Raymond Auerbach Part 2: Researcher and policy maker

The Transition to Teaching and Research

After twenty years of hands-on farming, I realized that to truly make an impact in agriculture, I needed the tools of science. After a long discussion with my wife Christina about our future, I decided to take a position as senior technician in agronomy at Fort Hare University. Our twins were just one year old at the time, making it a significant transition for our family, from farming in Kokstad to the beginning of an academic career in the Eastern Cape.

When I look back at the workings of destiny, I see how each challenge and opportunity prepared me for the next phase of my work. Even the setbacks ultimately contributed to a deeper understanding of how to create truly sustainable food systems; from a small farm in the mountains, we moved into the academic world.

At Fort Hare in 1986, I was fortunate to work with two remarkable professors. Jean Marais taught me the intricacies of field research, while Raymond Harry introduced me to agricultural chemistry. This was particularly valuable since I had previously started a soil laboratory on our farm in Kokstad, but it was quite primitive. I came to understand that soil science stands firmly on three legs: soil biology, soil physics, and soil chemistry.

To understand soil, you need to understand all three. We organic farmers are usually quite good on the biological side, but we're often very poor on the chemical side.

I immersed myself in studies, taking Agricultural Chemistry 101 and 201 with Raymond Harry, and Soil Microbiology with Prof John Mildenhall. This intensive year of learning complemented my practical experience and gave me the scientific foundation I needed.

My journey continued at the Institute of Natural Resources in Pietermaritzburg in 1987, where I ran the education program and managed Nansindlela, a training farm at Inchanga. We conducted short courses in poultry and vegetable production. While the approach was fairly conventional at first, I gradually steered the institute toward a more organic, agroecological approach. Prof Charles Breen, INR Director, taught me how to write scientifically and he and Prof John Lea supervised my MSc research. I had taken a number of courses in soil chemistry, biometry, design of field experiments and agronomic field techniques, and was granted BSc Honours status and eventually gained my MSc.

Learning Humility in Teaching

My life has unfolded in phases. The first phase was farming—getting my hands in the soil and learning firsthand what the land had to teach me. Then came the second phase, where I found myself training farmers, sharing what I'd learned while continuing to learn from them.

I often joke that when I started in organic farming, everybody knew I was nuts. Twenty years later, they thought, "Well, maybe he's not nuts." Then they made me a professor, and now, suddenly, the whole organic movement has become mainstream. It's been quite a journey!

The shift from being a farmer to becoming a trainer was significant. When I returned from Australia, I arrived with a substantial ego. I was quite certain that I was going to change the course of African history and that I knew exactly what to do.

One of the seminal moments in my development occurred when Bill Mollison, the co-founder of permaculture, visited our farm in 1992. I kept pestering him because he had written about permaculture ethics in his books, and I wanted to know more about the spiritual side. After some persistence, he turned to me and said, "Raymond, you've had some pretty intense spiritual experiences, haven't you?" When I confirmed this, he simply replied, "Well, do us a favor, keep it to yourself!"

Bill's message was clear: don't impose your spiritual and cultural baggage on the people you work with. That would be arrogant and unhelpful. This warning has stayed with me throughout my career—a constant reminder that real education is about empowerment, not imposition.

As trainers, we who are enthusiastic about organics, biodynamics, or agroecology tend to be pioneers. And pioneers are typically a fairly bumptious lot—people with strong opinions. You need strong convictions to get things going and some charisma to rally people around you.

But as Lao Tzu wisely said long ago, "In the end, if you work properly with the people, they will say, 'We did this for ourselves.'" I believe Lao Tzu got it right—sustainable development requires communities to be in charge. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tries to give them the tools to analyze their situation.

Academic Development and Research Focus

During this period, I completed my MSc, researching maize farming systems among Zulu farmers in southern KwaZulu-Natal. I had already adopted the farming systems research and extension approach, which integrates farmer knowledge with extension work and scientific research.

My rainwater harvesting system became the focus of my PhD research at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. I worked under professors Niels Röling and Eric Goewie, who helped shape my understanding of participatory research methodologies. I spent four months in Holland with my family in 1998, writing up my thesis while my children attended local schools.

I defended my thesis in June 1999, returning to South Africa with a PhD and a much more nuanced understanding of how to combine scientific rigor with farmer empowerment.

My MSc and PhD process taught me about scientific honesty and statistics, but also about participatory action research and how to learn with farmers.

Comparative Research on Farming Systems

After completing my PhD and running Rainman for some time, I became Professor of Soil Science and Plant Production at Nelson Mandela University’s George Campus. This position allowed me to conduct comprehensive comparative trials between organic and conventional farming methods (the Mandela Trials).

Our research followed a systematic approach over four years. In the first year, organic yields were 25% lower than conventional. We had applied a little lime to the very acidic soils, and the organic plots received compost while the conventional plots received substantial dressings of synthetic chemical fertilizer which produced an immediate response.

In the second year, yields in both systems increased, partly due to better rainfall, but the gap widened to 31%. The organic system was improving – soil biology was developing, acidity was decreasing, organic matter was increasing – but phosphate levels remained very low, and so the yield gap had widened.

I purposely hadn't given any rock phosphate to the organic system because I wanted to see how much the compost alone could accomplish. The compost did help, but not enough. Where soils are acidic with high levels of exchangeable aluminium (Al), the soil phosphate (P) is bound to the Al oxides, and is therefore not available as a plant nutrient. This is the case with many soils in Southern Africa, and the conventional approach is to use lime, and then use synthetic fertilizer which again makes the soil acidic.

During the third year, we applied 900 kilograms per hectare of rock phosphate to the organic system; this natural fertilizer is simply ground up rock which is high in P. That year – which happened to be a drought year – the organic system outperformed the conventional. This wasn't entirely surprising, as organic systems tend to perform better during dry periods due to improved water retention in the humus-rich soil. Nevertheless, the organic yields in the third year were higher than even the conventional yields in the second, wetter, year! This is, of course, very important in our times of climate change!

The fourth year brought an unexpected complication when my student used poor-quality compost, against my instructions. This created what initially seemed like a setback but ultimately proved instructive. The conventionally-grown monocrop cabbage far outperformed its organic counterpart. However, in our rotation system (cabbage, sweet potato, cowpea, then cabbage again), the organic cabbage following cowpea nearly matched the yield of rotated conventional cabbage, despite the poor compost, which had almost no N or P.

This just showed that crop rotation by itself was a very big part of the answer: when the cabbage followed cowpea, a legume which fixes nitrogen (N), even though the compost had very little N, the residual N from the preceding cowpea crop was enough to nourish the following cabbage crop! In spite of the poor-quality compost, the crop rotation alone was enough to supply adequate N to the cabbage crop.

Our research thus yielded three crucial insights for organic farmers:

1. You must establish healthy soil biology through quality compost, possibly with a little lime to address acidity, and assisted by mulch and crop rotation;

2. In phosphate-deficient soils, you need to add rock phosphate rather than waiting for decades for it to become available naturally;

3. High-quality compost is essential for providing sufficient nitrogen to crops, and building up colloidal humus in the soil.

These findings are detailed in the book "Organic Food Systems: Meeting the Needs of Southern Africa," published in 2020, with chapters 18-22 covering our research results. Section One deals with Conceptual and Global Perspectives; Section Two is about Capacity Building and Climate Change. Section Three deals with Supporting Organic Farmers while the final section is on Upscaling the Organic Sector in Africa.

Policy Work in Post-Apartheid South Africa

The early 1990s were a transformative time in South Africa. I became involved with the ANC's Land & Agricultural Policy Centre (LAPC), helping to develop rural development policy during this critical transition period. Working through LAPC, which served as a think tank for the ANC, I contributed to the white paper on agriculture and rural development in 1994-95, and to the ANC’s pamphlet on Agricultural Policy for the New South Africa.

I had an interesting connection with Derek Hanekom, who became Minister of Agriculture. Years before, before he went to jail for his political activities, I had taught Derek about organic farming, and subsequently, he and his wife Trish had a dairy farm in Magaliesburg. After he became Minister, he visited my farm, and I introduced him to the Natal Agricultural Union people, who were surprised and relieved that the new minister was actually a farmer!

It was quite an important part of trying to bring people together to build the New South Africa in those early post-apartheid days. I coordinated a series of workshops in the four provinces, bringing together white farmers, black farmers, Indian farmers, farm labourers, extension people, researchers, and government and ANC policy figures. These workshops culminated in a national workshop that fed directly into the white paper on rural development.

Integration of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches

Throughout my career, I've developed what I believe is a balanced approach to agricultural improvement. My Master's and PhD process taught me about scientific honesty and statistics, but also about participatory action research and how to empower farmers.

On one hand, one needs the bottom-up process to empower farmers. But one also needs a top-down process, because as a researcher, one is exposed to many things that one may have experienced throughout one’s life, which farmers may not have been exposed to.

This integration creates a dynamic where farmers' insights are valued and enhanced through structured processes, exposure to scientific knowledge, and opportunities to learn from other farmers' successes. The system of “farmer-to-farmer” learning exchanges is an important part of such processes; farmers learn best by seeing how things work in practice.

The Spiritual Journey

Meditation has been crucial for me—essentially a way of allowing the mind to reach stillness. Instead of the chatter of me and my ideas, there's just stillness and an attempt to hear a divine message. Some people may not believe in any kind of divine being, but in my case, I do believe in God, and I know God through my meditation.

When Raymond gets out of the way, the God in my heart provides direction. Socrates described the daemon who guided him, “It never tells me what to do but often tells me what not to do”. When my ego has something to say, the inner voice says, "Not that. Shush. Listen." Sometimes I'm able to follow that guidance, sometimes not.

In my five decades of work, I've come to understand that wisdom requires a blend of working on one's own spirituality, being careful not to impose social baggage, and using science to measure what is really happening rather than what I think is happening. Objectivity does not mean moral abdication, but rather careful steps to see what is really happening.

My Legacy and Ongoing Work

Looking back on my life's work, I see a natural progression: 20 years of learning to farm and farming, 20 years of training farmers and developing participatory methodologies, and 10 years of academic research and now lots of policy work throughout Africa. Each phase built upon the previous one, creating a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture that respects both traditional knowledge and scientific advancement.

When we began, organic farming was considered completely "lunatic fringe." Gradually, it became something that maybe needed to be looked at. Then some research was done. Now, in many areas, organics and agroecology are seen as needing to become mainstream. That transformation has been quite remarkable to witness in my lifetime.

Today, I continue to advocate for organic and agroecological farming as chair of the Network of Organic Agricultural Researchers in Africa (NOARA) and president of the Technology Innovation Platform of IFOAM Organics International (TIPI). I've also served on South Africa's Agricultural Research Council board, and currently serve on the Board of the South African Organic Sector Organisation (SAOSO).

Through all these roles and experiences, my goal remains the same: to create healthier food systems that respect both people and the planet, and to empower farmers to be the agents of this positive change.