Zac Rowlandson
For some farmers, the idea of regenerative farming practices is overwhelming at best, and is often seen as posing a risk to the profitability, productivity and efficiency of the business. For Zac Rowlandson, when it came to scaling up the family farm, it seemed like the logical next step.
âI approached the farm as a business, coming from a commercial operations background, and I couldnât accept the level of risk for the return with conventional systems.â
Zac researched the world of regenerative farming widely. He learned about worm liquid from Re-Gen Farming and was converted to compost making after a conversation with staff at Camperdown Compost. He read the work of regenerative rancher Gabe Brown and picked up tips from the team at NutriSoil.
âSoils for Life, with its case studies, was probably the biggest resource back in the day, and a system called Natural Intelligence Farming really resonated with us,â Zac says. âIt focuses on the mindset of making changes to stop fighting against nature, using your intuition and the connection with the land to farm. We have lost that over the last 40 or 50 years with full-on synthetic systems.â
Starting From the Soil Up
âWe changed the focus with soils and the farm as a priority rather than the animals, and that just changed the way we made decisions,â Zac says.
âI went on this journey to learn how to make compost,â he recalls. âThat is probably one of the most enjoyable things that Iâve done in ag, to be able to make something and then apply it and see the benefits. Youâre encouraging growth instead of trying to implement your control by spraying chemicals that will kill things.â
Zac also used grazing management to improve soils and pastures. âWe changed to high-density grazing or timed grazing, moving stock around. It was another thing where I thought there were way too many headaches, and most of the problems I had anxiety about didnât happen,â he says.
âIn some cases, thatâs allowed us to triple our stocking rate without any other inputs. Iâd say thatâs the most powerful tool for anyone who has livestock.”
Increasing Productivity by Decreasing Inputs
Adopting regenerative practices has led to a huge reduction in inputs. When the family company, Super Natural Farms, took on a broadacre property in Forbes, they used livestock â not chemicals â to improve the land.
âPeople told us we couldnât do it at Forbes, in the cropping country. That farmâs now been running 16,000 DSE for the last 12 months, which is well above the stocking load we thought it could do,â Zac explains.
He recalls consultants putting pressure on him to fertilise: âI started to ask the question, âWell, what happens if we donât?â And they said it would fail. That was the first year of the drought, and we didnât fertilise, and it probably wouldâve sent us broke if we did.â
âThat taught us that we could get away without all the inputs. We came out of the drought and grew good average crops for the district without any in-crop sprays.â
âThe agronomist said, âIf you donât spray these weeds, youâll go broke,â but we just didnât do it.â Seed banks that experts warned Zac about havenât caused problems. âIf you treat the soil badly, those weeds will come back, and if you treat it well, they donât grow; if you create the right conditions for the plants you want to grow, you wonât have the issues.â
Soils are improving, livestock are performing, and input costs are diving. âThe chemical bill the first year out there was set to be $220,000, and the last few years, itâs been about $10,000, Zac says. âYou donât have to be real smart to work out where most of the profit comes from.â
Using Tech to Manage Change
As well as looking after the family business, Zac is CEO of Bettergrow. He uses the same regenerative practices at the companyâs Warragundi Aggregation in the Central Tablelands region of New South Wales. The process has been made easier thanks to the adoption of AgriWebb.
Cattle moves are recorded in real time, making it easier to track them through paddocks and across multiple properties. Users can look at the farm map on their mobile and know precisely where the mobs are grazing. Even better, AgriWebb automatically estimates each paddockâs grazing days remaining.
âDirectors who are remote can look on AgriWebb, and the anxiety about running out of feed goes away because you can see what youâve got in front of you.â
Thanks to AgriWebbâs integration with Cibolabs, Zac has even more confidence in his fodder stocks. Cibolabs uses remote sensing and machine learning combined with on-farm knowledge to bring greater insights into pasture productivity.
âWhen we got Cibolabs, that was another layer we could look at, and compare our feed on offer to what we assumed it was from driving around the farm,â he says. âItâs a good indication â if a paddockâs bright green, I know weâve got feed up our sleeve. Weâre not pushing the limit all the time.â
Beyond providing a clear view of the present, AgriWebb makes future challenges easier to navigate. Trustworthy records can be retrieved instantly, providing perspective on the current situation. âI can go back and look at paddocks in previous years and know exactly what theyâve done. We know what to expect for our stocking rate, and little things like that are critical,â Zac says.
These insights lead directly to more profitable management decisions. âIt means you donât make silly decisions in trading or offloading cattle,â Zac explains. âThrough this winter, the cattle market dipped and we were tight, but we knew weâd get through. In the system we used to run, we wouldâve sold because we wouldâve feared running out of feed â without AgriWebb, you donât have that ability to judge it so clearly.â
Securing the Farmâs Future
AgriWebb is proving crucial for Bettergrowâs long-term plans, making it easier to take on carbon projects with the Carbon Farming Foundation in Western Australia.
AgriWebbâs map-based interface is particularly helpful. âWe have different map layers to manage those carbon projects,â Zac says. âThe guys on the ground have got the information and can see where the different areas are and how to manage them.â
Zac sees the soil carbon projects as a way to be rewarded for good work he is already doing. âAll the things people say you need to do to grow carbon, were all the things we were trying to do to grow productivity and soil health,â he says.
AgriWebb is also increasingly important for raising and investing capital. âNow with bank valuations, weâre asked for AgriWebb files because they get a rolling view of what weâre doing. And we are able to prove that weâre not just putting on a good front for valuation,â Zac says.
âItâs really good for producers to have those records because when weâve gone to buy farms, the more reliable the records are, the higher the value we place on the farm.â
To find out how AgriWebb puts the future of your farm business in the palm of your hand, get in touch for a free demo today.