Benefits of Regenerative Farming PLUS an Easy Free Planting Planner

Recently I watched a really inspiring film called Kiss the Ground, it’s an insight into the Regenerative Farming movement which offers a real solution to solving climate change and, yes, it includes getting back to natural methods and keeping poop and livestock in the loop!

Did you know?

Soil actually stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Watch this video by Kiss the Ground to understand the process that is working with nature to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.

How will regenerative farming save the planet?

Bringing humans and nature back together

Current mass production farming has created a world where many humans are totally out of touch with where their food comes from. Regenerative farming gives back to nature, but it also gives humans the opportunity to truly re-enter the food cycle. By composting our food scraps, growing our own food, even learning about dry composting toilets and how animals contribute to encourage the growing of food we can all remember our place in nature's cycle, even the importance of poop!

Reduces global warming

By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of storing it in soil, we can balance our planet and begin to reverse climate change.

Turning desert back to eden

Currently, large scale farming utilises practices which simply damage nature. Pesticides and monocrop farming is not natural and eventually decimates the soils, which then causes desertification. Regenerative farming is based on natural methods of farming, such as avoiding tilling, using companion planting, recycling water and using composting.

Bringing livestock back in the loop

Livestock is currently perceived as one of the major causes of our current climate issues, which is pretty much a fair statement. However, putting our farm animals back where they belong, in their natural settings has shown that they actually help the health of the soils and any gasses created by their poop is actually used by the soil and the plants. By industrial farming not giving livestock a natural environment, they have created an unnatural situation. Hence why we all must only support grass-fed, free range and organic farming aka regenerative farmers.

Reduces waste

Poop and composting is essential to healthy soil and so through this form of natural farming, we can all reduce how much food waste goes to landfill by composting at home or making sure we utilise any food waste services local to you. Scraps from the kitchen can easily be turned into compost - which microbes in the soil love and in turn helps plants grow!

Revives the water cycle

By replenishing soils and creating lush pastures, the immediate air and earth is cooled, which encourages moisture. This generates rain clouds, thus reducing drought and making it possible to return much needed land into arable land - and, gives existing natural habitats a fighting chance to stay wild rather than get lost to food production.

Get involved and start growing your own with our OYOO Planting Planner

We’ve put together a simple planting planner to help you get started. You can build as many beds as you like, or have space for, in a shape or size you prefer.

We have chosen to use the ‘keyhole’ method for our planting beds, as we love to compost (check out our blog about composting with a Bokashi bin) and use companion planting. This method can easily be adapted to anyone’s situation, as the beds can be whatever size you like.

In our example, each bed is 2m in diameter and is raised from the ground. In the centre of each bed is a cylinder, using chicken wire, which can hold your compost. To keep the cylinder clear of soil, but still allow filtration, we recommend building a layer of stones around the outside of the cylinder as you build up the soil beds. You could also add large stones on a bin lid to the opening, at the top, to stop animals getting to the compost. Water the compost centre and this will spread nutrients to your growing plants.

Here is a diagram to show how they’re constructed: