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food & farming

Six Inches of Soil film report

Rupert Knowles

• 6 min read
Six Inches of Soil film report
The Three Farmers (image from the film's website - see website link below)

Six Inches of Soil was co-hosted at the Arc Cinema, Daventry on Thursday 19 September by CA-WN and ActNow Consulting Ltd.

This thought-provoking film about three young farmers putting regenerative principles into practice has received wide attention round the country.  But there have been no public showings in West Northamptonshire.  CA-WN, in collaboration with the lovely ARC Cinema in Daventry, put this right and over forty CA-WN members and the general public came to see it on Thursday.  After the film, there was an open discussion between an expert panel and the audience.

The film is about the soil seen through the eyes of three novice farmers (and the numerous other famers and experts they met) attempting to do the right thing for the environment, the soil, their livestock and their customers.  By telling their stories, the film described the main features of regenerative farming.  Consumers may be aware of marks and standards such as Red Tractor, LEAF, or organic.  These marks often justify higher prices for the product reflecting the higher cost of growing, but there are no such agreed standards for ‘regenerative farming’. 

What all three farmers and their mentors agreed on was the importance of their soil.  Some ten years ago, I attended a meeting of farmers near Cambridge and one of the speakers castigated the audience for being obsessed by their bank accounts and their magnificent machinery whilst neglecting their most important asset, THE SOIL.  Many farmers are now heeding this warning and adopting regenerative practices.  I won’t describe regenerative practices in detail.  You can read about them on the internet or Wikipedia, or for a general impression and a moving experience, watch this film - https://sixinchesofsoil.vhx.tv/  (there is a small charge). The film is filled with pictures of holes in the ground, worms and micro-organisms, and farmers smelling the earth!

On the left of the photo Anna Jackson, a Lincolnshire 11th generation arable and sheep farmer, has the wisdom of her father to draw on.  He was not happy with a conventional crop rotation of wheat and rapeseed: he tried and failed to go organic.  However he has incorporated livestock to add manure, researched alternative crops, reduced fertiliser and ploughing (min-till) and mostly stopped spraying.  We saw Anna handling some impressive machinery.  The digital readout from the combine harvester’s cab showed very respectable wheat yields.  At the end of the film, Anna admitted that the two trial crops – quinoa and flowers for cosmetics – had made losses, but wheat, rape and rye were profitable.  Well done Anna for demonstrating the risks in experimentation!

Ben Thomas on the right has a beef herd of Belted Galloway cattle in Cornwall.  His land comprising small, steep fields enduring high rainfall is a complete contrast – totally unsuited for cropping but perfect for grass and livestock.  He was practicing ‘mob grazing’ – moving his cattle to fresh grass every day.  The ‘grass’ was full of wildflowers and the cattle had access to overhanging trees providing a very varied diet and incidentally adding to the flavour of the beef.

He also had some coppiced birch woodland where the cattle went for a scratch and a small herd of pigs were rootling in the soil and inadvertently cultivating it.  An idyllic scene.  But the weight-gain of the cattle in winter was marginal.  Nevertheless, Ben was able to find a small abattoir where his animals were carefully butchered and yielded beef much in demand by local customers who were prepared to pay above supermarket prices even for the mince.

In the centre is Adrienne Gordon.  She is a market gardener growing mostly vegetables which she sells in local markets.  A local farmer has given her a small plot for nominal rent on which she has erected a poly-tunnel.  She can produce good plug plants in pots but her soil is heavy clay and totally unsuited to intensive vegetables grown in the ground.  Although she had some access to water, her land was a very sad sight in the drought of 2022. She seems to be having less success, resorting to unusual vegetables and spending a lot of time selling her produce at a local market.  Given the hard work she puts in, she deserves to make a go of it and she seemed happy.  Good luck, Adrienne!

Soil is important to the crop, providing support, air to the roots and water and nutrients to the whole plant.  Regenerative farming is mostly about mixing and maintaining organic matter in the soil.  Although soil is made up of particles of sand, silt and clay in varying proportions, it is the ‘aggregates’ or lumps of soil with space between them that are created by organic components: roots, dead leaves, and the organisms that eat them such as worms, fungi, bacteria and numerous other creepy-crawlies.  It is a complex mixture.  As well as being important to the crop, good soil has two other very important functions:  it holds on to surplus nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus to prevent pollution of water courses; and it stores carbon to prevent global warming.  The film puts a lot of emphasis on carbon storage.

Soil can store huge amounts of carbon.  In the top six inches, organic matter can be increased by min-till (or only shallow ploughing as seen in the film), by including livestock in the rotation as per the sheep on Anna’s farm, by deep-rooted cover crops or root crops like Adrienne’s beetroot or by permanent grass with dung-beetles and earthworms at Ben’s.  In fact I know from personal experience that wheat can draw up moisture from 90 cm in May and June which means that there must be active roots at that depth.  In the short term, soil carbon is more significant than timber for climate.  In the long term, we will reach ‘peak carbon’ only when the carbon stored in organic matter added to the soil is balanced by the carbon dioxide emitted by soil microorganisms.  Luckily that is a long way off.  The film’s message about storage of carbon deep in the soil is very important.

On a final note, we discussed how to make the urban public more aware of where their food comes from and how to eat better.  The film showed children visiting farms and I would like to see more of that.  I took many primary school children round my farm in the 1970s, but government policy gradually cut funding and made this impossible.  We also discussed how young people can get into farming.  This is important given the high average age of farmers, but young people cannot buy a farm any more than they can buy a factory.  One way is not to invest in land but to buy some sheep and rent grazing.  Regenerative farmers often want livestock to improve their land but do not want to go down that route themselves.  For an enterprising young person out of college with limited capital, this is a good opportunity. 

Another question was how to get good meat locally. How to find a farmer like Ben?  That was not really answered, but to suggest that we are all going to move away from supermarkets and shop locally is unrealistic.

I farmed in the era before supermarkets when we sent lorries of apples to wholesale markets round the country every night in the season.  Prices went up and down like a yoyo and my poor father was on the phone at 9am deciding whether to try Newcastle or Bolton next night.  The film showed two of the farmers spending hours retailing when they should have been farming.   It also showed one farmer trying to do the wrong thing on the wrong land.  There is no doubt that our current supermarket system is highly efficient and the choice available is phenomenal.  The problem is that power in the value chain is so uneven in the supermarkets’ favour.  It will require determined legislation to change that and to make it fairer. 

Not wishing to end on a negative note, I really enjoyed this film, both the human interest and the farming.  If you did not make it on Thursday, I urge you to get hold of a copy and share it with your children.

Our thanks to the panel for giving up their time to take part in the discussion and to the ARC for screening the film.

Notes

Future screening dates for Six Inches of Soil now include 28 September at Waterloo Cottage Farm near Market Harborough, and 30 October at Quinton Village Hall. https://www.sixinchesofsoil.org/screeningdates

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