Ducks on the Pond
A podcast for rural women... by rural women. Hosted by Kirsten Diprose and Jackie Elliott, they seek expert advice and the stories of other rural women on issues such as succession planning, motherhood, starting a business...running for politics and much more!
Ducks on the Pond
What does ‘climate smart farming’ even mean? - Collab with Farmers for Climate Action, pt.2
“Climate smart farming” has become somewhat of a buzz word (or buzz phrase, rather!). But what does that even mean? Instead of becoming caught up in definitions, we hear from two women who are each running farming operations in two very different landscapes...but are both proudly, climate smart farmers.
At its essence, climate smart farming is about lowering inputs where you can, making decisions for your soil and grass, and in some cases, tapping into opportunities such as renewable energy or carbon sequestration. It’s going to look different, depending on your property. However, it's often thinking about farm productivity from the soil up, and yes, it also means making a profit too.
Hear from:
- Ellen Litchfield - runs a cattle and sheep station in remote South Australia. She’s also a vet, and has a Masters in Sustainable Agriculture and works part-time for Farmers for Climate Action.
- Dimity Taylor - runs a sheep farm near Crookwell in NSW. She is implementing regenerative agriculture practices on the farm and also works part-time as a physiotherapist.
Both Ellen and Dimity talk about the challenges and successes they’ve had in getting others on board their climate smart farming journeys.
We're not all climate deniers and conservative older people. There's a big growing cohort of people in agriculture that have similar concerns to their urban counterparts.
Speaker 1:I really like that idea of feeling like we're not sheep farmers, we're grass farmers. If we have good grass, we will have good sheep. To have good grass, we need good soil.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to Ducks on the Pond, brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co, kirsten Dippros, here with you with our second collab episode with Farmers for Climate Action and the two voices you just heard. There are two proudly climate smart farmers. So what does that even mean and what does that look like? In this episode, you'll get a really good picture of that. Before we dive in, I did want to mention the Farming Forever Summit. It's on September 1 and 2 in Canberra and we have a code for you DUX20. Just head to the Farmers for Climate Action website and you can get 20% off tickets to that summit. It's going to be an awesome event. Loads of farmers are going, including me, okay. So, climate smart farming it's a bit of a buzzword at the moment, or a buzz phrase for the English pedants amongst us, but I guess it really comes from a place of lowering inputs, where you can making decisions for your soil and grass and, in some cases, tapping into opportunities such as renewable energy or carbon sequestration. It's often thinking about farm productivity from the soil up and, yes, it also means making a profit too.
Speaker 3:In this episode, we'll hear from two women who farm in very different landscapes, and they've also had their own battles in trying to convince or influence that's a nicer word other family members to try something different. You'll hear from Dimity Taylor shortly. She's a farmer based near Goulburn in New South Wales who says implementing some regen ag practices has improved her operations but also her own family's wellbeing and ability to make good decisions. But first up we'll meet Ellen Litchfield. She's a vet, has a Master's in Sustainable Agriculture and runs a station in remote South Australia. You know where Lake Eyre is Well near there. It's remote, but that doesn't stop her from advocating loudly for climate-smart agriculture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was born and raised on a cattle and sheep property in northern South Australia up on the edge of the Simpson Desert near Lake Eyre Wilker Arena Station. Loved growing up here, love all the animals. I went away to boarding school and then studied veterinary medicine at Charles Sturt Uni at Wagga. I chose that course. It has more of a large animal focus, so a greater focus on herd health and production animal medicine, which I really enjoyed. And then I worked in mixed practices across Australia and then overseas in the UK and Northern Ireland, once again with production animals mainly a bit of small animal in London. And then my partner and I decided to move back to the station in 2017. Yeah, so we've been back home on the property for a while now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great. And so what do you farm on the property now?
Speaker 2:So we've still got cattle and sheep in In about I think it was 2012,. We moved over to Dorpers so it's a meat sheep now. So we've gone out of wool and into meat sheep and they just suit our environment a lot better. They're really tough, they're like mini cattle and so we've got a mix now of Dorpers and Australian whites and we've also got Angus cross cattle. The market likes the Angus and then the crosses for our environment. So a bit of centipole, sometimes a bit of Santa, make the cattle a bit better adapted to our harsh environment.
Speaker 3:And did you always know that you'd come back to the property?
Speaker 2:I don't think any daughter of a farmer would say that they've always known they'd be able to come back to the property. Also, I grew up in the millennium drought, so it was always really tricky trying to carve out a living on the station just for my parents, so I always knew that it's a difficult lifestyle choice. I've got an older brother as well, and he moved back home when he was mid-twenties or so, and then in 2016, we bought another station, so my brother and his wife and family live over on the other property. That's why we thought in 2017, I was lucky enough that my husband really likes the area and the lifestyle, and so we decided to move home, and I'm really glad that I did take that leap. How's?
Speaker 3:your husband going. Is he from a farming background or is it been a big learning curve for him being on a station?
Speaker 2:He's from the area but not from a farming background, so, yeah, it's been a big learning curve for him, but he really enjoys it, which makes my life a lot easier, and he also still works off farm as well, which has made it probably a bit of a smoother transition. So he works for BHP at Olympic Dam, which is only about two and a half hours away, so he's able to drive in, drive out from there. He just works there part-time now and so spends most of his time on the station, which is great for cashflow as well as, probably, his sanity. So he gets to go away and work with some people that he is not related to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, you sort of mentioned at the start that you don't think any sort of daughter of a farmer can be certain they can come back home. Yeah, why would you have thought? Oh, maybe coming back to the farm is hard.
Speaker 2:I think you know it's an elephant in the room if you don't address the fact that it's harder for daughters to come back on the farm than it is for sons, like there's a lot of as soon as the child is born, especially if it's an eldest son of a farmer.
Speaker 2:I think that there is still a lot of people that would say, oh, they'll probably come back home on the farm or the station in our case, and it's taken a long time and it is still a process for that to change and there's quite a few daughters back on their generational properties around where we are and I'm sure it's becoming more common in other areas as well. It's a generational thing but it's slow and it takes people to change that perception and hopefully, like my generation and I generation and it won't I only have two boys, I only have two sons, but if I did have a daughter, I hope that they would feel that being a farmer or a pastoralist was a legitimate career choice for them just as much as it is for my sons yeah, I've got two boys as well, which makes me go ah.
Speaker 2:I always hoped that I would have two girls and I could be like, really like they could have male-dominated fields and all these sorts of things. And now instead I've got two boys and I'm going to try and raise with empathy and make sure that they raise women up, but also you don't want them to feel like they are the bad guys.
Speaker 3:No, I know it's complicated, isn't it? So you've also been involved with Farmers for Climate Action for quite a while. Yeah, what's your involvement there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I came across Farmers for Climate Action after I'd finished my Nuffield Scholarship.
Speaker 2:So I did a Nuffield scholarship on the effect of climate change on livestock production in the arid rangelands, obviously very directly related to our station, and one of the things that came out of that was that in a lot of places all around the world, from Canada to Africa, the farmers, when you started talking about climate change, one of the things that they were most worried about was actually the political impacts and the policy changes and red tape than they were about the environmental impacts of climate change, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to minimize their concerns about the environmental impacts, but for something that seems like to me a bit of an easier solve than climate change is, they were really worried that their voices weren't going to be heard and that people were just demonising cows essentially and not giving them a fair chance and creating sort of sensible climate policy. And so when I got back to Australia, I stumbled across Farmers for Climate Action and so I've been with them just part-time ever since, and it has been a really great way for me to feel like I'm working. I like to do a bit of the day-to-day stuff at home, but I also like to be working on that bigger picture, trying to make a greater impact and change the way that agriculture is perceived not just women on stations, but also that we're not all climate deniers and conservative older people. There's a big, growing cohort of people in agriculture that have similar concerns to their urban counterparts. We're all pretty similar when it comes down to it, and that's something that I can work on at Farmers for Climate Action.
Speaker 3:Is climate still a dirty word? We did an episode with Natalie Collard a little bit earlier about that. Is it still something you have to tread carefully around when you're talking in certain circles? I've noticed how governments or people will say things like climate variability or they cannot say climate change for fear that it's political, whereas climate change just unfortunately is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that we need to get away from worrying about, like you say, is it a dirty word or is it taboo? And you're not going to change someone's mind At this point. There is so much literature, there is so much scientific fact backing up what's happening. You know, I just saw a certain president said that climate change mustn't be real because they forecast it was going to rain on his birthday and then it didn't. I think we've got to a point now where we can't waste our time trying to debate with people if on climate change is it real, is it it not?
Speaker 3:But I mean, like the example you gave, like he's someone with a lot of power and a lot of influence, so what do you do?
Speaker 2:I know and I recently at the International Rangelands Congress in Adelaide. It was really eye-opening seeing the American delegates there and the trouble that they've had having to remove climate change from their papers and from all their scientific research when it underpins so much of their work, and it was really scary to see that sort of censorship. But I think that, regardless of what people internationally are saying or doing, when it comes down to it agriculture is a product and we rely on our consumer. Our consumer wants action, so it's something that we need to take and we need to be constantly looking at.
Speaker 3:What about the role of women in changing some of these conversations, whether it be climate change or just policy around farming or how we get together as farmers or how we negotiate things. We are seeing this shift where we've got a generation of women who are really wanting to be acknowledged for their involvement and wanting to be at the table. Is that shifting the way that things are done in agriculture?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hope it is. I think it is, especially if you go to an agricultural conference. It's a really welcoming space for women. Now We've got across the industry and that side of things. We've got some really amazing women leaders in ag Katie McRoberts at AFI, obviously, fiona Simpson, that comes to mind as well. You just need that diversity. It's not necessarily that because I'm a woman I would have a different idea to a man the same age as me. It's just I have different life experiences.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think it's again that age thing as well. I know a lot of guys who are really great allies to women of all ages, but particularly, I think, men in their 30s and 40s often don't bat an eye about women being around at all and 20s, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree, and I think that's where men need to take up space and be louder advocates. You know, if you're the not to be discriminatory, but if you're the you know 30 year old white male you need to be the one that's the loudest on making sure there is diversity at the table. I think is a really important point. Obviously, yourself and I, you know we're privileged as well, being born in Australia and with this background, so it's something that we can as well, but I think that that is really the space for men to support the change makers. I'm not sure how many 30 year old men listen to this podcast, but Many Women Maybe put it on in the car.
Speaker 2:Actually, I do have men that listen, but I don't know, maybe not many, maybe a few, partners have made my husband listen to this one yeah.
Speaker 3:Not even my husband listens to my podcast, but that's good, because I just talk about him all the time and he never knows. It's brilliant. Yeah, true, what are you thinking about when you look ahead? Firstly, I suppose, for your own business, what are some of your goals? And then, what are you hoping to see in the agriculture sector at large?
Speaker 2:We've just recently purchased another business, another farm over in Queensland, which is really exciting for us. The other places are all in this like close together around northern South Australia. So, yeah, really excited about the other property. My husband and the two little boys and I drove over there. It took us like three days to get to St George but we had an amazing time there. It's just a whole new world with lots of grass, big trees and lots of water Very different to the desert where we live.
Speaker 2:Big trees and lots of water, very different to the desert where we live. So we're really excited and I'm really interested in getting to know and getting to learn about that new kind of grazing system and we can do a lot more like intensive measurements and things like that over there. Here we have one and a half million acres it very extensive rather than paddocks and cattle and sheep, we measure where they're grazing, based sort of more off watering points rather than actual fencing, and there's new little properties, got exclusion fencing, really well-defined paddocks and laneways, and so, yeah, really excited about being able to manage things a bit tighter and obviously learning about the new system is that, like, are you spreading your risk a little bit like with that kind of climate variability and I'm saying that genuinely as in yeah, just to kind of offset when it's really dry where you are, which it is now, I imagine, to have those two locations?
Speaker 2:Yes, yep, exactly Like Sid Kidman was onto a winner back in the days and it's already worked out. So we've only had the place a few weeks, not very long at all, but it's been really wet out there, especially the start of the year. They're having one of their best seasons they've ever had and obviously down here it's extremely dry.
Speaker 2:I feel a lot more for our farmers around the mid-north and the south-east in Victoria, because it's obviously they've had a few dry years in a row and it's some of the places the driest years on record. Where we are, it is dry and getting uncomfortable, but that's pretty normal for us and we live on a desert, so that's something we need to be prepared for anyway. But yeah, the Queensland place. It has totally different weather systems to us and benefits from flooding and the more tropical rain systems, so that's really exciting. So we are south of Lake Eyre and the floods in Queensland. All of our friends and neighbours that live on the other side of Lake Eyre are all getting flooded and so have all this beautiful feed, and we're just like stuck on the wrong side of the lake.
Speaker 3:I recently flew over Lake Eyre as part of my caravanning journey that I'm on. We, yeah, flew over and all of the water that's filling the lake is from all of the flooding in Queensland, so it's quite brown and murky mode of it at the moment, but just fascinating to see, and for me it was like that interconnectedness of our country which I have theoretically known. We learn about it maybe geography, I don't know. It was really a really cool experience and it's been making me reflect more about this kind of holistic approach to environment. Sometimes we can be so hyper-focused and I know I'm guilty of it as a farmer on your own little bit of production and bit of land that you forget that it's part of a broader ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, a hundred percent, and I think that is one of the difficulties around climate change as well is because it's a global problem. So you know and I think that is one of the difficulties around climate change as well is because it's a global problem, and I know that becomes a lot of people's sort of cop-out answer. Australia doesn't emit very many emissions compared to China or the US, and the US isn't doing anything about it. Why should we? And there's a really good paper called the Tragedy of the Commons, and when it talks about the town common and everyone would put as much livestock on it as they could, because if you didn't, someone else would. So I think that is really difficult. I think that is possibly maybe a spot where, as maybe a bit of a stereotype, women tend to be more altruistic than males, and I think that altruism and wanting to protect and look after things at a broader scale for the next generation hopefully getting more women in those sort of policy space and at the table will bring that forward.
Speaker 3:So yeah, the Farmers for Climate Action is having a summit in Canberra, which is very exciting. You'll be going, I assume.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm super, super excited. So, like I said, I've been working part-time for Farmers, for Climate Action, for a while now and sort of a producer and industry advisor, and actually haven't met a lot of the staff in real life, because I just jump on like this, the beauty of it, and so, yeah, I'm really excited to meet some of the staff that I haven't met and also reconnect with a lot of the farmers I've been working with now for four years or so. It's a really great group of open-minded, innovative farmers that just truly want to make sure that they're leaving things in a better condition for the future generations. Because I guess that's one of the big things with this problem You're not going to get a quick fix that necessarily helps you in the short term. It's a big long-term investment.
Speaker 3:How do you balance the need to produce and make money as a business with the way you want to farm environmentally, with sustainability in mind? Essentially, how do you balance the two effectively and not feel pulled in one direction more than the other, too much?
Speaker 2:In my mind, they both go completely hand in hand. Everything that increases productivity and efficiency decreases methane emissions, and also you then get the flow and benefits of the more efficient you are. You're getting better sustainability goals as well as environmental wins. I like where we farm out here. So we're on a pastoral lease which has its own sort of set of restrictions, but it means that we're really synergistically doing agriculture and conservation in one. The cattle all graze native pastures. We can't sow, seed or fertilize or anything, or irrigate. You need to manage in a way that there's enough reservoir for things to grow back when it does rain, and so I really like that, that way of farming out here on a pastoral lease. And when it comes to the sort of more intensive farms, yeah, the greater the efficiency and productivity, well then, the lower your emissions generally will be, and it's all about stacking those strategies. Do you mean like per?
Speaker 3:unit per what you're creating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, per mouth you feed and especially like it comes down to. You know, food's sort of a non-negotiable. The world needs food and there's a lot of different ways we can make energy and there's some really effective and cheap ways to get renewable energy done. So I think that's where we need to focus our emissions cuts and farming as long as you're getting to more productive and decreasing your emissions, so that there's no waste and there's a lot of. For example, I think tree shelterbelts are a really good example. So they sequester carbon, they increase land survival and then obviously you get the biodiversity benefits. So there's a lot of different benefits that come from something like that that aren't just the fact that you've sequestered some carbon.
Speaker 3:I really love Ellen's approach. There's no quick fix, it's one step at a time, just a really holistic approach to farming. It's a mindset thing, and that's where my next guest begins. Dimity Taylor farms near Crookwell in New South Wales. So a really different setup to Ellen, but they have a similar mindset. Dimity is a physiotherapist as well as running a sheep property with her husband. She's keen on opening up renewable energy opportunities for farmers and communities and her focus is really on the grass, and then the rest just flows from there. I'll let her explain it, but first you have to hear about her interesting journey back to rural New South Wales, which is where she grew up, because she just casually drops in how she was living in Somaliland and Kenya, like she's just come back from Toowoomba or Ballarat. So here's Dimity.
Speaker 1:I grew up on a fairly large sheep farm near Wellington, out near Dubbo in central and west New South Wales and then I went away for school and uni and then completely fled the coop. So I studied physio in Sydney and then I applied for jobs in Darwin, perth and Tassie, trying to get as far away as I could, spent some time working in Tassie and then I moved out to Alice Springs. Then I got a job for three years in Tonga and then I went to Somaliland and a refugee camp in Kenya and then Northern Sri Lanka towards the end of the Tamil-Tiger War and then I thought I'd come back to Australia for a bit but started off in Darwin. I'm going to stop you there.
Speaker 3:We're just going to pause the story because there's so much. You said Somaliland, which I don't think you can get there easily.
Speaker 1:No, it is really hard to get to and nobody comes to visit, like nobody's partners or anybody. Even came to visit my parents, my country parents, who had barely travelled at all. They came to visit. They had to fly to Ethiopia and then get on this tiny little plane into a tin shed airport in rural Ethiopia, plane into a tin shed airport in rural Ethiopia and then we picked them up and drove through rural Ethiopia, got to this contentious border between Somaliland and Kenya, picked up our armed guards with their AK-47s to escort us back to Hargeisa, which is the capital of Somaliland. It's such an interesting little, it's a place that's got so much heart Like. It's not internationally recognised. It's the northern part of Somalia, but they've had free and fair elections, they've got their own currency and passport and flags and they're just functioning as this amazing little country.
Speaker 3:Is Somalia a failed state? So Somaliland is different to Somalia. Is that right? Because I thought Somalia is pretty much like a failed state and it's really unsafe to go there and kind of anarchy at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the Mogadishu end of town is nuts and it's really yeah, black Hawk down. But the northern part of Somalia are trying to reclaim their colonial boundaries they were actually a British colony, rather than the southern part, which was an Italian colony and just so that they can function as a functional country. And the biggest conflicts are often between camel herders over grass and water, but occasionally terrorists from the south will come up and disrupt things. But overall it's pretty functional. It would be very different to the Mogadishu end of town.
Speaker 3:So what were you doing there, like how did you end up there and why?
Speaker 1:As I said, I studied physiotherapy and then I got really interested in disability and in disability inclusion, and so I'd worked in Tonga for three years really working on community development and how to better include people with disability in the broader community, and then, through that experience, I got this job in northern Somalia, and the job really was about better including people with disabilities in the broader development context.
Speaker 1:Yeah wow, and so Tonga, Somaliland Fiji camp in northern Kenya, where the people from some issue were fleeing to, and then there was northern Sri Lanka at the end of the Tamil Tiger War Gosh we could do an entire podcast about your journeys.
Speaker 1:It was so interesting. I feel like I hope I contributed something during that process, but I feel like I learned so much and, if nothing else, like just realizing how privileged we are to be living where we live. But that privilege just comes down to luck. It is not that we are any more clever or resourceful or anything, we just struck it lucky or anything. We just struck it lucky and how strong and how compassionate and generous people with nothing who will just give you literally the shirt off their back, and they're such a focus on connection and community and how important that is, and I think sometimes we do miss out on that in our society.
Speaker 3:I think we sometimes get focused on those economic drivers so much that we forget about the simple but important need for connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it really is so important to us as humans.
Speaker 3:So I think we left you in Darwin. What were you doing in Darwin, and where'd you go from there?
Speaker 1:So in Darwin, I was working as a clinical physio again.
Speaker 1:I thought it was time to make sure I actually worked as a clinical physio rather than a project manager and I wanted to make sure that I could live back in Australia again. I'd met so many people overseas who felt they felt a bit too foreign to their own country because they'd been away for so long and that their skills were so specific to being away, and I always wanted to know that I could come back to Australia if I wanted but wasn't quite ready to come back to mainstream white Australia. So I thought Darwin could be a good transition place. It's really culturally interesting and fascinating. Great. I had about a year and a half up there and then my now husband and I decided we would start a family and he was living down here in rural New South Wales. So after thinking I would only ever come to visit my parents in rural New South Wales, here I am back living in rural New South Wales on a sheep farm and loving it and thriving and living in the market, which really surprised me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, life has come full circle somewhat, so tell me where you live now and what you do there.
Speaker 1:Crookwell is our closest town. It's quite small, but our bigger town is Goulburn and it's in between Canberra and Sydney. We're living on a sheep farm. I also work as a physiotherapist, mainly with people with brain injury and other disabilities, and my husband is also a builder, yeah, so busy farming with two other full-time jobs and kids as well, I take it. Yeah, there's three kids between 10 and 14 years old.
Speaker 3:They keep us pretty busy too, there's three kids between 10 and 14 years old. They keep us pretty busy too. Yeah, how do you balance all the competing needs? You know? Does your brain thrive on that, or yeah? How do you do it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I really like having a lot of balls in the air. It keeps things interesting, keeps things fresh and just means we don't get stale, Keep looking for new opportunities.
Speaker 3:Now I wanted to ask you about climate smart agriculture. What do you do on your farm that you know is climate smart, or what does that word even mean to you? I think climate.
Speaker 1:smart farming can have a couple of different angles. For me at, smart farming can have a couple of different angles For me. My two main areas with it are what we're doing in regards to our farming practices. When we bought the farm that we're now on, about seven years ago, my husband and I both did a. We did a regenerative farming course. It's called holistic management and it was game changing in how we manage the farm.
Speaker 1:I'm a bit hesitant using that term regenerative farming, because it sometimes somehow indicates that people were doing what other people are doing is bad. But in regenerative farming is about trying to use the animals, like the stock that you've got, as a tool to really regenerate the land, to improve the soil health, to improve the ecology, to improve the water infiltration, the microbial activity in the soil, using the animals as that tool rather than lots of other external tools. I feel like the holistic management course really, at its basis, is a decision-making process. The decision-making course that's not prescriptive in how you do things or what you do. It's just giving you a lot of information and ideas so that you can make your own decisions based on your own context.
Speaker 1:I guess the basis of it with regards to grazing is that you have as many animals as tightly bunched as you can. That then move around the paddock so they've got a big impact on a small piece of land. And then that bit of land gets a really big rest and by giving it a big impact it spreads fertilizer really evenly all over the place. It tramples lots of grass, which kind of makes a mulch layer and it means the animals are eating a little bit of everything other than just their favorites all the time. But then that bit of land gets heaps and heaps of rest so the roots can grow down really big because the grass can grow taller. The biology in the soil has a chance to really fire up and develop good communities of fungi and good bacteria and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sort of microbial world is something we're learning so much more about.
Speaker 1:In so many ways, we learn about our gut bacteria and realise that it's important to have good microbial activity, and the soil is one area where that's important as well.
Speaker 1:But the reason I think we'reative farming is climate smart is one reason being you're more drought resilient because you're working towards having greater biodiversity, greater ground cover and more resilience in the plant matter in your farm. When droughts do come, they hit a bit later and they break a bit sooner. At the end of the drought in 2019, 2020, when it broke, our dams filled so much slower than everybody else, but our grass recovered so much quicker because the rain was actually able to fall and go into the soil rather than running off down into the river. The other important thing in regards to feeling more drought resilient is that it gives you the decision-making capacity. It gives you the tools to be able to plan further in advance, so we can tell three or four months out if things are getting tight and if we need to destock, rather than getting a week or two and realising we really need to destock now because things are just too tight, which gives us much more control over the market.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no one makes good decisions when you're under pressure, and already stressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a big part of it. They really focus on your emotional health, making decisions that feed into a good state of mind for the people who are running the operation, have the time to be able to spend with our family, to be able to go lay for weekends and holidays. We don't want to be stuck here all the time. We don't want to be really stressed about money and markets and things all the time. So we've got some tools that give us more of a buffer and makes life more enjoyable.
Speaker 3:It sounds like region ag and you mentioned that the term that you don't want it to be something that puts other types of farming down but it sounds like it's more of a mindset, like it gives you this starting point and that holistic approach and then from there, that's where you make decisions and use different tools in the suite that might come under regen ag or climate smart farming decisions and use different tools in the suite that might come under RegenAg or Climate Smart Farming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I like that. It also feeds into other benefits Because we've got more ground cover. We're not getting the amount of weeds that we used to, so it used to take quite a bit of chemical and quite a bit of time to keep the blackberry and the serrated tussock under control. Now it's in 600 acres. It'll be one backpack of chemical every couple of years to manage the whole place, because those weeds aren't growing up as much because there's not the bare ground, which is what a lot of those weeds love. We're not getting as many worms in the sheep because the grass is growing longer. We're able to break that life cycle of the worms, which means we're not spending money on and using all that chemical, but also not having to spend as much time in the yards, which is great.
Speaker 1:The reason that we got involved and the way I managed to get my husband over the line to get involved, though, I think was by seeing my brother up in Wellington, who is also using these practices, and his main drive to be doing these practices is because it's economically beneficial for him. He's not doing it out of any beating heart greeny kind of attitude. It makes him more money, and a lot of that is, by saving him money and saving him time, which saves him money. So I think climate smart approaches really work when there is an environmental payoff but there is also an economic payoff.
Speaker 3:It's interesting like you mentioned that with your husband. Yeah, how did you get him over the line? I just feel like some farmers not all, they've got this concept in their head about what regen ag is and they think it's howling at the moon and hippy-dippy stuff and they're like I don't want to touch that, I don't have time for that. Even You're busy. I've got my way, it's working well. What don't need it? It's a huge barrier sometimes. How do you I don't know if you're breaking through, if you're just subtly sliding through. How would you describe it?
Speaker 1:I think for my husband it was about seeing what was happening on my brother and parents' farm, and they are absolutely mainstream commercial farmers. They also run a stud, so it's not oh, you can only do it if you're trading stock. They have lots of mobs all over the place, but they're still using these same decision-making principles and these same practices. But he could see that the land was really resilient, particularly during drought, and he could see that they were making really good money and that he could see that the regenerative ag practices that they were implementing was a really big part of that profitability. So I think that's probably what got him over the line.
Speaker 3:One thing I've been thinking about in general is that, the concept of leading from anywhere. So you don't have to lead from the front, you can lead from behind. And when it comes to changing practices, if you're not in that position like, oh, I've been the farmer for, you know, 50 years here it can feel really difficult to change the way things are done. But I don't know, do you have any ideas on that kind of leading from behind, of introducing new ideas, testing them out and seeing that change happen over time with the people you're working with, which are often family members?
Speaker 1:for many of us. I think that sense of strong community really feeds into that. When my brother went and did his regenerative ag course, which was through a company called RCS, it was because a good friend of his that he really respected had done it and said it was great. And then a whole bunch of the farmers around Wellington went and did these courses and then it became really normalised. But it was just sparked by one person going out on a limb, taking a risk, thinking it was great, sharing it with them, and it has created a real movement. So many of the really big profitable sheep farms and sheep studs in Wellington are using regenerative ag practices. Every person that goes to work on my brother's farm has to go and do one of these courses so that he can make sure that everybody's on the same page and in the same mindset.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's interesting, that community factor. We trust our neighbours so much, I think, because we know them Also. It's similar land and just that kind of casual chat. I just think it's so fascinating how local communities play that role in, I think, when it comes to any form of adoption of a new technology or practice.
Speaker 1:Something that's been really beneficial for us in that space has been, soon after we did the course, there was a grazing group that started in our area. So it was somebody else who'd been doing regenerative farming practices for a long time and was passionate about helping other people in that space to learn about this stuff, and so once a season, there is a gathering of farmers from the local area who are either using these techniques or are interested and learning from each other. What works, what doesn't work, what are some things we might want to think about, what are some techniques, what are some? What is some of the decision making that people are making in different seasons? And it has been such a great support network, rather than just they're just more talk and sharing of the kind of things other people are doing, their wins, but also their losses, the things that they that haven't gone well, so that we can all learn from each other.
Speaker 3:And it's in that local context and that has just been really helpful how do you keep going when something doesn't go the way you want it to? I think we can be so easily write something off and go. Oh, clearly, regen ag doesn't work. Grass isn't going the way that I wanted to. Let's just go back to what we were doing before. How did you not do that? Because I think it's a natural response.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's just been about learning from other people, be it the people in the grazing group and the experiences of people locally. There's so many great books on people who've been through these journeys, from Charles Massey's the Reed Warbler there's Dirt to Soys. There's thousands of stuff, heaps of stuff, but also things like Dark Emu and Bill Gage's the Greatest Estate on Earth Dark Emu and Bill Gage's the Greatest Estate on Earth. Understanding that these kind of practices in a different way have been used for a long time and that through podcasts and books and talking to other people, we can learn from other people, and gives us that encouragement to keep going and try something else, or keep trying the same thing but a bit differently, whatever are there any other sort of climate smart techniques that you use, whether it's renewable energy or anything else?
Speaker 1:I think renewable energy has a really big part to play in climate smart farming. We're using a bit of renewable energy for a pump on a bore and we'd love to get more on the house and things, but we live next to a wind farm and I think that has a really big part to play in a broader community's resilience to drought. When you host a renewable energy project, obviously you get paid money for that, but most renewable energy projects now also pay the neighbours really good money. We're quite happy living next to this wind farm that we're next to and we don't get paid for it, unfortunately. But if this was being proposed now, we would be getting paid $60,000 a year just to live next door and that is such an incredible buffer to have through a drought.
Speaker 1:If you know you're guaranteed to have that income, it's guaranteed for decades, it's not dependent on the weather, it's not dependent on the markets, it's not dependent on interest rates, then the decisions you can make are really different. And if your farm and all the farms that are hosting wind farms or solar farms and all the farms around them are also getting this money that isn't dependent on the weather, the markets and interest rates, then there's so many businesses in that community that are more robust and that feeds into the broader community. Those businesses are still going to be spending money in town during the drought. They're still going to be shopping at the supermarket, going to the cafe, spending money at the local ag store, buying clothes in the shops during droughts. We know that during droughts the businesses in the local towns often really suffer as well. So if the farming businesses in that region can be more financially secure, then the businesses in the town also remain more financially viable, which is really fantastic.
Speaker 3:I love that you're not bitter that you didn't get that 60 grand. As the neighbouring farm to the wind farm, that's a relatively new thing now, isn't it? I think wind farms five, ten years ago would come into a community and then if you weren't on that space where the wind farm would be, you'd miss out. But they've changed that approach. Now, I think and there's a lot you can come to companies now and demand a bit more. As a community you can actually say we want the money for this and there's I've done previous episodes that that talk that like what. You can come and say look, we'd like some money to go towards our community or something else. It is still contentious, though Wind farms. Not everyone likes them. It can really upset some communities. I don't know how do we bridge that. I don't know. I don't have the answer. So I'm just asking you and I don't expect you to necessarily have the answer, but your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the real difference between a community that thrives from renewable energy projects and those that don't, if those renewable energy projects that are being proposed have communicated well, if those renewable energy projects that are being proposed have communicated well, if they've consulted with the community and genuinely not tokenistic stuff, but right, this is what we want to propose. Is there anything we could tweak to make it more palatable, less impactful? What are the benefits that this individual community wants to see, rather than having a cookie cutter approach Right when we turn up? This is what we provide. It's so much better if they turn up and say what does this community need? Because every community is different and there's such strong advocates in every community.
Speaker 1:So communities that have been proactive and engaging in those projects get such better outcomes and things that are really transformative for their community and have really broad benefits, not just for the hosts and now for the neighbours. All projects, even for the last 10 or 15 years, have had community benefit funds, which are really great, and they've supported lots of sporting organisations and hospital auxiliaries, local halls. The local Bannister Hall was bought back for the local community Bannister's, the regional area that we live in, and it has become a really strong hub for our local rural community. We hold the bushfire meetings there, there's a book club that happens once a month. Lots of land care meetings are held there. We've had meetings on everybody learning how to be more cyber secure and the annual Christmas party, which is the highlight of the Bannister calendar.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're talking to a president of a local hall here. I love my hall.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know Santa on the fire truck.
Speaker 3:Yep, santa on the fire truck. It's just going to be such a good memory, I think. Tell me about what excites you about your farm, you know, when you think about the next five years or 10 years, yeah, I think on our farm.
Speaker 1:I'm just excited about seeing how much more growth and development we can get from the actual bit of land where you have rather than thinking we'd have to expand really want to get in even more fences and more water points so that we can control, we can manage the grasses so much better. I really like that idea of feeling like we're not sheep farmers, we're grass farmers. If we have good grass, we will have good sheep. To have good grass, we need good soil. So we need to be doing all our decision making about the farm in regards to what is going to improve the soil, because that is what is going to make the farm profitable. So I would love to get more fencing and water on our farm so we can be more intensive with our rotational grazing.
Speaker 1:I'd also I'd love to if we could attract a solar project to our farm. I'm not quite sure of the best way to manage that. Do we lease the land to somebody? Do we try and host project? There's been some really great examples of people who are grazing under solar farms and seeing the productivity of the land and the sheep that are under it really improve. There's a big solar farm out at Wellington that's done some studies with a university that have proven that the productivity under the panels has improved, the wall quality has improved, things like that, and I think if the grazing is planned into those projects early on rather than tacked on as an afterthought, you can do it so much better.
Speaker 3:So both Dimity and Ellen, while busy running their own properties, are also future thinkers for the broader agriculture landscape. So I asked them both about what farming could look like five or ten years from now.
Speaker 2:Here's Ellen Litchfield again when I was on my Nuffield trip and interviewing farmers around other parts of the world, is that they all sort of view Australia as a really gold standard in climate smart farming by virtue of the fact that we have such a harsh climate out here. So I really think that Australia could be Australian farming could be leaders in this space and being known for our decreasing emissions and setting really enthusiastic targets, because we used to be known as the clean and green. I feel like that was the early noughties. It was agriculture in Australia. It's clean and green. It's a safe product and part of being clean and green now is also being low emissions. So I think we need to continue that legacy and just involve a lower emissions space as well.
Speaker 1:I would just love to see the ag industry, I guess, more resilient and less at the mercy of the weather and the markets and things like that, and I think if people can have more control over what's happening on their land, that is great. I'd love there to be a stronger connection between the producers of product and the consumers of product their food and their fibre is coming from and what that supply chain is, so there can be a bit more respect and understanding of how these supply chains work and what our part is in that, be it as producers or as consumers.
Speaker 3:And that's it for this episode of Ducks on the Pond. Thank you to our guests, dimity Taylor and Ellen Litchfield, who you can both catch at the Farming Forever Summit. They will be on a panel and, as you can hear, they are super passionate and would love to answer all your questions. Tell them I sent you and we have that 20% off discount. Ducks 20 is the code you'll need. Head to the Farmers for Climate Action website, pop in the code and I'll see you soon in Canberra. Now in our final collab episode, we're looking at how you actually measure some of these initiatives, from reducing emissions to what the bank manager wants to see when it comes to increasing biodiversity or any other sustainable measure you're looking at. Thank you, as always, for listening. This is a Rural Podcasting Co production. Check out our website to see what we do. We help you tell your own story, ruralpodcastingcocom, and make sure you hit follow to Ducks on the Pond so you don't miss an episode. I'll catch you again soon.
