Regenerative agriculture — with the goal of healing and restoring ecosystems, not just sustaining them — goes beyond growing grapes and making fine wine for Ivor Jeramaz, winemaker and vice president of vineyards and production at Grgich Hills Estate in Napa Valley.

“I’m passionate about regenerative farming. I have six kids, I want them to live long, healthy lives. I don’t think it’s possible with the food that we produce today,” he said.

His operation has been organic for 25 years. But even organic food only ensures people aren’t eating poison; but does it have quality and the nutrients people need, he said in a livestream lecture presented by the Robert Mondavi Institute and UC Davis Library.

Regenerative farming, in his opinion, is the only way forward to produce healthy food.

Chemical inputs

He said today’s farming is all about chemical inputs, it’s inefficient, pollutes and degrades soil.

Conventional farmers say they need synthetic fertilizers because growing and harvesting deplete nutrients. If they don’t put on fertilizers, they’ll run out of nutrients.

Jeramaz said that’s not true. There’s no shortage of nutrients. Soil test shows thousands of pounds of nutrients per acre. But they’re not in ionic form, they’re tied to something else, he said.

“So there’s no shortage of nutrients below our feet, we’ll never run out,” he said with a Croatian accent.

As for nitrogen, there’s 17 million pounds above every acre. But it has a triple bond and plants can’t grab it. But microbes can, he said.

“So, there is the solution for our problem,” he said.

Soil functionality

Lack of nutrients isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of functionality of soil. But there is a way to solve the problem, he said.

“We already have a recipe, it’s been in place for 430 million years, and it’s called liquid carbon pathway,” he said.

“Liquid carbon pathway starts with photosynthesis. Before we can have that, we have to have green growing crop,” he said.

His operation relies on cover crops when the grapevines go dormant in the winter.

“So our job as a farmer, we have to capture energy of sun. That’s our main job. So we are capturing it through photosynthesis, putting carbon … and new energy into plants,” he said.

Symbiosis

Carbohydrates, simple sugars, are produced in leaves, and 50% of those carbohydrates are used to feed microbes.

“So this is that natural system, (it has) been working for 430 million years,” he said.

Plants feed the microbes, give them energy in exchange for nutrients. If a plant needs calcium, for example, it can’t just crab it from calcium carbonate. Only microbes and enzymes can dissolve it and make it available to the plant.

“When we study nature, we believe everything fights in nature. But overwhelmingly, nature works together — if you set it up that way,” he said.

To start, no-till is very important. Tilling destroys the structure of soil, but it also favors bacterial dominance as opposed to fungal dominance. Fungi create healthy soil, improve soil structure and improve availability of nutrients.

Ancient trees

On the California coast, a person might encounter a sequoia tree that is 2,000 years old.

“If this theory of depleting nutrients works, how the heck (is) that the tree is still there after 2,000 years?” he asked.

Beneath the tree are its roots and probably a thousand times more fungi. It’s an original world wide web underground.

“So what is fascinating about this is that all plants that you grow in your vineyard or anywhere are connected and there’s … highways,” he said.

Biodiversity

Cover cropping is also important because structuring soil can only be achieved in the presence of living roots. And there has to be at least four functional families of plants such as grasses, broadleaf plants and flowering plants.

“Why? Because each family of plants come with their own biodiversity around roots. You need as many as possible to work to create quorums,” he said.

When microbes reach a quorum or threshold, the microbial community begins to function as a coordinated organism and can perform tasks that individual microbes can’t. They can switch on genes that affect genetic expression in host plants, such as drought and disease tolerance, according to Chistine Jones, a noted Australian soil ecologist.

Biodiversity of plants and animals is a key component of a healthy farm — healthy farm equals healthy soil equals healthy people, Jeramaz said.