The Regeneration Rhapsody: Success Stories of Soil & Spirit from the Margaret River Conference (Day 2)

Join us at the grand finale of the 2023 Regenerative Agriculture Conference in Margaret River WA. Following on from last week, today we’re with another all-star panel. And again, we’ve no predetermined agenda, but to reflect on what had gone before, and what might come next.

• Dr Judi Earl is a national treasure, having conducted the first studies describing the benefits to pasture from planned grazing. She has been a Holistic Management educator since 2002, and showcases the capacity of grazing animals to regenerate land on her 454 hectare property in NSW.
• Rowan Reid is a global figurehead in agroforestry. He’s a co-founder of one of Australia’s most successful Landcare groups, the Otway Agroforestry Network, in southern Victoria. More than 12,000 visitors have toured his Bambra Agroforestry Farm, which is set up as a 42-hectare outdoor classroom for farmers, scientists, students and tree lovers.
• Kristy Stewart is a young leader who was born and raised up the road from Rowan Reid at Yan Yan Gurt West, an award-winning sheep and agroforestry farm of 575 acres, on Wadawurrung and Gadubanud Country. You might remember Kristy from episode 132 out at the family farm, or facilitating for Nicole Masters in her workshop last year.
• Grant Sims runs the family farm in Victoria, which has been no-till since the early 80’s. When Grant came back to the farm full time he started looking at ways to improve the life and function of the soil through biology. Today he is one of this country’s most popular speakers and trainers on the topic.

Our guests are not just talking about change; they're living it, transforming the very soil we stand on, food we eat, water we drink, clothes we wear, air we breathe, livelihoods we make, and communities we belong to.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers (also available on Apple and some other apps, and the embedded player on the episode web page), and a transcript of this conversation (the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read).

This was recorded on 7 September 2023.

Title slide L-R: Kristy, Rowan, Grant & Judi (pic: Daniela Tommasi).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Wadandi Boodja, by The Nomadics, off their latest album.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Transcript

Anthony: 0:04

G'day. My name's Anthony James and you're with The RegenNarration, exploring the stories that are changing the story for the regeneration of life on this planet.

Anthony: 0:23

It's live, free of ads and paywalls, t hanks to listeners like Kristie Tonkin. Thanks for becoming a subscribing member, Kristie. And enormous thanks also to the members who just knocked up their second anniversary supporting the podcast - Mike Mouritz, Ruben Parker-G reer and Rob Scott. And thanks again to the Nomadics for the tune you're hearing this week, Wadandi Boodja, Country of the Wadandi People, where the event we feature again today was held.

Anthony: 0:52

If you're also finding value in this, please consider joining this great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and what to contribute. Members get footage, photos, invitations, tips and the chance to engage with other listeners and me. There's now an additional way to support the podcast too directly via my host platform, Buzzsprout. You can find that link in the show notes, but do note, just admin wise, at least for the moment those member benefits are only available in Patreon. I'm so very grateful for whichever way you're able to support the podcast. Just head to the website, also via the show notes RegenNarration. com/ support and thanks again.

Rowan: 1:56

I think it was said earlier in Gabe's presentation, in some sense it's easier for the next generation and they've got the resource base to build on. So I sort of feel like they're going to catapult forward and we're going to see much more rapid change as a result of these examples. It's certainly going to happen with trees, because they take so long to grow, but imagine what it's like in all these other examples where people have got those markets established and the infrastructure and the links and the equipment and the knowledge and then suddenly it should just take off.

Anthony: 2:33

Following on from last week, to day we're back in Margaret River, wa, where a full house of 300 plus people gathered for the 2023 Regenerative Agriculture Conference. This time I'm in conversation with another All Star panel at the end of the conference on day two, and again we've no predetermined agenda but to reflect on what had gone before and what might come next. Dr Judi Earl is a national treasure. Having conducted the first studies describing the benefits to pasture from planned grazing, she's been a holistic management educator since 2002 and showcases the capacity of grazing animals to regenerate land on her 450 hectare property, glen Orton in New South Wales. Rowan Reed is a global figurehead in agroforestry. He hails from the Otway Ranges of Southern Victoria, where he's a co-founder of one of Australia's most successful land care groups, the Otway Agroforestry Network. More than 12,000 visitors have toured his Bambra Agroforestry Farm, which is set up as a 42 hectare outdoor classroom for farmers, scientists, students and tree lovers, and a living lab for his own learning. Gabe Brown said to me ahead of the conference that the next generation is getting this four times faster than his In many ways.

Anthony: 4:01

Kristy Stewart stands as exhibit A. She was born and raised up the road from Rowan Reid at Yan Yan Gurt West, an award-winning sheep and agroforestry farm of 575 acres on Wadawurrung and Gadubanud Country in Victoria. You might remember Kristy from episode 132 out at the family farm or when she facilitated for Nicole Masters in her agroecology farmer workshop in New South Wales earlier last year. Grant Sims is a sixth generation farmer running the family farm in North Central Victoria. The farm has been no till since the early 80s and when Grant came back to the farm full time he started looking at ways to improve the life and function of the soil through biology. Today he's one of this country's most popular speakers and trainers on the topic. Kristy leads off for us here, followed by Rowan, Grant and Judi.

Kristy: 5:01

I guess for me it's the depth of the conversations that we've been having at this conference and really casting that net-wide from not only the on-the-ground things how do we get things working but bringing a more philosophical lens and cultural lens to the conversations, which I've really appreciated.

Anthony: 5:19

I'm going to come down the line here everyone.

Rowan: 5:22

Yeah, first of all, I want to thank you for the great response to Christy's presentation today, and it's really important that we support the new leaders of the future. I'm just fascinated by the number of landholders and I'm wondering what's going on inside all our brains about the ideas that we take back, because this is where so much information comes home and we take it back and we integrate it and we think about how it might work, and what comes of that over the time is what I'm fascinated about.

Grant: 5:54

Yep, yeah, I love these sort of events all the time. I just think there's always good energies around and I think we're very lucky in this industry and agriculture the ability that we have to get together as farmers and farmers, helping farmers and sharing. Like most other industry, we're all in competition, but I think it's just like in nature when we all work together and collaborate, we can get some really good results. So how to think it's really nice in this regenerative environment.

Judi: 6:23

Not much left to say. I don't think, oh sorry it is going, but no, the diversity of people and just the amount of young people that are here are feeling pretty aged actually looking around the room and who's here and the diversity of not only people but the stories and where they've come from from the forestry to the chickens and it's all there. And yeah, just compounding it's great.

Anthony: 6:55

One of the things that Saul actually said to me before coming on. And then, as it happened, a young bloke, dylan, came up to me before we started as well and said almost the same thing that, well, he, in Dylan's case, didn't even know. This was on till recently, through the podcast actually. And then, in Saul's case, he was saying he's been having a number of conversations with people who said they weren't actually going to come because they were feeling a bit down on things and potentially like this wasn't going to help that much, but that the overwhelming feeling has been inspiration having come. And so Saul actually wondered and I'll put it to you here what you guys might be feeling more optimistic about coming out of this.

Judi: 7:45

I'll start because I've definitely been feeling down. We're back into drought and empty dams and hungry cows and carving cows, that sort of thing, and you sort of look around and I've been going at it for 12, nearly 13 years now. I started with it seriously. I can still see the good, but you sort of take one step forward, two steps back and whatever, and I certainly have been energised and I think I'm going to go out and sit under my fig tree and see what I should do and I'm hoping that I'll be told to stay.

Grant: 8:30

I'll just jump in. I love these. I always get excited and I just can't wait to get home now. I just want to start growing trees and running chickens and just doing everything. But I think that's where it's really cool too, because if you're just cropping or you're just running sheep, you can sort of I think this whole mindset where we're out here, it's looking outside the box there's so many layers we can do. When you're getting regenerative agriculture, you can be running bees, you can be doing you know there's so many things. We can have so many bites of the cherry to say and it's just good. And I reckon also then to keep the momentum going on, this is not just get home and then go, oh, this was awesome, and feel good. Actually, just start trying to do something, just do little things, connect with people here and just keep going and keep talking to each other and then keep pushing each other along. And I reckon it's really exciting these events to bring everyone together.

Rowan: 9:25

For those who are older, and particularly those who have been trying to do the tree growing, for example, over a period of now 36 years, it's really nice to be whether because of Charles or the group and others, to feel like there is a broader network of people who, who sort of are our family, who, despite the fact you might have been doing something on your own place two decades ago, now, it's got a bit of a definition, it's got a story, and then you start saying, well, where could it go to next? And that's that's opening up now.

Kristy: 9:59

Yeah, I guess for me it's, um, it's been that whole thing of the relationships with people that aren't necessarily as engaged like farmers on the ground, but the presentation with ZQ was fantastic. Yes, we're trying to do so much on our farm and sometimes I just get so exhausted. I'm like I can't, I don't have the capacity to do all these things, and so now I know that ZQ's there and it sounds like they're doing some amazing things with some really great moral baselines, and you know, I'm gonna have a conversation with them about our wool, selling our wool. So, yeah, for me, the relationships and building the connections and getting to meet the community and Work out how we can support each other better in our industry as farmers is so important and and that's happened here at this conference and the other thing is Getting to talk about those deeper perspectives around how our bodies are connected to the natural world, and the fact that I could talk about the female menstrual cycle at an agricultural conference is actually so incredible.

Anthony: 11:04

It's so is a couple of. You have probably spoken to this already, but, rowan, you mentioned a couple of times expressly what might happen next, what we can make of this. Have you got specific thoughts?

Rowan: 11:19

well, no, I suppose I work in a in a world, in our little group, in our community and, and I'm sort of you know, it's people like Christy and there's a whole team of young people now who are, who are the next generation. Now I didn't think I was old but because I was young when we started all got photos of Andrew and I with hair and, and when we're only now 30s and now I'm looking at the 30s, 30 year old thinking what a, what a launch pad. I guess that's happening in every one of these activities. The next generation, as I think it was said earlier, the in Apes pretty well in games presentation.

Rowan: 11:59

Yeah, it's in some sense it's easier for the, for next generation, and They've got a resource base to build on. So this I sort of feel like they're going to catapult forward and we're going to see much more rapid change as a result of of of these examples. It's certainly going to happen with trees because they take so long to grow, but imagine what it's like in all these other examples where people have got those markets established and and the infrastructure and the links and the Equipment and the knowledge and it suddenly just it should just take off.

Anthony: 12:30

Isn't it? And when you see the cross-pollination amongst even you know you guys on stage learn the broader outfit. And I think Terry was saying yesterday he made mention of there being a lot of a A ton of other people playing around the edges of some of this stuff and that he sensed a wave potentially in the offing Imminent. So it really does make you wonder, grant, do you see some of this around the place as well?

Grant: 12:57

Yeah, yeah, no, I do. I'm very lucky because I sort of been traveling all around the country doing these sort of things a fair bit Lately and then I suppose, with you know the seed stuff we're doing, I get to talk at a lot of different farmers in a lot of different Enterprises, you know, and it's happening. There's some really cool stuff. I always go out, I go out and run a workshop, but I come back with you know, learning more than actually what I'm giving a lot of the time and it just blows me away. There's people out there you wouldn't even know that are doing mind-blowing stuff now, like it's, it's crazy. So I've you know, anything is possible, I think, and I've seen things that you would at times thought is impossible, but it's not. It's just you know, once you know you can do these things, that and unlocks a whole another world. It's pretty cool.

Anthony: 13:39

I feel like that. That's almost the theme of the whole shebang for me. I hide his comment. I reiterated a couple of times yesterday the greatest opportunity of all, but it's that, I guess it's. It's. It's. It's in a sense this, the feeling I had coming in, that it's in a sense imagining what could be. But then there's understanding and we've heard it just time and time again that what can come can still blow your socks off or regularly does it sort of part of parcel.

Anthony: 14:07

Judy, I'm wondering, picking up from Christie's point in a way, and I sort of you know I'm tempted to go back to Christie, but I actually want to go to you with this first. Christie know we're talking at our last camp before coming down south, when we happen to bump into each other in Canaver and we'll. She was saying should I say these things here? And I encouraged it for the record, but I also said back what still? One of the things that blows me away is that 90% plus of succession still goes to blows. For everything we've said about women in agriculture and everything we're observing and everything we're seeing in the next generation, there's still effectively a lockout as it stands. What are you observing?

Judi: 14:48

Definitely it's still going on. The the region that I'm living in currently is very conservative and and it's I guess there's there I'm seeing a lot of single women managing properties or and but, but in terms of the succession from Families, I don't see that so much but, but certainly there's a lot of single women or the, the woman taking charge on the farm and the men doing more off-farm off-farm work, generally spraying, but that seems to be the the most common Activity of the local fellows, but particularly the younger ones, unfortunately but, but yeah, the the succession side of things, it's still predominantly Males that are taking the reins, but yeah, it's, I think it's starting to even up that yeah, I think that the subtext is shifting it is yeah, yeah.

Anthony: 15:55

Yeah, christie, you're obviously partly in that camp, but I won't ask you to divulge Family meetings and whatever. But you're partly going through that process as a family and figuring it out with three daughters. What are you observe? Is there change of foot around?

Kristy: 16:12

Well, my dad had three girls. We didn't get a choice.

Anthony: 16:18

Yeah, it's no sun and my sister's a daughter's.

Kristy: 16:20

It's woman power on our farm, so I can't really give any personal details around it but getting around the country as you do, and increasingly observing, I Guess. Yeah, predominantly it's still. It's still men, yeah, it is, but more women are stepping into the space and I think the more that we can have these conversations and more that we have more women in leadership roles in the industry is gonna help with that as well.

Audience : 16:49

Hmm.

Kristy: 16:49

I'm curious if there's any comments from the crowd about this topic.

Grant: 16:56

There we go. I was just gonna quickly add it like a lot of the.

Grant: 17:00

You know, the soil biologists and people like that that I've met and seen, and the good ones around the world are generally women and I just think you know women are and nurture is by nature, and men just want to kill things. So you know, yeah, yeah, just let's kill that and kill that. And and I just think it's great, like I've got two daughters and I love, you know, getting them in on the, in getting them involved and yeah, because it sometimes might look at things different, the way that men can as well. So, yeah, we're trying to grow things. I think it's a good way to look at it. Hmm, cheers.

Audience : 17:36

Yeah. So I run with my team some social benchmarking studies across Australia and we are finding that over time more and more women are running farms, which is really positive. But I'll also like to give a shout out to my PhD students. Work Linda with. She's looking at women in farming and she's found some really amazing, really clear links between the way that women think about the land in Quite a different way they tend to on the whole, it's not all women, it's not all men, but think more holistically about landscape and as a result of the way they think, the way that they are Approaching that landscape is different and the practices that they implement are different. So just thought I'd put that out there, because it's pretty amazing stuff she's finding.

Anthony: 18:27

It does emphasise we all need each other those sort of fundamentally Well they're. We can just keep going to the floor at this point if you like any questions, yeah.

Audience (Blythe Calnan): 18:38

I guess, is a woman who is in that sort of emerging leadership space. I'm seeing more and more that so many of the problems we've got ourselves into as a humanity a Partially because of a masculine way of thinking and acting and communicating. And the women I'm seeing emerging around me and around the world have the ability to fix and that leadership and that intuition and that nurturing and that Collaboration which comes more naturally often by a woman's style of communication, I think has the the possibility to lead us out of a lot of the trouble room.

Anthony: 19:16

I have to agree in my observation, but it's also interesting hearing this from you, blythe, given some of your work has gone so into what we might call quintessentially male spaces. You know, live export in the Middle East, all the more so, I don't know, might say something about Masculinity and femininity, those archetypes, as much as it does about actual gender. What do you think? I?

Audience (Blythe Calnan): 19:45

I Say a lot in the pioneering women who have succeeded in leadership roles. They've often got there because they have or have adopted more masculine traits, and particularly in our political systems. I think it's a wonderful example because no one's probably going to get offended. Those women in those roles have got there because they've behaved like men and I think particularly you know, I am a strong, confident, brave woman, so I've been able to go into those frontiers and succeed. But now what I'm seeing is the women in their 20s to 30s coming up don't have to adopt that to succeed. So we've got this succession of ball breakers who've come through, and then there's me, who's, you know, been able to wear the nice clothes and be feminine, but still have to be very strong to succeed. And now we're seeing a true appreciation of the femininity within our businesses and our leadership roles and I'm really excited by it.

Anthony: 20:45

I'm so excited by that too. Yeah, and I would add to that the femininity that's, I don't know. I'd even probably say committed in blokes. Yeah, beauty.

Audience : 21:01

I'd love to ask a bit of a rookie question, but I'm really mindful of the time commitments on everyone. But being new to farming probably just over one year how would I go about finding a mentor? There's been lots of tips, but I wouldn't know where to begin, especially finding someone in this space.

Kristy: 21:24

I could have a crack at that one. So, honestly, it's just finding someone that you admire and going and having a conversation with them and asking them the question can you spend time with them? That's what I did. I did that with Dianne and Haggerty five years ago. I got to go and spend a month with them, living on their property and learning about what they do, and that's been a really wonderful mentoring relationship for me. And that's what I've done with my other mentors as well, and I can take a certain amount of bravery, but it's so worthwhile yeah.

Anthony: 21:54

There is such welcoming to hey Kristi, I mean, it's what you experience. And the Haggerty's are awesome, let's face it. But they're not alone the welcoming. I mean, I've experienced it. Who the hell am I? I'm not even a farmer. I'm blowing up and just taking up space. They're not, I'm not helping like you were. The welcoming is enormous.

Kristy: 22:14

And I think it is like having making the time for it. So I would just be like whatever, whatever suits you, but can I just come? Can I come and spend some time? And that's that's what's been really rewarding. So I've had more time to actually build that relationship, which then turns into a mentoring and mentee relationship.

Anthony: 22:33

If I could venture, I'm sort of bouncing off your bit here, kristi. There's another element to it, because I've also had people come to me through the podcast and ask similar questions and I've connected them with people. The flip side to that is that some people have not honored that very well, to my mind, because it takes time, like any, probably a lot of you. We all know the thing right. If you take the time to train someone up in something and then they don't stick, it's just a massive load on you as a, as an operator of one kind or another, and even if you're spending the time having a young, with someone, as to whether you'll play a role with, with and for them, that takes time and these people don't have that time.

Anthony: 23:16

So I guess the corollary to it which I'm realizing to engage with people more and more on before I send anyone anywhere I mean I thought I was doing it, but it's just been emphasized is commitment.

Anthony: 23:27

And it's interesting I mean, it's not that you have to commit to being there for six months or a year or whatever at the outset, but there's some form of commitment to embody if you're going to take someone's time, if you're going to ask them for that welcome, to meet it in that way and as that word comes to mind as talking with the elder in the Fitzroy River, literally in the bloody river bank, where we would have been at the bottom of an ocean only months prior, quietly spoken, recording I had to jack the inputs right up to get his voice quietly spoke. It's so profound and I asked him what the one key ingredient to all his success that he's having and then where he's seeing others in his community come along. And that's the word he chose. So I guess that's the meeting, but anyone else have anything to add on that before we go back out?

Judi: 24:17

I need, very briefly, I think, most workshops and presentations I do. I usually put my contact details up and say if you have any questions, call. But I don't. I mean I get the occasional call, but in terms of numbers very few, so the offer is always out there.

Grant: 24:38

Yeah, I used to be like there's groups around. I used to be president of Vicno Till back in the East and that was it. Started off with cropping but it sort of turned a real focus on soil health and I'll have an annual conference and a number of workshops through the year and there could be dairy farmers, sheep produce, all different people, but with a focus on soil health, and their motto is farmers helping farmers. So it's a really good. There is networks out there that you can join and become a group of and then you get that events like this where you'll catch up and keep in touch. So there's stuff out there and there's probably opportunities to start one right here in this region. Like, I know that there's the land care networks and that that can all tie it in and but yeah, it's, it's just great if you can put on these events to get everyone together.

Anthony: 25:25

Yeah, they mean a lot, don't they? The events, it's worth going out of trouble. I think, the network in in the old ways, I mean a hell of an exemplar that there are those communities of practice.

Rowan: 25:35

Just on our network and I think this is this is sort of picks up on the point that Anthony was making about that it's not just a few so-called leaders or outstanding people and a young person would link into.

Rowan: 25:51

In our network we have what 35 mentors and those those other ones who might not see themselves as having some high level of experience to share are often more relevant to a newcomer because they're more recent to that newcomer experience, and I wonder whether they're much more useful than someone coming to me and saying well, you're starting out, maybe you should work through this mentoring program with two or three others and then, if I've got something to offer, it may be later on, but they're familiar with our work and what Andrew and I do. So it's not about sort of picking out just the leaders you mentor at a not saying it's a hierarchy, but closer to where you're at with peers. So we use the word peer rather than this sense of being someone well above or much more experienced or 10 or 15 years ahead, and I think that's important. So Christie's a mentor in our program and other people like her who've built up more recent experience.

Audience (Saul Cresswell): 26:56

Hi AJ and panel I.

Audience (Saul Cresswell): 27:00

My question was partly just answered right then by by Rowan and Grant, but I sort of wanted to pick up on the mentor thing and just just raised the networks, the networks thing.

Audience (Saul Cresswell): 27:12

Part of the motivation or the three kind of outcomes we wanted to see from this conference was inspiration, knowledge and the building of new networks. And I guess, to foster those new networks, something that we'll be sending out, as soon as we can pull it together, to everyone who's attending is a list of resources and places to go for more information. But I'm limited by what I know, so I would welcome anyone to bombard my email address with their networks that they're aware of. We've got a huge amount of wisdom in the room. We've got sustainable table and carbon eight, and Southern Cross Union, I think, has the only Regen AG degree in the world. You know there's huge amounts of wisdom within this room and I'd be happy to try to collate that and pass that on as a huge list of resources for you to turn to, to, to know where to turn for that peer to peer mentoring and and for further information going forwards.

Anthony: 28:11

Terrific. Thanks, saul. By the way, I didn't say before, gabe Brown also said to us, to say to you that he's very happy to be contacted by anyone as well. There's a halibut invite.

Kristy: 28:22

There's a mentor for you.

Anthony: 28:23

I'm taking it up I can tell you that much.

Audience : 28:27

The West Australian Livestock Research Council runs a program alongside their livestock forum meeting once a year called Farmer Friend or something to that effect, and it matches farmers who are wanting to provide a mentorship to people in the industry young people and students particularly to actually volunteer their time and it connects those farmers with young people or new people to the industry in a Farmer Friend program. Esther Price is the CEO of Wellrack and has been in the industry from research to farm for a long time. She is very well connected but she doesn't know who she doesn't know, rather, in the industry would not surprise anyone. So if you get in touch with Esther Price from Wellrack, it's not a region based organisation, but I don't know too many people in my circle that have not started conventionally and moved into that space, so that's definitely a place to go if you're looking for mentorship in the farming industry generally.

Judi: 29:26

Thank you. There's a couple that I mean the lower Blackwood land care.

Anthony: 29:31

Yes, I was just going to say.

Judi: 29:32

The work that Kate and Co do there in terms of the network that they've created is fabulous, and I know there are lots of other groups that I'm aware of, probably locally, that provide that opportunity to connect and make those connections as well.

Anthony: 29:50

And Christy, you've got a particular passion around the land care network, in a sense feeling like it's a bit underrated.

Kristy: 29:58

You know, I just guess I feel like land care is such an incredible organisation and it's probably not known well enough in our generation and it's got this incredible network of people all around Australia on the ground, grassroots communities, so it's an amazing. I just have the question of how can the regenerative agricultural movement be more engaged with land care and how can we leverage off those relationships that are already there? So let's maybe around the sort of ideas of not recreating the wheel too much but working with what's there. And you know the example of the OAN, of that mentorship program and the way that's designed. How might the regenerative agricultural movement learn from that model and perhaps use it within this movement?

Anthony: 30:44

It's been a bit of a theme to hey, like a number of people have talked in different ways about getting out of our familiar territories, just extending the bar over to some other mob that you're not or network that you're not connected with, and that we can all do that. And if we did, I imagine who was that? Keep him under control, Jeff. That's the under 10.

Audience (Barry Green): 31:09

Yeah, Thank you, it seems to be two competing ideologies between economies of scale and stability through diversity, the basic premise of permaculture stability through diversity. We're in such an interesting period of history because throughout history information has been controlled by kings and queens, bishops and dictators more recently Rupert Murdoch. But the internet's changing that and my sense is that what the internet's providing is a platform for something the knowledge equivalent of multi-species pastures, and we like to measure everything. Just because we can't measure something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and you know if we create that opportunity and see what happens.

Audience (Barry Green): 31:55

But in these sort of events where we're perhaps preaching to convert it, it seems to me the missing link is we've got to connect that to the city population, and that's where I think agri-tourism is so important to get people out of the bush, talking to farmers. And it's not just about the money, it's about the understanding, because there's a lot of people in the bush, in the cities, you know, have an idea of what they want, and there's also farmers doing things that if they talk to the consumers they'd realise they don't want this shit. So you know, we've got to have that communication among ourselves and with the consumers. And the supermarks of my backgrounds on radio tech so I know in an electronic system be stable it needs a feedback loop. The supermarkets have broken that feedback loop and maybe Acbury tourism can remake it. Comments.

Rowan: 32:47

Can I just pick up on your first point about economies of scale? And you know I'm a forester and that's one field where being big has been the dominant factor. It's about to break down. It's breaking down extremely quickly and because of what's happening, the fires led to the fact that if you own a pine plantation now and you grow it a conventional way, you cannot insure it. There is no insurance company from Lords of London to Amsterdam that's going to actually take out insurance, and there's a crisis going on within the larger private growers because they need insurance.

Rowan: 33:28

That Kangaroo Island fire was the end of forestry insurance. So what that's done we don't have insurance, we're too small and too diverse. But what it's actually done is saying that model is just one example, that model getting to a point where it's not resilient enough to deal with just a simple economic situation, and then you overlay the social aspects to it. And so I've been exploring through my whole career about what might happen if forestry was actually sort of inverted and it had strength in being diverse, and the challenge is in everything from the machine to the certification to accessing the market. But I wonder now, when you say it's probably the same in a lot of the sectors that we're dealing with. I've always thought agriculture 100,000 people with a few cows is a demonstration. Our scale can come through many people. Maybe that's something forestry can do, but maybe it's actually breaking down in other parts of the ag sector that you're involved in more so than I knew.

Audience (Barry Green): 34:34

Certainly in the future at least. The further it is from the supply, the less nutrition is left in the market.

Anthony: 34:43

Any other comments?

Grant: 34:45

Yeah, there's a huge opportunity now for agri-tourism and sort of putting a good message out there, because we always get a lot of negative stuff in the media of farmers killing, the ISIL doing that or wrecking the environment.

Grant: 34:56

So it's an opportunity we have.

Grant: 34:57

But I know, particularly at home, through just after COVID, there's real opportunities like people just want to get out of the city. They got locked in there for that long in Melbourne and I've been to events where people are tapping into that now and this is where we can stack those enterprises and be as creative as your imagination lets you. But I've seen on different scales where you can come and stay there, feed a pet lamb a bottle of milk, feed some chickens, some handful of wheat, and people will pay big money to let their kids do that because they don't have a cousin or anyone on the farm. To the other end, where I've seen people advertise a shipping container in the bush and they advertise no power, no Wi-Fi, no comfort, no thrills, and it's booked out every weekend because they just want to get out of the city and disconnect. And so you think we have to be this big fancy farmstay with all this elaborate stuff. They said we just bought a shipping container and advertise, and it's booked out every weekend, so there's lots of opportunity there.

Anthony: 35:59

Hold on hold on there is.

Kristy: 36:01

Could I just jump in there quickly as well? I think another big part of the agritourism or the reconnecting is the education space. So you know, our tours are getting more and more popular and we're now working with schools where they're actually integrating our farm property into the subjects with the students. So the students do subjects that are based on looking at the farm and they have to design how they'd regenerate the property. They get a map of what it used to look like when it was degraded, then they do their designs and then they come out to that place and we take them around and then we talk about why we did what we did and they present to us on what their designs were, and so there's more interest in this coming through with. The schools and the education departments are starting to come on board with this stuff. And also at the university level we can do things.

Kristy: 36:48

A friend of mine, frank, who's an architect we co-developed a subject for Monash Uni for the architect students looking at regenerative building design and ecological landscape management, and the students came out and we got them to camp out on the land and the biggest impact for those students was actually the camping.

Kristy: 37:07

It wasn't even really looking at all the ag stuff which they still thought was interesting. But they said the subject was rated really highly and like one of the highest rated subjects you know out for the students in that year level. And they said the biggest thing for us is that we got to watch stars. Some of them had never camped before, some of them had never sat by campfire. We fed them land from the farms, which is just this really experience for them of connecting. So looking at how can we, all of us as farmers I mean I know that we're all limited with our time, but that's where we get more people involved but we can be involved in the education systems in the city as farmers in all sorts of space Like I'm working with architects, you know. So there's, I just think there's so much opportunity for us in that way of connecting with the city through those different avenues.

Anthony: 37:53

Yeah, and there's an overlap there too, I like, and the themes that were coming through yesterday around the power of having people come on to country, that's more evidence of that. But it's sort of knitted through everything and even in the tourism lens, if you like, it can still be done in that way with a bit of depth. I've got to come back to you too, Rowena. When you said you don't get insurance because you're too small and diverse, I thought what if your insurance was innate? The understanding that insurance was innate because you were the right scale and diverse?

Rowan: 38:24

Yeah, so I was talking about in the way the forestry is, insurance is developed is is they actually pay for the value of the years you've had the tree in the ground. So that's not the sort of insurance that we could get because of the way it's structured. But it's because it's integrated, because we graze underneath, spate the trees and prune, that we carry our own. We cover our own risk for the fire, yeah, exactly.

Rowan: 38:53

I don't want to come back next year and say I got burned out because it would be horrible. But you sort of think well, you've got to manage your risk and you're in a position because you're in a farming community, you live on the property or you've got grazing animals you can manage the risk better than a corporate or a large-scale absentee landholder. So in a sense we should be a lower risk asset for ensuring people. On the two, I just want to say add the thing please charge. I worked at uni for 20 years and I think I was the first academic that actually paid the farms we went to. In the first year I set up the farm and my family saying you know, you're going to get any money for this we held a field day and I charged $10 a head to come and look at trees. They were this big, we had 100 people and it was all cash back then and $1,000 worth of money on the table back in 1988.

Rowan: 39:50

I think Claire could see. Well, maybe this might actually be something that develops in and that encourages the students. They've got much more into school groups than I can cope with or interested in doing. But now our network, we pay our members who hold a field day. We pay them to visit there. That's what we're just always investing in the people.

Rowan: 40:12

And then you go back again and they do a better job. They put that money back into I'm going to manage my trees or I'm going to clean up them, I'm going to put it in a car park. They always put it back in and you get a better result as it. And I imagine them going proudly back to their family and the family saying, well, you're wasted today talking to that group and they said no, we've got a couple hundred bucks and made some good friends. Making good friends is not a good line if you don't get the money. When you go home and you've got three kids at home and three young kids and you say I made some friends. I used to say that wasn't enough, so yeah.

Anthony: 40:50

No, it also emphasises how you don't need to carry the can by self. Yeah, yeah.

Audience (Kallista Bolton): 40:57

Ajay, I just wanted to circle back to the query about connecting with other local farmers. So there is an amazing network in Western Australia called the GrowA Group Alliance. It's a network, a statewide network of 88 groups, of which 65 are pure grower groups, which are localised groups of farmers. The groups operate at all different levels of scale and purpose. So their groups have 15 members through to the largest one, which is RegenWA, which Stuart announced yesterday has actually 200, 2000 stakeholders. So within the network there are at least around almost 20 groups that are overtly out around being regenerative Life's down there.

Audience (Kallista Bolton): 41:51

She's the vice chair of the WA Regenerative Livestock Producers. We've had Nick Kelly up here today. Wheatbelt Integrity Group, lower Southwest Growers Group, which is a local GrowA Group here. But the best resource and tool I'll get this to you is head to ggaorgau. There's an ATZ page which is a list of all the GrowA Groups around Western Australia with a pin on the map so you can go there find your local GrowA Group. But everybody here should probably be connected to RegenWA because that's the overarching place and community practice for regenerative practitioners. So yeah, I'll send that through.

Anthony: 42:30

Thanks very much, Kalista. There's also I've been observing some of the land and conservation district committees over station country and there's some amazing stuff happening there too that we're not going to hear about here, sadly, and I would like, in terms of what I would like in what happens next, that something connects to the station holding community a little more as well. In forums like this, they do it themselves with so few of them. It's terrific, but I wonder if there's more potential there as well.

Audience (Jeff Pow): 42:59

We're going to get a conversation after all, shoot no well, the mentoring and growing of new farmers, but also, I suppose, the important work coming away from this two days around ways to market. So making sure that those pathways and Michelle affectionately calls what we've done the bleeding edge, and you guys are the leading edge. You know that, yeah, the path is a little bit clearer, but we've still got these barriers around livestock processing. Some really important work to be done around that and I think that's going back to the grower groups, et cetera, and to the department and the policy makers is around that enablement that we actually got to facilitate the way to market so that these young farmers who are really interested in what we're doing, we could stack enterprises, we could stack forestry, we could stack poultry you know all these different farming enterprises together on land. So we don't need the capital, it's just the processing and getting those products under tables 100%.

Anthony: 43:58

Let's take that as a closing comment. I think that's all we've got time for, is that right, kyra. W e got one other, okay.

Audience : 44:04

Thank you. I suppose I just want to go back a little bit and encourage everyone to just be who they want to be and do what you want to do.

Audience : 44:16

I mean you're allowed to have the dream, you're allowed to want to do the things you want to do. You can do as much or as little as you want. If you want to find a mentor or connect with a network or run a regenerative agricultural conference, then you can do that. There are people that can support you. But you've got to do it. But when you do it you get this amazing support and power. That is the community, that's the network, that's the regenerative process. I suppose yeah that's it.

Anthony: 44:52

That will be our closing comment. Thank you Alr ight. Pl ease do thank the guests that have come on this panel for us, Judi, Grant, Rowan and Kristy. A nd thank you to Saul Cresswell, main organiser of the Margaret River event, and Dave and Jack at Smart Soil Media for bouncing along the venue's audio, along with producing film of the event which you can see on the conference website. And finally, stand by for the sequel to this conference, and RCS Australia's monumental convergence event 18 months ago that we talked about at length in episode 136, because plans are underway for Convergence Mark II to be run in collaboration and staged on each side of the continent in 2025. More on that as info comes to hand.

Anthony: 46:15

A big thanks once again to the generous supporters of the podcast for making this episode possible. If you have been thinking about becoming a member or other kind of supporter, I'd love you to join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thanks again, and thanks, too, for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your favourite app, because it all helps. The music you're hearing is Wadandi Boodja by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.