- Speaker #0
Welcome to part two of our episode with Ariane Lotti from Tenuta San Carlo in Tuscany. This second part is more about farming practices. Ariane shows us one of her rice fields and explains how her farming rotation works. She shares some pretty innovative regenerative practices she uses and we also talk about the issue around water. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I am your host Raphael and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
- Speaker #1
So as I said earlier, the reason I grow rice is because this was a former marshland and the soils are the right type of soil for rice, right? They're heavy clay soils, they're poorly drained, and they hold water really well, which are all characteristics that rice needs. to grow. Obviously I have an extensive crop rotation through these rice fields but overall on all the land that I manage and I also grow about a dozen other crops organically. So we're focusing today like you said on the rice because it's that's where some of where I've been testing some of the most more innovative techniques in terms of the regenerative agriculture applications here. So I'd like to take a step back though and just talk about briefly are what I call my traditional organic rice production method, right? Obviously everything is always, you know, there's no one way I do something. It's a constant, you know, back and forth with the land, see what works, see what doesn't. What problems are in this field? What do we want to improve in that field? And so all of that is part of our context. But in terms of the very basics of it, the technique over the years that I've developed for most of our rice fields is, it relies heavily on cover crops and on crop rotation in our rice management. And rice gets planted in May and harvested in October. And the fall before, I plant a cover crop that then grows over the wintertime here because we are in a Mediterranean climate. The cover crop tends to be a fava bean cover crop, so loves heavy soils, a legume. I work a lot on, it provides a lot of biomass, a lot of nitrogen to the soil, and helps structure the soil as well. And then I will... till that biomass in in March and then level the field and do the final field prep for rice production for rice planting in May. Rice gets planted in water about this deep and so in May this field was a little lake essentially and then we are now in the primary kind of you know, vegetative phase before the rice starts, the rice grain head starts to emerge in about a couple of weeks. The, obviously I don't, you know, apply any herbicides, pesticides, we're certified organic, but the more regenerative technique, I wanted to explain that primary, the basics of of that technique because the regenerative one tries to essentially minimize or limit soil disturbance over a two-year period in rice production. And so this was a technique originally developed by a farmer with the University of Milan in Northern Italy, and I've been the first to kind of apply it and think through it here in Tuscany. So instead of planting a cover crop in the fall before rice, you plant essentially a hay field, right? You plant vetch and rye. on a leveled field. So you do all of your field prep in the fall and that hay field, the vetch and rye, grow throughout the winter and into the spring. And instead of tilling all of that biomass back into the soil, I plant directly into the standing hay field in May. So I plant rice into that. And then immediately after that, I mow. Right, and so you get a, like all of that biomass, which in May is higher than I am, taller than I am, forms about a mulch this thick with the rice seeds in it, and then I flood, right? And that flooding causes a fermentation to happen over a few days and then I remove the water and you'll get that wet mulch, right, that rice seeds will start to germinate in and then through and then the rest of the production season is similar, right, because we don't really do much during the production season. The rice plant will grow and we will then harvest in October like all of the other rice. What happens in certain years is that then the vetch, no not the vetch, the rye will re-germinate over that winter after the rice harvest and so we'll get a secondary crop of rye seed from that original planting. It's not a very profitable crop obviously but that means that we go approximately two years in annual rice production without a... without tilling the soil. There are a lot of things that... I've done the technique for five years, and last year with the irrigation district that I'm a part of, I actually started measuring the water consumption of the two different techniques and put water meters on those fields. And we saw that the regenerative practice actually used a little bit more water in the entire season. And that's because in that first flooding, in order to like effectively cover the mulch, which is about this big, you're actually using two or three times more water than you actually need in that other than you use in that other technique. And so at the beginning of the season you actually have more water consumption. And then there have been problems with the heat. Sometimes we get a really hot May and the heat will cause the fermentation to go too far, right? And so we have to be really careful in that. But essentially, if you think about the two production techniques I mentioned, they are, they help me manage climate risk because the field work is actually in two different parts of the year, right? So the field work for the, you know, the less The like no-till or more, you know, I don't know, we're calling it more regenerative technique is in the fall, whereas the majority of the planting work, you know, the pre-planting work and the other technique is in the spring. Last fall, we had a very rainy fall. And so I had in the crop plan one of the rice field, you know, a few of the rice fields in that technique, but we weren't able to get in and level the field. and plant the field in time for then, you know, before the deep winter. And so actually this year I don't have one of those fields in production because it rains so much. You know, oddly enough, had we had one of those fields in production that would have helped me manage the intense amount of rain that we got in May during the planting season, which delayed us significantly because in the years when I have had that, technique in the field and we've had a wet planting season, I'm always able to get the rice into those fields on time because I'm not tilling anything. And so perfecting that technique is one of the things that I'm working on. But I'm also right now, we do have livestock on the farm. And we haven't talked too much about the livestock. Obviously, livestock is an important part of any regenerative system. And one of the things that I'm working on now is trying to figure out how to get animals into my rice, well, generally into the crop production, but more specifically into the rice fields. And I'm working on, and maybe you'll come back in a year and see if we're testing this in the field or not. Trying to understand whether it makes sense to have ducks run through the fields for a month or two, right? There are a lot of like public health regulations to work through and a lot of like duck management things to learn. But it is an interesting... technique to think about, you know, in a field like this, having ducks come in around this time, you know, within the past month and for another few weeks to help fertilize, but also to eat the weeds. So we'll see. Stay tuned on that front. And it's, I don't know, it's a process.
- Speaker #0
It sounds really interesting. I did a conversation a while back with a university professor from the Netherlands. And they're doing the Lighthouse Farm Network. One of them is in Indonesia. And I know that he mentioned that they were working on a similar system with rice fields there with ducks and fishes.
- Speaker #1
Oh, I'd love to. Maybe that's a good contact to be in touch with. That would be great.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, but I remember the story being so interesting. The idea of like including these animals and they each bring a different benefit. Yeah, that sort of first method you described there of planting into your... your field and then mowing it and and fermenting it so you you mentioned some of the downsides the the water uses a big one yeah um what are the big upsides yeah the big upsides are that you um you don't obviously till
- Speaker #1
the field right you're not you don't you're not um compacting the soil you're helping improve the soil quality and the soil structure and all of the soil ecosystem right And then it's... It gives us, when we don't have a super rainy fall, it helps us manage that climate risk that I said because there's less field work in a certain part of the year that here, when it's often raining, which is planting season. And it's the biodiversity, so we get, I get high biodiversity in my cover crop, my regular cover crop method too, but the The biodiversity that we get here in this... bring in the in the vetch and the rye field in terms of not just the plants but all of the you know the insects and then the birds it's it's a beautiful system to see when we're planting um so there's that that piece to it as well but the water piece is a big piece right to figure out how to manage we right now i'm part of an irrigation district and what that means is that i um I participate and I pay into, essentially, to an entity that manages the infrastructure around irrigation. And so there's a river nearby. The river is, you know, comes from the watershed, the hills, and all of the water gets redistributed here. you know, in underground tubes. Because obviously we are in Tuscany, so it doesn't rain that often in the summertime. And in a certain sense, that water management of underground tubes has greatly improved the water use efficiency in this area. And now we're metering all of the water and working on improving the amount of water, or diminishing the amount of water that we use on a per hectare basis in rice production. It's a big topic. Yeah. And I have tried, I did experiment with a research institute once in Italy, rice, growing rice with drip irrigation. I don't want to say it failed because nothing ever fails, but the experiment that we did did not produce sufficient rice at a good quality to immediately. invest in that kind of irrigation technology on a broad scale. I did get elected to the water board here. I participate now. I'm the president of the Irrigation Commission because it's such a big... The management of the water resource is such an important part to the future of this area, but to the future generally, that I... Let's say I'm actively involved in conversations around water use here, right, with the goal both of being able to conserve and monitor and improve the water management of the area and also make sure that farming can still exist in this area.
- Speaker #0
Just a very quick pause to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seat podcast. Soil Capital. Soil Capital is a company that accelerates to transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health and biodiversity. They're an amazing company and if you'd like to learn more about them I will leave a link in the description of this episode. Is there a lot of pressure on that side here in the area in terms of like water scarcity becoming more and more of an issue?
- Speaker #1
Yeah it is it is It is an issue and it's interesting too because certain research studies, at least in Italy now, are showing that irrigation practices, including like flood irrigation for rice fields, help to counteract the salt incursion, the salt water incursion that's coming in from the sea because of just a density, water density question. But we are obviously looking at a future where as well that we're living right now right there are years of water scarcity and years of water abundance and being able to effectively manage both of those situations at a water scale level at a watershed level is one of the things that um i think is the one of the biggest challenges for agriculture and one of the more interesting challenges too right from just like how do you design water systems. so that you can meet the needs of many different uses, including agriculture.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. There's been cases we discussed on recent episodes where, you know, regenerative farmers are working hard to try and recreate the water cycles to revive it locally. And one of the problems they're having is that there are in the region, in the watershed, big industrial producers who consume a lot of water. Does that happen here as well? How can you regulate the amount of water? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
and this is the benefit of having... I say a benefit, I mean, I pay into what is a public authority that manages the irrigation district, that manages the water infrastructure here. Because if it were privatized, it'd be very difficult to have that dialogue in a way that would satisfy everybody. And so because of a European law that regionally has been adopted, we are now their water meters on all of the irrigation district. And so historically, the way the tax or the payment to the district was calculated was on a fixed rate basis primarily. And that's changed now completely as of this year, where we're going on a consumption basis. So if you consume more water, you pay. And then the irrigation district, one of the projects I'm working with them on, is to collect the baseline data on how much a hectare of rice, how much water does it use? How much does a hectare of tomatoes use? There's a lot of wheat in the area that doesn't get irrigated. How much does a hectare of corn use? So that they have a baseline. And then we can have a dialogue with the irrigation district where they say, okay, the water level is low, so for this production season we can only authorize a certain number of hectares of rice or of tomatoes. And while that's not something that I personally, as a farm business manager, appreciate in terms of wanting someone that can limit my production the truth is that if you don't manage the the resource collectively, there's not going to be enough for anybody. And so I, just this week, we had a meeting of the Irrigation Commission to talk about the percentages that are going to be fixed or variable, right, based off of consumption. And then what the regulation around that, you know, the rules around water use will be going into the future, because I do believe that if you effectively manage a water resource, irrigation can be part of the water use, but it has to be measured to what the resource can sustain and what the other uses are.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, of course, yes. But I suppose controlling the water use like this and working on a more of a usage-based cost will also incentivize moving towards producing crops that are more resilient to water scarcity, maybe other older varieties and slowly kind of shifting the focus towards something that makes more sense for the future, no?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I think so. You know, I mean, although it's a long road, right, because we do use water, right, but not just for agriculture, we humans use water. And so what how much water use and what's sustainable water use and what's regenerative water use. Those are questions that I'm slowly trying to introduce into the irrigation district because up until now it's been like, well, there's water, right? And we can just use it. But like I mentioned in 2017, there was a drought. And then in 2022, we were on red alert for water use and had to, you know, the, the, They implemented, the irrigation district, a number of conservation techniques, but you know that obviously will be the norm, right? The difference is, you know, the wild swings between water abundance and water scarcity. And so trying to have that conversation within the entity of the irrigation district to say, okay, what is a sustainable water use? plan here is it's the first time that conversation is being had.
- Speaker #0
At least you're having a conversation about it, that's already a good start.
- Speaker #1
Yeah,
- Speaker #0
yeah. So coming back to regenerative agriculture and the practices that you do here, one question that just came to mind is do you do any crop rotation besides the cover crops that comes in the winter?
- Speaker #1
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
- Speaker #0
yeah. It's not like a place that is really dedicated to rice production and you do it every year?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do crop rotation, one of my favorite. quotes is crop rotation as with life is a journey not a destination crop rotation is a huge part of what we do and so just to give you a sense the farm is 480 hectares 350 are arable land right because we have the marshlands and pine forests which are classified which don't have annual crop production on them and of that 350 I have annually 35 to 45 hectares in rice production so the vast majority of actually the hectares I produce is in other crops. The most profitable is rice. And right now I have a three to four year crop rotation on rice, right? So if we're doing our traditional rice production, so let's say this will be harvested in October and then A couple years ago I started integrating a technique where I just broadcast immediately after harvest clover seed on top because you can't go in and prep the field for any sort of, you know, crop planting that's not just broadcasting at that point.
- Speaker #0
What do you mean by broadcasting?
- Speaker #1
Broadcasting, so like a manure spreader, you just like throw it on. Yeah, okay. Right? So we go in. with our tractor with the steel wheels and just throw the seed on right right after harvest and so we'll get a Clover crop because otherwise it would just the field would just stay uncovered through the winter and into the next summer We get a a clover crop out of that and a cover crop essentially and then the following year We do so that one of the rotations that working out best although it varies in different parts of the field We do I'll do a legume which is a fava bean for seed, right, which would be a fall planted. And then I'll do a grain crop after that, which is farrow. We found that farrow works really well. Other crops that I've tried include organic, you know, well everything's organic, so heirloom wheat varieties, flax, sunflowers. I've tried a variety, millet, I've tried a variety of different kind of primary crops in the rice rotation, but because the fields are structured in a different way to really hold water instead of drain water, only a few crops really can handle that situation. And so I found that farrow is a crop that goes into that rotation well. And so you'll do the farrow and then after that you'll plant the fava bean or, you know, your cover crop mix before the rice cycle then again. Okay.
- Speaker #0
And did you have animals on the farm?
- Speaker #1
Yes, we have animals on the farm.
- Speaker #0
Do you also integrate them onto the rotation or is it a separate?
- Speaker #1
So that's where the ducks came in because I was kind of struck in my mind about how to get animals on the rice fields, which is a goal, right? It's the next big step in our regenerative agriculture journey. I have a heritage breed of cattle that pastures in our pine forests and in... the fields and pastures towards the sea, right? Getting those animals across the road and into the fields themselves is a large logistical challenge that I've started to address in terms of trying to, you know, introduce more mobile fencing. And we tried some of the no-fence collars as well. And I work with a cowboy who helps me manage the cows. by horse as well. But there's a big logistical question which is that the cows currently are on the other side of a provincial road, right, because the farm's in two big pieces. And getting them out here is a logistical challenge. And that's why when I heard about the ducks, I was like, oh, that seems a lot more feasible than moving at the moment, I heard of cows. I do, In my mind, there's the goal of having the cows graze on these fields. It's always a goal that's five or ten years out.
- Speaker #0
Okay, yeah. So all of these methods that you've been applying for a number of years now, have you seen Some benefits to, I mean, some improvements in soil health and biodiversity. Have you been measuring the soil? What can you tell us about that?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as soon as you start adding crop rotations and cover crops, you start to see in a couple of years just the soil structure. You start to see the microbiological activity. You know, you look at the color, you look at the, you know, all of the different kind of indicators. physical indicators, right? And then every few years I do tests. We've been testing soil organic matter in a few different parts of the farm over time and those parameters improve, but slowly, right? These are heavy clay soils so they are very nutrient rich to begin with. And so that I've seen and just the ability of the soils. to respond to lots of rain or periods of drought, right? When I first took over, you know, I think I mentioned earlier there was a drought in 2017. The soils had only been, you know, I started the organic transition in 2016, so it had only been a year of crop rotation and cover cropping, and the soils really suffered from that drought, right? We do have... we have had drier periods in the past couple years and there's there's more resilience in the soils and like I said we do the soil testing every few years yeah okay amazing any other
- Speaker #0
like big plans for the future things that you you want to try that you're quite excited about yeah oh yeah of course well the ducks is a big one yeah but then one of the projects that
- Speaker #1
I'm you know participating in and hopefully will get funded is around more full-scale climate you know carbon emissions and and climate you know related emissions uh monitoring right so that we can really start to put more um quantify better what our practice how our practices impact um carbon the carbon cycle essentially um and then from a farm business perspective one of the um I'm hoping to open a farm store in the next year or two. We didn't really talk about, and that's totally fine, the workshops, the tourism, the educational component of the farm, which is a really important part of what we do, but how the public interacts with what we're doing is the next step in that process is really a place for people to buy farm products and learn about what we do. So those are some of that. projects on the horizon.
- Speaker #0
This is the end of part two. Thank you so much for listening until the end. If you'd like to support me and my work, you can actually do that in just a few seconds by clicking on the deep seat page and clicking the follow or subscribe button. It only takes a few seconds and it makes a huge difference for me. So thank you so much in advance and see you tomorrow for part three for the last part of this awesome interview with Ariane.
- Speaker #1
Bye.
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