Correspondent: The Magic Bean Tx Date: 10th June 2001 This script was made from audio tape - any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Music 00.00.07 Julian Pettifer With agriculture in crisis worldwide there's good news from Latin America. 00.00.11 Music 00.00.15 Julian Pettifer Harvests are being tripled. Rainforests are being saved. 00.00.19 Music 00.00.22 Julian Pettifer The whole environment is benefiting from plants like this - a remarkable bean that really does work miracles with people's lives. 00.00.30 Music 00.00.32 Professor Jules Pretty I am quite convinced that this is the beginning of a new agricultural revolution and it could spread around the world. 00.00.38 Correspondent Theme Music 00.00.47 Title Page The Magic Bean 00.00.51 Julian Pettifer In the fairy story, Jack plants a magic bean and his family prospers. 00.00.56 Julian Pettifer Now in Latin America farmers are planting a magic bean with similar results. 00.01.02 Aston JULIAN PETTIFER The bean is called mucuna; the velvet bean and extraordinary claims are being made for it. Bigger harvest, more food without cost to the environment. 00.01.10 Julian Pettifer Is that really possible? Well apparently the benefits of planting mucuna are so far reaching that they're quietly transforming the way crops are grown. 00.01.19 Music 00.01.22 Julian Pettifer These fields are flourishing without chemical fertilisers, weed killers, pesticides or GM seeds. 00.01.32 Julian Pettifer And the world hardly noticed. Until a British scientist came here to Guatemala. 00.01.37 Julian Pettifer For ten years he'd been investigating sustainable agricultural systems. But it wasn't until he was here among the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal that he saw that something very special was happening, that he must share with the rest of the world. 00.01.55 Julian Pettifer I came back to Tikal with Professor Jules Pretty as he recalled his 'Eureka' moment. 00.02.01 Professor Jules Pretty Well when I first came up here I realised that this most fantastic rainforest all around has got an important story to tell for us. There's huge diversity here, two hundred and fifty species of animals, five hundred species of birds and yet right on the edge of the rainforest here, there are farmers who are at the vanguard of a new agricultural revolution. They're using the mucuna bean in their system to improve productivity, to improve their soils and because of that they don't need to chop down the rainforest. 00.02.33 Julian Pettifer Like many small-holders, Don Gabino plants mucuna with his maize. He cuts both back after harvesting, leaving them to rot down. 00.02.44 Julian Pettifer His maize yield has more than doubled. And he's been cultivating the same fields on the edge of the forest for ten years. 00.02.54 Julian Pettifer Without ground cover, tropical soils quickly lose their fertility, forcing farmers to move on and cut more forest to survive. 00.03.04 Julian Pettifer Mucuna beans were first distributed here by Centro Maya, an agency working in the Peten rainforest. It's representative Juan Carlos Moreira talks to Don Gabino. 00.03.16 Don Gabino Subtitles Before bean manure, it wasn't so good. Yields would be 25-30 hundredweight. Now they are between 60-70. 00.03.30 Julian Pettifer Double the yield without agro-chemicals and without tilling the soil, just leaving the mucuna to regenerate year by year. 00.03.39 Julian Pettifer So what is it about this particular bean that makes such a difference? 00.03.43 Professor Jules Pretty Well the fantastic thing about the mucuna is its rampant growth produces a huge amount of organic matter and that's part of the magic of the bean, is exactly how it manages to improve the quality of the soil as we can see here. Juan Carlos has got a sample of soil from a field that hasn't produced any mucuna. And if we put the two together, this is the soil rich in organic matter produced by mucuna with a hundred tonnes of organic matter per hectare per year and this is the improvement in the soil, this is the soil without the mucuna. 00.04.21 Professor Jules Pretty This farmer's created a new soil and this new soil means that he doesn't need to move to a new field, he can carry on farming this field practically forever now. 00.04.30 Julian Pettifer Now how long will it take him to turn this into that? 00.04.33 Professor Jules Pretty This is, this has been produced within three years. We see an improvement right away within the first year and look at this, within three years a fantastic friable good quality soil. 00.04.46 Julian Pettifer It all seems so simple doesn't it? 00.04.48 Professor Jules Pretty It is remarkably simple. It's making the best of nature, it's making the best of this bean, producing large amounts of organic matter and it's improving the soil, which of course is the basis to all good agricultural systems. 00.05.02 Julian Pettifer Just tell me again, how much organic matter is it producing? Because that figure just... 00.05.06 Professor Jules Pretty It's mind boggling, we're talking about mucuna producing a hundred tonnes of organic matter per year, per hectare and that organic matter is simply falling on top of the soil, rotting down and creating a new soil on top of the old one. 00.05.23 Julian Pettifer So the mucuna makes an exceptionally good mulch or green manure. But could it really mean the end of burning down the rainforest? 00.05.32 Professor Jules Pretty Well fifty years ago we thought the only way to improve agricultural production was through modern methods, through the use of fertilisers and pesticides and modern seeds and so forth. But these are costly and small farmers can't afford them so we really have found some new way to help them increase their productivity. And to be frank, once they start to build up the quality of their soil, to improve the natural capital of their system, they don't want to cut the rainforest down, it's dangerous, it's hard work, it takes a lot of effort to do that. They'd much prefer to farm sustainably in one place and enjoy the benefits of the forest even if it's right next to their farm. 00.06.15 Julian Pettifer Central America is losing forest at the rate of forty-four hectares every hour. But instead of destroying the forest, these villagers make use of it, growing a cash crop. 00.06.29 Julian Pettifer The women harvest parlour palms for the international cut flower market. From one hectare of palm they earn four hundred dollars a month. And around here that's real riches. 00.06.48 Julian Pettifer All they do is plant the palm and let nature do the rest. 00.06.52 Julian Pettifer As leaves and litter decay, they provide all the nutrients. No need here for ploughs or fertilisers or weed killers. 00.07.01 Julian Pettifer The same principle applies with Don Gabino's mucuna back on the farm. 00.07.07 Juan Carlos Moreira Subtitles Have the weeds increased or has the bean manure helped? 00.07.13 Don Gabino Subtitles Bean manure destroys weeds. Where we were over-run by weeds... the beans kill the weeds. The crops grow much better. We need to use green manure to increase production. 00.07.35 Music 00.07.40 Julian Pettifer Mucuna belongs to a large family of plants, the legumes, that include all the familiar beans, peas and pulses. 00.07.47 Music 00.07.53 Julian Pettifer In the 1930's two million acres of mucuna were planted in the United States to feed cattle. But only now is it emerging as one of the truly remarkable seeds of change. 00.08.04 Music 00.08.08 Julian Pettifer By planting magic beans farmers in Central America are reinventing traditional husbandry. 00.08.13 Music 00.08.19 Julian Pettifer I followed the story to Honduras. 00.08.22 Music 00.08.27 Julian Pettifer It's early morning in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. They're preparing the route for the Good Friday procession. 00.08.35 Julian Pettifer These carpets are made from coloured sawdust, painstakingly assembled over night to be destroyed in a few seconds when the procession passes through. 00.08.46 Julian Pettifer As one of the original 'banana republics', Honduras still lives up to its Central American stereotype - poor and devout. 00.08.53 Singing 00.08.58 Julian Pettifer Just as Jesus was burdened by the cross, so most Honduran people bear the cross of hunger, sickness, ignorance, exploitation and unemployment. 00.09.08 Singing 00.09.11 Julian Pettifer That's the Good Friday message from the radical young Cardinal, Oscar Rodriguez. 00.09.17 Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Subtitles For those campesinos coming to the city... to find work... we trust they will find hospitality... from our Christian brothers. 00.09.33 Julian Pettifer According to the Cardinal, the greatest victims of injustice are the campesinos, the rural poor. 00.09.41 Julian Pettifer In their desperation many have fled to the cities like Tegucigalpa, only to be submerged in even greater poverty in urban slums. 00.09.49 Singing 00.09.55 Julian Pettifer In the countryside the processions are more modest. But it's the same tale of piety and poverty. 00.10.01 Singing 00.10.04 Julian Pettifer These are a few of the billions of rural poor worldwide who have not benefited from the productivity of industrialised agriculture. 00.10.12 Singing 00.10.16 Julian Pettifer An hour and a half's drive from Tegucigalpa, this is Guinope, the centre of an area where in the past farmers really struggled to survive and which provided a steady stream of migrants to the capital and beyond. 00.10.29 Julian Pettifer So great was the exodus that twenty years ago Guinope was described as a dying town. And then in 1981 a small private voluntary agency called World Neighbours began to work in the surrounding villages to improve productivity on the farms. 00.10.47 Julian Pettifer One of the villages is Pacayas. 00.10.50 Julian Pettifer The soil here used to be so poor that farmers could hardly grow enough to feed their children. Nor could they afford to buy fertilisers. 00.10.59 Julian Pettifer Flight was their only option. 00.11.03 Julian Pettifer Amazingly that exodus has now been reversed with families returning to land they so recently abandoned. 00.11.12 Julian Pettifer How did it happen? Agronomist Antonio de Alvarenga, from the local agricultural agency COSECHA, took me to meet a farmer whose leadership inspired the whole valley. 00.11.28 Julian Pettifer Elias Zelaya was one of the first to plant the bean which changed his fortune. 00.11.33 Julian Pettifer It was mucuna that improved the soil and from that everything else followed. 00.11.38 Julian Pettifer When you first came up here what was the, what was the land like, what was the quality of the soil like? 00.11.46 Elias Zelaya Voice over It was really bad but the World Neighbours programme changed all that when it showed us how to make organic manure. The programme was extensive. They visited the communities and showed them what to do so everyone knows about it now. Neighbours came and looked at my fields and started doing the same. 00.12.14 Julian Pettifer Elias then showed me the real magic of mucuna, how it makes its own nitrogen fertiliser, in huge quantities. 00.12.23 Julian Pettifer The roots of the mucuna harbour bacteria, which store nitrogen in tiny nodules. When the nitrogen is released into the soil it's taken up by crops like maize which don't themselves fix nitrogen. 00.12.37 Julian Pettifer Mucuna can fix up to a hundred and fifty kilograms of nitrogen per hectare, tripling maize yields. 00.12.45 Julian Pettifer So it's these little nodules that produce the nitrogen that fertilises the maize. 00.12.51 Elias Zelaya Exactamente! 00.12.52 Music 00.12.55 Julian Pettifer Among numerous nitrogen fixing plants, mucuna is one of the best. 00.13.00 Julian Pettifer Farmers also use other beans to do a similar job. Like this dolicus, which produces less fertiliser but tastes better. 00.13.10 Julian Pettifer It tastes a bit like peas, in fact. You said you can use it in soup. 00.13.19 Julian Pettifer The man who knows most about the value of mucuna in Central America is the founder of COSECHA, Roland Bunch. 00.13.27 Julian Pettifer What practical difference has it made to the people there? 00.13.31 Roland Bunch Well just about as much difference as anybody could go through in a lifetime. I mean they're, they're probably earning, they're certainly producing you know, five to six times the maize they used to, as you saw the agriculture there's much, much more diversified than it ever was in the past. I mean their incomes are probably anywhere from ten to twenty times what they were fifteen years ago when the process started. I mean, you know, it's made a tremendous difference to their lives. 00.13.59 Julian Pettifer For Elias and his family life is already better. One of his daughters was the first in Pacayas to attend high school. She's now a teacher. 00.14.09 Julian Pettifer His wife Nila says her bread is more nutritious with mucuna added to the flour, fat and the eggs. 00.14.21 Julian Pettifer And magic beans are also used to feed livestock. They're much appreciated by the pigs. 00.14.48 Julian Pettifer Can you eat them like this? 00.14.50 Julian Pettifer Nila emphasised that the mucuna beans have to be cooked properly before you can eat them. 00.15.02 Julian Pettifer Right, this is the moment of truth. 00.15.12 Julian Pettifer Brava. Si. 00.15.25 Julian Pettifer The bread sells well. It provides another source of income for the family. It's in great demand around the valley. 00.15.37 Julian Pettifer Elias insisted we visit a neighbour, Ambrosio Hererra, who succeeded heroically in growing crops on very difficult land - steep, rocky and without irrigation. 00.15.50 Julian Pettifer With the help of his friends and of mucuna, Ambrosio is creating new soil where there was none. 00.16.00 Ambrosio Hererra Subtitle Look at this - this is what gives me my livelihood. 00.16.06 Music 00.16.07 Julian Pettifer And he's managing to keep the soil, winning the battle against erosion. 00.16.13 Julian Pettifer It seems that you can make a garden even on bare rock, with sufficient determination and the magic bean. 00.16.19 Music 00.16.23 Antonio de Alvarenga Subtitle And this is how it was - bare rock. 00.16.28 Ambrosio Hererra Subtitle It was like that when I started. 00.16.38 Julian Pettifer In Honduras eighty percent of the rural population, that's two million people, endure equally harsh conditions. Some of them on plots even smaller than Ambrosio's single hectare. 00.16.52 Julian Pettifer Land distribution is the problem. 00.16.56 Julian Pettifer In Central America three quarters of the terrain is mountainous. 00.17.02 Julian Pettifer While the poor scratch a living on steep, easily eroded hillsides, the rich get richer in the lowlands. 00.17.11 Julian Pettifer In Honduras, ninety percent of prime farmland in the valleys is owned by ten percent of the population. Cattle ranches, fruit plantations, pineapple and banana cover the great central and northern plains. 00.17.26 Julian Pettifer This is industrial agriculture with huge returns. 00.17.39 Julian Pettifer In 1998 when Hurricane Mitch stuck Honduras, ninety percent of the banana crop was lost with severe economic consequences. 00.17.49 Julian Pettifer In fields degraded by conventional farming the soil just washed away. 00.18.00 Julian Pettifer But there was an unexpected pay off for those farmers who were planting the magic bean and were practising sustainable agriculture. 00.18.10 Julian Pettifer In the pine-covered hills not far from Pacayas, Pio Gamay conducted his own experiment. 00.18.17 Julian Pettifer He's co-director of COSECHA, the advisory body working with local farmers. And he decided that to teach others he must first teach himself. 00.18.26 Julian Pettifer He cleared the forest, taking care to leave some trees. Planting mucuna and other legumes to build up fertility. 00.18.37 Julian Pettifer Pio then protected the soil on his steep slopes with live barriers, mostly grasses established along the contours of the fields. And did he suffer from Hurricane Mitch? 00.18.50 Pio Gamay Voice over You can't see from here but on the other side there's damage done by Mitch. Here, as you can see, the earth is very good so it absorbs the water. The barriers worked well keeping the floodwater from washing away the land. So there was no damage, none at all. 00.19.25 Julian Pettifer So magic beans help protect against storm damage. 00.19.30 Julian Pettifer It's all part of the system that some agronomists call 'smart farming'. 00.19.37 Julian Pettifer Pio uses several species of bean as well as the mucuna. 00.19.46 Pio Gamay Voice over Remember we are some seventeen hundred metres above sea level and mucuna beans don't grow well at this altitude. So I plant dolicus and chinapopo beans, which produce a lot of foliage and they work in the same way as the mucuna bean. They generate nitrogen and lots of organic material, which is good for the soil. 00.20.16 Julian Pettifer Every bean has several functions. Pio's using mucuna to fertilise his sugar cane and he feeds both cane and mucuna to his animals. 00.20.30 Pio Gamay Voice over The cows eat everything. Some calories, some nitrogen - it's very good for them. 00.20.46 Julian Pettifer Well if this bean is so wonderful, how come that it's languished in obscurity and that I've only just heard of it? 00.20.54 Aston ROLAND BUNCH Director, COSECHA Well I only heard of it about fifteen years ago for the first time. It's a difficult question to answer but part of it is that we were so taken up with chemical fertilisers and so forth and felt that that was the answer to everything that we just weren't looking for alternatives. 00.21.10 Roland Bunch And it is easier to use when you're not mechanised. So farmers in the United States have a harder time using it than farmers do down here who are just using a hoe. 00.21.19 Roland Bunch We aren't just making those jobs cheaper like you do with a tractor. We're eliminating them. We're getting rid of them. You don't have to do it. The earthworms do it for you. For the first time in history, you know, basically with these systems, we can compete with mechanised farmers, in fact we can do better than mechanised farmers because they're still having to buy their tractors and the gasoline and all that sort of stuff and we don't even have to spend any money on that. All we have to buy is a handful of seed and multiply it. 00.21.48 Roland Bunch We're not seeing sort of a blip on the screen; we're seeing the beginning of a whole movement that's going to get larger and larger and larger. Just in my professional lifetime I've seen this go from nothing to the vast majority of non-government organisations in Latin America now working with ecological agriculture and this is going to have an impact. 00.22.10 Roland Bunch In fact as petroleum prices continue to go up and they will over the next twenty or thirty years, there's no question about that, the petroleum industry's been telling us this for twenty, thirty years now. As those prices go up ecological agriculture becomes more competitive. 00.22.28 Julian Pettifer Working against the odds with simple technology and poor soils, farmers in the Central American states of Guatemala and Honduras can now feed their families and produce a surplus. The idea is beginning to catch on. 00.22.43 Roland Bunch Almost anywhere you go in the world the mucuna seems to be the one bean that farmers most appreciate. It is a fabulous little bean. 00.22.52 Music 00.22.56 Julian Pettifer It is the small farmer and the modest mucuna that are the heroes of this tale. 00.23.01 Music 00.23.05 Julian Pettifer News of their success has spread from farmer to farmer way beyond Central America. The take-up in Brazil has been phenomenal. 00.23.13 Music 00.23.29 Julian Pettifer A horse and cart may look old fashioned but there's nothing backward about Santa Catarina state in Southern Brazil, where they take an integrated harmonious approach to farming and it shows. 00.23.43 Julian Pettifer There are wild flowers, birds, butterflies and insects in profusion. 00.23.49 Julian Pettifer Organic farming is a big success and of course at the heart of it is the magic bean and what it does for the soil. 00.23.59 Julian Pettifer Afonso Kloppel has five hectares of land where he grows onions and where quite recently he went through an almost spiritual conversion to sustainable farming. 00.24.12 Afonso Kloppel Voice over The benefit is we protect nature; nature is our greatest wealth. The soil is our mother for all the goodness it gives us. If we don't value it we'll go hungry tomorrow. 00.24.28 Julian Pettifer Afonso Kloppel began farming conventionally using pesticides and fertilisers but his land deteriorated and he ran up debts. He was about to go bankrupt when he heard of agro-ecology. 00.24.42 Julian Pettifer He went the whole way - planting mucuna, leaving residues to rot down, planting directly into the mulch. 00.24.49 Julian Pettifer What's more he found a good market for his organic produce at higher prices. 00.24.59 Afonso Kloppel Voice over Five years ago we farmed conventionally, we became dependent on the banks. Today we have a small farm but we make money every week. 00.25.12 Aston JOSÉ CEZAR PEREIRA Agronomist, EPAGRI Voice over The alternative systems of soil management are essential. This is not only because of the environment but because farms become economically viable. 00.25.40 José Cezar Pereira Voice over We are working hard to encourage this way, to make family farming viable in our state. 00.25.54 Afonso Kloppel Voice over We benefit economically every day. Every week we go to market and we sell to Sao Paolo every month too. Our children believe in it. My son, who got married five days ago, lives and works with us. It makes us very proud. 00.26.21 Afonso Kloppel Voice over The family works together. We don't use chemical fertilisers because we used to have health problems from the poisons. 00.26.35 Julian Pettifer José Cezar Pereira works for the Santa Catarina state government, which now strongly encourages farmers to abandon conventional industrialised agriculture. 00.26.49 José Cezar Pereira Voice over The government has taken up a position with regard to the use of agro-chemicals. It has thrown down a challenge - to make Santa Catarina the first Brazilian state to be free of the use of agro-chemicals. 00.27.03 Julian Pettifer It's a courageous move motivated as much by economic as by environmental considerations. 00.27.10 Julian Pettifer Abandoning agro-chemicals and adopting sustainable agriculture gives the small farmer greater independence. The big question is could it work for big producers? 00.27.22 Julian Pettifer I flew a thousand miles to the cerrado in Central Brazil to find out. 00.27.27 Music 00.27.31 Julian Pettifer Thirty years ago the Brazilian government opened up the dry savannah of the cerrado and offered incentives to entice farmers into the region. 00.27.40 Julian Pettifer Adventurous cattlemen from the south took up the challenge. They were the 'guachos' and they took their culture and their traditions with them. 00.27.49 Music 00.28.23 Julian Pettifer But the guachos' cattle raising traditions didn't help them when they tried to grow crops on these high dry plains. 00.28.31 Julian Pettifer When they ploughed the land it either blew away or was washed away. Erosion was as much a threat on these wide acres as on the tiny hill farms of Honduras and the solution, in principle, lay with magic beans. It meant a fundamental break with the past. 00.28.50 Julian Pettifer Since the beginnings of agriculture some ten thousand years ago, the first step in growing crops was always to till the land, to disturb the soil, to subdue weeds and make a seed bed. 00.29.04 Julian Pettifer You could chart the whole history of agriculture from the development of the plough, from the digging stick to the massive twenty and thirty furrow machines of today. And yet here on the wide plains of the cerrado in Central Brazil, many farmers have completely abandoned their ploughs. 00.29.24 Julian Pettifer By not turning over the soil they've stabilised and improved it. 00.29.30 Julian Pettifer Grain is being planted directly into unploughed ground. 00.29.34 Julian Pettifer The planter follows in the wake of the combine that's harvesting soya. 00.29.40 Julian Pettifer The system is called zero tillage or direct planting. I heard all about it from the secretary of the Association for Zero Tillage in the Cerrado, John Landers. 00.29.51 Julian Pettifer I imagine that the idea of zero tillage isn't an easy one for some people to get used to. 00.29.58 John Landers Well you see, the farmer's been ploughing land for thousands of years and if you turn round and say to him throw your plough out of the window; he's going to think you're a nutter. You have to have a very good reason to show a farmer why he should do that and the good reason is in his pocket. 00.30.22 Julian Pettifer Zero tillage reduces fuel costs and by employing the magic of the beans and other legumes in the crop rotation, marginal land has been made profitable. 00.30.34 Julian Pettifer The objectives are much the same here on this twelve thousand hectare property in Brazil as on the one hectare plots in Guatemala and Honduras. 00.30.46 Julian Pettifer There are differences. 00.30.49 Julian Pettifer Cash crops are grown in rotation with the beans, not amongst them. 00.30.55 Julian Pettifer And instead of mucuna they're growing soya, which is both a nitrogen fixer and a cash crop. 00.31.04 Julian Pettifer How far can it go? How much further can it grow, zero tillage, in Brazil? 00.31.10 John Landers We've got about a third of the cropped area of Brazil and that is somewhere around fourteen million hectares. And I think the Brazilian farmer is showing the world an example of how to be ecologically responsible but this is not recognised even by the urban population in Brazil let alone by the rest of the world. 00.31.34 Julian Pettifer And is there a lot more land, do you think, that can benefit from this kind of husbandry? 00.31.40 John Landers We have new technology now where we can integrate livestock and crops and this means we can move high yielding crops onto degraded pastures, come back three or four years later and those pastures will treble or quadruple their carrying capacity. 00.32.02 Julian Pettifer If you mention cattle in the same breath as Brazil, it instantly triggers images of forests burning to make way for ranching to supply hamburgers to the millions. 00.32.13 Julian Pettifer But if this experiment works, the temptation to destroy forests may be just a bad memory. 00.32.22 Julian Pettifer These are just a few hundred from a herd of two thousand cattle, raised on a five thousand hectare farm where grass is grown for them in rotation with beans and sorghum. 00.32.33 Julian Pettifer It's an ingenious system. 00.32.36 Julian Pettifer But soya produces sparse foliage, so unlike mucuna it's not very good at suppressing weeds. Zero tillage, as practised here in the cerrado, uses regular doses of certain herbicides. 00.32.50 Julian Pettifer For the purist, this is seen as a shortcoming. But is it inevitable? 00.32.55 John Landers No point in just saying; oh you used more pesticides or you used more herbicides. We have to look at the overall situation of the system and what does it do for the environment and when you see the number of earthworms and the biological activity in the soil, you know there can't be anything very badly wrong with the herbicides we're using. 00.33.19 Julian Pettifer One way or another weeds have to be controlled and so far the agro-chemical companies claim they have the best answer. But for how much longer. 00.33.31 Julian Pettifer Working with land owners pioneering zero tillage is Marceo Scalea. 00.33.36 Julian Pettifer He's from the multi-national agro-chemical company, Monsanto. He advises many of the farmers, including the owner of the great herds of cattle, Sebastiao Conrado. 00.33.47 Julian Pettifer But he must wonder what the long-term future is for Monsanto products. 00.33.53 Sebastiao Conrado Subtitles The rotation of crops is very important. The pasture recovers and it's cheap. It costs me practically nothing. 00.34.07 Marceo Scalea Subtitles How long do you keep the plot for pasture? Here - how long will this area be grass? 00.34.18 Sebastiao Conrado Subtitle For two years. 00.34.20 Marceo Scalea Subtitles Two years of crops followed by two years of pasture. 00.34.23 Sebastiao Conrado Subtitles Yes. We avoid the need to use fertiliser. We keep grazing costs as low as possible... always alternating crops with grazing. 00.34.43 Julian Pettifer By including cattle as part of the rotation, Sebastiao Conrado has pushed zero tillage an important stage further. 00.34.51 Julian Pettifer This is not an organic system. The man from Monsanto is still part of the picture and these large scale farmers see no reason to exclude him. 00.35.04 Aston SEBASTIAO CONRADO Farmer Voice over As long as we farmers keep up these exchanges with the companies and keep in close contact with each other, we will make progress. With the help of the big companies who supply subsidies we can only improve. 00.35.29 Julian Pettifer While claiming that at present there is no substitute for herbicides, there is total commitment to many of the principles of sustainable agriculture. 00.35.38 Julian Pettifer And the farmers are confident that here on the cerrado they're both protecting the environment and forging a secure future for their sons and daughters. 00.35.47 Music 00.36.31 Julian Pettifer A thousand miles away life moves to a different rhythm. It's cooler and wetter but the basic challenge remains the same. 00.36.39 Music 00.36.43 Julian Pettifer In the Brazilian state of Rio Grande du Sul the use of agro-chemicals is falling as they promote radical agro-ecology. 00.36.52 Julian Pettifer Here zero tillage is just the first step in a love affair with the land. 00.36.56 Music 00.37.05 Aston JOSE DE VARGAS Agronomist Voice over Before 1990 twenty percent of the state used zero tillage. Ten years later it's ninety five percent. It's a very short time isn't it for such a major transformation. The next step is crop rotation, green fertiliser, management of the soil. It's going to take time but farmers are going to understand it perfectly. This knowledge will sweep the country from south to north because throughout Brazil most farmers are from this state - Rio Grande du Sul. 00.37.46 Julian Pettifer Jose de Vargas helped to found a local farmers association. 00.37.51 Julian Pettifer These are enthusiasts emphatic in their belief that sustainable agriculture is the only way forward. 00.38.00 Jose de Vargas Voice over The population is growing, production is rising, land is being destroyed. We have a technique that can regenerate soil from here to China. 00.38.09 Music 00.38.24 Julian Pettifer These boys are growing up on a one thousand hectare estate. It's close to one hundred percent organic, using virtually no agro-chemicals. And it's a thriving concern. 00.38.37 Julian Pettifer The secret is that farmers here spend as much time planning as planting. 00.38.46 Julian Pettifer They meet regularly at each other's homes. 00.38.49 Julian Pettifer Today's gathering is hosted by Ulfried Arns. 00.38.57 Julian Pettifer There's a free flow of opinion and information between farmers and agronomists. 00.39.07 Julian Pettifer All of them are passionate about improving their soil. Ulfried Arns wanted to demonstrate what he'd achieved. 00.39.14 Julian Pettifer Can you tell just by looking at this soil that it's in good condition? 00.39.27 Ulfried Arns Voice over The soil here is structured, it's granulated, it's agglutinated, structured. This is very important because the rainwater is absorbed and there's no run off. The rainwater infiltrates. Agglutinated soil is a sign of fertility. It smells of the forest. 00.39.57 Julian Pettifer It's true, it's true, it does, it smells just like a forest, a wood. 00.40.06 Ulfried Arns Voice over These little creatures are crucial to the tilling of the soil. They are our modern plough. 00.40.17 Julian Pettifer So I imagine that you are, you're no friend of the agro-chemical companies? 00.40.25 Ulfried Arns Voice over Not in the least, quite the opposite. They don't like us because we've gone down this road of using this herbicide. 00.40.34 Music 00.40.37 Julian Pettifer Ulfried promised me a treat - a glimpse of his favourite green manure. It's not mucuna but it is a magical plant. 00.40.46 Julian Pettifer What, what do we have there? Is this... 00.40.51 Ulfried Arns Voice over This is sunhemp. 00.40.59 Ulfried Arns Voice over It's a fantastic plant for us. It has a root system three metres deep. 00.41.08 Ulfried Arns Voice over It reaches much deeper layers of soil than traditional crops. It brings phosphorous and potassium up from the sub-surface to fertilise plants such as corn, soya and wheat. It's a fantastic strong plant, which nourishes soil and acts as a cover crop. We have great hopes that this plant will do well from now on. 00.41.43 Julian Pettifer If alternative agriculture works for the farmers that's a blessing. But the benefits may go much further with a special reward for all of us. 00.41.52 Aston Professor JULES PRETTY University of Essex This soil is full of carbon. It's got lots of organic matter, which has been produced from the bean. But the important thing about organic matter is about half of it is carbon and we face a really serious challenge globally at the moment because we have too much carbon in the atmosphere and too little in the soil. And these farmers are effectively sucking up carbon into the soil and so not only is that helping to improve the system for the farmer, it's also providing a service to us all because it's going to slow down climate change. 00.42.21 Aston ROLAND BUNCH Director, COSECHA The new Head of the Rockafeller Foundation is saying we have to have a green, green revolution. In other words a revolution that also takes in the ideas of, of ecology and a use of nature, a working together with nature rather than, you know, sort of zapping everything that nature gives to you. I mean you know, an insect comes you kill it, you know a weed comes you kill it and all this sort of thing. We have to work with nature not against it. 00.42.44 Professor Jules Pretty The sad thing is that in the last two generations, the last fifty years, in our invention of modern industrialised agriculture is that we've forgotten and that knowledge has disappeared in many systems and the actual technologies have disappeared. We need to rediscover them but to do that in a way that really does take things forward. I don't think we'll be looking back, I think we're looking forward to a new revolution that actually is led by small scale farmers in developing countries. 00.43.09 Music 00.43.12 Julian Pettifer It's not often that we bring you good news on the environment. 00.43.15 Music 00.43.17 Julian Pettifer But damaged land is being rescued and there's now a chance to protect forests and slow down climate change and even to feed the world in perpetuity. 00.43.27 Music 00.43.30 Julian Pettifer And if that sounds like magic much of the credit must go to the beans. 00.43.35 End Music www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.41 Credits Reporter JULIAN PETTIFER Produced & Directed by SUZANNE CAMPBELL-JONES Camera ELIO PADILLA BRIAN SEWELL Sound GABRIEL DE ALVARENGA Music SAFFRON ALLEN Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE VT Editor NICK KAMPA Graphic Design NICOLA OWEN Production Team RACHALE DAVIES SARAH BRODBIN NILA KARADIA JULIA DANNENBERG ANJANA SHARMA Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager IRENE OZGA Film Research NICK DODD Research STEEN JOHANSEN GIDEON BOULTING Picture Editor SHELAGH BRADY Deputy Editor FARAH DURRANI 00.44.05 Editor FIONA MURCH BBC (c) BBC MMI 00.44.09 End BBC Correspondent 1 1