On his 70-hectar farm in the French Sologne region, conservation farmer Franck Baechler happily combines cereal cropping with animal husbandry. Herds of Angus cattle, local landrace sheep and even chickens can be spotted on his crop fields, moving from one temporary paddock to the next. Franck is a practitioner of dynamic rotational grazing. What’s more, none of his animals ever return to the shed! The self-sufficient system he’s put into place works strictly without sheltering and large machinery. All decisions here are made with one specific goal in mind: creating a fertile, living soil.
While it’s also an additional source of income, for Franck, livestock farming has another, more important function, particularly with regard to his main economic activity, cereal cropping. Having animals above ground helps boost carbon flow underneath; it increases organic matter in the soil, and ultimately, leads to rising levels of soil fertility. Franck is indeed very well placed for improvement of such kind. His farm, “Angus de Sologne”, sits just next to that of Frédéric Thomas, one of the pioneers of conservation agriculture in France.
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“Tous Terriens !” is an independent series, born from a sense of civic and professional duty to deliver quality information on the environmental and societal issues of our day. In keeping with this, I’ve self-financed this video.
Author and producer:
Pierre Girard
Co-author and camera,
translation and subtitles (FR/EN/DE):
Geoffrey Schöning
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