Day 70 of 365 Days Of Low Carbon Living: discovering delicious bread, made from single-source flour from wheat grown using regenerative farming.

It’s always interesting buying a different version of one of your staple foods.

Yesterday I noticed a bakery cafe had a visually attractive display of hand-crafted breads for sale.  All were on racks and put into paper bags as people bought them – ‘naked’ bread: just what I like.

Curious, I had a closer look.

There was a sign saying that this particular bakery uses flour made from wheat from a farm that practises regenerative farming. Being able to say where the food comes from is called ‘provenance’. Tracing it back to one farm is called ‘single source’.

I saw that the varieties they offered included a particular type of bread I quite like. So, needing bread, I bought a loaf to try.

Why buy food grown using regenerative farming

Regenerative farming (often called ‘regenerative agriculture’ or ‘regenerative land management’) is very different to the style of farming that has been the mainstay of so much agriculture around the world. It is almost the opposite to ‘industrial’ farming.

Instead of growing monocultures and using techniques that ‘mining’ the soil, regenerative farming makes use of diversity and grows the soil.

What I had learnt from friends about regenerative farming told me that it:

• causes less damage to our climate because it uses less fossil fuel (oil and gas). The farmers burn less fuel driving machinery because they till the soil less and avoid artificial fertilisers and pesticides. This also avoids the damage caused by the gas and other raw materials that are used to make the fertilisers.
• stores carbon in the soil. If used widely, this could make a big difference to reversing the damage to our climate and soils.
• uses less water, largely because of the carbon in the soil and because the soil is healthier and covered in vegetation.

According to Soils for Life:

healthy soil and soil organic carbon levels are fundamental to capturing and retaining rainfall for use in the landscape. Every gram of carbon in the soil can retain up to eight grams of water. Effective management of our rainfall and waterways is also essential to retain topsoil and for landscape regeneration.

Soils for Life also outlines the following advantages of ‘regenerative landscape management’:

• Increasing soil health – structural, chemical and biological properties
• Supporting a diversity of vegetation to moderate temperatures, provide habitat and build resilience
• Sequestering greater amounts of carbon from the atmosphere
• Retaining more water in the soil for uptake by plants and animals – extending the growing season
• Supporting health and biodiversity in soil microbes
• Facilitating healthy nutrient cycling
• Producing more nutrient-rich vegetation and livestock
• Producing healthier, more nutritious food and livestock, and therefore healthier people
• Regenerating, rather than degrading the natural resource base
• Healing landscape degradation
• Building a landscape which is more resilient, especially to climate extremes (such as flood, drought and fire) and able to recover more quickly
• Reducing input costs
• Enabling sustainable production
• Smoothing out production and profit peaks and troughs
• Applying a technique that could sustainably feed growing global populations
• Obtaining a greater sense of personal wellbeing.

Does regenerative farming make a difference to food?

If the taste of the bread I bought is anything to go by, regenerative farming does make a difference to food. It was so delicious!

Another way of looking at it is to consider that, if we don’t change the way we grow our food to more sustainable methods then we won’t have enough food – especially as the consequences of damage to our climate and soils become more and more severe.

The legendary Alan Savory explains in a TED Talk How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change how regenerative farming and other land management works and why it is so important.

The challenge

When buying from your local farmers market or shops ask whether the food is grown using regenerative farming practices. H have a conversation lets suppliers know you are interested and can introduce them to the issue if they have not come across it before. Learning a bit about regenerative farming beforehand can help – start by following the links in this post! If you want more depth, read the case studies on the Soils for Life website.

You could also:

• Seek out food grown by farmers using regenerative farming techniques. As well as asking directly at farmers markets and small, health-focussed and artisan shops, try searching online.
• Try applying regenerative farming techniques as much as possible in your own gardening.

Join me!

Any change or challenge is easier if you have company along the way.

So let’s embark on this journey together.

• Read my blog for ideas, thoughts and experiences for living a lower carbon lifestyle, more in harmony with nature – while also adapting to the consequences of our damaged climate.
• Subscribe to get posts direct to your inbox.
• Commit to taking action yourself.
• Add a comment to let me know you’re joining in the effort to turn around our world so it can remain liveable – and what your experiences are.
• Share with others my posts and what you’re doing – our efforts, progress, experiences and challenges – on Facebook, on Twitter, in conversations with friends, on talkback radio and in letters to the editor. Use #LowCarbonLiving hashtags on social media.

A problem shared is a problem halved. We’re all affected by the changes to our world so we need to be all in on the action!

Till next time…