Better energy balance key to future of agriculture

Dec 16, 2022

They were given a jar of banana pulp and a male and female fruit fly. Every day, he and his classmates would examine the jar. By day 26, there were more than 100 fruit flies. By day 28, there were more than 200. By day 30, there were about 500, but on day 31, they were all dead.

It was a pivotal moment in McQuail’s life, said the regenerative agriculture advocate. It opened his eyes to the importance of environmental sustainability, he told a recent online seminar hosted by the University of Manitoba.

“The thing that really struck me about that experiment was that there was still banana pulp that could have served as food, but fruit flies had poisoned their environment with their metabolic wastes.”

After high school, McQuail got his start in farming by working as a hired hand on a dairy farm. He bought a farm near Lucknow, Ont., three years later, in 1973. There he honed his skills with respect to sustainable farming and put the lessons learned in science class to work.

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Video: From Conventional to Regenerative: Will Groeneveld’s Journey Back to the Land

"You realize you've got a pretty finite number of years to do this. If you ever want to try something new, you better do it."

That mindset helped Will Groeneveld take a bold turn on his Alberta grain farm. A lifelong farmer, Will had never heard of regenerative agriculture until 2018, when he attended a seminar by Kevin Elmy that shifted his worldview. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a deep exploration of how biology—not just chemistry—shapes the health of our soils, crops and ecosystems.

In this video, Will candidly reflects on his family’s farming history, how the operation evolved from a traditional mixed farm to grain-only, and how the desire to improve the land pushed him to invite livestock back into the rotation—without owning a single cow.

Today, through creative partnerships and a commitment to the five principles of regenerative agriculture, Will is reintroducing diversity, building soil health and extending living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Whether it’s through intercropping, zero tillage (which he’s practiced since the 1980s) or managing forage for visiting cattle, Will’s approach is a testament to continuous learning and a willingness to challenge old norms.

Will is a participant in the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a social innovation process bringing together producers, researchers, retailers and others to co-create a resilient regenerative agriculture system in Alberta. His story highlights both the potential and humility required to farm with nature, not against it.