Keeping messaging simple is key to getting consumers to seek out food grown in a more restorative and sustainable way, says Andy Cato, keynote speaker at the Foundation for Arable Research’s CROPS 2022 near Ashburton.
A British regenerative agriculture trailblazer, more widely known as one half of the electronic music duo Groove Armada, Andy Cato took time out from his busy tour schedule to speak at CROPS 2022.
About 500 farmers and industry representatives attended New Zealand’s biggest annual arable farming event at FAR’s Chertsey arable research site on November 23.
Andy Cato, who has been a mixed arable and livestock farmer for the past 15 years, has gained a new following for his work trying to find a more restorative and sustainable way of growing food. In recent years he co-founded Wildfarmed, a farming philosophy that prioritises soil health and biodiversity and grows crops without the use of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides.
“We can go to customers and say that by choosing this flour rather than that flour you are participating in the transformation of the landscape. That message is empowering for a population in the United Kingdom which is largely urban. A lot are concerned about biodiversity loss and climate change. Very few people have made the link that how we grow our food is critical to those questions,” he told CROPS 2022.
It took thousands of hours to put its messaging into simple slogans.
“We are trying to go to high street and tell quite a complicated story about soil health in a very noisy world and try and compete with food that is artificially cheap.”
This led to the decision not to use any “cides” even though there was a compromise between herbicide and tillage.
Wildfarmed produces stoneground flour made from wheat grown alongside a variety of plants, grasses and legumes. Its 50 farmers now supply 500 outlets ranging from specialist bakeries and restaurants to United Kingdom retail chain Marks & Spencer.
Andy Cato says his journey started when he read an article about industrial food production and its consequences on health and the environment. “At the end of the article it said: ‘If you don’t like the system then don’t depend on it,’ which is a phase I took to heart.
“In what was in hindsight a madly naïve decision I sold my songs’ publishing rights to finance the purchase of a farm. It was a moment of absolute madness and I did regret it for several years afterwards.”
The farm had 0.5 per cent soil organic matter and had grown maize almost exclusively for 80 years.
“I went into that thinking that I could just grow organic cereals and it would be fine and it wasn’t.
“I did a Sri Lanka in that it was a chemical farm and I had turned off the chemical tap.” Without chemical control the farm was overrun by weeds.
Close to selling up, he discovered the book “An Agricultural Testament” by Sir Albert Howard, published in 1943, which led him to introduce livestock and grow herbal ley mixes. “Within a year of mob grazing the weeds were gone.”
To increase diversity, he grows bi-crops such as wheat and beans and is trying to develop poly-crop combinations such as barley, peas and rape. This was drilled and left, producing 5.5 tonnes/ha from the three different species. “It’s fascinating how resilient these are.”
He has also sown wheat into pasture though this is prone to lodging.
Andy Cato says he was then faced with market realities as he was growing cereals with an emphasis on the soil and ecosystems when “the only measure was tonnes, not quality”, which led him to set up his own flour mill and make bread.
He accepted that he still had to rely on large parts of the existing system such as distribution networks and high street food chains. “We realised that there is a danger that you say ‘I can’t solve everything, so I’ll solve nothing’. What we can do is improve the soil and eco-systems on land on which the staple crops of the UK are grown and we will focus on that.”
While most New Zealand growers will stick with their conventional growing systems in the meantime, the CROPS audience recognised the hard work and learning that had gone into the development of the Wildfarmed system.
Comments from growers included “I can’t see myself going completely down that path, but every farmer can learn from another” and “I don’t think the world food production could transition to a system like that in one hit, but we need people like this doing the hard yards and learning for us…we can’t predict what we’ll be doing in the future”.