Transforming the Food Landscape at Scale, Can it be Done? - Groundswell 2024

Speakers: Henry Dimbleby and Andy Cato
Henry Dimbleby, in the National Food Strategy (2022) and his book Ravenous (2023) has focused public attention on the urgent challenges facing the food system and how we must work together, across farming, government and industry, to build a system which is good for the health of people and the planet. Andy Cato, Grammy Award winning musician and farmer is the co- founder of Wildfarmed, a pioneering regenerative farming and food business working with a community of farmers to create a viable alternative to the current extractive food system. Henry and Andy will share perspectives from their experiences challenging the status quo at every step of the food supply chain and offer viable, tangible and implementable solutions for what needs to be done next.
Recorded at the Groundswell Festival, Lannock Farm, Hertfordshire, England, June 2024
groundswellag.com

[@melbradley1397]

So good to finally watch this as missed it at Groundswell. Exciting to hear about the 'true cost of food' project with Deloitte - what a massive gap that will fill

[@HawkMillFarm]

Brilliant to be about to catch up on this having missed it on the day. 👏👏 to everyone that made the whole event such a success again.

[@janetjohnson998]

For the US and loving how there are there are so many here on the same page. Carbon Cowboys

[@b_uppy]

If you couple restorative ag (over more general regenerative ag) with hyperlocalized earthworks to harvest rainwater, --we can increase the amount of land that sequesters carbon. These earthworks would reduce muddy water washing carbon/topsoil to the ocean, instead being carbon sinks. They would also increase regreening and further draw down carbon in areas long historically lost to overdrying conditions. This increases the area of carbon sequestration.
Rainwater harvesting earthworks can be made just about anywhere, including cities in the form of bioswales. Bioswales are planted depressions using native or other biome appropriate plants that allow water to quickly soak excess rainwater runoff. They may have curbcuts and harvest streetwater, or handle roof runoff, etc.
They can accumulate windblown trash for easy collection, add beauty, sense of place; reduce ambient temperatures; reduce paving buckling, ground subsidence, brownouts (because irrigation draws a lot of energy to pump it), crime; increases walkability/bikeability; reduce home cooling and heating costs; reduce heat island effects; irrigation costs; reduces flooding, drought and heatwave impacts; etc.
Parking lot landscaping can easily convert existing landscaping to bioswales to reduce infrastructure expansion costs as well as maintenance costs. It's win-win-win...

[@peterclark6290]

CO₂ is not the GHG some (less honest) humans want it to be. 2. To get cleaner open water (rivers, lakes), restore water tables, resist drought, etc. farmers et.al. create armoured, aggregated soil that soak up rain where it fell at very high infiltration rates. 3. Swales can create downstream springs which weren't there before when that land was selected for other uses, oops. You need to think deeper grasshopper. Start by proving a trace gas @ .042%, Spec.Grav 1.5, has any part in Earth's climate except to indicate an Ice age has _officially_ ended. Like the scientists do.

[@b_uppy]

@@peterclark6290
Lol, you are asking the wrong person to discuss climate change. I am trying to improve soil, regreen and recharge groundwater in a hyperlocaluzed way, and harvesting rainwater, changing ag methods, etc.
I think it's more important to work on building resources than to solve for controversial claims about human caused climate change.
Try your argumentation elsewhere where it will matter more.

[@peterclark6290]

@@b_uppy Carbon sequestration is a climate change mantra.
If your goal as stated above are true then why haven't you discovered the _soil sponge_ argument provided by Regen as the first major benefit of its practises? You are miles away from seeing the bigger picture.

[@peterclark6290]

The confluence of two factors makes Regen farming at scale relatively simple to achieve. The expanding influence of the carnivore diet (optimally set at only consuming fatty ruminant meat, salt and water: for some and eventually most as old attitudes towards food die out) and the gentle nature of pastoral use of arable land should see (a) billions of acres returned to wildlife and recreation, (b) restoration of entire ecosystems (where possible), (c) clean water rivers and lakes, and (d) drought-proofing the little bit that remains for human use. However the best place to raise hearty, common sense kids is on a farm so many smaller farms are better for society.