Nurturing Diversity
By Kim Deans
It’s almost a rite of passage in regenerative agriculture transitions to jump start diversity through sowing multi-species cover crops, pasture crops, diverse pastures, or plant out a diversity of trees and shrubs for shelter and start doubting and questioning ourselves when we don’t see immediate results. Interpreting these experiences as feedback and a learning opportunity instead of failure is what differentiates those who stay the course from those who don’t.
On this journey we get valuable opportunities to learn how the outcomes we seek from increasing diversity do not arrive in isolation simply by planting out a diversity of seeds or plants and hoping for the best. Just as throwing a diverse group of people into a room together and hoping for the best is no guarantee that diversity will be harnessed for a beneficial outcome, the same goes for our efforts to increase diversity in agricultural systems.
Diversification sounds simple in theory, yet diversification is complex which can bring challenges to overcome to realise the benefits we seek. In regenerative systems diversification is not another input, it’s a way of relating to the whole system.
A research study published in 2021, “Narrow and Brittle or Broad and Nimble? Comparing Adaptive Capacity in Simplifying and Diversifying Farming Systems” explored what happens when farming systems adapt to the threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss and global food insecurity by diversifying instead of simplifying. Simplifying agricultural systems focuses on maximising production and scale through homogenous, centralised systems. The simplification approach can appear to work when considered in isolation yet over the long term ends up reducing our ability to adapt and build resilience, causing more harm than good. There is growing evidence that these simplified processes are a major cause of the challenges we face.
In contrast, diversifying agricultural systems cultivates complexity to provide multiple ecosystem services as well as restoring adaptive capacity and resilience to a wide range of potential future challenges related to climate variability, markets and rising costs of production. The research study found that diversification shifts us out of the vicious cycle created by simplification into a virtuous cycle where multiple benefits can emerge, but this can only happen when the multiple dimensions can grow together and interact.
The researchers explain how no single diversifying step comes first, rather many steps are needed in relationship with each other. Otherwise diversifying on one dimension may lead to trade-offs in other areas.
In regenerative agriculture these trade-offs can look like planting a multispecies crop to find challenges arise in relation to managing cover crop residues with existing labour and equipment, creating new expenses and delaying timing with subsequent crops. Or planting a multispecies fodder crop and then overgrazing the crop and setting soil health backwards due to not having the skills, resources or infrastructure to implement the improved grazing management required to achieve the desired soil health benefits.
Diversity does not create benefits in isolation, but through an interconnected approach focused on the relationships and energy flows within the whole farming ecosystem. In practice this comes down to how we prioritise and manage living ground cover to harness photosynthesis that drives all the relationships within the whole system through our grazing and cropping decisions, along with protecting, enhancing and restoring trees, shelter, and riparian areas.
Three qualities that I am being inspired to connect with as we regenerate the relationships that nurture diversity in agricultural systems include:
1. Co-creation and collaboration with nature
I used to say that we “grow soil” until I realised the arrogance of thinking that we grow anything at all. The soil, plants, and animals all know how to grow, all we can ever do is steward the conditions for life as growth is inherent in nature’s design.
We nurture diversity in relationship and collaboration with nature and other living organisms, not through isolated actions. Approaching diversity as an input into a system on life support won’t change anything. Life begets life. A system must be alive to produce life. Shifting our focus from killing life to nurturing life is what unlocks the benefits from diversity in our system.
Co-creation and collaboration is summed up so beautifully in this article by Didi Pershouse who writes about what humans can and cannot do: “Humans cannot rebuild the soil sponge. Only other species can do that. What humans CAN do is to respect the work of other species, create the conditions in which other species can do their work, collaborate with other species in managing landscapes, and stop interfering with their work. We can allow conditions that maximize the capture of solar energy and atmospheric CO2 through photosynthesis and then step back and allow plant/fungal/bacterial/insect/animal communities to turn that carbon into healthy living systems that cycle water, carbon, and methane and naturally correct climate extremes.”
2. Patience
There is an ancient Chinese concept called wu wei, non-doing, based on the idea that you can harness the power and momentum of natural cycles and the flow of things to gain the value you are looking for. Nurturing diversity requires us to be able to know when to patiently sit with the current situation and do nothing, as well as when to act. We have been trained to perceive slowness, waiting, and restraint as not contributing value, when this is far from true.
Action bias is a term used to describe our preference for action over inaction, even when there is no indication that action will produce a better result and the better choice could be doing nothing at all. We can quickly jump into fixing mode without understanding problems well first. Taking action helps us feel more in control and more productive in the midst of uncertainty. Becoming aware of our action bias helps us question into the underlying belief that value can only be realised through action. When working in complexity and uncertainty value can develop on its own, our actions can get in the way of seeing that value emerge, which could be even greater than what we had imagined. We can choose to connect with how thinking, observing, exploring or simply waiting are all inherently valuable and don’t mean nothing important is taking place.
In this Wisdom & Action podcast interview, Nora Bateson expands on how we need to slow down, how we don’t have time to be in a hurry. The conversation explores how things move faster when they are given room, instead of looking for faster, easier, shallow solutions that make deep, complex problems worse and things take longer. How species we thought were extinct have reappeared when the intention is to make room for relationships to make relationships without knowing what will come of it.
3. Successional dynamics
Living ecosystems are always evolving and changing, nothing stays the same indefinitely. Nature’s process of successional dynamics is how ecosystems evolve towards increasing complexity, diversity and stability. Landscape succession starts when bare ground is colonized by simple algae/lichen/mosses who trap moisture and dust so that soil building processes commence. Gradually over time this successional process moves ecosystems from primitive, hardy, colonizing weedy plants towards grasslands, scrublands then forest. Complexity, productivity and stability increase as succession unfolds.
In 2019 our gardens, orchard and pastures were destroyed by a bushfire. In a few short minutes the fire made the land unrecognisable from what it had been, leaving a blank, burned canvas in its wake. Being immersed in this process of destruction and restoration has brought me up against my personal attachment for how I had expected the landscape we steward should appear a certain way after all the “work” we had done. It highlighted for me our human tendency to expect landscapes to stay the same over time, and how this is in opposition to the cycles of disturbances, succession and evolving complexity that is built into nature’s ecological design.
Agricultural practices that simplify and homogenise repeatedly send the system in the reverse direction to nature’s system of increasing complexity. Creating the perfect conditions for weeds and pests to thrive so we can spend billions of dollars annually each year on actions which continue to send the successional processes backwards, creating the perfect conditions for what we don’t want. Understanding successional community dynamics opens the door to working with these natural ecosystem processes for improved outcomes.
Daniel Fourie has written a How-to guide on setting up a cover cropping strategy to recover degraded agricultural land that harnesses the processes of ecological succession. He suggests using the fungi:bacteria ratio of the soil microbiology to identify the ecological successional state of the farming system and then choosing species of plants that fall into the successional state the system is in that also have an agricultural benefit. Over time the species chosen are adapted to fit soil health and successional state as these improve.
Regeneration is relational, not transactional. Unless we nurture complexity, tend to the relationships in the system and learn to navigate uncertainty, the outcomes we seek from our well-intentioned efforts will continue to elude us. It can be easy to fall back into simplification when diversification challenges us through the complexity and uncertainty relating with it brings. Realising the benefits of diversification relies on us taking care not to approach diversification through our old ways of thinking, which means actively avoiding simplifying diversification.
“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” – Tom Peters
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