Andre Leu is an Australian organic farmer, an internationally recognised speaker, the author of ‘The Myths of Safe Pesticides’ and “Poisoning Our Children”. He was past President of IFOAM (The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) and presently he is the international director of Regeneration International. Mission: To promote, facilitate and accelerate the global transition to regenerative food, farming and land management for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems.
This workshop focuses on the sciences and best practices in regenerative agriculture to build soil health particularly soil oranic matter and how this can both adapt and mitigate climate change. Most imporatantly , these methods will inprove yields in an increasingly unreliable and erratic climate while reducing production costs – making farms more viable.
Regenerative Agriculture is now being used as an umbrella term for the many farming systems that use techniques such as longer rotations, cover crops, green manures, legumes, compost, organic fertilizers Includes: organic agriculture, agro forestry, agroecology, permaculture, holistic grazing, intensively time managed grazing systems and other agricultural systems that can increase soil organic matter/carbon.
Standard agronomy says that all plants that are not the cash crops are weeds because they are competing for nutrients and water and therefore lower yields. This is not true. If this is correct monoculture would be the strongest and the polyculture should be struggling in droughts. Soils are created through the biological activity of the microbiome/soil food web/rhizosphere – mediated by roots.
