Meet the carbon

Meet the carbon farmer

Caroline Spencer talked to Glyn Mitchell about regenerative farming

It sounds so obvious, so simple. You take food waste, you make compost from it instead of burning it, you regenerate the soil to grow healthier food, fibre and fuel. It closes the loop, completes the circle.

As a Soil Food Web microbiologist, Glyn Mitchell knows that while it certainly all makes sense, it is a lot more complicated than it sounds. He is someone who knows about cultivating microbes, fungi and bacteria in the right proportions in order to come out with a ‘biologically complete’ compost.

At Warwick Farm, he works with Jersey Hemp and their fully owned subsidiary The Carbon Farm. At the time of visiting him, road sweepings from St Lawrence had just arrived in a large parish vehicle.

‘We compost plant material, fix it and put it back in the ground. I farm carbon,’ Glyn explained. ‘Those road sweepings would otherwise be taken to the incinerator, which would release CO2 into the atmosphere, which is bonkers. ‘The trick to composting is that you’ve got to find all the ingredients that microbes like to eat, particularly bacteria and fungi. All I do is mix them together in the right amounts to make a nice-smelling compost ready to go out on the fields.’ Ideally Glyn wants to see such a localised composting operation for food and green waste in every parish. The Carbon Farm are soon to take delivery of an aerobic digester that would accept food waste from restaurants and cafes, and 24 hours later it comes out as a pasteurised compost ingredient.

Visitors to the 2019 Boat Show will have seen this demonstrated in the eco zone of the event. Now Glyn wants to upscale the model. ‘The idea is that people can offset their emissions by choosing a restaurant who send their food waste to us and composting that waste to feed Jersey soil. Soil carbon levels have been depreciating dramatically because of how much we have taken from the soil to grow crops and don’t give back. They used to be up to 15-20%, they are currently around 3%.’ Walking around the tunnels at Jersey Hemp, Glyn points out that nothing could be grown here for 15 years because of the poor soil. But now it is yielding healthy hemp crops.

It is estimated that in Jersey 14,000 tonnes of food waste goes to the incinerator every year. Glyn thinks the real figure could be a lot higher. ‘When we were collecting from Nude Food, the first restaurant that sent its food waste for composting, I was collecting 100 kilos a week, and that was just one small outlet. I hope to engage with everyone, including supermarkets, as it doesn’t make sense to burn inedible food waste, when it’s a natural fertiliser.’

He also wants to engage with anyone interested in the land. ‘Our main focus is to make Jersey as resilient to climate change as possible and the best way of doing that is to improve the soil,’ he said. ‘Retain the topsoil and you have improved food security, water security, bio security.

It’s a much bigger picture that we have got to get our heads around. We can’t keep depleting our soil.

‘Mother Nature’s law of return is very simple. You leave 60% for her and you take 40%. It’s about farming with Mother Nature, not against it. Here at Jersey Hemp, the philosophy is that you return what you take. Jersey Hemp, by using this organic regenerative system, are committed to leaving a proportion of their crop residue to rebuild the soil.’

It’s early days for The Carbon Farm, which was formed in April, and Glyn and colleague Chris O’Brien have been establishing priorities. Over the summer, they concentrated on finding people who would deliver clean organic matter. The compost, from drop-off to product, takes about three months to make and now they are in a position to take it to the next level, getting composting machines in every parish and supporting Jersey farmers to regenerative farming.

However, the compost can’t be offered to external parties until they get a licence, currently under consideration by the Government of Jersey.

“Everything points

to regenerating Jersey’s soils for our children’s future

Businesses, Glyn says, need to consider putting something back into the environment, and composting food waste is one way of doing that.

Of course, converting to regenerative farming doesn’t come cheap, and can take two or three years to make the transition. ‘It is not easy, but it is achievable,’ he said. ‘To be adopted on an Island-wide scale, farmers will require encouragement, patience and possibly financial incentives to give them the time and security to learn and practise regenerative techniques. Higher education will also need to evolve to include soil conservation practices in curriculums.

‘Everything points to regenerating Jersey’s soils for our children’s future,’ Glyn said. ‘I believe there are many individuals and businesses who want to do it and hopefully Carbon Farm can provide a direction.’

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