When I turned 50 I started looking back
at what my behaviour was leaving as a
legacy for the planet and I just didn't
like what I saw at all.
We are all sick. Because of the way we eat
and because of the way we farm.
I was inducted into if you like the industrial
farming paradigm. And it was only after
the 1982 drought that I realised there
had to be a better way to avoid debt
and harming the landscape and so I began
to study alternate methods, which
led me to regenerative agriculture.
People often ask me what changed when
we changed the way we run the place.
I think it's just it's just one word and
that's mindset. We changed from being
stock managers to being land managers.
Regenerative agriculture covers a
variety of practices from ecological
grazing, to agroforestry, to using
biological inputs in cropping,
things like permaculture biodynamics. It's a
wide range but they're all around
regenerating how the landscape works. 
We humans can actually allow nature to
improve herself if we enable her. Through
improving your landscape health you
improve the resilience you ride out the
droughts and it's ending up being a lot
more profitable. The latest research is
showing it's much better for human
health mental and physical.
Lots of the products we were applying to the
land on an annual basis have a
negative effect on life. Now what the
world needs for the future – what human
beings and all life need humans to be
doing – is to have an agricultural system
that the consequence of management is
to increase diversity not diminish it.
Without that we're in a real dilemma.
Out of my own farming journey, having made
all the mistakes and then realised
there's some wonderful solutions where I
could do it easier without debt and
regenerate landscapes – I was always
passionate about nature – I ended up going
back in my late 50s to University and doing
a PhD looking at all this and why
farmers had changed. And out of that came
my book "Call of the Reed Warbler".
The books really about these wonderful
farmers David Marsh for example. He's one
of the leaders in regenerative grazing,
holistic grazing in Australia.
Sometimes there are quite big
differences between how conventionally
managed farms look compared to those
that have been managed holistically.
What we see with regenerative grazing
practices you graze the plants for a
very short period of time and you've got to
have a fencing system that allows you to move
the animals around so that you've got
enough recovery time for your paddocks
to recover.
Whereas when you've got stock in every
paddock and you've got it grazed down
really short, the plant roots are very
small, those little insignificant falls
of rain that are very important for a
regenerative system, in a conventional
system they seem to do nothing because
any growth that happens is being grazed
immediately. So we're allowing plants to
get big, which makes the root systems
invade a bigger area of soil and puts a
lot of organic matter into the soil,
which helps it hold water. If you've got
plants that are useful for grazing they
evolved here, they're reestablishing here,
there's a diversity of them, they'll take
advantage of rainfall at any time of the
year, that's incredibly valuable and we
haven't spent any money putting them here.
Some people get confused when we
talk about the new ecological grazing.
It was actually developed by an ecologist,
a guy called Allan Savory in as it was then
Rhodesia, watching those giant animal
herds in the millions migrating.
And you'd think that such huge numbers,
disturbing and eating would degrade a
grassland but he found the opposite.
It was the healthiest grassland you'd
ever find. Led by him but others they've
now refined a management systems for we
farmers on commercial landscapes to
replicate that ecological impact so you
make more paddocks, get as bigger mobs
as you can, doing the same thing but this
time under human management.
We went through nine years of drought
from 2002 to 2010, and we didn't spend a
cent on feeding. That saved us between
half a million and $800,000, which is a
massive amount of money in a farming
business. We've learned how to estimate
how much grass we've got ahead of us all
the time so that we're constantly
adjusting our stocking rate so that
we're not over stocked. That means that
you don't have to spend any money
feeding so that is a massive change from
the past. You know instead of feeling
anxious and out-of-control debt
spiralling and that sort of thing. 
We're not going through that.
Not far from where I live is a friend of
mine Charlie Maslin. And he's doing some
remarkable stuff. He's got a running
creek through his property, which hasn't
been functioning all that well because a
lot of the water disappears or erodes in
big storms. And he's set about using
what's called Natural Sequence Farming.
And so by slowing down the water and
holding it, he's now rehydrating his landscape.
We're really trying to recreate
the water systems that existed
prior to settlement. When I came
home it was at the end of a fairly long
four-year drought and our creek corridor
was just a dry barren weed infested
corridor. One of the things we've done on
the place is installed leaky weirs in a
lot of the streams. And a leaky weir
is basically just a structure in a
stream, so that when water comes down
with runoff in a flood environment it
slowly leaks through and continue on
downstream at a much much slower rate.
What we're trying to do with putting the
weirs in is just to hold back more
water at the top end of the place, so
that when it does get dry and the stream
stops flowing, there's water there to keep
slowly making its way downstream.
And that's – in this dry country with very
sporadic rainfall – that's the way we need
to keep our streams flowing. The biggest
thing I think is probably managing the
stock that are in this area. Stock are a
great thing as a healer of the banks
with lots of intensity, but then for
every bit of intensity of stock being in
there you need a lot of rest. And
under normal grazing systems a lot of
streams don't get rest. By taking the
stock out all the profusion of life that
you can see here now just wouldn't have
occurred. Giving a lot of these holes
much more life and it gives a chance
for plants to grow. It's also handy for
the stock and for birds and for the
Platypus and for all the animals that
live along the creek. Nature works
wonders if humans are kept out of it for
awhile and animals are kept out for a little
while.
Not far from here some friends of mine
Beatrice and Tobias Koenig, who are
leading biodynamic farmers in a fairly
tough environment, growing healthy
biodynamic soils. And that's all through
getting your soil biology going, accessing
all the nutrients that industrial
agriculture shuts out by killing that
soil biology, so it's fairly simple
stuff but it's profound.
You know we have flavour.
There are plenty of people who say
that our potatoes are fantastic and our
garlic is really good and Beatrice's
vegetables.
You address the chemistry in the
soil and then you address the
biology. So the biology is addressed
by using cover crops and compost teas,
including biodynamic preparations.
All the nutrients we think are needed, which
does for instance include lime or gypsum
or we use a lot of fish, we use a
lot of seaweed.
That's a fairly small plant and
that root system. And it's ... and
every single root is surrounded by soil
and what that actually tells you is that
there's soil biology happening. What I
mean by that is that they're not only
the necessary nutrients in the soil but
there are microbes and fungi and all
little critters and earthworms working
in the soil cycling stuff. If we would go
into another paddock that we haven't
worked anything on you wouldn't you
wouldn't see that. You would see a few
roots and they would be pretty much
bare, no soil.
Agriculture is hard work, but it can be
very very rewarding if for
instance you've got people telling you
that your produce is not only tasteful
but actually nourishes you rather than
just feeding you and if you if you see
that the place is getting better.
It's just very rewarding.
The big question: How important is
regenerative ag in addressing the biggest
issues of our time? 
We now know in five continents
for example ecological grazing is
regenerating tens of millions of
hectares. We now know that the very best
way of pulling down excess carbon from
the atmosphere is through healthy
agriculture, regenerative plants,
regenerative systems burying carbon long
term in the soil. One of the questions I
get asked is how are we going to feed the
world without industrial agriculture
industrial inputs? People forget that 70
percent of the world's food comes off 5
acres and less of peasant farms. And
interestingly the majority of those
farmers are women. But on the rest of
it where there was once industrial
farming, regenerative farming is more
than capable of filling the gap with all
the added benefits. The question of
change is the big one in in this moment
in time on earth
as we're rapidly racing down this
economic rationalist industrial paradigm
consuming more and destroying more...
How do we change the question?
There are a lot of what 
I'd call industrial farmers
who have an ecological conscience, but
they don't really make the connection
between ecology and complexity and how
that relates to their business. And we've
found that that our business has gone a
heck of a lot better since we've been
making decisions towards the environment.
I think a lot of people are worried
about feeling marginalised or ostracised.
It's a courageous thing to swim
against the tide.
It's not about saying, "I am biodynamic 
and therefore I'm better". No.
We have to be open to everything and actually 
create an environment
Where my neighbour is not offended
by what I'm doing but interested 
in what I'm doing. And it's the
only chance to get it to change
the whole situation.
The thing I want to emphasise about
this story where I've really
highlighted how regenerative
agriculture can help save the planet and
human health is that that's only half
the story. The other half is we need
urban people to start connecting with
the regenerative ag movement and 
they can do that either by
supporting farmers markets or 
buying product direct.
But they can also do it in their own power,
growing their own veggies is a hell
of a start. It's got to be an indivisible
connection between people out there in
the urban areas getting acquainted with
what's going on out here but also
 how it integrates with
what they can do and are doing.
We've seen ourselves as outside of
nature for a long time
for probably a couple of 
hundred years, but really we're
just another species.
Sometimes people
think that evolution's all about
competition but there's a heck of a lot
of cooperation in the change of
evolution over time and adapting to
circumstance.
