Soil Aha Moments…

Have you had an aha moment around the way you farm? A moment of sudden insight, clarity or discovery that permanently changes the way you see things? That was certainly the case for Kim when this moment (approx 1996) changed how she saw soils from that moment on:

“I remember driving across the paddocks checking on our wheat crops and noticing a strip in the wheat crop that was stunted and sick. I asked my husband (now ex-husband) “What happened there?” … ‘That’s where the fertiliser rig ran out’ he answered.

We were farming some of the most fertile soils in Australia in the renowned “Golden Triangle” at Croppa Creek in northern NSW. I immediately became concerned about the state of our soils seeing these wheat plants struggling to grow without fertilizer.

These soils had supported my parents in law well. They were successful, innovative farmers who grew prize winning, profitable crops. Local farmers would talk of the days when these soils were newly cleared and initially required very little in the way of fertiliser inputs.

This moment connected for me how soil health was a foundation for maintaining a viable farm business and I could see how it needed to be a vital consideration for families through the process of succession planning. I saw the challenge for us as the next generation of farmers, taking on large debts to buy out the retiring generation and inheriting soils that were unintentionally depleted. This was clearly not a recipe for success!”

Once you have an aha moment around soil health you can not unsee it. I continued to see the declining soil health reflected back to me in declining resilience of farmers to climate extremes and in the increasing rates and costs of inputs in my rural financial counselling & extension work with hundreds of farming businesses in our local area.

An innate knowing that things just aren’t right…

Maybe your awareness to restore soil health and move away from industrial farming practices has been more of a gradual progression, stemming from an innate knowing that industrial farming is just not right? This was certainly the case for Angus:

“I was born in New Zealand and have always been a farmer save for a few years in mine management. I moved to Australia in 1981 with my parents who had three sons interested in farming and this would never have been a possibility of aspiring to in New Zealand at that time. We purchased a 7305 acre woolgrowing property at Ballendean in southern Queensland and this was where I was first introduced to the challenges of farming in a very different land – both with regard to the climate and quality of soils!

I soon came to understand and appreciate the challenges this landscape presented and to apply all that I knew and felt to improving the capability of each and every place I have lived on since this time. Long before carbon farming was ever spoken of I modified grazing strategies and stocking rates to manage with the belief that every year was a drought year and so I had to maintain at all times a more than adequate groundcover and feed reserves not only to maintain animal production but to improve organic matter levels and water holding capabilities of the land I stewarded.

In those early years whilst working extensively in intensive horticulture I also fell ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a result of chemical use on enterprises I worked in. This experience hastened my journey down the pathway of what is now known as regenerative agriculture. I am passionate about my belief that our health is dependant upon the health of the food we eat, which is dependant upon the health of the soils on which the foodstuffs – be they animal or plant – are raised. Our health and perhaps more importantly the health of our descendants and the earth itself is dependant upon each and every one of us leaving the land, in whatever capacity we have stewardship of it, in a better state than when we assumed that stewardship. This is true of a suburban backyard or of thousands of acres – the size does not matter.”

Growing soil

We purchased “The Oasis” in 2004 with the intention of living a permaculture type lifestyle and growing as much of our own food as possible. Our granite soils had been sluiced for tin in the early 1900’s and had a history of over grazing. These degraded, lifeless soils gave us no choice but to learn to “grow” soil if our land was to have any productive capacity at all.

Angus has been passionate about properly managed grazing since he was a child in New Zealand. Implementing grazing management practices designed to get animal impact and then a good rest and recovery period between grazing was our first step. We added biodynamics to our soil restoration tool kit after attending a workshop with Hamish McKay in 2006. Hamish encouraged us with the confidence to just have a go as the only way to fail with biodynamics is to not do it!

We continued to read widely and attended lots of courses to build our knowledge around soil and human health over many years. Most importantly we took inspired action implementing practices now regarded as “regenerative” agriculture. We have enjoyed learning from biodynamic farmers through events with Biodynamic Agriculture Australia and were particularly influenced by workshops with Graeme Sait and Hugh Lovell. Our learnings deepened through the opportunity to work as coaches with Nicole Masters from Integrity Soils in from 2018-2021.

Building resilience through soil health

“The Oasis” has been an incredible teacher over the past 17 years. Our observations from growing soil here have made us even more passionate about restoring soil health and the capacity to build resilience in our landscapes to climate extremes and grow nourishing, nutrient dense food.

We quickly observed how our management practices improved the water cycle and rainfall use efficiency in our landscape. Our soils were absorbing more water and we had minimal runoff leave our property, when it did the water was clean. The carrying capacity of the land has increased gradually over time along with this improvement in water holding capacity.

In early 2011 we had the opportunity to participate in a Soil Carbon Research Programme SCaRP that was examining soil carbon levels in the top 30 cm of the soil. It was designed to compare carbon levels between a rotational (or similar style of grazing management) grazed property and a conventional set stocked neighbour on light soils to see whether grazing systems influenced Carbon sequestration. The soil samples were taken by Soil Conservation staff and due to the neighbour’s absence Angus was fortunate to be present as both sites were sampled. The hydraulic core sampling rig they used could sample to a depth of 750mm on our property without aid but only about 60m away in the neighbours paddock it could only penetrate approximately 170 mm!

When the results were returned the differences in total organic carbon expressed as mg/g were massive in the top 20 cm as the attached table shows with no difference in the depth 20 – 30 cm.

Total Organic Carbon mg/g
Our Property Neighbour
0 – 10 cm 17.9 5.6
10 – 20 cm 14.1 2.3
20 – 30 cm 4.2 4.2

This equates to total carbon stocks per hectare as per the table below:-

Carbon Stock tonnes/ha
Our Property Neighbour
0 – 10 cm 22.3 7.8
10 – 20 cm 20.4 3.2
20 – 30 cm 6.3 6.2
Total 0 – 30 cm 49.0 17.3

The most exciting aspect of this from our perspective is the much increased ability of our soils not only to support correct biological functioning but also to store water. The difference in total Carbon Stock per hectare between ourselves and the neighbour of 31.7 tonnes equates to approximately 52.6 tonnes of organic matter per hectare. This then enables us to store 210,000 litres more water per hectare than our neighbour. Our observations are that our property has improved in resilience, biodiversity and productivity with each passing year with our improved ability to store water. We also received Colwell Phosphorous levels indicating more than 4x as much P in the top 10 cm and more than 2x as much in the next 10 cm as our neighbour (with no fertiliser applications!).

Given these amazing results it was frustrating to see the data collected from our landscape disregarded as an anomaly, along with other properties that also demonstrated vast differences from their neighbours as a result of grazing management. No researchers visited our site to gather context in making this decision.

Following months of severe drought, in February 2019 “The Oasis” was impacted by the Tingha Plateau fire. This fire was followed by the lowest ever recorded rainfall in the 2019 calendar year. We had destocked our land due to drought one week before the fire destroyed all of our ground cover and we spent many months living in an apocalyptic type landscape. The grief process that accompanied this event and our recovery from fire has taught us a lot. Losing most of our much loved garden and orchard along with lots of trees we had established and nurtured over the years has been heart breaking. We have been reminded that nothing in nature ever stays the same and taught to let go of the human notion that it should.

At the same time we have been encouraged by the resilience that the foundation of soil health we had built has provided our land in recovering from prolonged drought and fire. In August 2019 northern NSW was a dust bowl, we had dust blowing off dry bare land all around us yet our soil was not blowing. Pictures below show that we basically had a dust proof fence! In November 2019 when rains started to fall we could see our land absorbing water where around us water was not able to infiltrate the soil.

The fire also provided us with the opportunity to totally re-design our internal fencing to facilitate flexible, adaptable grazing management of livestock. The rains have returned, we have re-stocked the land and continue the soil growing journey.