🇦🇺 Webinar: Future of Farming: Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture isn’t a fringe idea or a nod to the past. It’s going to be how farms survive into the future. Listen in to our panel as they discuss the current efforts they are taking on their farms and ranches to preserve the land, make it more resilient and pass it along to the next generation in the best shape possible. 

[John Fargher]

I’d love to introduce myself. So my name is John Fargher, one of the co-founders here at AgriWebb, and I will be hosting this session today. Before I introduce our learned panel of colleagues, I would just give a quick introduction of myself, so I’m actually a fifth generation pastoralist from Northern South Australia in the Flinders Ranges. I have always been really passionate about farming, particularly livestock; bringing innovation and also technology to the industry. I’m really excited for today’s session. Something that’s been close to my heart is regenerative agriculture, and some of the practices that we’ve followed as a family business for many generations are becoming best practice.Things like land management, handling erosion, handling feral animals and setting the business up for future generations and being good custodians of the land. This is really the heart of what we’re going to be talking about today.

Today’s focus is on regenerative agriculture. It’s really pertinent to a lot of the macro issues we’re facing as an industry globally as we meet a growing population. We’ve got to do more from less. We’ve got to farm more sustainably. We’ve got to meet our rising consumer demands and of course, there is the carbon footprint that we’ve got to deal with. This is clearly a topical conversation.

With no further ado, I’d love to introduce you to our panelists. We have a great lineup for you today…we are really lucky to have Tony Mahar, the chief executive of NFF with us today along with Lorraine Gordon, Sam Trethewey and Charlie Arnott. Maybe we will go through and do some introductions. First, I’m going to hand it over to Tony. If you could give a bit of your background and also let us know what regenerative agriculture means to you.

[Tony Mahar]

Good day everyone…NFF is the pig body trying to represent farmers and agriculture across the country in terms of advocacy on key policies and programs that are going to help drive the industry towards A$100 billion and hopefully some of you have seen our road map for A$100 billion in the sector by 2030. I’ve been at NFF for eight years now. I’ve been in and around agriculture for most of my working life. I worked across food supply chains and in government. I’ve been CEO [of NFF] for four years and I love the job, it’s a challenging job, but I have a real passion for agriculture. That is what drives me.

[John Fargher]

Thank you, Tony. Lorraine Gordon wears many hats across the industry. If you could give us your background and what regenerative agriculture means to you, that would be great.

[Lorraine Gordon]

Thanks John. I’m Lorraine Gordon. First and foremost, I am a beef cattle trader from Ebor in northern New South Wales. I do get my hands dirty–very dirty–every week. I’m director of strategic projects at Southern Cross University Farming Together–which many of you would have heard of–and founder of the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. I’m also associate director of the Organics Research Centre at Southern Cross University. So, what does regenerative agriculture mean to me? I have a very simple meaning for it and that is leaving the landscape and the environment in a healthier, more improved state than we found it. Actually, my son Ethan came up with a fantastic definition of regenerative ag. He has referred to regenerative ag as, “part of the self organising quality, inheriting nature which many practices –consciously or unconsciously–encourage this is a quality where every living system has inherent within it the possibility to move to new levels of order, differentiation and organisation. While sustainable systems must maintain productivity, regenerative systems go a step further in restoring what has been lost and improving what is currently there. Regenerative agriculture has emerged as an umbrella term for any agricultural activity that restores and enhances holistic, resilient systems. It can include many old and new practices. An agriculture practice is not regenerative when it is discouraging the evolutionary and self-organizing potential of a living system.” There you go. There’s an academic take on it.

[John Farghar]

Thank you for that, Lorraine. I’d love to dig into the academics and some of the research and results that comes out of that later today. So, thank you.Sam Tretheway, we’re excited to have you on. Sam and I go way back in the AgTech scene in Melbourne and we are always excited to hear your views. Now back on the farm in Tasmania, Sam, give us a bit of background and what regenerative agriculture means to you.

[Sam Tretheway]

Thanks John. And yeah, it’s awesome to be here. We’re based in Tasmania and we’ve got a fast growing Wagyu business. We’re doing grass fed Wagyu farming regeneratively and we’re becoming a vertically integrated brand. We raised money for this about 12 months ago and now it’s all happening. We’ll have over 1,000 acres under management in the next month or two. Regenerative agriculture is an interesting one because it is a broad set of ideals and principles. It presents so many issues of integrity with consumers. They’re going to get very confused as to what it actually means, and that means there’s a lot of flexibility and opportunity. Three quick things from me on this: for me, the biggest piece is that it’s a fundamental shift in our mindset; the way we look at our farms, soils, natural processes and animals. The biggest thing for me is that it’s about not killing stuff. We’re coming out of a period of around 70 years where we were trying to control, dominate and in some way fight natural systems through chemicals, narrow spectrum fertilisers in a non-diverse plant base and I suppose at that point it’s about if they’re working with natural processes. There’s nothing natural about what I had just mentioned, so it’s about mimicking nature and putting carbon at the center of that system. There are three pieces for me which encapsulate grazing systems, plant species and all of that.

[John Farghar]

Thanks Sam. I think the carbon piece will pop up today to provide some active conversation. So thank you for that. Finally, our final panelist, Charlie Arnott is a regenerative farmer and educator, also with a very strong Instagram following. If you could share your background and what regenerative agriculture means to you, that would be great.

[Charlie Arnott]

Thanks John. I’m an eighth generation farmer. We did some farming in Scotland before we came out here. I don’t know how far it goes back, but far enough. We farmed very conventionally for many years. About 15 years ago, we changed our mind about a lot of things, which we will probably get to. Nonetheless, we’ve been doing things very differently since. In terms of regenerative agriculture, in terms of the definition, mine is keeping it loose. It’s reflective of the non-prescriptive nature of regenerative agriculture. I really reference the five land states functions, things like solar, mineral and biological. The fifth land state function is that of the people in the community and the social and cultural fabric of that landscape. The other one which I like which is even more simple is just essentially the core of it is just increasing the quality of the land and the soil. When that happens, pretty much all of those land state functions improve. So that’s really my take. As I said, it’s not prescriptive. I’d just like to thank you for putting this on. It’s a wonderful thing.

[John Farghar]

Thank you, Charlie and yeah, absolutely. It’s so exciting to see people throwing out the comments of where they’re coming from. We have well over 400 people now online and that number is trending up. So it’s really great to see and I think it’s a testament to how people are interested in the topic. Charlie, I think you made a great point there around the different views of people on what regenerative agriculture means and that’s a great place to start actually. I might hand this over to Tony…

For the full transcript please watch the video on our website with captions on. Alternatively, you can learn more about regenerative agriculture via our guide on getting started with regenerative agriculture.