00:00 Our food systems are highly efficient, but they are not sustainable.
00:08 They contribute to biodiversity loss, pollution of soil, air and water, as well as climate
00:14 change.
00:16 How can we restore nature while guaranteeing our food security?
00:21 That's what we'll be looking at in this episode.
00:32 Normandy in the north of France.
00:34 Here levels of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers remain high.
00:41 Europe's objective is to halve their use by 2030.
00:47 I chose to meet with conventional farmers who have already done it, like Emmanuel.
00:53 This former follower of intensive farming has turned to agroecology.
01:00 Traditionally we grow wheat after flax.
01:02 I don't do that.
01:03 I grow rapeseed.
01:04 It's a plant that will capture nitrogen in the autumn, so it does not leak into the water
01:09 table.
01:10 And this way I recover nitrogen for my rapeseed, so I don't have to apply as much chemical
01:14 nitrogen myself.
01:15 It's a win-win.
01:17 I started out with a very intensive system.
01:20 In fact, it's easy to implement.
01:22 It was based on a lot of fertilizers and chemicals, with technical results that weren't necessarily
01:27 up to scratch.
01:28 So I asked myself a lot of questions about how we could do things differently.
01:32 What's going to force us to move much faster is the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity,
01:38 and the third element is the energy crisis.
01:42 Vincent also treats his fields half as much.
01:47 He prefers to observe them.
01:50 He has replanted hedges, introduced new species, and favors complementary crops.
01:57 What made me think is that I have friends and relatives who have had health problems
02:00 related to phyto products.
02:03 I think it's also an approach that my children like.
02:05 My eldest is a beekeeper, so bees obviously concern me.
02:08 And my second son works for the French Office for Biodiversity, so he likes to see that
02:13 I'm protecting his environment, his father's environment.
02:16 He's proud of his father.
02:18 Changing the way we produce is a priority for Europe, but it's complicated.
02:23 A major European framework law for sustainable food systems should soon place nature restoration
02:29 at the heart of all agricultural policies.
02:32 This agronomist who accompanies Vincent and Emmanuel told me public authorities have the
02:37 responsibility to immediately encourage the transition to other models.
02:42 The economic demonstration we've been doing with this group for the past ten years is
02:46 that they're not losing money, and that the gain is in the common goods.
02:50 But for other people, since there's no economic surplus, they don't make the change.
02:55 In any case, this way of producing cannot last, because we can't renew chemical active
02:59 ingredients at the speed that would be necessary given the emergence of inefficiencies and
03:03 resistances.
03:04 Some phytosanitary products are indeed less and less effective, but they're less useful
03:12 if we improve resilience and biodiversity in nature.
03:15 That's according to agronomist Christian Wieg.
03:19 Pesticides are not inputs.
03:20 The more you use, the better it gets, when in fact you only need pesticides if you have
03:25 disease pressure.
03:26 And so if you have more biological regulation, you'll need fewer pesticides because you'll
03:31 have more natural protection.
03:34 The positive effects of restoring ecosystems can be seen in Charles' lands.
03:39 This French permaculture pioneer passes on the knowledge he's acquired on his small organic
03:44 farm, which is inspired by the complexity of nature.
03:48 In fact, there are what you call ecosystem services.
03:52 These are all the services that nature provides free of charge and that enable us humans to
03:57 live.
03:58 These include the creation of fertility and the pollination of plants, as well as the
04:02 self-regulation of diseases and pests.
04:05 More than 10 scientific research programs have been carried out on this farm.
04:09 The first major study lasted four years and showed that we produced an average of 55 euros
04:14 worth of vegetables per square meter grown entirely by hand.
04:18 That's over 10 times more than organic market gardening with a tractor.
04:21 The fertility of plots that are intensively gardened increases very quickly.
04:26 And the other good news is that it frees up to nine-tenths of the land for planting trees,
04:30 digging ponds, raising animals.
04:32 So the same amount of land is both much more natural and much more productive.
04:43 Charles' farm remains an exception.
04:45 More than half the land in Europe is in poor condition and that's why a major European
04:49 law on soil monitoring was proposed this summer.
04:53 To understand what's at stake, I went to Northern Europe.
05:01 Here we are in Helsinki.
05:02 It's early and we're going to join a group heading for the Finnish countryside to discover
05:07 regenerative agriculture and its benefits for the soil in the Baltic Sea.
05:16 An environmental protection association has invited me to a workshop on a pilot farm where
05:21 the issues of reducing pollution, protecting the climate and restoring biodiversity are
05:27 intimately linked.
05:29 Owners Saara and Ilkka work with scientists to regenerate land damaged by intensive farming.
05:35 Biodiversity.
05:36 This worm shows that there is a good soil structure.
05:40 This is very positive when you find these.
05:44 One of our priorities is to protect the Baltic Sea.
05:48 Discharges have severely depleted its oxygen contents.
05:53 It's already one of the most polluted seas in the world.
05:56 That means that there's a lot of excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the sea and that comes from
06:03 agriculture and forestry.
06:04 Yeah, and if you want to prevent the runoff from the fields, you have to have the proper
06:10 soil structure.
06:12 And how do you make the soil structure?
06:14 You have to have as much carbon in the soil as is possible to build the ecosystem back
06:21 to the fields what it was decades ago.
06:25 To rebuild ecosystems, we also really need to limit land disturbance, such as intensive
06:31 plowing.
06:32 Shake this a bit.
06:34 If the soil is not in a good shape, you lose a lot of soil also and with the soil, the
06:39 nutrients.
06:40 So we like to use the nutrients on the field to grow food and then if you lose this, you
06:45 have to put more on.
06:47 The other good news is that life is carbon.
06:50 So the more life there is underground, the less carbon there is in the atmosphere.
06:55 These technologies make it possible to measure its presence in the soil.
06:59 How much carbon is there in this soil?
07:02 Maybe two percent.
07:03 You have a top layer.
07:04 You need the roots to get the carbon.
07:07 So you can improve carbon sequestration by changing the way you manage your field, right?
07:12 Exactly, yes.
07:13 And the importance of this is similar to increasing the carbon sink capacity of forests.
07:19 If we were able to globally start using these more regenerative agricultural methods, I
07:25 think that could help us by removing like a third of what we need to remove from the
07:29 atmosphere.
07:30 We end this episode in the nearby forest.
07:33 Participants in the regenerative agriculture workshop were treated to a concert under the
07:39 pine trees.
07:40 See you soon on the Road to Green.
07:55 [APPLAUSE]
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