Episode 158: Reducing Weeds and Pests with Regenerative Mulching Systems with Erwin Westers

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Science, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.7 • 548 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Erwin Westers runs a biodynamic seed farm in the northern Netherlands, producing high-quality seeds for potatoes, radish, and wildflowers. His operation uses innovative mulching and cover cropping to enhance soil health.

Westers pioneers regenerative agriculture with techniques like Flechenratte surface decomposition, reducing pests and weeds and improving soil structure. He leads the Dutch Regenerative Alliance to share scalable practices with farmers.

In this episode, Erwin and John discuss:

Using Flächenrotte to incorporate cover crops shallowly, boosting microbial activity and soil structure to 10 inches
Applying rye and vetch mulch to cut potato beetle larvae hatching by 50% and delay late blight
Choosing diverse cover crops like grasses and clovers to sustain soil health
Controlling Canadian thistle and quackgrass with better soil structure and compost tea sprays
Improving seed vigor and germination with microbially rich soils.
Leading the Dutch Regenerative Alliance to offer e-learning and community support for regenerative farming

Additional Resources
To learn more about the Flächenrotte, please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZqCiL2RiuI

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, friends. Welcome back to the regenerative agriculture podcast. This is John Kempth, and today I'm here with a guest who I've wanted to have a conversation with for a long time.
0:09.1	Erwin Wester's. Erwin, you know, it's so easy for us in agriculture. We all understand that we have our own unique local context, and our local context is different. We have to adapt
0:22.2	practices from different areas to our own areas. But I've been really intrigued by the direction
0:29.5	you've taken your operation and the number of practices that you've incorporated that I don't
0:34.4	see quite often. I don't see very commonly in production scale agriculture
0:38.2	here in North America.
0:39.7	I don't see people spreading mulch on a scale of hundreds of acres, for example.
0:44.4	So I've been looking forward to our conversation to learning more about your operation
0:48.0	and to seeing what we can learn from you.
0:50.2	Tell us a little bit about your context and the scope of your operation of work that you're
0:54.5	doing today. Yeah, thanks for having me, John. We have a biodynamic seed producing farm in the
1:03.3	north of the Netherlands, all at the border of the sea. So we own a part of the dike that holds
1:10.4	the Netherlands dry from the sea, and we own a part of the dike that holds the Netherlands dry from the sea.
1:12.6	And we own a part of land that is outside the dike, which is a salt marsh.
1:16.6	And it is in that climate that we have developed a seed production system
1:24.6	under a biodynamic certification in which we try really to go some steps further
1:31.9	in putting a lot of quality in the seed. What are the various crops that you're producing seed for?
1:40.6	We are producing seed for potatoes, so which is a tuber, but it's a seed potato.
1:46.0	We're producing for reddish, for kale, for turnips, for nasturtiums, a lot of wildflowers also
1:55.0	and lupins and a couple of others.
2:02.2	And that fair eyes every year because we have a couple of seed buyers,
2:07.8	some of them in the German part of Europe.
	...

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