares. And they do walk the land – obviously not all the land – but they make that time a priority in their schedules: “I need to be out there to see what happens.”

Regenerative thinking

Can regenerative thinking be scaled up to every farm? Is it even something that we’d want to scale up?

First of all, what do we mean by “scaling up”? Coming from business economics, scaling just means doing what you’re doing, but bigger and more efficiently. And scaling in regenerative agriculture means we want to have more people doing the same thing; not one big farm, but a hundred small, regional, local farms doing the same thing.

And can we scale it up? Yes, of course. But not with blueprints, not with “here is your recipe”. There might be some guidelines that get you started, but, in the end, you, as the land manager, have to decide for yourself what makes sense.

And what does that mean? For me, mindset change is the first thing: systems thinking, beliefs, values. Make them your own and figure out what your connection looks like. And that takes some time and a lot of overcoming fears: of losing the farm, of disappointing your parents, neighbours or whoever it is.

It’s about moving with the speed of trust and moving with the speed of life and not expecting everything to fall in line within one season – maybe it will take 3 years. Maybe you just need the community support to be OK. Support in your decisions, that you’re taking the right steps, or to just keep on doing it. I absolutely believe that this will work.

A lot of other changes in our systems need to happen, too. Our thinking needs to change from “Oh, that’s a lot of physical work!”. Yes, but physical work is not a bad thing; it actually keeps us healthy.

Work-life balance

What practices or mindsets help regenerative farmers maintain their health and a healthy balance when caring for the land and for themselves?

One framework that I work with is the holistic management framework. At its core is defining your personal holistic context, and life quality plays a central role here. If you don’t take care of yourself (and not just yourself now but also thinking ahead into the future), you will not do farming here, or the next generation(s) might not.

Like with everything else that we might want to change in our lives, this is about practice. Every January 1st, people start their year wanting to do more sports, eat better, or whatever else, but then a habit needs to be formed. Which often isn’t.

Neuroscientists say that you cannot delete the program you have; you can only write a new one and make it your main program for how you make decisions.

So, if we grew up and learned in a system where we have to be productive, we have to work at least 7 or 8 hours a day, we have to be always online, then even if we know, regeneratively, that we’d be better off taking care of ourselves – prioritizing coffee with my wife more than working on the next set of slides – the old program is there telling me that I should be productive.

What helps is having a support system. Either someone we are in a partnership on a farm together and reminding each other that we both want this change, or finding a virtual community, a support group that helps you stay on track of “Oh, yeah, I wanted to prioritise more. I wanted to have a healthy life. OK, then I say no to this opportunity.”

This interview was conducted by former SIANI intern Lovisa Hast.