Good day, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name's Ryan Cullen. I manage a small-scale—in our case, 10 acres—diversified farm. We predominately grow market garden vegetables intensively, but are integrating small-scale livestock systems and small fruit and nut tree systems in a rural and peri-urban context. I've also designed and managed a small-scale, high-tech and high-yield urban farm in an academic setting at our local college, while also learning and getting training from some of the leading small-scale and regenerative farmers around the world. I'm focused on demonstrating the viability of small-scale, regenerative agriculture farms, teaching and training a new generation of farmers and growers and redefining the paradigms in horticulture, food and farming and how they connect to our everyday life.
Regardless of the context of any of these farms, I want to stress the importance of how some of them are being managed.
On our farm, we plan and manage our farm holistically following regenerative farming principles, meaning we consider how our resource base, our decisions, our production systems and outcomes not only affect our bottom line but also positively affect our environment and the people in our community. Regenerative agriculture is all about managing holistically, so we make decisions that are not just based on economics but include the social and environmental impacts and outcomes as well.
Building soil, as we've heard through many of the speakers today, is an important part as well. It has the power to sequester carbon, cycle nutrients and produce life. We focus on systems that improve soil health, not destroy it, whether it be no-till cover crop systems, not spraying herbicides and pesticides, or using organic inputs.
We try to mimic ecosystem processes, understanding how nature functions in wholes, recognizing natural laws and patterns in nature and how we can use nature to create a niche for our production systems and our economies, and integrating these laws, patterns and systems into our production systems and our everyday farm business. We strive to use local inputs for local outputs, capitalizing on circular economies using wastes, particularly our own, as resources, and integrating our systems so the inputs for the farm come from the farm.
We focus on mobile, scalable infrastructure that's low tech, innovative, energy efficient and useful technology applied with low capital costs and minimal fossil fuel use. We're investing in management and information, not expensive infrastructure with high capital costs.
Our model's direct-to-consumer sales and certified by our customers. We very much meet and exceed organic standards, but don't believe we should have to pay for certification to demonstrate we have safe and high-quality products. We maintain transparency about what we do and how we do it by inviting the public and our customers to be part of the experience, to see how their food's grown, to understand how we do it and educate people on where their food is coming from, trying to put the farm at the centre of the community and making it an integral part of the social fabric.
We're ecologically, socially and economically regenerative. We're attempting to build up multiple forms of capital, not just economic forms. We're trying to create a resource base in harmony with nature, society and ourselves that's sustainable, viable and resilient. If farms are going to be regenerative, we need to work to a triple bottom line that works to keep our business, the regeneration of the land and our customer satisfaction in equal consideration.
What we need in agriculture are production systems at various scales fit to their context. Whether it's 1,000 acres in Saskatchewan or a quarter-acre in the city, we need integrated systems that permeate the social fabric of our lives, produce high-quality food for people and grow it locally with local labour accessible and convenient to the local population. We need systems that regenerate our landscape, cities and countryside and are integrated into the communities, economies and environments we're living in today.
Production systems that are viable agricultural models and use useful technologies already exist and are being practised. We need to promote these systems and models and promote local inputs and outputs, create local jobs from a skilled local workforce and integrate these systems into our local communities and economies. We need to take a holistic approach that is regenerative, and that's what we're trying to do.
Thank you.