The value of regenerative farming is the desire of farmers to reduce their environmental impact and align their practices with the services that are inherently part of all ecosystems. But this is not a new concept at all.
We have recently implemented a new assessment which assigns each farm participating with Trace & Save a sustainability status. The purpose of this status is not necessary to categorise each farm and say whether they are good or not. It is rather to identify where the farm is on their sustainability journey.
Soil fungi increase security, awareness, and knowledge for those connected to them. Any soil management action that results in the breakage of these connections, such as tillage and fungicides, destroys the entire nerve system of the soil thus isolating plants and soil organisms from each other.
The purpose of this business case is to investigate the association between the economic and environmental facets of sustainability related to milk production on dairy farms in South Africa.
Can we afford not to change when we look beyond the individual farm and look at the entire agricultural industry and the way food is produced? What will it cost environmentally, and long-term economically, if we do not change?
I encourage you to think about farming from a restorative versus destructive, rather than a livestock versus plant-based perspective.
South Africa has a population of around 59 million people. Of this population, there are only around 40 thousand commercial farmers. This means that each farming unit provides food for around 1475 people. Now that is a lot of mouths to feed!
There are seven farms which have negative net carbon emissions for the duration of this study. That is amazing! It completely changes the narrative of the negative impact of dairy farming.
Livestock, farming, farmers, meat – they are all often just grouped into one category and linked to negative environmental impacts. This is very unfair.