Resilience: What farming can learn from nature - Dr Jacqueline Rowarth

Dr Jacquline Rowarth writes that resilience is a biological construct - resistance is the alternative.

OPINION

Sometimes we forget we are part of nature, and nature is the most resilient aspect of the planet, writes Dr Jacqueline Rowarth.

Resilience appears frequently in the media in a sort of reassurance people will be all right, people in communities will support each other, and the Government might swing in to provide assistance for the battlers.

Sometimes we forget we are part of nature, and nature is the most resilient aspect of the planet.

We create all sorts of ways of protecting ourselves (including flood protection banks, vaccinations and base isolation systems) founded on the desire for a better future and knowledge of the past, and then suddenly something interrupts the trend.

Recent perturbations have been the two cyclones (Hale and Gabrielle, both in 2023), Covid-19 (2020 and various lockdowns), and the Kaikōura and Christchurch earthquakes (2016 and 2011, respectively).

These events, meteorological, biological and geological, affected all of us in various ways, and most of us recovered, just as we did after Cyclone Bola (1988), the Spanish influenza (1918 in New Zealand) and the Napier earthquake (1931).

Note this is not a diminution of anything people had to get through … and in some cases are still enduring.

But we adapt. Within a year of the Kaikōura earthquake, life was found again in the canyon and seals had colonised a new area.

By 2020, life was considered abundant.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989) was devastating… 28 types of animals, plants and marine habitats were injured.

Twenty-five years later and orcas haven’t returned to Prince William Sound – but most other species are considered recovering or recovered.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth.

The improvements were recorded within one to two years for shorelines; sea otters and harlequin ducks took longer.

Researchers have noted the recovery is set against a background of constant change.

They also reported most of the progress in environmental restoration could be attributed “not to human efforts, but to the resiliency of nature”.

Resilience is a biological construct.

Resistance is the alternative.

In nature, do you choose to live to fight another day? Or do you pour all reserves into fighting change?

Every year this plays out in the deer herd.

The roar (or rut) is all about the stag (or bull, if elk/wapiti are being considered) creating a lineage and living on through progeny.

After a few years, their dominance might fade and a young stag/bull will confer a final blow, but the old lineage lives on, and the new lineage will appear.

In agriculture, resistance to the removal of producer support (subsidies) has resulted in a considerable number of protests and tractor jams.

The EU has caved to some demands (rolling back emissions targets for food production, for instance); the UK has announced increased support for food security purposes.

In New Zealand, despite ongoing concerns about farmers not changing, most have. The productivity gains of the past few decades are the proof.

Farmers have learned from the past and thought about how they might improve performance now and for the future.

Kiwis have benefitted through increased export earnings, which then cycle through the economy, meaning they can create better lives for themselves as well.

Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Dr Jacqueline Rowarth on The Country below:

However, in the year to March 2022, productivity gains in the primary sector went backwards.

Farmers and growers faced unprecedented regulatory change and were perplexed about what to do for the future.

The new Government has responded with a focus on enabling rather than restricting.

National’s 100-day action plan promised to “establish a permanent Rural Regulation Review Panel to assess all regulations affecting the primary sector and propose solutions to cut red tape”.

The intent still exists that agriculture, providing the bulk of the export economy, should be enabled to increase productivity while continuing its trend towards reducing environmental impact.

Learning from the past assists.

The Esk Valley was under flood in 1938. Remembering that, perhaps the current recovery should continue to focus on market gardening and cropping rather than anything that requires infrastructure.

Already the maize and sunflowers through the valley appear to be flourishing in the silt and are indicating biological recovery.

They will add carbon to the soil when their roots die and are raising the spirits of onlookers.

The $80 million government response to the East Coast for Cyclone Bola recovery stimulated pine tree planting… now understood not to have been a good solution.

We learn.

And we learn from others.

At the Foundation for Arable Research’s Maize Conference in mid-February, growers taking part in panel discussions said some of the changes they had made in alignment with new requirements had resulted in improved satisfaction in farming.

Increasing soil organic matter, preserving peat lakes, increasing biodiversity – all of these have been recorded.

But in order to take the risk of a change in management, farmers and growers have to be profitable.

Risk and resilience depend upon reserves.

These reserves might be dollars, but they might also be energy (carbohydrate reserves for plants and animals) and goodwill.

Risk and resilience are another common partnership.

If something doesn’t work out, do you have enough reserves to survive?

Stags/bulls, plants, humans – it is all the same.

Resilience is easier to achieve if the risk is mitigated by staying alive and solvent, whatever the currency.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, an adjunct professor at Lincoln University, is a director of DairyNZ, Ravensdown and Deer Industry NZ.