Coaching Dairy Farmers Through Regenerative Transition

Last month we wrapped up our series on regenerative water management, and today we’re kicking off a new series on regenerative animal management. Both of these series correspond to master’s programs that we’re currently building with our university partners here at Climate Farmers, and we’ll eventually be using these interviews as supplementary resources for the academic programs. The aim is to introduce regenerative management into agronomy and food science programs at universities around Europe, improving access to these concepts at a high level in education and hopefully helping to train the next generation of field professionals who can assist farmers in managing their operations more holistically and with a stronger understanding of ecological processes.

To kick off the animal management series I’m speaking with Maarten Sillekens, a former dairy farmer and current farm coach who brings more than three decades of experience working with dairy farms in Germany and Poland. During COVID, his discovery of holistic management and the work of people like Allan Savory and Gabe Brown changed the way he thought about the challenges he had spent his career trying to solve. He has since become a Savory-accredited educator and now works with dairy farmers across Europe, including around 55 farms through Climate Farmers and other transition programs, as well as Arla’s regenerative pilot farms in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.

In this conversation we look at what regenerative animal management can actually mean in the context of a modern dairy operation. Maarten contrasts the high capital costs and dependence on fertilizer, concentrates, silage, machinery, and fossil fuels of many barn-based systems with approaches that make much greater use of grazing, diverse herbal leys, better pasture management, and even mobile milking. More importantly though, we get into the process he uses to help farmers make that transition. Rather than starting with a prescribed set of regenerative practices, Maarten begins by asking farmers to define what they actually want their farm and their life to look like, then assesses things like sunlight capture, water and mineral cycling, biodiversity, animal health, veterinary and reproduction costs, and other indicators of how the whole system is functioning. From there it becomes a process of small experiments, careful monitoring, learning, and adaptation. We also talk about something that can easily get lost in