Mont Rouge Olive Estate wins gold
November 19, 2019
New wine cultivars with a promising future, Merwida Winery
November 19, 2019
Our team is keen supporters of Regenerative farming. Everyone in the agricultural industry needs to work together to regenerate the earth’s soils and keep them healthy.
Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density. Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter.
Regenerative Agricultural Practices are practices that:
· contribute to generating/building soils and soil fertility and health;
· increase water percolation, water retention, and clean and safe water runoff;
· increase biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency
Practices include:
1. No-till/minimum tillage. Tillage breaks up (pulverises) soil aggregation and fungal communities while adding excess O2 to the soil for increased respiration and CO2 emission. It can be one of the most degrading agricultural practices, greatly increasing soil erosion and carbon loss.
2. Soil fertility is increased in regenerative systems biologically through application of cover crops, crop rotations, compost, and animal manures, which restore the plant/soil microbiome to promote liberation, transfer, and cycling of essential soil nutrients.
3. Building biological ecosystem diversity begins with inoculation of soils with composts or compost extracts to restore soil microbial community population, structure and functionality restoring soil system energy.
4. Well-managed grazing practices stimulate improved plant growth, increased soil carbon deposits, and overall pasture and grazing land productivity while greatly increasing soil fertility, insect and plant biodiversity.
Vegetable and fruit farmers showing interest in Regenerative farming:
Atlantic Fertilisers held their first two workshops on Biological and regenerative farming for fruit and vegetable farmers on 20 and 21 May 2019 in the Koue Bokkeveld at Op-Die-Berg and in the Citrusdal area. Here’s some photos we would like to share with you.
From left to right: Charus du Plessis from Atlantic Fertilisers, Cordré Smith from Erfdeel Farming, Kobus Herholdt from Atlantic Fertilisers.
RIGHT IMAGE:
From left to right: Freddie Eksteen from Dutoit Vegetables, Snowman, Sheila Storey from Nemlab, Johan Conradie, a farmer at Dutoit Vegetables, and Erik Conradie, independent agriculturalist.
From left to right: Johan Burger and Marius de Waal, both from Dutoit Vegetables, Tandfontein, and Anton de Jager from De Keur Estate.
RIGHT IMAGE:
From left to right: Benna Viljoen and Gerrit van der Merwe, both from De Keur, Leeu River.
From left to right: Ardan Hite from Bio Cult, Stoney Steenkamp from Stoney Agricultural Services, Freddie Bredenhann from Shortlands Agricultural Services and Lean Hanekom from BioCult.
RIGHT IMAGE:
From left to right: Kobus de Witt from Uitsig farming, Jaco Visser from Viking, Alwyn Badenhorst from Atlantic Fertilisers and Niel Els van Omnia
From left to right: Bernie van den Heever from Cape Mangoes, Dirk Mouton from Mouton Citrus, Dirkie Mouton from Clanfresh and Reinhardt Slabber from the Hexriver Farm.
RIGHT IMAGE:
From the left to right: Freddie Bredenhann from Shortlands Agricultural Services who delivered a talk, Martli Slabber from the Hexriver Farm, Michael de Klerk and Juan Voigt, both of the Twaktuin farm.
