If we want to reverse global
warming it's actually quite easy to do
and we can do it and we can start today.
We could reverse it significantly within
five years I believe that if we had the
will and we had enough people that are
managing land involved in the process.
We're all about life aren't we and how
we go about living and are we living a
joyful life or are we living a sad
hateful fighting sort of life and a lot
of people are living this sad life where
they're actually fighting everything
around them and when you're fighting
mother nature it is not a war you're
ever going to win. As mother nature's
got more tricks up her sleeve than we
will ever know about.
And if we think
about that from the point of view of the
human race, the human race is doing
significant damage to this planet and
damaging at an accelerating rate. But the
planet doesn't actually care because the
planet doesn't need the human race the
human race needs the planet.
To me the flip side is if we have the power to destabilize the whole planetary system
if we do the right things and the right
practices like Regenerative Ag why can't
we start pulling that back because we
know regenerative agriculture can drag
down huge amounts of carbon dioxide
buried in the soil if we do it right.
So if we're going to change things we got
to start right back at the farming end
of things and that's what I'd call
regenerative we've got to regenerate the
health of our farming systems our soils
we've got to regenerate that soil
microbiome, that plant microbiome, that
animal microbiome which will then
regenerate the human microbiome.
There is an innate relationship between hooved
animals and quality pasture because what they do is they take the top off the
pasture to allow more sunlight into
those pastures more photosynthesis to
take place which brings the carbon down
through the roots of the plant and into
our soil profiles. And as grazing animals
move across a landscape particularly
when they are moved and paddocks are
rested allows those plants as plant
communities to thrive. That is what
produces good carbon in the soil.
Plants and animals have evolved together and particularly in the rangeland
areas those grasslands don't stay
healthy if you try and take the animals
off in fact the scientists that designed
holistic management was an ecologist
from South Africa and he saw the damage
that happened when you took the animals
out of the system and how it degraded. He realized that it wasn't the animals in
the system that were doing the damage it
was how the animals were being managed
in a natural system the predators bunch
the grazing animals together we take the
predators away now the grazing animals
spread out and can do damage so it's
really a case of us trying to to mimic
that in our management we want to bunch
those animals together you know we
become the predator we bunch them
together and then we move them around
and that helps us manage the
landscape. So it's a case of whether
we're doing things that are degrading
the landscape or building the landscape.
Without hoofed animals moving
across a landscape eating the tops of
our pastures our pastures and our
landscapes will turn to deserts that is
science but the message is not getting through.
Carbon is central to this whole linking
soil health to human health.
Carbon is the foundation of all energy and whether we're talking fossil fuel energy or the
energy and the food that you eat, carbon
is the energy source.
We will all benefit from carbon trading.
Once we start to sequest carbon in the soil and we end
up being reimbursed for it because once
you put an economic value on something
all of a sudden watch things happen. So
it will benefit not only farmers in
their hip pocket because it will be
income for them down the track, it will
sustain them into the future, they'll be
carbon farmers.
If it's economic why aren't we doing it?
Why are we doing it if it makes investment sense?
I can see this being billions and billions
of dollars of investment. The urgency is
economic we have a significantly
underused economic resource.
What's great with agriculture is our land is abundant and is unlimited in terms of the
potential for the soil if we look after
it. But in addition to that you're
achieving environmental benefits that
are significant and also social impact
of actually being out there help farmers
on the land and how great is it is food
security it's improving soil health
which is better not only for our planet
but also for our children.
So we've got this beautiful carbon cycle
that's been operating now for about 370 million years.
Is this amazing bit of technology that Mother Nature developed
and we wouldn't be here today if it
wasn't for this carbon cycle but carbon
must cycle. It must go into every living
thing, go out of every living thing and
back into every living thing again. The
useful place to put it is into soils.
What we would be doing is building the
health of those soils. So as we put that
into the soil we improve the water
holding capacity of the soils, we become
more drought resistant. We improve the
quality of the food that we produce off
those soils so that consumers going to
benefit from that. We improve the
microbiomes because we've now got homes
and we've got energy for the soil
biology to both attach to and to feed
off and somewhere for their waste
products to go.
So there's if this is a win-win-win in
every direction we can take co2 out of
the atmosphere we can put it in a place
where it's only going to do good.
Whilst agriculture has has contributed to
perhaps 12 13 percent of greenhouse
emissions we are the ones that will be
able to sequester carbon and by
sequestering carbon in our landscapes we
can bring these temperatures down.
It can be like a second Enterprise not only can they have their crops
and pasture fed
stock they can also make a living out of
sequestering carbon and Southern Cross
University plays a vital role in
enabling farmers right across Australia
to learn how to do that.
