Practical Regeneration: Taber author pens ag book

Advance Photo Submitted. AG BOOK: Scott Gillespie at Analog Books in Lethbridge. His book Practical Regeneration is on the shelf behind him on the right just below shoulder level.

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A local consultant and agronomist has taken his years of experience and observation in the field and captured them in a new book: Practical Regeneration – Realistic Strategies for Climate Smart Agriculture. Scott Gillespie had already composed some of the material that would become the contents of the book and started his own business, Plants Dig Soil Consulting Ltd., before the project began. As an introduction to his book, Gillespie’s webpage says, “In these days of climate-change anxiety…people choose agricultural systems that seem right on the surface but aren’t actually making a difference. Many times, a new idea is simply a good hypothesis.”

 His online bio reveals some of his history. “I can never remember a time that agriculture was not a part of my life,” it says. “I grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Ontario. All of my off-farm jobs while growing up were agriculture related – from collecting eggs at a neighbours’ chicken farm, to working at corn breeding plots, and finally to working at an agricultural input company mixing fertilizer and distributing chemicals.”

 Gillespie completed a bachelor’s degree in agriculture at the University of Guelph and later moved to Manitoba to complete a master’s degree in plant science. From there he continued  further west, finding a career home in the Taber region. From 2007 to 2011, he was employed by a local agriculture company and then moved to working on a large farm in Scandia for six years before starting his own business in 2018.

 He maintains his Certified Crop Advisor status through continuing education and says he exceeds the standards required. Practicing agronomy in Alberta also requires membership in the Alberta Institute of Agrologists, and he’s a registered member in good standing. His ongoing education for his CCA helps to maintain his Professional Agrologist (P.Ag.) designation.

 His book emerged from the knowledge he’s gained from long experience. “It’s a response to a lot of books that are out there that are hyping up what can be done in regenerative agriculture. I could see that there are a lot of good ideas that need a little bit more thought behind them. They can start working at the beginning but maybe they aren’t working the way people think they are,” he said.

 “I have four sections to the book where I go through stepping back and looking at the long view on how things could regenerate or how the soil could work. Then I move to what I see as the way you could get started but also looking at it through an economic lens, looking at the return on investment and the practical things that you can do. Then I look at some of the more advanced practices or things that you can think about once you have the basics in place. I finish off with the whole carbon capture idea and whether it’s something you should pursue. The book is set up so that it’s not supposed to be prescriptive but to help people think through how things can work on their farm.”

 The book gets practical about how farmers can think about implementing healthy-soil practices such as cover crops and intercropping. He explained the meaning of those terms, saying, “Cover crops have become a big thing that people are trying to bring back. They’re a crop that you don’t harvest off the land or sell. They’re to improve the soil in the literal sense of covering it but also by the roots working in it continuing to feed the microbes with sugars instead of them having to break down organic matter to survive. There are areas where they work very well: in high rainfall areas where you get water that soaks deep into the soil and goes into the groundwater, they can do a lot to prevent nutrients from going deeper or being lost through tile drainage due to excess water. Here, their best fit is going to be potatoes, sugar beets, or dry beans where you end up with very little soil cover after harvest to prevent wind erosion.” He said that cover crops require an extra season and may have potential under irrigation in southern Alberta but would be limited by dry years and water restrictions.

 “Intercropping is the idea of planting two or more crops at once, usually just two. Sometimes people are doing it just because they think it’s better, but you have to have some benefit. One that has worked really well in the prairies, not necessarily for this region, is chickpea and flax. It seems to work well because there’s less disease in the chickpea because the plant has something to hold it up. The other benefit is that chickpeas don’t like to mature, whereas if the flax is there using up the water it can help force them into maturity. Also, it’s an easy crop to separate because you get the big chickpeas and the small flax seeds.” He said that separating the seeds can be problematic and a limiting factor in the use of intercropping.

 For the book, Gillespie collaborated with Friesen Press, a business that uses a hybrid model, combining self-publishing with supported publishing which includes cover design, editing and printing. Their work together started in the winter of 2022 and was basically a year-long process with the editing cycle and draft improvements. “What I like about this particular publisher is that they’re an offshoot of a printing company and they know how to get it to all the different channels and to major distributors,” he said.

 Practical Regeneration is available online through plantsdigsoil.com/books or in a variety of stores including Alberta UFAs, the U of L bookstore, and Analog Books. Visit the website for more info.