No synthetic pesticides, no ploughing, livestock grazing…
This French farmer believes that a shift in agricultural practices is necessary. These are the techniques he is testing in the south-west of France.
This French farmer believes that a shift in agricultural practices is necessary. These are the techniques he is testing in the south-west of France.
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00:00You can film the birds that are going to take off.
00:02There you go.
00:03So these are bullfrogs or bullfrogs.
00:06They come to eat the insects around the breeding,
00:09especially all the grasshoppers and all that.
00:31So we just found the cows on this plot.
00:34We're going to move them to the next park.
00:41Come on.
00:42Come on.
00:47In fact, we cut all of this hillock
00:50into lots of small plots
00:52and that allows us to move them every two days
00:55and to control the way they will eat the grass.
00:59That is, they will not eat everywhere,
01:01but they will eat specifically where we put them.
01:04And by eating like that specifically,
01:06it leaves time for the grass to grow back in other places
01:09and the grass they will eat will always be of optimal quality.
01:12That is, we will find in this grass a lot of diversity
01:16with vegetable gardens,
01:18with lots of different family of plants.
01:21This system, which is called dynamic turning grazing,
01:25allows animals to be in good health all the time
01:28and it allows us to store carbon in the soil,
01:30to have meat that is rich in omega-3,
01:32to improve biodiversity with permanent meadows
01:34and also to store water
01:36because the roots of the meadow will better colonize the soil
01:39and it will allow a better infiltration of water into the soil during storms.
01:46Look at all the grasshoppers on it.
01:48They are the ones who are going to start this decomposition work.
01:52And in fact, the fresh cow poop that falls on the ground
01:57is incorporated by the life of the soil into the soil
02:00and by being incorporated by the life of the soil into the soil,
02:02we store carbon.
02:04And in these grazing systems,
02:06we can store up to 4 tons of carbon per hectare and per year.
02:08These are huge quantities.
02:10If we compare that to very large areas,
02:14the change in agricultural practices
02:16can solve the problems of global warming.
02:18What is your personal choice?
02:23My personal choice is to try to reconcile biological agriculture
02:28with the practices of soil conservation and regeneration.
02:31In the breeding workshop, these are things that we know very well,
02:34that we master perfectly.
02:35These are things that were written decades ago.
02:37It works, it works.
02:38In the large-scale cultivation workshop, it is very complex.
02:41How not to work or how little to work the soil
02:43while respecting the biological agriculture specifications,
02:46that is to say, zero synthetic fertilizers and zero pesticides.
02:49This is where it is very, very complicated
02:51because we have difficulties in managing weeding,
02:54we have difficulties in having enough fertility to grow plants.
02:58And having a system that reconciles all this
03:00to produce food calories,
03:03by improving the planet, by storing carbon,
03:05by preserving water resources,
03:07by improving biodiversity
03:09and by bringing health to the plates,
03:11it's hard work.
03:12What is the purpose of this experimental plot?
03:16We are here in an experimental plot
03:18with the aim of seeing how the competition between species is managed
03:22without mechanical weeding,
03:24with associated crops and country plants.
03:27We see winter fava beans,
03:29which is a plant that just occupies the space
03:32but which brings a little nitrogen but does not disturb the corn.
03:35We have zucchini, so small butternuts that come crawling to the ground.
03:40And we have beans that hang, that wrap around the corn leaves.
03:44And so this bean climbs on the corn, climbs on the corn.
03:47The goal of this test, which will be a test that will be picked up by hand
03:50because it is a very small test,
03:52but it is to see if we can not reproduce it next year in the field
03:55without mechanical weeding,
03:56so without action that comes to work the soil
03:58and cause erosion.
04:00The work of the soil,
04:02it has as an important consequence
04:05to burn organic matter and burn carbon
04:08which will be released in the form of CO2,
04:10in addition to having problems of erosion.
04:13And it is crucial today to build agronomic systems
04:17that preserve the soil.
04:22One of the techniques that I put in place is the semi-direct undercover.
04:25We grow plants that will feed the soil.
04:27These plants, we will grow them, grow them
04:29and destroy them but leave them in place.
04:31By leaving them in place, they make a meadow.
04:33The seed grows through this meadow
04:35and this meadow protects the soil throughout the culture
04:37and nourishes the plant.
04:38Here we are on a very superficial soil work,
04:40but with companion plants.
04:41That is to say that we always have our feverol
04:43which is sown with the corn.
04:45Here we have the vest
04:46and we find all the meadow linked to the vegetal cover.
04:49When I raise the meadow,
04:51below it is wet.
04:53This corn is very successful.
04:55It is the seed of the farm for the previous vegetal cover,
04:58the seed of the farm for the corn,
05:00a little bit of chicken feces bought from my neighbor
05:02to grow it
05:04and we have a corn that lacks nothing,
05:06which is very well developed.
05:08What is fascinating with this system
05:10is that the more biomass we grow,
05:13the more CO2 we will capture.
05:15And this biomass, by returning it to the soil,
05:17we will come to store carbon in the soil.
05:20The best machine someone has ever invented
05:23to store carbon
05:25and fight against climate change
05:27is the plant.
05:28And we need plants everywhere.
05:30We need a maximum of vegetation that grows.
05:35Here we are on the vegetable garden.
05:37This part of the vegetable garden,
05:39also without soil work, but with tarps.
05:41What changes this system is that in terms of work,
05:43it is my automatic vegetable gardener.
05:45That is to say that I make a cover
05:47where I throw seeds at random,
05:49this cover grows,
05:51I crush it, I put tarps
05:53and I plant vegetables in the middle
05:55and I come to pick up vegetables.
05:57And so we see all the previous vegetal cover
05:59which was of the Febrol
06:01which is gradually decomposing
06:04and the soil which is structured
06:06by roots.
06:08As the earth is not in the sun,
06:10the earth keeps a lot of water.
06:12So very little watering
06:14to grow vegetables in this system.
06:16With very little work,
06:18it makes vegetables that are very interesting.
06:20Here we will find two cucumbers.
06:22Cucumbers that are beautiful.
06:34Today we have two models
06:36that are opposed.
06:38On the one hand, agriculture
06:40of soil conservation.
06:42We no longer work the soil.
06:44We grow crops under vegetable cover.
06:46And we respond to a lot of agroecological issues,
06:48especially soil preservation,
06:50erosion, carbon storage,
06:52biodiversity and all that.
06:54We have organic farming which responds
06:56to other agroecological issues
06:58where there are no more pesticides
07:00but with a strong problem of erosion
07:02to be able to couple
07:04these two techniques.
07:06And we are few to look for.
07:08Sometimes we will succeed,
07:10sometimes we will not succeed.
07:12It's an interesting experiment
07:14and I can't wait to see the result.
07:16I found myself in something
07:18where it's fun to do
07:20and at the same time
07:22I say to myself,
07:24I can't wait.
07:26If I wait, who will do it?
07:28How long will the research organizations
07:30to offer us models that will work?
07:32Who will do this work?
07:34To try things,
07:36to try to move forward,
07:38to identify these factors.