Next, I will explain what we did, the mistakes that we made and the things that worked really good on our farm.

Transcription

1 BIOLOGICAL FARMING: It s a living system of plants, animals, micro organisms in the soil that need each other, and has a relationship with each other. It produces needed energy but it also gives energy to support all living things to be in a state that we call life. The Bible says in John 1:3, all things were made in and came into existence through Him... In Him was Life Gen 1 says God made the heaven and the earth and all the living creatures in it. When God made or created something it is always in a way that reveals His character and likeliness. When I look at something that was created by a person, like a painting I can tell from it the character, likeliness, of the artist. Was the person joyous, sad? Is there love or hate? That s why we can make the conclusion that the work God has done would also be like that and that the original idea of God about nature is a living system that are bountiful, joyful and rich in all its facets, to support every living thing, because all energy and light comes from the sun and eventually from the Son. God is also a God of relationship, relationship with us through Christ, relationships that we have with each other and with nature that He created. We see this also in nature. God s purpose for us was never to function on our own. That s why we have a body of believers, everyone with his unique purpose and function joint together as a body. We get this unity in diversity in nature also. Jesus said we must die to our self, so that the new live in Christ can appear and bear much fruit. There are always things in nature that are dying after fulfilling its purpose and giving the support to others to bring forth new live. Jesus said in John 10:10. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows. All the above principles and many more are Gods intention for His people. When you apply these principals and harness it in agriculture and in your soil, you get to a place where the blessings and goodness of the Lord will follow you; you will be a conqueror on every level through Christ Jesus. The other side of the coin is also true. When you only

2 live for yourself, doing everything in your power to get rich, sin will eventually conquer you, destroy you and all the things that you have done for the purpose of doing things was wrong, for your own glory and not for the Lord. My story of biological farming begun after 5 years of studying agriculture at Stellenbosch. We produced potatoes on our farm under an irrigation system. 90% of the soil was never cultivated before, virgin soil. In the beginning we had good yields and quality but after 3-4 times that we planted the same piece of land our problems began. Every pest you can think of came and with that the dropping of production. After few years of pests and sickness, with the yield that was coming down and years of very low market prices; we were quickly in deep financial trouble. Although we applied more chemicals and fertilizers, the problems that we had were not getting any better. We had some good results from the chemicals that we applied, but at the end of the season it did not make any sense because the cost of it exceeded the income. It was in this troubled times that I asked the Lord for a solution because none of our own plans worked. I was spending more time between the potatoes than with my own family, because we lived in such tremendous fear. It seemed like everything that lived on the soil and in the soil attacked our crop and we had to spray every living thing dead. We were constant in a battle with nature and losing. With this, the joy and fulfilment of being a farmer, the love for Gods nature and soil quickly began to disappear. It became a place of hardship, discouragement, and the lost of hope to give our family and children any future. Our soil that once was full of life was becoming dead, very hard and very difficult to grow anything on it. I thought to myself: IF this is the way farming is supposed to be, I want nothing to do with it. One day I was invited to conference about biological farming. This was the beginning of my journey and the wonderful world of our soil biology and soil health.

3 Next, I will explain what we did, the mistakes that we made and the things that worked really good on our farm. When we started farming biological we had a production history of years of 100% conventional farming. That means the fertiliser and chemical companies, gave us certain programs that we followed based on the crop we were growing and soil analyses. One of the mistakes that we made was to change to quickly from conventional to biological. A well known farmer, Gary Zimmer, who is also a big biological farmer in America, once stated that you have to own the right for biological farming. You can t go from conventional to biological if the situation on your farm and soil is not ready for it. This is very, very important to remember. Many of the soil had what you call, a hard pan, that is a very hard part about cm from the surface of the soil. To get more material in the soil and to get more food for the microbes you have to reduce your tillage. But if you done this and neglected to break the hard pan, the roots of the plant will not go further than cm and you will reduce the capacity of your soil. Deeper roots give the plant a far better chance to survive in difficult times. So we would cultivate the soil, loosen it, get the plants to grow and put their roots as deep as possible in the soil. After this we reduced the tillage. The soil must always have a blanket of material to protect it from wind, heavy rain, storms or very hot conditions these material is also food and a home base for the microbes. We have very sandy soil that has no protection against strong winds that blow away all the good topsoil. After a wind storm the crops looked like it was sandblasted. After we got our tillage right, we had 98% protection from the wind. We did many soil analyses. Every soil type has the capacity to store minerals and nutrients. It means that every soil type has a fuel tank like a car. If you have a small car with a small fuel tank you have to refill it regularly to get to your destination. Sandy soil is like

4 this. A clay soil has a big tank, with which you can go a far distance, but in the beginning it costs a lot to fill it up. That is the big difference between the two soils. The 2 different vehicles will each reach their destiny, but the filling up with fuel will be the difference. So we learned that to grow a crop like potatoes that needs much fuel, you have to apply fertiliser on a weekly basis, or sometimes every 2-3 days, depending on the soil you have. We changed from the conventional approach, where only Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium were important. Ca is described as the trucker mineral that is necessary to take all the other minerals into the plant. So we start liming our soils with dolomitic lime, because our Ca and the Mg was low. We also gave attention to trace minerals like Zn Br Fe Co Man When the Ca in our soil was extremely low, we had to apply lime to fill it up. We applied 2-3 tons of dolomite lime with great success just before we plant our potatoes. If you have a sandy soil with a very small fuel tank. You have 2 options. You must fill it regularly with fuel or you have to make the tank bigger in order to travel further or with a heavier load. The best way to increase your fuel tank in sandy soil is to get the carbon % higher in your soil. Carbon is that black stuff in charcoal or the black colour in your soil. It comes from organic material that was used by the microbes in the soil to form humus. Humus is a very stable form of organic material that is in the soil formed by the microbes and it can be determined by the carbon % in your soil analyses. Humus has a tremendous capacity to enlarge your fueltank. It has a much greater capacity than clay. If you can get the carbon % higher with 1%, it will hold and l of water more in the soil per hectare. It also helps to hold on to the elements necessary for the plants, so it does not leach out of it. The soils in our region have a carbon % of Think of the amazing results you can get with just 1% more. Our annually rainfall is between mm a year. If we only get the carbon higher with 1% it means the affect in terms of water capacity will be 600mm per

5 year. So, how do we get this advantage? You must get more organic material on the soil in the form of plants, animal manure, and leave as many as possible material on the soil if your soil is very poor in carbon in the beginning. You can also make compost and add it to the soil. Use plants in your farming rotation which can give you lots of materials like maize, legumes like clovers, grass whatever will give you lots of material and will work well on your farm and what you produce. If you can grow plants in that soil the whole year around, it will be the ultimate, and I think it is really possible in a country like Uganda. It is by far the simplest way and cheapest to get the carbon higher. Why, because you have a system that can use the sunlight, convert it in energy through the plants and bank it in the soil through humus that was formed from the carbon of the organic material that organically came from the Co2 gas in the air that the plants uses in there processes. It happens the whole year. None of the above is possible without a workforce that can get the job done in the soil. That workforce is the millions of bacteria, fungus, mhycorisa, earthworm s protozoa, all the living small animals that live in the soil. Literary stated that behind every mineral there is a micro organism involved. After years of cultivation with only chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, very few of these beneficial organisms were left in the soil. The sad part is that the microbes that were left were usually the bad guys that attacked the plants further. How do you get the biology that is so important back? We were introduced to Dr Elaine Ingram, a world renowned microbiologist. She has invented the process that we call the brewing process s of compost tea. Every plant that grows in the soil has its own set of microbes that work for them. So, we will take organic material of different plants to have a wide as possible range of organism, compost the material and then we brew a part of it in a plastic tank that is in infused with oxygen. In the proses the aerobic organism multiply very quickly and after about 2-3 days of brewing the compost tea went into the soil

6 through the irrigation system or it can be sprayed on the soil. This is a much cost efficient way to do it and the benefits that you get out of this proses is amazing. It is also a food source for the earthworms that is needed in the soil. It also works really good, especially after you had to spray some hard chemicals on your soil to keep it grow and after herbicides that kills a lot of the microbes. Another way to do it is in the form of cover crops. After the production of a crop like potatoes, or maize, we will plant a combination of different crops all together. We will mix barley with cereal rye oats, some legumes like lupines, serradella, sunflower, grasses and more. Each plant will give you there unique microbes, that will enlarge your workforce. It will also give you lots of material for the forming of humus and it is a good way to suppress weed and their flowers will attract insects that will feed on harmful insects. It s really a great tool to have. Farm animals are also great tool to have. It can be used to produce meat, milk, wool, skins, but you can use it also in a manner that can improve your soil and grazing. We will graze them on the cover crops for production but also for their manure that are rich in microbes and will fertilize the fields. We changed the approach to our grazing technique. In the past we would graze the field with a certain amount of animals and leave them for a long time in that area. What happened is that they would first graze on all the tasty plants, and when they were finished; they will only then go on to the plants that are not so tasty. After a couple of years the grazing field will change from tasty plants to non tasty. The reason for this is that the animals will graze the tastier plants for much longer time, sometimes killing them and then the not so tasty plants will take over your field. So we put on a lot of animals on a small piece of field, so they have to eat all the plants, move them quickly, if the food is done, to the next piece of grazing. In this way we got a field where all the plants were grazed, much manure were left on the surface of the You

7 leave it then for a long period to grow and the grazing will change to the more beneficial grasses and plants. We incorporated All the above in our farming system to get the best and affordable production. The principals you use will stay the same; it does not matter in which country. How you do it will differ but at the end it will always be in a way that make your soil healthier, more robust, production cheaper, with healthier animals and people because all these are linked together in relationship with each other. And above all, farming will again become fun, joyful, fulfilling, giving your fellow man good and tasty food to eat at a price that he can afford. This wisdom only comes from our Lord that loves us so much and He will reform it each year to get it better and better. An amazing legacy to leave behind for our children and the generations to come. Thank you.