In the last two transition Blogs we covered your What and Why of transitioning, then we spoke about preparing your mindset to ensure you are ready to map out a simple skeleton to begin your How process. During this Blog we are going to outline this skeleton โ
- Assess current practices and eliminate damaging practices
- Build your IMOโs
- Reduce fertiliser rates
- Replace seed treatment with a bio-stimulant
- Remove pesticides and fungicides
Begin by assessing the current management practices or tools you are using to determine how they are impacting your soil health. From there you can start the process of either cutting out or limiting the practices which are damaging this soil health. For example, herbicides have an impact on the health of soil microbes, how can they be reduced? Tillage is destructive to soil structure and results in the loss of soil carbon, how can tillage be reduced?
Each time you make a decision about an activity or practice, use the What Why and How process and work out whether that activity will damage your soil, keep it the same or improve your soil for tomorrow. If it is damaging, then find another option so you donโt have to keep doing things the same way they have always been done. There are alternatives, so if you are not sure what they might be, there is heaps of information available online, or give me a call and we can thrash out some options.
The next step is to start stimulating your IMOโs (Indigenous Micro Organisms). These little guys are game changers, they are your hidden workforce and when they turn up for work each day they can move mountains. Increasing your IMOโs is the real starting point for changing to a regenerative system. Once your IMO numbers have started to increase you can lower your fertiliser substantially over time, but this is one of those things where you need to take the time it takes.
If you cut your fertiliser rates too quickly you are asking for trouble, a good rule of thumb is around 20% in the first year and 10% each year after that until you find the sweet spot. During this stage it is worth looking at alternative fertilisers like guano or soft rock phosphate, whichare less damaging to your soil health. Eventually, you could find yourself in a position where you can remove conventional fertiliser altogether and just use seed treatments and foliar applications of targeted nutrients.
After 18 months to 2 years, your soils should be healthy enough to remove any pickle from your seed treatments and allow the IMOโS to protect your seeds from pathogens. Time and time again I see seeds that are treated with a biostimulant and some good nutrition will germinate and get away much better than those which have been pickled with fungicide.
At around the same time you should also be able to start to removing fungicides and pesticides as preventative foliar treatments. The increasing number of soil IMOโS will create a healthier environment for the plants to grow, resulting in healthier and stronger plants, which donโt need the interventions we have become to rely on. Instead, by using nutrition and biology you can grow healthy plants, which just donโt need help.
The added bonus of healthier plants is the flow-on effect to livestock, which in turn are healthier and donโt need the interventions such as drenches. Just imagine the money and time you would save if you could lower your fertiliser by even 50% and by removing annoying fungicide and pesticide passes over the next 5 years.
Now you might be thinking โI can change my mindset a bit, investigate and eliminate some damaging practices, invest in some self-education, along with removing pesticides and fungicides seems easy enough. But what about these pesky IMOโS, how do I get them going?โ
There are many ways you can build your IMOโs, you can use certain grazing practices, bio stimulants, liquid vermicast or multi-species crops, or even better stack these things on top of each other and really get the ball rolling! You just need to work out which one is going to work best for you, and give you the confidence to take the next step.
Now that you can see the first steps you need to take, take them because it is the only way to start the journey.
It really is this simple, change the way you think a little, make some better choices and change a few products and then you are on your way to transitioning to a healthy soil system. Itโs so simple you just have to do it.
Keep Living the RE-Gen Farming Dream.
Join our LIVE STREAMING event Monday January 30, 11.30am. Get your transitioning questions answered!
