Soils For Life

In this episode we talk with Joel Williams about how growers can start weaning off costly chemical inputs, rules of thumb for seed treatments and foliar sprays, why he likes tweaks and incremental improvements, the growing scientific evidence behind regenerative farming practices and more!

Joel Williams is an independent plant and soil health educator based in Canada, working on soil management, plant nutrition and integrated approaches of sustainable food production. Joel is interested in designing farming systems that focus on managing soil biology along with crop and soil nutrition to optimise plant immunity and soil function. 

At Soils for Life we’ve recently launched a major project focused on cropping systems, and we thought Joel would be the perfect person to talk about why and how growers are transitioning to a more regenerative, resilient approach to cropping.

Find out more about the project via soilsforlife.org.au/cropping-resilience/.

If you have any feedback or questions about this podcast, or suggestions of topics or people you’d like us to include in future episodes, please reach out on social media or via info@soilsforlife.org.au.

The industrialisation of agriculture has created large paddocks of monoculture crops and increased the chemical burden on farmers and their environments. Global herbicide use has continued to increase as farmers have shifted to no till practices and adopted herbicide-tolerant crop cultivars over the last 30 years. One result of this is that the list of herbicide resistant #weeds is growing.

Some farmers spend huge amounts of money on herbicide and scarce time removing weeds; Meanwhile, exactly how much damage is being done to native plant species and soils is not yet fully known. Either way, the current model is not sustainable

In this episode we are exploring a paradigm shift to an ecological systems approach to weeds with Soils for Life agroecologist Sarah Fea. We visit four farmers to understand their changing relationship to plants. Including a grazier, seed producer, a farmer who has enlisted the help of goats and another who has developed no kill cropping.

We take a fresh look at weeds and how we can benefit from seeing them through a different lens. We hear how specific weeds germinate to heal damaged soils, showing us what the soil needs and how we can help them heal it.

James Diack from Soils for Life visits grazier Martin Royds at his farm Jillamatong in Braidwood. They sit down to have a yarn over Martin's fascinating story of change and repair. James also talks to farmer and soil microbiologist Bruce Davidson, who has a great story about how he approaches Blackberries and African Lovegrass. And Agroecologist Sarah Fea talks to seed producer Russel Young who talks about the challenges he’s facing as someone who is earlier on in his journey of transition to a more biological approach to farming. She also visits Bruce Maynard to hear more about his approach to weeds. Bruce is a farmer and educator who has developed methods such as No Kill Cropping and Self-Herding.

Thanks to all the our guests

Martin Royds - Jillamatong

Bruce Maynard - Willydah 

https://soilsforlife.org.au/willydah/

Bruce Davidson - Soil Smith 

https://www.soilsmith.ag/about/

Russell Young - Young Seeds

Hosted by Susannah Kable from Grow Love Project and James Diack and Sarah Fea from Soils for Life

This Podcast has been produced by Grow Love Project in collaboration with Soils for Life. This project is supported Australian Government’s Smart Farms Program.

Australian agriculture currently has a labour shortage of over 100,000 people. It’s not an easy gig for someone to start from scratch on a farm and many younger generation farmers are moving from farms to urban areas.

We rely on farmers to sustain our way of life as they produce our food and fibre. It’s critical that young and new farmers are encouraged and supported to supply for our needs in a way that regenerates soils and landscapes.

Some major barriers and challenges that young and new farmers are faced with include access to land and capital, climate change issues and access to learning, particularly learning about regenerative practices.

In this episode, learn from a researcher, writer and farmer who has walked the walk, and started her own regenerative farming practice. Be inspired by an additional six young and new farmers who embraced a regenerative mindset to overcome these challenges.

Thank you to all our guests:

Tanya Massy  https://sustainabletable.org.au/advisors/

Josh Gilbert https://www.joshuagilbert.co/

Harriet Finlayson https://soilsforlife.org.au/womens-day-regenerative-agriculture-chicken-egg-farmer/

Adam Lilleyman https://soilsforlife.org.au/chickens-for-a-change/

Trish Smith https://www.youngfarmersconnect.com/

Luke Winder https://www.tathraplacefreerange.com/

Thank you to https://www.farmerincubator.org/regenerationreport for producing the much needed report: Regeneration which you can download from the website. And thank you for the audio featured in this episode from the launch of the report.

Hosted by Susannah Kable, Grow Love Project and James Diack, Soils for Life

Farmer, forester or conservationist. It might seem like you need to choose one but more and more landholders are challenging this. With the right management, trees on farms can provide better farm productivity and forest products and increase biodiversity. But in many ways forests are still treated as either conservation reserves or plantations, making it difficult for farmers to take this path.

In less than 100 years as a nation we have gone from removing trees to wanting to plant them back. Tree planting programs are not achieving the scale of restoration required to repair Australia's landscapes. We need to rethink how we support landholders to invest in trees.

In this episode we hear from two farm foresters who have approached farming trees very differently, as well as a scientist and a forest policy professor. They discuss why more farmers have not adopted forestry, how trees can be managed for multiple outcomes and what mindset and policy shifts are required to move to a whole-of-landscape approach. 

Thank you to our guests: 

Farm forester and grazier - James Henderson https://soilsforlife.org.au/colodan/

Forest scientist and grazier - Rowan Reid https://www.agroforestry.net.au/

Professor Peter Kanowski - https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/kanowski-pj

Associate Professor Cris Brack - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cris-brack-233a117a/

Your hosts Eli Court @soilsforlife and Susannah Kable @growloveproject produced by Edgars Greste

There are millions of hectares of degraded soils in Australia's agricultural landscapes. But there are a billion reasons why compost offers a solution to this problem, teeming with micro-organisms and organic matter that can help regenerate soils. But not all composts are the same and there is still a lot that we're learning about this precious, carbon rich resource. How can governments, farmers and industry work together to return organic matter to the soil and close the loop from paddock to paddock?

Thanks to all our guests for their time and insights.

Soils for life case study with Milgadara, Rhonda and Bill Daly - soilsforlife.org.au/case-study-catch-up-milgadara

Rhonda and Bill Daly, Milgadara and YLAD Living Soils - yladlivingsoils.com.au

Eric Love - Centre for Organic Research and Education - core.asn.au

Amanda Kane, organics manager, NSW EPA - epa.nsw.gov.au/your-environment/waste/waste-facilities/organics-processing-facilities

Virginia Brunton, environmental scientist - MRA consulting - mraconsulting.com.au

Gerry Gillespie, compost industry consultant - gerrygillespie.net/about.html

Phil Lavers, Moonacres Farm - moonacres.com.au/farm

This Podcast has been produced by Grow Love Project in collaboration with Soils for Life.

This project is supported through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program

This is Soils For Life. A podcast about connecting farmers, researchers and policy makers, to shed light on agricultural best practice and explore current policy barriers and mindsets that are getting in the way of adoption and how to overcome them. Each episode we’ll delve into a topical issue around soil health in agriculture. We’ll hear from farmers about what inspired them to change their practices and we’ll talk to industry experts about the challenges and opportunities to help improve soils for life.

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