Diversity, diversity, diversity

The importance of encouraging diversity in crop, pasture, livestock and wildlife species

In the latest in our Autumn and Winter Webinar Series, we focused on how increasing diversity of all living organisms can improve soil health.

Our two main speakers were Shane New, from our mentoring partner Understanding Ag, and Ian Gould, a director of Oakbank Game and Conservation, in Huntingdon.

Oakbank has built a great reputation working with farmers and landowners to make the best use of agri-environment schemes to improve wildlife habitats. Ian is particularly interested in how plants can be used to solve problems in soils.

Thanks so much to Shane and Ian for sharing their knowledge of this essential aspect of building soil health.

‘Think of your farm as your power plant’

Growing a more diverse range of species with different types of leaf architecture will help capture more energy from the sun, bringing natural benefits for the soil.

“What kind of architecture or leaf structures do you have out there capturing that energy?” says Shane.

“You should think of your farm as a power plant. And like any power plant, you want to maximise the output from it. You don’t want energy to leak and the best way to capture the energy is through diversity.”

The diversity of the leaf architecture and plant types will be reflected in the variety of different root systems. In addition, a broad variety of leaves will also break up raindrops and slow their speed, protecting the soil in the process.

At the same time, a diverse mix of roots leaking exudates into the soil will promote microbial diversity, increase mycorrhizal activity and encourage species such as earthworms.

Plant diversity can promote microbial diversity and mycorrhizal activity

The benefits plant diversity brings to soil will be magnified by keeping living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible, for example through the use of cover crops.

"When a plant goes to pollination, that plant is no longer providing root exudates into the soil,” says Shane.

“But if I have another plant in there that's starting to grow, that's starting to provide carbon exudates into the soil and is helping feed soil microbiology we can keep soil aggregation constantly occurring.”

Biology equals soil structure

"I fundamentally believe that the only thing that creates soil structure is biology,” says Ian.

“The more biology that we have of different sorts, the more organic compounds that will come to help create that aggregate structure.

“The more biology and the more diversity we can get into mixtures, whether that's in an arable rotation, or through things like herbal lays in a grazing situation the faster these changes happen.

“For me I've come to realise that diversity really equals resilience. And that's what we're trying to build into the system, whether that be resilience in your soil, or diversity of cropping, because for lots of reasons, and many of them just simply economic, the diversity in our cropping system has become less and less.”

Creating diversity to benefit soil

Although diversity can come in the form of multi-species cover crops or grazing mixtures, it can also be provided by bringing livestock back into arable systems.

"Clearly there has to be infrastructure and there needs to be people that know what they're doing,” says Ian.

However, this does not necessarily mean having livestock as a permanent part of your farm. They can be brought in temporarily, for example, in the form of so-called ‘flying flocks’ of sheep.

Ian Gould of Oakbank Game and Conservation

“Getting all this diversity back into your system certainly speeds up the changes that you're seeing in the soil,” says Ian.

"Whether it's cattle that are just eating and terminating a multi-species cover crop, whether you've got pigs feeding on your grass or perhaps in woodland, whether it's cattle feeding on a multi-species sward rather than just a ryegrass mixture or whether you're able to bring in sheep temporarily using electric fencing and so on to kill off a cover crop.

“Common places to start in the UK for farmers have been with things like companion crops, particularly with oilseed rape, but increasingly in other crops, like wheat, or with mixtures like these multi-species herbal leys, either through stewardship or outside of that.

“They've been terrific for both soil health and animal health with benefits like natural wormers from things like chicory. The deep rooting species like lucerne, chicory and plantain have really built soil.

"Typically what we see on UK arable farms in terms of a diverse mix is anywhere between three, six or eight species, commonly varieties like linseed, buckwheat, phacelia, clover, vetches, sunflowers, oats or rye.

“I'd strongly suggest if you're looking to do this at scale, growing some seeds yourself is a really good idea. And it helps to keep the cost down. So things like oats, linseed, beans and so on are relatively straightforward to grow.

“This idea that it takes 1000 years to create an inch of soil, we're certainly seeing that that's not even remotely true. We're turning what could reasonably be called dirt back into soil, no question and relatively quickly, within a three to five year time span.”

Supporting farmers to grow profits from healthy soil

We are working with farmers across the country to support them to improve soil health, grow profitability and generate new revenue streams.

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