Use of Chemical InputsUpdated 9 months ago
All our farmers sign up to our Production Protocols, and fill out a Regenerative Farm Plan with our Regenerative Impact Manager when they sign up to supply Dirty Clean Food. We help farmers transition to regenerative practices and view our relationship as long term. Here is information about how our Regen Farm Plan works, and what our farmers are doing on farm in terms of chemical inputs.
Our Regenerative Farm Plan lists 10 regenerative principles under the headings of soil health, biodiversity, water and nutrient cycles and committing to a learning journey. Under those 10 principles there are 50 regenerative practices that are recognised as best practice.
The practices addressing synthetic fertiliser and chemical use fall under the principle Soil Health: Feed the Soil Food Web (not the plant). They are as follows:
- Fungal and microbial inoculation of soil and or seed
- Use of mulching, manure and compost
- Work towards eliminating / reducing synthetic fertiliser usage
- Buffering (eg carbonate bonding) of water soluble nutrient applications
- Work towards eliminating / reducing herbicide, pesticide and fungicide usage
Each of our farmers lists what they are doing currently on farm under these practices, and what are their planned actions for the next 12 months. All of our farmers are working towards eliminating or reducing synthetic fertiliser usage, and herbicide, pesticide and fungicide usage.
As an example, here is an excerpt from one of our broadacre farmer's Regen Farm Plans.
Work towards eliminating / reducing synthetic fertiliser usage: We have reduced nitrogen considerably, constantly trying to reduce nitrogen rates and get cycling happening by replacing synthetic fertiliser with biological fertiliser. We switched to single super for phosphorus, which is meant to be not as harsh as MAP/DAP. It is a lot softer on the biology, and has a lot of calcium in it, in a more plant available form.
Work towards eliminating / reducing herbicide, pesticide and fungicide usage: We are trying to build plant natural resilience to eliminate fungicide and insecticides. We have not used any fungicide on the farm in the last 2 years. Also working to build the successional cycle by changing quorum signaling to stop weeds from germinating. We are hoping to get less weed pressure, therefore use less or no herbicide. If we do need to use herbicide we are using fulvic acid to try and lower the rates when we do use it, and as a buffer for the soil biology. We also use narrow row spacings to outcompete weeds, 6.5 inch discs on the disc seeder.