- Speaker #0
Our agriculture at the moment is based on an extractive approach. If we go on like this, we are destroying the ecosystems and the fertility of the soil. We have to recognize that farming is not just producing goods. Farming is taking care of environments, is Producing oxygen, fresh water, mitigating winds, mitigating erosion. And I don't want to be paid anymore for the amount of wheat I put in place. If someone has to help the farmers of the future, he should try to push them to maximize their photosynthesis, to maximize the soil cover, to maximize the biodiversity. This is what we need.
- Speaker #1
Welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast. This week I am visiting an amazing regenerative farmer in Tuscany in Italy called Marco Carbonara. His background in ecology gives him a unique perspective on farming. He doesn't just see isolated problems and reach for easy solutions. He looks at the entire ecosystem, at the countless interactions between plants, microbes, and animals, and comes up with holistic, systemic solutions to those problems. In this conversation, Marco makes a lot of strong arguments to demonstrate a few things, like the fact that the conventional model is completely failing, and that recent studies demonstrate just how much better regenerative agriculture is, not just ecologically, but economically as well. He also makes a strong case for why animals have an essential role to play in regenerative farming systems, using very well-described specific examples to demonstrate why. Honestly, this is a fantastic conversation with a farmer who has mastered the art of working with nature and complexity instead of fighting against it. If that's the kind of things you're into, I definitely recommend listening to this episode until the end. This episode was made in partnership with Soul Capital. I am your host Raphael and this is the Deep Seat Podcast. Hi Marco!
- Speaker #0
Hi! How are you doing today? Very well, very well. And yes, I'm very excited to share with you something about my life.
- Speaker #1
Yes, I'm super excited too. And I'm super happy to be here in this beautiful place. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about where we are today.
- Speaker #0
Yes, this is Pulicaro Farm. Me and my wife Chiara, we started this farm 22 years ago now. And we are close to Acqua Pendente, between Orvieto and Lake Bolsena, so we are in the center of Italy, on a volcanic high plateau 600 meters from the sea level. This is a very wild area for being in Italy. There are very few inhabitants and you have to consider that in the past there were ten times the citizens that now we have here. We arrived here trying to see if a lifestyle could become also a job. I'm from Rome, Chiara is from Milan, and we decided we didn't want to live in the city anymore, and to try to see if farming was sustainable from every point of view. Now we manage more or less 100 hectares, and... We mostly focus on pasture raised animals. We try to build a real agro-ecosystem. So we raise a lot of different species. We have 25 cows, 4 donkeys, 150 between sheep and goats, we have 220 pigs, and 12,000-15,000 birds per year. So chickens, some turkeys, we have some rabbits. So it's really something based on trying to have some income from the farm, at the same time letting the animals do their own job working on the farm. For fertilizing or for disturbing some pests, or keep some balance into the different herbs or bushes and so on.
- Speaker #1
It's all about farming with nature. Not against nature, right?
- Speaker #0
Exactly, this is the point.
- Speaker #1
And there was division from the very beginning, when you started 20 years ago?
- Speaker #0
For the first 4-5 years everything was so confused and so difficult because all the mainstream consultants, like vets or agronomists, they were trying. to push us in a very classical direction. So if you have a problem with a pest, you have to spray an insecticide. If you have a problem with a disease, you have to treat the animals with medicine. And this, I think, is really at the core of our approach in general, also for human medicine and for our society in general. We are not used anymore to investigate the deep cause of the problems. of the situation. The first thing you learn when you study ecology is that there is no, there's never a simple answer to a quite complex question. And so then, step by step, step by step, we realized that it was all a matter of holistic approach, of resilience into the ecosystem, of balance in between plants and animals. For example, at the moment I'm really convinced that farms that are too much specialized could never reach this kind of target. If you have just grapes, if you have just olives, if you have just cows or whatever, it's very difficult to... to build this ecosystem because at the end mostly we are trying to imitate yeah absolutely the wild ecosystems just for letting you understand i think one of my strongest allies in farming are wolves most part of the farmers complain about wolves constantly because they are not used anymore to to deal with them and they just see The damage? We don't have any damage from wolves. We never had because we always had the guardian livestock. dogs into the pants where we have the animals. So into the electric fence we keep the sheep or the chicken and the dogs, the leaves together. And this is enough for keeping the wolf away because the wolf is very smart and he just wants to prey a sheep when it's easier than a wild boar or a wild deer. But when there is a dog that is big enough and mentally strong enough to face the wolf, the wolf doesn't want to risk an injured wolf is a dead wolf so they don't want to risk at all and i noticed that since the wolves came back in the arab 15 years ago the wild boars decreased they were unbalanced into using they were too much too many and they keep all the populations of the wild deer constantly healthy because if there is any wild deer that can be a little bit sick or weak weak is the first one they eat. So again, this different point of view change completely your life and your farm. When you have a problem, you have to try first of all to understand exactly how the life cycle of the ex. involved are. For example, we keep a lot of birds, especially turkeys if we can during the late summer and beginning of the autumn, or chickens all year round into the olive orchards because one of the worst pest for the olives is the it's called the mosca del olivo fly of the olives i don't know exactly what it's called in english but it can damage your harvest till the 80 90 so it is something quite serious but if you go studying instead of spraying insecticide that are very wide effective so they they kill all the insects and they kill all the animals that feed on these insects and poison us also as well but yes if you study precisely how this life cycle of this fly works you discover that they will start laying an egg during the middle summer or late summer on the olive and the larva will start eating the olive and if we know if we remember that olive trees doesn't produce olives for us they produce olive because they want to propagate their own species, obviously. So these two beings co-evolved for fighting each other. The fly wants to eat the olives, and the olive tree wants to produce good seeds. The olives turn into a violet color when they are almost ripe. This is the moment they change their color for making them more visible for animals and they change their flavor and reduce the bitterness because they want to be eaten from a bird or from a wild boar or from a deer or from whoever that will put the seeds far from the mother plant, okay? So the olive tree doesn't want to waste a single Sugar from photosynthesis don't want to lose any energy on an olive, on a fruit that will never be perfect. So it will never produce a perfect seed,
- Speaker #1
you know what I mean?
- Speaker #0
So usually the plant realizes that the olive has been attacked by this parasite and he sends down an hormone called ethylene that will cut two layers of cells and will let the olive fall on the ground. because the plants want to just spend all the energy on the olives that are perfect okay but the larva doesn't care about this because on the ground she will go on eating the olive, okay? And when she grew enough, she will go out of the olive, try to find a place, a spot into the soil, a few millimeters down the soil for... finish growing and make the... I call it...
- Speaker #1
The kind of transform, yeah, into a fly.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. So she will go out of the soil again, a few days later, and she will try to... climb on a stem of grass and open the wings and restart the cycle. But if there are animals, wild or animals from the farm, that into this process will try to eat the larva into the olive, because they don't care if there is a larva inside, so the chicken will eat and the turkey will eat the olive with the larva inside or we'll try to actively pick some flies because they love flies to eat or they will scratch on the on the ground and they will find the larva into the ground and they will eat or when they come out and they climb on the on the on the grass and so on all this Animals will keep the number of the pests low. Not zero, but low. We always have damage in terms of loss of values that is in between 1, 2, 3, 5%. That doesn't push me. No matter how I think about ecosystems, that I don't want to use special, but it doesn't make sense economically to go buying insecticide for 3% of loss. You know what I mean? And this is exactly what regenerative agriculture is based on. It's based on the idea of having in place solutions that are more effective and more economic than the average chemicals one.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so if I understand what you're telling me is that we have a tendency, in today's world, of just treating symptoms. Whether it's in medicine or in farming, it's kind of the same thinking process. And we never look at the cause and we never really solve the sort of systemic problem that this...
- Speaker #0
Where it comes from.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, that causes more problems and that's kind of an endless cycle of not really solving the initial problems and going in the wrong direction. But you're looking at it more from a systemic perspective. You're trying to look at the cause. The system as a whole, you mentioned the world holistic, right? Exactly. And you try to work from there, right?
- Speaker #0
Exactly. I want to make you a very simple example. The ancient Greeks were saying that there were two kinds of medicines for the humans. The first kind is the medicine for the slaves. You have to cure the symptom very quickly because the slave must go back to work. The other medicine is the one for the people that are free, that are wealthy we now should say. that should investigate the deep root of the problem and taking the time for solving the problem at the base, okay? For having a full, happy life. So you now tell me which approach we developed in the last 2000 years.
- Speaker #1
Right.
- Speaker #0
Okay. If we try to imitate an ecosystem with different animals and plants from the wilderness and the farm, we keep all the issues in balance in a range that will not be maybe zero, but will be enough close to zero to not make a real damage. And this is the goal of a regenerative farm to do not choosing of not treating with chemicals just because it's your choice, okay? But to make it more convenient this is if we want to change the world if we want to Bring more people with us. We have to demonstrate that it is also affordable, that is convenient, let's say, okay? So I was telling you that we will never treat an olive orchard for a loss of the 2% of the product. You have to go to the shop, buy the products, go on the tractor, cover yourself, spray two mornings, three mornings, so this is the goal to do not need it. And let's make the opposite example. Imagine an olive orchard, quite big, maybe some hectares, 20-30 hectares, okay? With the soil that is constantly tilled, so naked, no edges, no different trees, okay? Just olives. that the farmers in general consider that one a clean olive orchard. When they come to my olive orchard they say, why don't you clean your olive orchard? Because in their mind it's dirty, because of the grass.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Okay? But again, if we have this monoculture and we artificially build an environment that is very, very simple, olive trees, Soil, no edges, no other trees, no other animals because there's no refugee for them, there's no food for them. My question is who will colonize this artificial environment? Who is the only one that can come into an olive orchard that is... managed that way. Just the ones that eat olives because they have nothing else to eat. So just very specialized forms of life that can take advantage from a monoculture of olives. It's quite simple, you know? But the idea at the base is that machines and chemicals are more effective than ecosystems. And this is simply a lie. Because ecosystems are very effective, are very efficient.
- Speaker #1
but some would argue that by using machinery, by using technology, using chemicals, they can work on huge amounts of hectares at once, minimize costs of labor and so on and therefore make, produce more, feed more people and make more profits.
- Speaker #0
Okay, let's go a little bit deeper in this. We have to recognize Something very important is at the base of this idea. Our agriculture at the moment is based on an extractive approach. An extractive approach that is exactly the same approach you have for extracting oil or copper or sulfur from the ground. Our economic approach is based on an idea that is 200 years old, that the world is enough big and we are so few and so little that we can extract forever how much we want. We now know that it's not like this. This is an idea that comes from 200 years ago when people were much less. And so we have to start from a consideration. We want to go on extracting. Or we realize that if we go on like this, we are destroying the ecosystems and the fertility of the soil. So this is something we have to decide. Because if you are asking me if it's more convenient to go on putting a lot of fertilizers on a soil, a lot of water, a lot of gasoline, because you can produce like this maybe six tons. wheat per hectare and I can produce 25, 30. Okay, so in terms of tons, if we want to go on extracting, obviously, this kind of agriculture is more effective. But, and we started a study with Veara, If we already start looking at the economics, it's already different. Because that kind of agriculture is very, very, very expensive. You need a lot of things from outside of the farm. You need fertiliser, you need gasoline, you need a lot of this. If you cut out the cap, most part of this farm will disappear in six months. Because they cannot afford to go on like this. Because this kind of farming produces more tons. And, by the way, with much less nutrient density. This is another thing we have to consider. But it produces more tons because it has a lot of inputs and extracts a lot from the soil. Okay.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
But this is artificially keeping alive this system through the cap.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Okay. In a farm like mine, cap is nothing. It's nothing. It's a very small amount. And if they remove the cap tomorrow, OK, I will lose something like 4,000, 5,000 euro per year. But it's not something that keeps my farm alive. You know what I mean?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. OK.
- Speaker #0
Most part of the arable farms, if you take out the cap, they will seriously struggle. And I'm not happy, obviously, about this, but it's a fact.
- Speaker #1
OK.
- Speaker #0
Okay,
- Speaker #1
so in effect, I mean we are in an extractive society today.
- Speaker #0
Exactly.
- Speaker #1
And the farming system is no different. It relies on the use of finite resources, fossil fuel, compost, seeds, but also soil fertility, microbiology.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. We are extracting resources from our farm and from the outside world for producing more quantity.
- Speaker #1
More quantity,
- Speaker #0
normal quantity. quality and not more density but more quantity yeah okay but why now regenerative agriculture is much more interesting for a lot of people we as they are we have been counted from a lot of big farms that are interesting to understand what's going on really because they are producing much less than in the past the average of an industrial farm in italy about wheat have been cut it in half in the last 20 years. So they were used to produce maybe six, eight tons per hectare of hard wheat, I don't know, okay? And now they are producing 28, 35, 42. So if you put these numbers close to the 25, 27, 30 of the Jaisalmer agriculture, and on the side you have much less inputs, on the other you have a lot of inputs, The comparison is now much more interesting than 20 years ago. You know what I mean?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so...
- Speaker #0
They decreased their production. We are seeing that after several years, and this is the point, after several years, we can be quite stable. Regenerative agriculture is much more stable. There is no year that you produce 50 and the year you produce 10. It's always quite average. It's much more stable. Cause seems to be the only thing that can really face, for example, climate change. When you have massive rain on a farm that have permanent cover, that have animal that graze properly, water even doesn't make a damage. Okay, depends on the area, depends on the amount of rain, okay, but it's much, much, much, much less. And you can see from your neighbors. If I have a friend in Sutri, the Fattoria Faraoni, that deep practice regenerative agriculture with cows, he's very good in this, and you have neighbors that have intensive hazelnut cultivation. When it rains, he doesn't have any kind of damage. into the hazelnut orchards, all the soil comes down to the river, comes down to the road, they have to go with a jack store to remove. So we are completely on a different page.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Are we arriving at this turning point, you feel like? Because from what you're describing, what we call conventional agriculture is really reaching its limits. The yields are dropping, costs are increasing, the damages by climate change are going to keep being more and more of a problem. And next to that you have regenerative farmers who have healthy balanced ecosystems, have a much more balanced sort of production and much more resilience to these extremes and much less dependence on external inputs.
- Speaker #0
It is not something that is not important.
- Speaker #1
Right. So the question I guess is do you feel like we're getting to this turning point where now regenerative farming now becomes just the best way to farm, period?
- Speaker #0
For me, yes. Period that is, it is already like this. It's at least 10 years it is like this. But there's a big but. We live in a society that, economically speaking, tells us that a good business plan is five years. We are in the era of the startups. In five years, we have to get a brilliant idea, develop it, and sell it. There is a problem. Nature doesn't work like this. Period. Period. Okay? So the problem it is the transition time. Average speaking again because it depends from your farm, from your area, how much it rains, how much poor is your soil or not. Okay, but every speaking you have four years at the beginning of transition that you... You wanna get mad. You get mad because everything is exploding because you don't spray anymore insecticides, the population of the pests are exploding, the soil is naked and so you have erosion without having fertility. So it's a mess. At the very beginning, the first three, four years are really difficult. Also economically. And there is no another field in general where You can tell to a company, okay, now for four years you will lose money.
- Speaker #1
I mean,
- Speaker #0
okay. Usually, after other four years, so in eight years, heavily speaking, you are starting to see the sun at the end of the tunnel again. So, you can really touch it that things are getting in balance, your productivity is increasing with a nice curve. your expenses are reducing and your resilience is increasing very well a lot usually around 12 and 16 years you get better result economically productively so the point is the but is how we can help or how we can accept To pay this for eight years of mostly problems.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, financing the transition.
- Speaker #0
Yes, that seems something unbelievable, okay? But to me, it's a very small problem compared on what we will face if we don't do it. On what we are facing, not doing this.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
You know what I mean? Even for a single farmer, I know farmers that don't know anymore what to do, what to think. Because they have big, big, big loans with the banks for huge machinery. They have big loans for the fertilizer and the gas in every area. The fields are not producing anymore. So it is a real problem also for the banks and for the insurance. I think it's more brilliant and more smart to get on the table and say, okay, who has a plan? Does this plan work? How we can find a solution for saving also our money? Because more part of the... There are billions of loans that no one will pay anymore because they can't simply. And I don't know if a bank is so interested in having acres and acres of land from farmers that they know how to cultivate, you know what I mean?
- Speaker #1
Doing this podcast, releasing new episodes every week and bringing to you stories of regenerative pioneers and experts, well, it takes a lot of work and a lot of time and I could not do it without the support of Soil Capital. Soil Capital is a company that helps accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture that we so desperately need by financially rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health and biodiversity. They are an amazing company. I'm genuinely a big fan of their work and I'm very proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.
- Speaker #0
I try to be very realistic, okay? I don't think anyone is changing their mind because they decided it is. more fair. I'm just saying they're afraid. Afraid to lose money, afraid to do not have enough goods to sell. Big companies contact groups of regenerative agriculture farmers because they simply are realizing that their own producers cannot produce enough. They are producing every year less. I think, I want to hope that we are smart enough to sit at the table and start saying, okay this is the problem, do we have a plan? Do we have numbers to support at least pilot programs on this plan? Let's try. Before it's too late.
- Speaker #1
Do you see that happening in the short-term future?
- Speaker #0
I've seen things that were unbelievable.
- Speaker #1
10 years ago so yes i think the the smartest one are starting moving about this yes okay nice this is what i see from my yeah that's really interesting really interesting i want to come back to to farming and to your farm in particular you gave us this amazing example with the the olive trees and i was wondering if you had other examples and all the stories you can tell us about your system and how you manage it in this holistic way yes for sure you know
- Speaker #0
Different species are different because they use different niches into the ecosystem and using a different niche into the ecosystem means using different resources so eating different stuff. For example, pasture or grasslands you have mostly two options or you have one species and through the mob grazing that is already a very good solution you try to push the animals to eat the 80-90% of the herbs that are on your field or you have to correct artificially because if the sheep doesn't like the thistle for example after one year two years three years four years which are the only plants that will completely develop and produce seeds the one that the sheep doesn't like so the thistle so if you were speaking with the farmers they say oh Oh no, a ship. should not stay on the field where you want to cultivate cereals because they will fill the field with thistles. Like if they can produce thistles, okay? But if you have, we have, for example, the first group of animals that go on pasture are cow and some goats. And for example, economically speaking, these goats, we have 25 cows and 12 goats usually in the same group, okay? these 12 goats are Mostly doesn't cost to me. Okay. I'm not referring to my work, the property, the fences, but they don't eat the grass that the cow eat. So if I can keep, I don't know, 25 cows into my farm on that 20 hectares. Okay. If I add 12 goats, I can still keep... 25 cows. And in a few years I can add the cow. Because they eat different plants and they keep the grassland balanced. So do not allow the plants that the cow doesn't like to develop too much. After the cow and the goats, immediately we let enter, because we have this rotational system, so we move in different plants, we let enter the donkeys. Because there are some thistles and thorns that no one want to eat but the donkey and they enjoy and they're healthy and chubby okay we don't eat donkeys at the moment we use them for for farming for for other works okay but anyway is uh is another animal that can live on the same field where my cow get the 90 of the food you know what i mean okay after them we try to move them the birds Because when the birds enter a pasture, usually around four to seven days after the cow moved, they find a lot of bugs in the manure of the cow. And on one side, they keep the pasture free from parasites. On the other, they get free protein. And immediately they start increasing the number of eggs they lay by 25-30%. And they eat 30% less the grains that I should feed them. So the cow is feeding the bird that will make, produce eggs for me. This is a different point of view. We also, the cap is now designed for, okay, you have these 10 hectares. Tell me what you do on that 10 hectares. Alfalfa or clover or wheat, okay, dot. No, I produce hay, but at the same time I have some olives and I use animals for pestle, so I produce milk and meat and eggs because the birds come after. Again, it's a completely different point of view and it has some of the problems. cause If you now read newspaper or you speak with vets authority they will tell you that never ever have birds, chickens close to cows or sheep. Because there is the risk of the avian flu that spill over. The virus can potentially skip from the birds to... to a mammal. That is what we want to avoid because it is a potential risk for us as humans. But again, we have to dig a little bit deeper. Real risk at the moment is into the factories where the density of the birds is unbelievable. It's not outside because the wild birds can potentially contaminate the soil and potentially contaminate the birds and so on, because the density here is too low. Alien flu is a very strong virus for birds, so after 24 hours they or they die or they... isolate themselves. Imagine about you when you are sick. You stay in your room and in the bed you want to stay by yourself you don't wanna you want to avoid light and so on and so if eventually my one of my chickens gets sick he doesn't have the chance to spread the virus to everyone else because he will isolate himself. My birds have usually at least 30-40 square meters each one. instead of having 20 birds on one square meter into a factory. So what we need as regenerative farmers, because regenerative agriculture mostly, especially in the Mediterranean climate, but in general, needs animals. This is my personal opinion. You can produce compost, you can produce a lot of, let's say, not livestock solutions for fertility. but honestly it's very expensive and the amount the tons of stuff you can produce is very little it's very interesting when you have to activate something like a yeast you know so if you produce a compost pile because you want to activate this compost pile you want to inoculate the soil yes this is very interesting but if you have to add organic matter seriously especially in mediterranean climate where we have a dry summer and a cold winter where bacteria's doesn't live, doesn't survive so much in these two extremes, up to 24 degrees. The activity is much less of the bacteria. You need the animals, especially you need the herbivores, the large herbivores. You need the sheep, the cow, the goats, because you need their stomach, you need their rumen. I'll try to explain this. Microbiota is what keeps the soil fertile, living, dynamic, moving. moving nutrients, moving gases and water, okay, vertically and horizontally. A dead soil can be fertilized theoretically in terms of nitrogen, but it is dead. It doesn't work, okay. For having a healthy microbiota, you have to keep alive the two big containers of this microbiota. One is the soil. And the other one, especially in certain seasons, are the stomach of the large herbivores. That will keep the population alive and will inoculate again into the soil. I know that maybe it looks a little bit complicated, but it is much more easy to understand if you can see it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
It's incredible the effect that... the manure does on the on the grasslands is is amazing is uh you can really see from a spring to an autumn in six months is uh that's something that every farmer i have met who works with animals in a holistic way is
- Speaker #1
absolutely convinced about so that i guess it's something you can see you can you can see you can touch it like people debate about things like that in in classrooms or in studies or whatever, but the reality of it.
- Speaker #0
being on the farm and feeling and seeing what it does to you to your land and there's nothing that can be a better kind of proof no absolutely and especially at the beginning of the regeneration path it's a matter of meters i mean if you have an olive orchard and you have the mobile chicken tractor in the middle of the line and the line is like six meters and the mobile chicken coop is three meters wide. So there is one meter and a half on the side and one meter and a half on the side where the chicken tractor doesn't move on. Okay? Birds go sleeping into the mobile chicken tractor so they have half of the day for pooping exactly where the chicken tractor is. So if you go up and down on the line with the chicken tractor, especially at the beginning of the regeneration, so the first two, three years, you will see that In the line where the chicken tracks are passed, the grass is lush, is much, much taller, much, much denser and rich. Half a meter from the side is poor, it's weak. The nice part is that as much as one part gets fertilized in patches, the herbivores will eat mostly there, but they will poop everywhere. So they will distribute those nutrients everywhere. I think that at the moment we are... Forgetting what is the main purpose of the farm. A main purpose of the farm is transforming sunlight into food. When I speak to you about grass, people maybe can think, okay, but we cannot eat grass by itself. Yes, but grass is just an indicator that tells you that the soil is more fertile. okay at the moment i'm feeding my animals with that grass and i will take food from my animals but if you if i want to cultivate i know barley or apricots or or whatever i need a fertile soil so that soil that now is just expressing grass is the one that can sustain an healthy tree my trees my olives the one that I started 15 years ago, doesn't need any more even copper and sulfur because they are so well fed from the ground, they don't need it. I want to make you another example. All the forms of life get sick when they are stressed, when their immune systems or their body cannot face a challenge, okay? So for a tree, One of the challenges is the water and the nutrients because they cannot go searching for water and nutrients they need around them. When you reach a certain amount of organic matter, a very healthy microbiota into your soil, the grass you can see into my olive orchard, compared to the other olive orchard that is at the beginning of regeneration, at the beginning of regeneration the grass becomes dry. first days of june okay in the other one becomes dry half of july end of july so maybe 40 50 days later means that the moist is into that soil for 40 days more every single year during the summer and when it rains the other one become green again with two small rains in a row and the other one needs four or five rains. And during the winter, here we are 600 meters on the sea level, some morning can be quite cold, okay? And the grass on the not regenerated olive orchard becomes damaged by the frost at minus 0.5 Celsius, so immediately. On the other field, nothing happens, the grass goes on, growing and is green and healthy till minus 3, minus 3.5. Because the roots are so developed and the soil is so active that they can pump warm water from the ground much better than the other ones that are weak. Okay? Imagine how many days during the winter, more, how many days more, my olives can grow compared to the other ones. Where the frost is effective at 3 degrees upper, you know what I mean? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
yeah.
- Speaker #0
The days that in Pulicaro the temperature reach minus 4 are, at the moment very few, honestly, also cause this climate change, but are maybe 15, 10, okay, in a year. And the days that you have minus 0.5 are 30, 35, 40. So... The efficiency in terms of photosynthesis of regenerative farming is much more. And again, then you can use that tool for whatever you want, no matter if it is one food or another, but the point is that you have to build your soil.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so you're capturing sunlight, basically, and feeding into your system this energy.
- Speaker #0
It's the only thing that farmers can do. We cannot control the sun, we cannot control the water. The only thing we can do is trying to maximize for the species through the soil.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And by working the way you work with this complex rotation with animals, so you have, first of all, you have a very diversified production and you can fit more into your land than if you just had 25 cows. It's crazy.
- Speaker #0
For sure. And there's also another economic aspect about this.
- Speaker #1
Obviously.
- Speaker #0
I risk less. Maybe my margin is a little bit smaller sometimes than compared to the good years of someone that just had pigs. Okay, because they can be more efficient, there is a different scale probably, okay? But you risk much, much more. Much, much more. If one ear is not the best one for olives because olives must be pollinated by the wind so if when they are in bloom there is heavy rain and strong wind they will not be pollinated and you miss one year but usually if this happens usually it means that it has been a very wet spring so i will have much more grass my lamps will be chubbier I will have more milk and more eggs and I will buy less hay or I can sell more hay. You know what I mean?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it bounces out. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
exactly.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, and so going back to the idea of capturing sunlight, feeding it into your system, so by increasing the health of that grass and of those trees, you increase the amount of sunlight that's been captured by photosynthesis. Exactly. And you're going into this loop of... Increasing the amount of energy in the system, increasing the health of that system, increasing the microbial activity in the soil, and all of that increases the health of your animals, the productivity of your system, and so on, right?
- Speaker #0
Yes, and there is also another aspect that increasing, boosting photosynthesis is the only way for capturing tons and tons of carbon dioxide that we physically put down into the ground through the roots of the plants and the... Work of the small animals. You know the kind of beetle that push the manure under the ground? In September, October, year, we can count 10 per square meter. They dig and they push the manure under the ground. They are physically, because the manure is mostly carbon, they are physically taking...
- Speaker #1
Dragging it down.
- Speaker #0
Dragging it down.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Okay, but you can do this. If you don't use insecticide. The most common insecticide in farming is Ivermectin. But it's such a strong insecticide that pollutes and keeps the manure poisoning for insects for six months. So, first of all, the manure doesn't tend to be decomposed. And no one is keeping down into the ground because every beetle that takes a bite is like a snow white apple. They die, poor animals. But again, it's all linked. During the summer we can have some problems with the horsefly. We have our bull that because he is close in a smaller area, he's not on pasture because he's... This bull is not 100% reliable with humans, so he is on a smaller fence, okay? And because he's on a smaller fence, he was having trouble with this horsefly. And he was getting nervous and he was even losing weight, okay? We have seen he was so nervous and... We put in with him three little hands that live with him and he stays... He doesn't move a single muscle because they go and they pick all the horse flies from him. They produce a lot of eggs, this tree is small, but they produce a lot of eggs so they were fed by high density nutrients from the horse fly.
- Speaker #1
Something I love about the regenerative mindset is the way you creatively turn problems into solutions, right?
- Speaker #0
This is exactly what ecology teaches you. I don't want to be too strict, but I am happy that I didn't study veterinary or agronomy, but I studied ecology. Because when I arrived here I wasn't knowing anything about how to raise a pig or cultivate a tomato plant. But I was having my background on how... A system work, how a plant grows, what are the needings of animals. The most part of the disease into factories where we raise animals are linked to stress. The hormones of stress really destroy the immune system. That's for us. And so, knowing that happy animals are strong animals, for me was essential. The first thing I go checking in my earth, in my group of animals is are they happy? It's not something fancy, it's not something... It's not poetry, it's very practical. It's very also related to your economics. A group of... Chickens that are happy grows faster.
- Speaker #1
And gets less disease, less problems. Much less.
- Speaker #0
Much, much less.
- Speaker #1
So going back to the point you were making earlier about health and safety regulations, right? So if I understand what you're saying is that those regulations have been put in place for these intensive production where they have a high density that welcomes kind of these big problems. And therefore they put in place these health and safety regulations that are very... strict and linear to avoid problems there. But now these health and safety regulations apply to a system like yours, cause more problems than they solve.
- Speaker #0
Exactly, and I want to be even more precise. If you have a factory with 100,000 birds, 20, 25 birds per square meter, 15, doesn't change anything, okay? Very selected breeds that... grows very very fast because for having a problem you need the right environment the right animal and the right diet or for being more precise the wrong environment the wrong genetics and the wrong feed if you don't have these three combined part it's very difficult to have a real problem you know what i mean okay so you have a wrong environment A very stable and humid and hot environment with high density. What is this? An incubator. But you have to maximize the growth of the bird. So you want to keep him not too cold, not too hot. That is exactly what our environment doesn't do. Every complex form of life as an animal or a plant Rely exactly on the fluctuations of the environment for being stronger than the virus and the bacteria. You know what I mean? If you put the bacteria under the sun with 35 degrees, if it's its own... Good temperature, it's okay. But when this stone will be cold in the evening, he will not be in his right environment. But the bigger organisms have a way to face it. You can sweat, you can move, you can drink more or less. Simple forms of life are much more dependent on their own environment.
- Speaker #1
Okay, yeah.
- Speaker #0
So if you have that kind of structure, you are keeping Temperature and moist at the same level, quite constant. So you are incubating not just your chicken's meat, but also your viruses and your bacterias, first of all. Then genetics that are selected just for performance. Performance is important, for sure. You know how we selected during our history of human beings. Ten thousand years ago or even 300 years ago, 200 years ago, I was coming visiting you, like you did today, and if I knew that you were having a nice flock of sheep, I was asking you, please, can you save for me a male and two, three females from your flock? Because I want to mix my blood, I want to change my genetics a little bit, and I know you have a nice flock. I will pick Few individuals that will carry, statistically speaking, the entire pool of the earth. Because I'm not selecting just you, then your son, then your grandson. You know what I mean? You're not selecting the single individual. You're taking a wider base of genetics.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Okay? So I can go from you because I want to improve my meat. So I have seen that you have a little bit. bigger ship but you are also selecting for the wool or for the milk and you don't spend time keeping your best ram into a little stable and think okay he's the one that is weights five kilos plus the other and so i wanna just reproduce reproduce himself you know what i mean can you follow this yeah okay after this 200 years ago 300 years ago we I started selecting individuals. So I was coming to you and asking for the lamb, son of that ram.
- Speaker #1
Okay.
- Speaker #0
Okay?
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
This is much faster. Much faster.
- Speaker #1
You get the genetic traits that you're looking for faster.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. Yeah. You achieve your goals faster because you can select just one animal per time so you can really decide which are the characters that you are interested in and go on like this. But at the same time you are selecting an animal, a complete animal. So you cannot give me a good lamb if the ram is big, is fat, but have bad hooves. You know what I mean? Or it's not healthy, will just live for a few years. So that one is the kind of artificial selection that we have made as human beings more successfully, I think, in the last... thousand years okay the individual selection with some also massive selection from from the flock then we started selecting just a single character we want double breast um chickens so we keep apart away from reproductive program all the chickens that doesn't have double breast we focus just on one thing especially with chickens we pick with fast rate of grow.
- Speaker #1
Because they reproduce very often.
- Speaker #0
Yes, and a chicken can reproduce in six months and they grow quite fast. So it's easier to do this. And we started not taking care of all the other aspects of the animal. So does it work? Well, it is healthy, it is resistant to this or that. Because it's the same time when we started putting the animals indoors. Okay? And in the end, the genetic selection, we pretend, from my point of view, to read what is into the genoma and say, okay, I can see that that ram has that genetic resistance to that disease. I want to use just that ram. If you are not very wise and very careful, you risk to forget about the animal by itself, and you just focus on a single character, increasing the risk of having an animal that globally is not healthy.
- Speaker #1
Okay.
- Speaker #0
You know what I mean? Yeah. Our studies in genetics are so much developed now that people can really know. But for me, the sensation I have still, what I read from studies is that, yes, now we know all the alphabet. And we can read most part of the words and the sentence. But it's like in a book. It's not enough if you read a sentence here and a sentence over there, and you cannot understand all meaning of the book. You have not complete point of view. This is what I feel. I feel that There's so much more interaction between different parts of our GES that we don't know exactly everything.
- Speaker #1
Okay, yeah. And so going back to this question of...
- Speaker #0
I don't know if I'm going too much in detail or... No,
- Speaker #1
that's really interesting, but I want to bring it back to my original question, which was about these regulations. Yes, sorry. I was asking if actually these strict regulations we've put in place for these industrial systems systems. Doesn't cause you more problem than it actually solves.
- Speaker #0
Yes, that kind of regulations are based on one idea and on a practical approach on what is in place at the moment, so industrial farming. So they think that you can avoid a virus and bacteria to enter. It's always based on this, to zero contagious. That doesn't work because if we could not do mostly anything even with human viruses, with COVID and things like this, I mean viruses circulate. You can reduce the risk, you can improve with vaccination or with I don't know which kind of practice but the point is that we base our biosecurity on The idea of keep very very low the risk of propagation. They think you can avoid completely the contagious. Yeah. the main difference. So yes, obviously how I can tell you that no sick bird will ever pass on the skies of Pulicaro and will not poop on the grass. This is impossible.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Okay. But I can tell you that all the bacteria, all the insects, the density that we have in terms of animals on pasture, the different species, will keep the risk of a real epidemic. Really, really, really low. I cannot tell you zero, but it's very close to zero.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
And they made rules just for the big factory, telling them, you have to avoid that everything can enter. But then it enters, because we are seeing that in the past 20 years, you know anything about the avian flu, but in the past 20 years, it got just worse.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So it means that that kind of system and not because it's polycarp, but because that approach, the idea you can avoid completely contagious, it doesn't work.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, okay. So how would you suggest to change the regulation?
- Speaker #0
I think that first of all we don't have to change the regulation, but we have to make new regulations, because the regulation that works for an indoor cannot work for an outdoor.
- Speaker #1
Okay, so this would be about creating a new category.
- Speaker #0
Recognize that there is another option.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
Finding together again, finding together with numbers, with studies, okay, solutions that can guarantee the public health, the health of the farmer, the health of the animals, and so on, that are completely possible.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Have you had any discussions with people about this? Is it something that might happen in the future?
- Speaker #0
It will happen, because that system is not working anymore. So again, or we just turn to vegan or cultivate meat or stuff like this that have other kinds of problems that are not... Perfect as well, like all other solutions. Or we have to consider that there should be another option. Because otherwise... Again, my question is, your system, speaking to the one in the industry, your system, it is working?
- Speaker #1
What do you mean your system?
- Speaker #0
The way you are raising animals, does it work?
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Doesn't seem.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Doesn't seem because we have huge problem about bacteria's resistance, for example.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Huge problem in Europe is it is the new pandemic. Dozens of thousands of deaths every single year. And they come mostly... from pigs, chickens and other animals indoors because we use too much antibiotics. So you want to reduce antibiotics, you have to change a little bit genetics, you have to change a little bit diet and you have to change environment.
- Speaker #1
So once again we come to the same conclusion that this system is just not working anymore, it's causing more problems than it's solving and there's no way around it, it needs to evolve. Nature includes farming like you're doing.
- Speaker #0
I want to tell you one thing because I agree with this. I personally... don't agree so much with the vegan idea of having farming without animals because my experience as an ecologist and as a farmer tells me that Animals are needed into ecosystems like are needed into the wild ecosystems Then I don't want to judge anyone personal choices. Obviously everyone have his own reasons for Deciding what to eat and what not to eat.
- Speaker #1
I Hear you. I understand understand you but it's there's a because me as someone who's eaten plant-based most of my life I think that, well, people who decide to go plant-based a lot of the time care about ethics and care about the environment. And therefore are probably prime allies in going towards a type of farming and a type of animal farming even. That is much more ethical and respectful of animals. And nature. and healthy and healthy for ecosystems and increasing biodiversity increasing life and therefore i think that industrial farming industrial especially animal breeding is awful it's it's horrific it's horrific we talked about the obviously environmental problems the health problems of the but the ethical aspect is is a massive one as well for me this should not exist it should not exist and therefore if we can put forces together i Exactly. This is the point. As regenerative farmers, animal breeders and animal rights activists, let's use that as a denomination for the group. Absolutely. Against that common issue, I think that would be fantastic. Look,
- Speaker #0
we have to go back to being fed from ecosystems, to eat more close to the sun. You know what I mean? Yeah. We need the whole environment. We need all the ecosystem. So, honestly, If you really understand how the ecosystem works, you will understand that you can renounce to cheese if you want to renounce the cow. You can renounce to the cow if you want to renounce to the meat, but you cannot renounce to the cow if you want to eat zucchini, wheat, because they are part of the ecosystem. The point is not, it's not a cow, it's the how. The problem is that we should reduce maybe the amount of meat we eat, probably, according to Albe speaking, we should select the mid... yes for sure And we must be fed from the ecosystem, proximity ecosystems. Pulicaro can produce a lot of, a certain amount of cereal, a certain amount of legumes, of fruit, of vegetables, meat, eggs, milk and so on. And we should eat what the ecosystem can produce. I can tell you that at the beginning of regeneration, it's more effective for the ecosystem if we eat more meat instead of cereals, because cereals need...
- Speaker #1
a fertile soil how you can fertile the soil if you don't have animals then maybe later you can reduce your consumption of meat because your your soil will be much more productive and you can yeah so what you're saying is that the animals no matter how you look at it they have an important role to play in a healthy ecosystem producing absolutely even producing a fully plant-based diets you cannot really get there. for 100% of the population without having some animals involved in the system.
- Speaker #0
There are incredible interesting studies from Pablo Manzano. He is an ecologist that studies wild herbivores that can really show you that the cow is in Europe now necessary because we don't have any more wild flocks. Of big herbivores, could you ever think that the wild blue beasts in Africa are part of the problem of the global warming? If I tell you that one million of wild blue beasts, blue wild beasts, you know that animal, this like a cow that lives in the Serengeti and Mesa Imara. If I tell you that they are responsible for global warming, you can trust me, they are there since millions of years and their manure... Okay, are much more effective in terms of improving the photosynthesis than the few farts they can produce. Yeah, for sure. But this is quite clear too, it's quite obvious that a wild animal cannot be part of the problem into his own environment. Okay? Yeah. But if we try to raise cows... Trying to imitate in a smaller scale with tools, with technology, with knowledge, with studies, as the wild animals do, these are part of the solution. The cow is part of the solution, not part of the problem. But if we go on keeping them in to feed lots, polluting everything that is around, obviously it's not something we can discuss. It is a problem, Yeah, so clear,
- Speaker #1
definitely. I have just a really small favor to ask. If you're enjoying this conversation and would like to support my work and this podcast, you can do that in just five seconds. Wherever you're listening to this podcast right now, Spotify, Apple Music, or maybe somewhere else, just click on the deep seat page and hit the follow button. If you want to go just one extra step, you can also leave me a five-star review. It helps the podcast more than you know, and I really, really appreciate it. thank you so much in advance. You are you're part of the EARA group and you're quite an active member I've seen you at conferences in Brussels.
- Speaker #0
I try.
- Speaker #1
Yeah right what can you tell us more about this how did it come about and what does it mean for you?
- Speaker #0
We founded EARA with other 80 farmers from Europe mostly because we met in Germany at the second Climate Farmers Conference. I met Simon Kramer there and other farmers. ...and for me it means a lot. That conference was the first place where I really felt home. We are a very small minority and this are sometimes to being the only one thinking one way. You start doubting. If you are responsible enough wise person, everyone tells you you are wrong.
- Speaker #1
Even if you're convinced of what you're doing, if your advisors, if the neighbors, if everyone...
- Speaker #0
Especially at the beginning of the regeneration. Yeah. Okay? Fortunately, I'm enough hard-headed to not give up. But yes, it was the first time where I really found other people speaking my own language. And then we decided to found EARA the year after,
- Speaker #1
all together.
- Speaker #0
For me it means a lot. For me it's a real project for trying to impact reality. We can be very diverse into EARA but at the same time very... Similar. So this is very interesting aspect. There are a lot of people that have also different backgrounds. So it's a very fertile ground.
- Speaker #1
It's incredible that 70-80 farmers from all over Europe, some really small scale, some big, some arable, some animals, some market gardens even. Yes, absolutely. to get together With such a huge diversity and manage to actually come to a common vision, common demands for public policy at the EU level, things like that, it's quite incredible.
- Speaker #0
Why is this possible? Because we all believe that the only important part is the ecosystem. And if you are an arable farmer, just taking care of the part. And I am a livestock farmer. I'm following another aspect. You know what I mean? So we are different actors of the same ecosystem. This is why we go quite well along and we try to work.
- Speaker #1
Okay, yeah. What's the future like, you think, in terms of... I mean, let's focus on EU policies, because this is a big focus of ERA. It's trying to influence the next cap, for example. What are the key elements that you would like to see happening?
- Speaker #0
Personally, we have to recognize that farming is not just producing goods. Farming is taking care of environments. is producing oxygen, fresh water, mitigating winds, mitigating erosion. And I don't want to be paid anymore for the amount of wheat I put in place. Okay? If someone has to help the farmers of the future, he should try to Push them to maximize their photosynthesis, to maximize the soil cover, to maximize the biodiversity. This is what we need. So to abandon a system that doesn't work, that will not survive by itself, and start boosting the change. This is what I hope.
- Speaker #1
It makes a lot of sense and it comes back to what you were saying at the beginning about an extractive system that is artificially kept alive that has no future because these resources will run dry and we're already at this that's the turning point and instead invest and focus on a long-term resilient food system that can go on for for generations and generations to come. It makes so much sense. What is stopping us from getting there you think?
- Speaker #0
What?
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
What do you don't like changing?
- Speaker #1
We don't like changing.
- Speaker #0
We are animals and animals don't like change. We are very linked to our habits. This is on a personal level. And there are still people that think that they can become rich extracting. It's quite simple.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
What is keeping us Out of this transition is simply the greed of you and the fear of the changing.
- Speaker #1
And that can change with enough.
- Speaker #0
I think that it will change, it's changing, again, it is changing, because even the greedier are realizing that it doesn't work.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
That's not the future. Unfortunately, unfortunately, there are people that doesn't care even about their own children. So it's a matter, I think that it will be like this. The only problem is a matter of time. We'll be, we will be... Ready enough, fast enough for changing before collapsing?
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Or not?
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
It's not a matter of choice. It's not a matter of choice. It will be like this. And I will tell you this because it's again, it's not Marco speaking. Everyone that studied this planet a little bit deeper, ecologists, geologists, scientists, we thought that's no other choice. That's no other choice.
- Speaker #1
It's the clear, factual, scientific.
- Speaker #0
It's so clear, everyone knows. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah,
- Speaker #0
everyone knows.
- Speaker #1
One last question. If there's one important message you'd like to share with people, what would you say?
- Speaker #0
Don't stop at slogans. Try to dive a little bit deeper. Try to read the whole sentence and not the slogan. And to not feed polarization.
- Speaker #1
Polarization.
- Speaker #0
Polarization is the worst thing we can do because it's even before the dialogue. You think in a way, I think in another. I'm right, you're wrong, that's all. And this is the, to me, the biggest threat we have at the moment.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so we need to talk, to communicate, even when we don't agree. And look at us, we have an animal farmer and a long-term plant-based diet guy having a nice conversation and moving forward. Absolutely,
- Speaker #0
I think you can enjoy staying in Pulicano for longer. And I will learn something from you and we will find together an even better solution and you will see other aspects that you maybe didn't have the chance to see.
- Speaker #1
Of course, I would love to.
- Speaker #0
I'm serious about this.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. You're welcome.
- Speaker #0
Thank you.
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