The eco-friendly Bec-Hellouin farm is a model in France

Brut America

These french farmers are trying to reinvent agriculture.   Follow Brut nature in Normandy, on a tour of Bec-Hellouin, one of the most eco-friendly experimental farms in Europe.

Transcript

00:00Hello, welcome to the Bec-et-Loin farm, a small Normande farm where we practice permaculture and ecoculture.

00:09So if you want to know what it looks like, I invite you to follow me.

00:22Here we are in the mini garden forest.

00:24A mini garden forest, I think it's the only one in the world.

00:31A garden forest is a layered system, like a natural forest.

00:36Except that here, almost all the vegetables are edible.

00:39So we have a canopy that is made up of, in the case of the mini garden forest,

00:44small fruit trees that remain of a small size, like for example this peach tree here.

00:51Then we have an intermediate strata of bushes.

00:54Here we have raspberries, here we have blackberries, or cassis that are grafted on a stem, a small trunk.

01:03And then on the ground we have aromatic plants, or behind us, hazelnuts.

01:09And so it's a system that is very efficient from an energy point of view,

01:14because the light is captured a little at all levels.

01:18And there are also even climbing plants, like these giant walls without thorns,

01:25which are lianas, which climb a bit like in tropical forests,

01:28the lianas that climb on the trunks, towards the sun, towards the canopy.

01:33This wall is particularly loaded.

01:38I find in the garden forest the sensations that I had,

01:42because in my previous life I was a sailor, I had a school boat.

01:47And for 15 years we shared the lives of the first peoples,

01:50a lot with the natives of the Amazon, or with the Papuans, the Vanuatu, the aborigines in Australia.

01:57And somewhere I tell myself, here in Bekeloin, we are trying to become peasant hunter-gatherers.

02:04That is to say, we do not plow the soil, we work it less and less.

02:09And as we have planted thousands of trees and perennial plants, we are becoming more and more gatherers.

02:15And over the years, suddenly, our impact on the planet becomes lighter and lighter.

02:20And we are fed by all this fertility that nature offers us.

02:25It is a bio-inspired system, that is to say, it is a system that takes nature as a model.

02:30Here in temperate Europe, the climax, what is called the climax of vegetation,

02:36that is to say, the natural state of completion of an ecosystem that spontaneously evolves,

02:42is the forest.

02:43It does not make much sense to cut down trees and to keep large open spaces,

02:49on a model of steppes, in fact, of plains.

02:52We will always fight against the tendency of nature to return to the forest.

02:57So the garden forest is a way to go in the direction of life.

03:00It is a way to go in the current of nature and to accompany this movement that brings us back to the forest.

03:08And the results of the first three years have been even beyond our expectations in terms of productivity.

03:14The garden forest imposes much less constraints than the marshes,

03:18where you really have to be there 7 days out of 7 in the season.

03:21It lives its life widely, but it gives us an abundance of good things.

03:38Here we are really in the heart of the farm from the point of view of vegetable crops.

03:47In fact, there were some quite surprising observations that we were able to make

03:53after a thousand difficulties during the first years.

03:57We were able to discover that against all odds, working entirely by hand

04:02allowed us to gain a lot in productivity per square meter.

04:06In terms of hourly productivity, we produce as much,

04:09largely as much as our colleagues with a tractor, but on much larger areas.

04:14And there is a study that made a lot of noise, which was carried out in this farm by INRA and Agroparitec,

04:20which was able to show that by working completely by hand, with very simple tools,

04:24we produced 55 euros of vegetables per square meter cultivated.

04:29I think that now the results are superior, because these are results from 2014-2015.

04:34This is already good news, but there is a second good news,

04:39which I think the public who heard about this study did not necessarily understand.

04:43If you manage to produce as much on a tenth of a hectare as on a hectare,

04:48you release 9 tenths of a hectare.

04:50And that's just huge, because these 9 tenths of a hectare can be dedicated to much more natural spaces,

04:58and in the first place to plant trees absolutely everywhere.

05:02Here, if you want to turn around, we see that there are trees everywhere in this farm.

05:07We planted thousands and thousands and thousands of trees.

05:10And for us, it is the trees that will save the planet.

05:13As a result, we are more tree farmers than farmers.

05:18And even here in the greenhouse, we sought to recreate a much more natural environment.

05:23So we planted, for example, a kind of mini Creole garden,

05:28with figs, citrus trees, climbing plants, flowers and aromatic plants that attract pollinators,

05:36ponds that create a microclimate and also promote the presence of pollinators.

05:43What makes this greenhouse, which is originally a kind of very artificial plastic bubble,

05:51we have re-natured it a lot and introduced more perennial plants.

05:55And as a result, we also practice a lot of cultural associations.

05:59That is, we very rarely have a single culture in the farm.

06:03We associate many different plants and they help each other, they protect each other.

06:09And we also introduced animals.

06:12If you want to come and see, we even have a chicken coop in the greenhouse.

06:18The chicken coop is also a kind of organic waste composting center of the greenhouse.

06:26So when we cut or weed, it feeds the chickens, which turns it into a super compost.

06:32And suddenly, we have a little surprising visions, for example, of a banana tree, a fig tree,

06:39tomatoes, here are some pretty purple black tomatoes, which grow in association with basil.

06:47Here we have passion fruits.

06:50So somewhere, yes, we are in a greenhouse, but we are trying to recreate a kind of small food jungle.

06:58And we realize that the more we complexify, the easier our life becomes.

07:04And this is one of the great lessons that nature gives us.

07:07It is that nature always goes towards more complex systems.

07:11And modern agriculture does exactly the opposite.

07:13It artificializes, it simplifies the agro-systems.

07:17We seek to closely associate trees, animals, cultivated plants.

07:23And this complexity allows the ecosystem services to express themselves.

07:28And suddenly, we intervene less and less.

07:31We have less intervention to protect crops, to fertilize soils, etc.

07:37Because it is nature that takes care of it in our place.

07:52I will introduce you to Swan, which is our twin.

07:56There, the poor one is at work, because she has an abscess in a shoe.

08:00But so, hello Swan!

08:02We have been working together for only 7 years.

08:05Before, we had another horse for 14 years.

08:08And part of the farm is still managed by animal traction.

08:11But with modern tools.

08:13But I couldn't show you that today, because Swan is forced to rest.

08:19Good luck, Swan!

08:27In our farm, our dream is to try to practice an agriculture without oil.

08:31Or with as little oil as possible.

08:33Which works with the sun.

08:35So we are always looking for ways to replace thermal engines with manual tools.

08:40So for example, we just made hay last week with our horse.

08:47We cultivate everything by hand.

08:51We have a holistic grazing system.

08:54That is to say, small meadows, and the animals turn from meadow to meadow.

08:58Sheep in this case, and then our equidae.

09:01And we even have trials of cereals without oil.

09:08So these are varieties from the past.

09:10With much higher straws than modern wheat.

09:13We try to cultivate them only by hand.

09:16So it's totally experimental.

09:18The goal is just to feed the family.

09:20But we like to find knowledge from the past.

09:22How people fed themselves when there were no harvesters.

09:25It is conducted in agroforestry.

09:27So there are fruit trees all around this plot.

09:30And we would like to develop our trials on cereals from year to year.

09:47This is our secret garden, if I may say so.

09:50We dug 25 mares on the farm.

09:53And it was time, two years ago.

09:55And it's for us a bit of a resource site.

09:59And for our team too, and our interns.

10:01Because I would say that a farm like this is much more than a production tool.

10:07OK, we try to produce food, it's our job.

10:10But it is above all a place of reconnection with nature.

10:13And one of the joys we have is to see that the farm is a real oasis of biodiversity.

10:18These water points contribute a lot.

10:20We have fishermen, herons, seagulls.

10:24Frogs, toads.

10:26We have more than 10 species of libellules.

10:28Including the very pretty blue libellule, which is called mercury agrion.

10:32So at first we intervene, we dig, we plant.

10:36And then very quickly nature takes over the plot.

10:39And then, hop, she introduces plants, animals.

10:42Even trouts have come sometimes in some ponds.

10:46All alone, we don't know how they got there.

10:48And it's quite fabulous because every day we are amazed by this spectacle of life unfolding.

10:57And we have the impression that our little town finds meaning.

11:01That is to say that we can contribute to doing good to the planet.

11:05We can contribute to doing good to the planet.

11:08This type of farm produces food.

11:11It produces social bonds.

11:13It produces joy.

11:14It produces knowledge.

11:16And it also produces meaning, in a way.

11:19So our farm is tiny.

11:21Maybe exaggeratedly mediaized.

11:23But if it could give thousands of people the desire to create their own place that looks like them.

11:32I would say that this farm has had a useful role.

11:36And then everywhere there will be farms, gardens, forest gardens.

11:40And little by little, little by little, we may be able to heal the earth.

11:45It's my dream.

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