by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes
In a recent interview for the brand new Winglewood podcast, Caroline Grindrod, founder of Roots of Nature, Primal Meats and Wilderculture, talks about her work and the mind-shift required to enable us to work with complex systems, be it land, animals, people or organisations.
“A lot of society is still dominated by a rational, reductive mindset, but when it comes to living systems and people, this can be very detrimental because we are not machines, nor are ecosystems – they are adaptive, emergent and self-organising.”
Caroline started out her life with a great passion for the environment and animal welfare. Following her early career in nature conservation, she then married into farming. This gave her the opportunity to explore nature-friendly farming. “I developed a deep passion for sustainability and healthy food,” says Caroline. “This is when I started Primal Meats, to support this type of farming.”
It was from here that her ideas really started to develop. A key insight within her work is the recognition that separating food production and land managed for wildlife, has an inherent flaw because we share one climate, one hydrological system and what you do in one area can’t but affect another. It is Caroline’s belief that we can do both better, together.
Then Caroline discovered the work of Allan Savory and Holistic Management, and decided she wanted to explore what that would look like in Britain, which is when she set up Roots of Nature and Wilderculture. She now works with farmers using regenerative grazing techniques within a holistic management framework. Wilderculture is a hybrid of this and rewilding, working with landowners in Britain’s upland environments.
Although Savory’s work was developed in the semi-arid climate of Southern Africa and the USA, Caroline had a hunch, that although Britain’s climate is very different, that these ideas were vital to address the problems she was seeing all around in the farming industry.
Britain, unlike Southern Africa, has a very forgiving climate. Historically at least, we get rainfall all year round and this has for a long time mask the underlying environmental problems. However with an increase in adverse weather events, these problems have become much more apparent.
“If we try and use prescriptions, rules and templates for living systems, that’s when we get it badly wrong, and I believe that is the root cause of the problems of modern agriculture,” says Caroline when asked to further explain her ideas on this holistic approach. She goes on to explain that modern farming still works largely from a rational, reductive science perspective. We think if we apply ever more complex technologies, micro-managing systems that we will get repeatable results, but this is not possible when working with living systems.
Managing life’s complexity requires a different mindset. Rather than working with fixed rules and prescriptions, we work with overarching principles. Through training and support, we work with farmers so they can apply these principles in their unique context.
The regenerative agriculture movement is increasingly gaining traction, but one of the major problems with the large-scale adoption of these methods is that if those adopting them don’t make the required mindset shift, then they will be forced into the old rational, reductive methods of working.
We are seeing this already. Many people think that regenerative agriculture is just about fixing the soil, but we have to consider the whole system and how all the parts are related.
If we don’t foster a paradigm shift in thinking then the golden opportunity offered us by regenerative agriculture and holistic management risks getting reduced into a self-limited approach. One of the keys to making this shift is assuming that you never have all the answers and therefore are always allowing yourself to learn from nature.
“Thankfully,” says Caroline, “more and more people are waking up to working with complexity.” This is where the question about the sustainable nature of meat production comes in. With a rational mindset, we have ended up believing that efficiency comes in the form of intensifying systems.
Before the industrial revolution, we didn’t have problems with emissions of carbon. This isn’t just because we weren’t burning fossil fuels. Carbon has come to have a bad reputation as the cause of climate change, so all sources of carbon, including methane from cows has come to be examined. And while intensive meat production is deeply problematic, and not just in terms of emissions, to make the animals, rather than the systems the problem, is a grave mistake.
If we look back in history we find that the great plains of America were home to millions of buffalo, indeed the number of cows now in America is not that different from the number of buffalo that were. These buffalo didn’t create climate change because they were simply part of the carbon, cycling in balance on our earth.
Animals breathe out CO2, plants breathe it in. Animals emit methane and, in a healthy soil, methanotrophs break it down. In a healthy atmosphere, the hydroxyl pathway also breaks down methane. A healthy soil, teaming with life and covered with plants, keeps the soil cool and retains water. This creates a healthy hydrological cycle which keeps the whole planet cool. Whereas bare soil does none of that, plus it re-radiates immense levels of heat back into the atmosphere. These are just a few examples of how, with modern agriculture we are crippling earth life support systems and contributing to an unstable climate.
“We’ve decoupled the system,” continues Caroline, “We’ve shot wild herbivores, and housed domestic ones, we’ve ploughed soil, exposing the microbes, releasing the carbon. There is less transpiration from plants and trees. CO2 is not being cycled into the soil. Manure gets stored in huge piles releasing methane. Ultimately you’ve got a system that is no longer able to regulate itself.”
So we have to think of this bigger picture, when managing our land, even though it might not seem relevant to us. Through this approach we can create a more resilient farming system, one that is less reliant on subsidies. Farming has for too long been degrading the very resources upon which it depends, but can we turn that around by understanding the role of grazing animals in the regeneration of soils and ecosystems.
“Essentially (with regenerative grazing), you are using biodiversity to replace inputs. If we are going to be successful to make this widespread it will have to involve large producers and corporations. Are they interested?” asks Helen.
“We are involved with some large corporations.” replies Caroline, “We want to have influence in that so it doesn’t get diluted and reduced back into something very conventional. I want to try to make sure we are guiding these companies so they use principles rather than prescriptions.”
This is the crunch really, and comes back to the mindset shift. It will be difficult at first to get holistic thinking on a corporate scale, but if we can help move that in the right direction, even if we are not getting them to have a 100% holistic approach, there will still be great benefits in terms of biodiversity, animal, welfare and human wellbeing in the system. We will be able to vastly reduce the inputs of pesticides and antibiotics too.
“If all we can do is shift that, then the whole process will have been started. Farmers will be monitoring outcomes. so it will shift thinking. It is doing so much more than counting carbon. This would make an enormous difference for the environment.”
Finally, Helen asks Caroline what she sees as the biggest challenges going forward.
“The mindset shift,” says Caroline simply, “How do we best advance people’s thinking, to shift to understand how whole-system-function, just works better. Farmers could be the best holistic thinkers ever, but if consumers and companies don’t understand this then… There is a lot of work to be done here, to think differently and teach others to think differently. Ultimately we need a shift in thinking in the people running these big companies because they can’t contemplate changing their supply structure unless they understand the holistic mindset.”