MIIA: Every year, artists from all fields of the arts and from all parts of the world travel to Saari Residence in southwest Finland to focus on their artistic work and exchange ideas and experiences. The Saari Residence aims to be a test platform for the future that is sustainable ecologically, socially, and mentally. This podcast stems from themes that are essential in the residence’s daily ecological activities. Together with invited experts, we talk about returning to our roots to restore nature and ourselves. My name is Miia Laine and this is Reviving the Wild.

[electronic music starts]

MIIA: Soil makes life possible. It’s a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms. And what does healthy soil look and feel like? You’ve probably seen TV adverts where a person holds a lump of healthy soil in their hands, beautiful brown, rich, airy, moist earth. Maybe a small and vibrantly green plant is growing in the middle. It’s almost romantic, but does this image we have represent the reality of soil and agriculture today? [electronic music] Saara Kankaanrinta is an environmental influencer and the chair of the Baltic Sea Action Group and the Carbon Action platform. She is also one of the co-founders of the Qvidja farm, which is located in Parainen, in southwestern Finland,. Qvidja is a pilot farm with an ecosystem approach. Everything there is done keeping in mind the diversity of nature and carbon capture. Farming at this location, however, isn’t a new thing. Qvidja has been used as a farm for centuries, and the oldest surviving building in the area is a stone castle that dates back to the 15th century. Saara is extremely busy with all her roles and responsibilities, but I managed to meet up with her in a hotel lobby in Helsinki. In Qvidja, they focus on regenerative farming. What is that and how is it different from the main model of agriculture?

SAARA: We’re transforming the farm into regenerative farming, to nurture biodiversity and increase soil carbon in the soil. In general, the idea of regenerative farming is that the more you farm, the better the nature is, or the better state of the nature. And that is a paradigm change compared to the conventional, where we see nature only as a resource, and for me, it’s a question about seeing nature in that sense that it could work with principles that humans think are very effective. But in regenerative farming, the principles are from the ecology, so that’s where I think the paradigm shift goes. It’s good for profitability, it’s good for the farmer, it’s good for the health of nature, but the idea is that nature knows and we learn from nature and we respect the ecological principles that we cannot change. We can change our own actions, but we can’t change the ecology. So, we try to be developing that kind of thinking to farming and do a paradigm change with Carbon Action Network, which is a huge network already. But in farming, in real life, it really means that there’s some principles that we have, there’s always continuous green cover in fields and in forest. There’s living roots, there’s large and functional biodiversity, above ground and under ground. We have animals, but animals we see as partners, we partner with them, they increase biodiversity and carbon storage better than we could do without them. So, we developed this rotational grazing, which is very natural way of grazing the land and just, actually, increasing the photosynthesis from the plant. And what else is there, well, of course, then we have this, everyone knows with the crisis of Ukraine, that fertilisers are limited and very expensive. So, we’ve been doing almost a (decade of the year) [unclear] for recycling the nutrients, so, if we use fertilisers it’s always recycled and organic.

MIIA: Yes, a lot of different methods that you use. Can we talk a little bit more about, you mentioned the natural environment is fields and forests, and that you have animals you are using, you are working with nature and with the animals, rather than extracting from them, maybe you could say that. You’ve been doing this for eight years now, how has the natural landscape changed and the farm?

SAARA: Somewhat seven years, but yes, you can see the change. Maybe, well, in landscape, you can see that when we brought the animals back to the farm, it also brought a lot of different animals. It brought insects, it brought birds and butterflies, so it has increased visible diversity, biodiversity that you can see. In the soil, which is of course 25 percent of all the biodiversity of Earth is in the soil, but we just can’t see it and we don’t know it so well, in the soil you can see it with shovel, that when you take a piece of land or you put the shovel to the field, you can see worms, and maybe the best indicator of life in soil is the structure of soil. So, if the soil is very compacted and hard and you don’t have to be a farmer or a professional to see that this is not good soil, when it’s compacted, and air or water doesn’t go or move in the soil.

MIIA: And you mentioned you’re capturing carbon in the soil, through farming. How does that work, could you let me know a little bit more?

SAARA: That’s the photosynthesis you learn in elementary school. It’s the basic process of nature, but very, somehow, undermined at the moment. We always want to solve things with technology and maybe invent or innovate better photosynthesis. But I think that the billions of years of nature’s work has created so great efficiency there, that you cannot beat that. We try to give space to the photosynthesis and increase it every way we can. Plant takes the carbon from air and feeds it, with its roots and microroots and (-) [unclear], feeds it to the microbes in the soil, and microbes as an exchange, they give nutrients to the plant. That’s how it works, if there’s good life in soil. So that process simply we have to keep alive and as in good shape as possible, because eventually, when the plant feeds the carbon from air, so takes away carbon from the air, and feeds it to microbes in liquid form, and then eventually, when the microbe dies, the microbial necromass is the stable carbon that’s in the soil, so you sort of lock it there. Of course, soil also breathes, it’s a living organism, so it also breathes out carbon dioxide, but the aim is to store more carbon than it breathes out. So, that’s what we’re also measuring in the Carbon Action, that can we increase the carbon storage all the time.

MIIA: I think this is very interesting, because especially agriculture has often been noted as a big polluter and a big emitter, and talking about climate change and agriculture, it doesn’t look very good. Why do you think focus on farming to help curb climate change?

SAARA: Well, first of all, there’s more agricultural land and pasture land in the world than there’s forests, so of course we need to protect all the forests that we can, and absolutely just nurture the forests as much as we can, but we have so big amount of agricultural land that we need to also get the ecosystem working in the agriculture. That’s also where you can maybe move a little bit faster, because you can use, for example, perennial grasses. It’s faster than making a good forest that actually stores carbon. And, well, we need food, so that’s obvious that we will have agriculture, but we need to shift the agriculture to the paradigm where ecology is really nurtured and used. Because if we have the ecology working, you do have more resilience, for example, when climate change brings extra heat or water, or whatever extreme weather, so when the soil is in good condition, when the ecology is working, it actually has a lot of more resilience. You can get crops instead of just losing this year’s crops and et cetera. So, there’s all the benefits that we should go to this regenerative direction.

MIIA: How about farmers that already have a conventional farm?

SAARA: Well, Qvidja was a conventional farm, very conventional. Monoculture, pesticides, artificial fertilisers. But that’s what we’re trying to do also, that we’re trying to test ways of transforming farm from that conventional state to regenerative. And you don’t even have to be officially organic, you can do, you can be conventional farming, but just apply the regenerative methods, in that pace that you feel that you can handle it. You don’t have to do everything at once, you take step by step, and in regenerative farming, you can say the principles probably are the same around the world, but then again, farming is very local, so you need to share local knowledge, and that’s what we’re also trying to support.

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MIIA: For example, at Saari Residence, the usage of local knowledge has been included. The surrounding fields are leased to local farmers who are encouraged to use practices that capture carbon in the ground. But how about other cases, fields where conventional farming has been going on for many years or even decades? And as a result, the soil has become dependent on chemical fertilisers, or simply put, gotten bad. Is it possible to use regenerative farming in these places and recover the health of the soil? Saara says yes, it is. She shows me pictures they took in Qvidja before they started regenerative farming. Back then, the soil was very compacted, very dense. The roots of the plants actually made an L shape. They had to change direction because they couldn’t grow any deeper. And then she shows me a picture taken only two years later. The soil looks much more alive, like in those TV adverts. There’s clearly air and water moving inside. To help with this transformation, they used a catalyst, wood fibres. And animals help the soil too. At Qvidja, horses, highland cattle, and sheep are an active part of the farm’s cycle.

SAARA: Horses we have about 25, roughly, because we have the mothers and babies there, and then they live their first two years there, and then they go to training. But horses also help in this carbon sequestration, because horse grazes, and we can co-operate with horse, like we actually co-operate with the ruminants, sheep and cattle. For example sheep, we have a longer life maybe than normal sheep would have, but we consider them that they are partners and they can have a long life, and we try to shift the paradigm in that sense also, that it wouldn’t be so intensive. Because at some point, I think farmers will get paid for increasing biodiversity and carbon. So, if you do that better with animals, that’s also one incentive that could shift things to better way.

MIIA: Absolutely. The farm of Qvidja has a very long history, as you mentioned earlier, and historically, manors and the lands around them formed this social and economic unit in society, and the local life was wrapped around the unit. What is this history of manors in southwestern Finland and how do you think it’s relevant today?

SAARA: In Finland, manors have always tried to develop things and be in the front of developing, for example, agriculture. It was always around, of course, tightly connected to agriculture, there’s no manor without agriculture. So for example, I think Qvidja was the first place where there was apple trees in Finland. Or, manors, when you look at the history, have taken a lot of influence from abroad and they have quite good networks. Nowadays, when we’re all very networked and everything is available digitally, it’s of course different. But in history, it was a very relevant thing to be connected to foreigners, for example, or bring some knowledge from abroad. But in general, the idea of trying to develop things and trying to test and bring something new has been relevant in manors, and that’s what we’re trying to do still. We’re trying to test and fail and succeed in these regenerative agriculture practices and science, so that we can actually speed up the transformation.

MIIA: And if we talk about people, just normal people that maybe don’t work at a farm. How can everyone get involved in this whole process, as a consumer of food?

SAARA: I always say that connect yourself to food, connect yourself to food producing. I think actually, that we need to have a stronger sense of food, where does the food come from. Everyone knows that if you grow a potato or carrot yourself, you don’t throw that away and you appreciate it and you see that as a miracle, because it comes from a seed and all this. So, if you’re not growing your own food, then maybe get to know a farmer, or somehow get connected to the food. And then we have, of course, organic labour, that’s the first one, it means that no pesticides, that’s a good start. So, organic farmers and organic food. We do have Carbon Action farmers who already label it, but it’s not officially a certificate. But we do have those who label it to their products, so of course, if you ever see a Carbon Action food producer, just support that.

[electronic music]

MIIA: Once again, I’m reminded that we need to have a more holistic approach. Unfortunately, for too long, we have been in the state of thinking that the earth is abundant and you can just use its resources, because they will be renewed endlessly. As we know, this is not the case. Especially soil has been extremely affected by unsustainable agriculture. And soil is the most vital capital that we have. I meet up with another extremely busy person, Sirpa Pietikäinen, a member of the EU Parliament and the Finnish National Coalition Party. Sirpa acts as the chair of the Saari Residence’s advisory board, and she’s been closely involved with the development of the residence since its opening in 2008. Sirpa points out that this is all connected. The health of the soil, biodiversity, and food production, and she thinks that the shift to organic farming is one of the key things that farmers need to do at the moment.

SIRPA: Actually, what sort of frustrates me is that this is not the news. We discussed it more than 30 years ago already, and I know people before me have been doing it 50 years ago. So there was understanding what is the circularity in food production, and that basically comes to organic farming and understanding how you use the resources, how you recycle them, and how you cultivate sustainably and that matter, if you have meat production, what is the sustainable levels and how you do it. We’ve talked it for so long, and still we do not even have higher targets than 15 or 17 percent of the production to be organic. We should have actually, have the target within 10 years, to turn around 70 percent of our production to be organic and mainly based on vegetables and the roots and all that, that is much more healthy and sustainable way in all matters.

MIIA: Would that be possible, if we’re thinking about soil as the abundant thing that’s just kind of going to be there forever, but I think with the fertilisers that we are using, a lot of the soil has been damaged a lot. So would that even be possible to have 70 percent organic farming?

SIRPA: Well, it would take at least 10 years, because…

MIIA: Only 10?

SIRPA: Yes, well, it depends, but I’m looking very much this kind of a European perspective. Somewhere it might take much longer, unfortunately, because you have (-) [unclear] basically sand as the soil, instead of organic living soil. And you might have quite a lot of contaminants on the ground and so on. But yes, it would be possible, and this is the understanding that, as said, the soil is organic matter, and you have to preserve it, and it is in the connection with what you farm, what kind of fertilisers, and they would need to be organic and recycled on the site you are using. This is the understanding that we should have in place and in our common agricultural policy, as a precondition for any finance, and of course, we need to have longer periods for transformation and support for that. But if you never start, you never get there, and it is alarming how big parts of the soil globally and even in Finland, has turned out to be dead, at the moment. And if you continue with this and with the climate change, it becomes harder and harder to really find a good, healthy soil that you could sort of transplant and get the revitalization processes coming. It was really astonishing, I really need to mention this, that when we discussed about the different kind of pesticides, it’s said that, okay, they phase out, they’re eradicated, there’s no more problem with that. And when we had this kind of a test among other people and us MEPs, as well, and we ate normal or organic food, and we had high levels of pesticides in our urine. And then after that, we discussed with quite a number of researchers and they say, no, and you should sort of get it if Roundup kills, it kills, and it kills also the soil, and this is the point that this is very much interlinked as well, and that’s why you should have this kind of biological linkage of (- and pests) [unclear] starting from micro level to upper level. Actually, using too much of the pesticides, you break the chain and you make the vegetation more vulnerable. So it is a very controversial action.

MIIA: And Roundup is a common pesticide, that is being used, yes. You just mentioned the EU common agricultural policy. Can you talk a little bit more about how does it affect sustainable food production and are there regulations for soil?

SIRPA: This is the key, and we have to remember it’s almost half of the total EU budget we are using, in common agricultural policy subsidies. So it is quite amount of money that we are putting. I think that the farmers really do need and deserve this, in this kind of a global competition, but it is a question what you subsidise and what conditions you put on there. Sometimes, we think that the regulation is born to an empty room, but actually, the existing way of subsidising taxation and regulation is very nurturing to some types of businesses and agriculture that matter. And then it leads to a situation where this has been very favourable for meat production, for big farming, for very industrialised farming patterns, for using chemicals and artificial fertilisers and so on. So actually that kind of structure we have and that kind of farmers we have, and that kind of an organisation to speaking for their favour we do have. So it is no wonder that when you try to change this agricultural policy, you have a huge lobby saying, no, no, no, you can’t do it, it’s difficult for us, I have a farm for 20,000 pigs. That actually happens in Poland, not in Finland. And if you make your structures like this or that, I can’t sustain my business. And then actually, we do have too little people speaking in favour for another kind of structures, and the organic farmers’ associations are very weak. The consumers really hadn’t sort of got on their feet and start fighting to change the agricultural policy, because it’s very complicated, and people tend to try to think, okay, if the farmers say they need this, then, as a politician, you should support it. It’s very hard to fight against it, and that’s why we’ve formed, a bit more than 10 years ago, this kind of sustainable food production group in the European Parliament. It is all of us trying to advocate and learn what that sustainable agriculture actually would be and what you would need to do for this common agricultural policy to make it happen.

MIIA: Yeah, I guess we’re often talking about “the farmers” in these kind of discussions, and you can’t really say that because there’s so much kind of inequality in between the very big farms and smaller, local, organic farmers. There’s also something called the EU biodiversity strategy, which is aimed to hold the loss of biodiversity and reverse the negative trend in biodiversity by 2030. What do you think that the role of agriculture is in this, and is it possible?

SIRPA: It needs to be possible, firstly, full stop. It needs to. Of course, we are talking quite a lot of the climate change, but actually, the biodiversity loss is much more grave and severe threat. And they are of course interlinked, as we know, so we need a healthier biodiversity with climate change, because the climate change is destroying biodiversity by itself. And then again, losing the biodiversity actually speeds up the climate change, and then we lack the abilities to adjust ourselves. So yes, I think that the biodiversity strategy A) should be a law. So, we should have this kind of a biodiversity law in the EU, telling that one third needs to be favourable for the local biodiversity, so supportive to it, and we would need to have the national and local targets. What we’ve actually thought quite a lot, and it was Ilkka Hanski, a very famous Finnish biologist who created this kind of a mosaic protection concept. That means that one third of my slot where I live should be left in natural condition, one third of my area where I live, one third of the city where I live, one third of the county, one third of Finland, EU and so forth. And so you can’t sort of (-) [unclear] biodiversity by saving a huge lot of the forest in somewhere there in Lapland, it needs to happen here and now. That then of course goes that, of course, you do it and you need to do it in housing developments and in cities. But the big part is forests and agriculture. You would need to apply this principle of having one third of natural habitats in all of the slots, and that should be of course compensated, and that should be a demand, a precondition for the subsidies. This would need to be a total turnover for the whole thinking of the biodiversity. We still think that we can use, whatever, 90 percent of the land cover to ourselves, and then okay, you save something percent pristine nature there somewhere, and the deal is done. And no, this is not the way. You need to take it into account in up to small scale to bigger scale. It needs to be present in all of the agriculture, and in the agriculture, it starts actually with the soil and the microorganisms there, because there is the biodiversity too. Then it is what kind of plants and animals you have, and there we’ve lost the biodiversity almost already. There should be the diversity of millions different kind of local tomatoes, or beetroots, or pigs or whatever. And then there should be the diversity of other vegetation, not only what is farmed there, but what is the natural, local habitats.

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MIIA: Both Sirpa Pietikäinen and Saara Kankaanrinta work on these issues on a very large scale, but everything goes back to a small scale. Back to the ground, to the soil. Farmers are not the problem, they are part of the solution. In general, there’s a lot of talk about the cost for farmers and the compensation that could help them change to regenerative agriculture. The question about cost is always present. And this is actually one of the key problems. In the world of agriculture, we still tend to think that a healthy environment is something extra, like cherries on the cake. If you can’t afford it, just leave it. So, maybe we should focus more on the cost of non-action. What will happen if we do nothing? Because that cost is something that we as a society, we as inhabitants of this planet, simply cannot afford. My name is Miia Laine. Thank you for listening.

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