When a farmer saw a field of dead worms, he started to pay much greater attention to underground life

One day a few years ago, Sean O’Farrell went out to his fields to do a routine farm job: he spread 3,000 gallons of slurry – animal excrement and urine, packed full of nutrients, that act as a fertiliser to make the grass grow – over each acre on his north Tipperary farm. He didn’t think any more of it until the following day, when he walked back through his land, set on the western slopes of the Devil’s Bit Mountains, to look around. What he discovered changed the way he farmed.

Thousands of earthworms, apparently suffocated, were strewn dead across the soil. It was, said O’Farrell, a “sad picture; the feeling was almost of grieving because of the loss of earthworms, which are so important in the system”. What confronted him, a farmer with control over 60 acres, triggered him to question how he could work the land to produce food with a more ecological vision in mind.

O’Farrell committed to working with nature. His land is divided into 10 small fields delineated by thick, native hedgerows. He keeps cows, pigs, geese and chickens, and produces various vegetables, such as kale, peas, carrots, broccoli and potatoes. Not for him the stranglehold of hyperspecialised monoculture and efficiency; instead, he operates on a principle that diversity echoes what is found in nature and is, therefore, more resilient.

Like other farmers who have experienced similar Damascene moments, O’Farrell’s response to a field of dead worms was to pay much greater attention to underground life. He stopped using chemicals and pesticides and focused instead on well-matured compost to support the microbes in the soil. Since then, his farm has become a centre for educating young students and community groups about nature-based farming.

O’Farrell is part of a small but growing group of farmers who have decided to take a similar ecological, long-term approach to food production. Set up in 2018, the Farming for Nature network was the brainchild of Dr Brendan Dunford and Brigid Barry. Both were involved in the pioneering, EU award-winning Burren Life Programme, which successfully channelled public money to 330 Clare farmers to deliver for nature.

With more than 100 farmers involved, Farming for Nature isn’t about small-scale farmers disaffected by “Big Ag”; instead, it includes a wide variety of operators, including large dairy and tillage farmers who want to shift their methods towards a more ecological approach.

Seven years ago, Colm Flynn – a fourth-generation barley, oat and wheat farmer from Kildare – had a deep sense that something was seriously wrong when he noticed that the birds were no longer following his tractor as he ploughed his fields; why would they, if there was no life in the soil to eat? And so, over time, he did what works for life: he moved away from using “cides” (the Latin word for “killer”: pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc) and focused on rehabilitating and building up soil biology.

The farmers’ collective knowledge and practical experience of what works for nature have been captured in the recently published Farming for Nature Handbook. Peppered throughout with exquisite, hand-drawn illustrations by Sligo beef farmer Clive Bright, the book is a bible for anyone who wants to attract wildlife to their land. This is no attempt at hippy-dippy organic conversion therapy; instead, the practical suggestions are workable within any system of any size, intensive or not, and are supported with testimonies from farmers who’ve already done it.

For Donal Sheehan, a conventional dairy farmer in Cork, the idea is to “push the boundaries as far as we can until we get a better balance between nature and food production”. One simple way he’s done this is to leave small bunches of nettles to grow in the middle of his fields to encourage caterpillars that feed off the plant. A few years ago, the cuckoo returned to Donal’s farm for the first time in decades. He spotted it eating the caterpillars on the nettles. “It just makes you feel good.”

We all know the issues facing us – climate change, nature loss, water pollution. It’s the solutions we need, at a rapid pace, to step out of disaster, gloom-and-doom mode towards something more hopeful. The research supports ecological farming as a pathway towards greater resilience. A global World Bank report of hundreds of scientists concluded that “more attention to agro-ecological sciences will address environmental issues while increasing productivity”. Put simply, diverse and nature-focused farms will be more able to withstand the pressures and shocks ahead.

Sean O’Farrell’s motivation is simple. “I only know the farmer that was here before I was – I don’t know who was before him, and I don’t know who will come after me. That’s why I like to plant the trees and build the ponds – for future generations who will manage the land.”