Navigating the World of Regenerative Farming

February was a very cold month that burned every green grass sprouting on pasture and froze some of the trees that we planted.

The lambs born in December and January were 70% male, so we decided to swap them for females, because we want to increase our flock, to help regenerate the soil.

March was a much nicer month with some warm days but very little rain. It was a good month to plant our agroforestry, and we did plant 1647 trees and shrubs and cover the soil with wood chip to protect them in anticipation of the sun in the summer and put irrigation.

As you well know by now I am battling trying to monetize the regenerative farming project I am doing at Vinagra Village. When I bought the property 30 years ago I knew nothing about farming and now that I have been directly involved for the past 18 months I still do not know much, but I have learned two important things. First anyone can be a farmer and second if he wants to make it a business he needs to watch his costs carefully because margins are almost non-existent.

A lot of idealism goes into farming but it doesn’t mean there cannot be profit, I think.

I spend every little moment trying to figure out how to make a business case for the farm within a regenerative concept. I think about sheep, pigs, essential oils, transformed products, fruit trees, food forests and even carbon credits.

I read hundreds of articles and see many youtube videos, but it’s hard to know what the future holds economically for this kind of agriculture. I feel it’s right to do this kind of agriculture but I do not know how to make it profitable. There is little to be made by selling produce to supermarkets so for now, I believe, the solution is diversification.

One thing for sure is that regenerative models are not economically viable for the farmer unless there is capital available. At Vinagra Village we have 3 full time employees for the 20 ha labour intensive regenerative farm. They are looking after the flock of 70 Merino sheep and 3 Mangalitsa pigs, also known as ‘’the pig sheep’’ because of their abundant curly hair, and 10 chickens, They are building an agroforestry and keeping the vegetable garden and the orchard. Our reality is a world away from the highly mechanized huge industrial scale agriculture, where you might only have one employee per 300 ha or more because everything is mechanised. Machinery is huge and expensive not viable for small farms, you need planters and harvesters and capital is not infinite. We know that every business needs to be profitable or it will not be sustainable.

So business wise this industrial agriculture makes sense, but it is killing nature slowly, using herbicides to kill the weeds, eliminating diversification, some say they are using genetically modified plants, that don’t need as much attention.

Back to our reality, 4 spring lambs are already on pasture and these are our first crossed between our pedigree Suffolk and Merino ewe. I plan to open reservations the second week of April.

You can check our animals here!