Welcome to the first of our mid-week specials. This is one of the experiments I want to try this year. Short grab releases featuring particular opportunities, stories or updates. There are just so many coming on, I hope this helps you to access them, and all of us to build on them. As ever, you’ll let me know what you think!
First up then, a huge opportunity in the wheatbelt of WA. The Haggerty family have put their original ‘home’ property up for sale. This is where they developed the foundation of their globally renowned ‘natural intelligence farming’ model over a few decades. Here they share with us some of the what, why and how of the sale, along with a sense of the enormous possibilities on offer.
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 8 February 2024.
Title slide: the view Ian talks about (pic: Anthony James).
The RegenNarration podcast is independent, ad-free & freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining them by clicking the link above or heading to our website.
Become a member to connect with your host, other listeners & benefits, via our Patreon page.
Visit The RegenNarration shop to wave the flag. And please keep sharing, rating & reviewing the podcast. It all helps.
Welcome to the first of our mid-week specials. This is one of the experiments I want to try this year. Short grab releases featuring particular opportunities, stories or updates. There are just so many coming on, I hope this helps you to access them, and all of us to build on them. As ever, you’ll let me know what you think!
First up then, a huge opportunity in the wheatbelt of WA. The Haggerty family have put their original ‘home’ property up for sale. This is where they developed the foundation of their globally renowned ‘natural intelligence farming’ model over a few decades. Here they share with us some of the what, why and how of the sale, along with a sense of the enormous possibilities on offer.
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 8 February 2024.
Title slide: the view Ian talks about (pic: Anthony James).
The RegenNarration podcast is independent, ad-free & freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining them by clicking the link above or heading to our website.
Become a member to connect with your host, other listeners & benefits, via our Patreon page.
Visit The RegenNarration shop to wave the flag. And please keep sharing, rating & reviewing the podcast. It all helps.
Thanks for your support!
Di:
And that's what we'd love most of is to have a new family or families come into the area, because that's what the country is lacking a lot of is people in those regional areas. A nd yeah some people with a fire in their belly and a bit of passion to go and put their own stamp on something.
Ian:
It's the perfect opportunity for us to actually put that out there and to be able to do that out there and let someone else possibly have the start that we did on that property. You know that property was the foundation from what we've grown into and we thought, well, it wouldn't be good, rather than us continuing to run it from up there, to actually open up that opportunity for someone else.
Anthony:
G' day. My name's Anthony James and you're with T he RegenNarration, exploring the stories that are changing the story for the regeneration of life on this planet. Welcome to the first of our midweek specials. This is one of the experiments I want to try this year Short grab releases featuring particular opportunities, stories or updates. There are just so many coming on. I hope this helps you to access them and all of us to build on them. I hope I'm not being crazy either. It's, of course, going to take more time and energy to make, but if it does prove to be of some value, I'm hoping the improved systems and skills at my end, combined with your ongoing generous support, will make it possible. As ever, you'll let me know what you think and I'll let you know if I'm burning out.
Anthony:
First up, then a huge opportunity in the wheat belt of WA. The Haggerty family have put their original home property up for sale. This is where they developed the foundation of their globally renowned Natural Intelligence Farming Model over decades. Here they share with us some of the what, why and how of the sale, along with a sense of the enormous possibilities on offer. Di and Ian, welcome back to the home studio. It's great to have you here.
Di:
Fabulous OJ. Beautiful to be here again.
Ian:
Fantastic AJ by the beach.
Anthony:
By the beach on a 40 degree day, so it's very welcome. We've got something we need to talk about today t hat's pretty significant. Tell us what's going on.
Di:
Well, I guess we've been looking at this scenario for a little while, but just of now we're sort of making a bit of a restructure in our farming land. I guess that we're choosing to operate. We've had an opportunity to expand the land near the Mulrin Home Farm in the last 12 months or so and those sort of opportunities seem to be continuing to arise and what it's doing is giving us an opportunity there to really focus on some of the more larger scale landscape impacts that we've sort of been really interested in pursuing and had the fortune, I guess, with taking on some of that Mulrin land, to start to see how those things can change and flourish when perhaps some of the pressure's taken off.
Anthony:
When was that die, that you got the Mulrin land?
Di:
About a year and 2014.
Anthony:
So about 10 years ago, and that became home away from the property. Then that you started on.
Di:
That's right at Wildcatchman. So we've slowly been piecing together, increasing the land mass up there, and we're very fortunate now to have a good chunk a bit over 50,000 acres or so. That's conjoined, would that be right, ian?
Ian:
Yeah, be about that yeah.
Di:
So it also conjoins to the Mulrin lake reserve, so there's a fair bit of natural country in amongst that and, yeah, so we're starting to think that, with the opportunity there to perhaps do research or whatever else it might be, into large water cycle impacts alongside the small water cycle impacts and how these things can really, you know, what can we do as far as rainfall patterns and all that kind of thing, not to mention biodiversity and habitat flow, when those opportunities have strengthened? We started looking at what we were doing with our wildcatchin property because, whilst that's been our original home farm and very, very dear to our hearts, it is now effectively 95 kilometres away from the home base now. So to be running that to the level that's required with a mixed livestock operation, it takes a lot of time and effort, and we're just looking at trying to simplify so that we can spend more time in the home base now and focusing our attention there.
Ian:
And just a fact that it's. You know that was our first original property, so it's had well over 20 years of the style of farming that we do and it's got a lot of great attributes to it. And we thought, well, it's the perfect opportunity for us to actually put that out there and let someone else possibly have the start that we did on that property. You know that property was the foundation from what we've grown into and we thought, well, wouldn't it be good, rather than us continuing to run it from up there, to actually open up that opportunity for someone else to be able to do that?
Di:
And I guess you know, as Ian said, that was the foundation block of what we've now, you know, developed as natural intelligence farming, and when we started there it was, you know, a typical industrially farmed property and we've learnt a heck of a lot from working that and taking, you know, the synthetic synthetics and focusing back on microbiome.
Di:
So it now has had an excessive 20 years of detoxification and restoring microbiome to the point where we get bucket loads of mushrooms and that, through what was previously considered quite saline land, now is growing mushrooms and all sorts of things through it. So it's really restored itself nicely and so it actually would be a bit of a good springboard for a young family or whoever to come on board now, because a lot of that heavy lifting is being done with a lot of those processes on their way, not to say there's still not a lot of great opportunity for further development. There absolutely is, and certainly from a biodiversity restoration continuing and all that kind of approach. But yeah, it would be a great opportunity for people to get started without having to do the hard slog. I guess that might have been in the first 10 or 20 years.
Anthony:
Yes, and you know, part of me still wants to scream out no, don't sell Graceland. As you know, having just visited myself for the first time not too long ago, and you're seeing how magic it is and how and how it feels as well in that way, so I can only imagine how it feels for you to be putting it on the market. But but I understand why you're doing it and it is. It's an extraordinary opportunity for people, is why we're doing this here today. So it's on the market now and the way it's working is that you're inviting expressions of interest. Is that how it's going?
Ian:
Correct? Yeah, no, we're doing that and just putting it out there and to see what might. What might come, come back or whatever opportunities people can think that they might want to look at that property for.
Anthony:
Yeah, and part of it is your worst nightmare is that it goes to someone who doesn't care about the legacy and you then watch it revert. So it's a great opportunity for someone to pick up a legacy and run with it as much as then, you know, get a foothold for themselves and develop it into their wishes and dreams and so forth. But on that note then, what are some of the possibilities that you see or would like to have even done over the years? I don't know, but feed into the imaginations a little bit. What could happen there.
Di:
We did well have started some of the revegetation work on it. It had been very much well and truly cleared before we got there. There had been the odd bit of tree planting, but not really appropriate species in the beginning. We started some biodiversity plantings in the early 2000s but there's still a lot more that could actually be done there along biodiversity plantings and restoration there and just continuing on with. You know, whether it be mixed grains or mixed livestock or whatever it might be, we know the capacity of that land to produce nutrient diverse and nutrient dense foods and microbiologically diverse and dense foods and we've seen those outcomes through Miller and Baker with the grain performance there in the bakery and also with the meat and the wool fibre.
Di:
So any of that amino acid formation has been just mind blowing and what the outcomes have been.
Di:
So I think if someone or a group or individuals or whatever wanted to go along with that whole food and fibre production and ramp it up, I mean there's still a lot more capacity that's been unexplored there because we've been operating over a large land mass. Now you haven't been able to have that individualised attention on that one property and what all its aspects that you could deliver on. And there also is opportunities there, because there is another number of land titles that it could even be broken into smaller parcels or sold as a whole or sold as two parts or whatever, depending on what people's appetite was. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity there with access to scheme water. And then there is one house and facilities there but there's, given that they're, scheme water. On the other parts of the property there could be other houses put there with solar power or whatever they wanted to do, because what's the size of it? It's 3,700 acres all up in two different locations, but there's a number of titles there that could be done different things with, depending on what people's appetite was.
Ian:
But it's about just putting it out there for the imagination. Really. You know, rather than staying business as usual and you know that just moves on and it all goes this way, it's about really starting to mix things up a bit and say, well, what else could this land must be used for, you know, and because it's been so totally detoxified and conservatively farmed, you know it's had under a 50% cropping rotation, you know, more likely 30 or 40, and really well set up farm it. Just the books open.
Ian:
You know we started on that farm. That was our very first bit of that farm. It was 1600 acres and we have grown totally out of that farm to where we are now close to 76,000 acres and it's just been a fantastic producer for us and been over to farm it conservatively and still get those results from it. So what really excites us is where could it go to from here? You know, like First Nations inputs to it. It could have reveged plantings, it could have whatever other forms of agriculture someone would like to put on that, but that'd be really good to see to give that opportunity and because it's not a big block and you know it's not like tens of thousands of acres, it's just a nice sized parcel for someone to move into.
Anthony:
What if you paint the picture for us a little bit, for those who perhaps aren't aware of even that part of the country, or even just your place? So how do you see it through your eyes?
Di:
It's slightly undulating landscape and it backs on to the northern boundary, is the Wallumban lake system, which is part of the head of the Swan River, and yes, there's some nice natural bush country out the back there, yeah, and just in two different land parcels, but they've got some nice elevated parts which suit a nice homestead.
Ian:
And from the main homestead you can just stand on the back veranda and you can just look out over that Wallumban lake, over to property and over that Wallumban lake system and you can see as far as the eye can see. You know it would go for tens of kilometres. You know, along all way to the horizon, so beautiful big panorama of what that property is.
Anthony:
It is bloody beautiful. Part of me wants to not do this episode and snap it up myself, but not being a farmer puts me behind the ape a little bit. But you are offering support to people who come in. Hey, you won't necessarily just leave into it. If you find the right person to sell to which would be the ideal or persons that you, you'll be there to to shepherd them through to a degree.
Di:
Absolutely. I mean a great opportunity, and that's what we'd love most of us to have a new family or families come into the area, because that's what the country's lacking a lot of is people in those regional areas and, yes, people with a fire in their belly and a bit of passion to go and put their own stamp on something.
Anthony:
And we've been talking a little bit of late to hey about the different ownership models or purchase models that we've been coming across just in with our general inquiries, and it does make the mind boggle a bit what could be done here in terms of buying as a collective and setting up a trust or all sorts of different possibilities. That's something that you're open to as sellers in this case.
Ian:
Absolutely. Yeah, you know, purchase some arrangements with an in commons, you know agreement in it where there can be a number of people on that property and the land can be just held for perpetuity. You could have first nations input. It can have the whole lot where they could really, you know a combination of more reveged plantings. There's been no carbon projects done on that property yet. We purposely haven't done that. So you know there could be carbon under reveged or carbon or soil carbon under that. So there's a good base there that people could work on and bring all by joining together, bring all different forms of agriculture, wherever it be, you know, medicine trees or whatever it might be, or whatever first nations activities on that property and then conjunction in with the agriculture and, wherever it be, growing grains and running livestock and all other different things and the biodiversity outcomes of that as well that could be looked into and studied and and data collected from that.
Anthony:
I wonder how you sit here today, how it feels to have made this big decision.
Di:
I think now it's actually. Initially it was difficult, but I think now we're quite excited about the opportunity it can present, and yes, because I think it's time to start to look at things from a different lens, and the opportunity we've got now on the northern side has given us a change in direction in that way, and so what this property now does need is to be part of perhaps a smaller operation, so that it's not part of the big one necessarily, although, having said that, it really is a good what would you call it? A demonstration unit, because it's been going for so much longer.
Di:
It could really fast track some of that diversity in food stuffs and things that can be produced on it, because it has got such an active microbial foundation there. You really could. You know the world's your oyster. There is what you could do with it.
Ian:
Well, it's not found out there these days, or very rarely found. You find properties in that, in that heart, that condition and what's how that farm has been farmed. So that's why we thought it was just a great opportunity to put that out. And we find it exciting now that we've come to that decision, because it's about really giving back and, you know, really putting it out there as a community to bring people into the community, to open it up and really start to practice those things where you know we've got a big project going on up north, but then you don't just keep hanging on the thing, you give up other opportunities, creating opportunities.
Ian:
So as much as about you know, as you know, aj, we haven't had in our own business structure a land ownership mentality. You know, we're just custodians or caretakers of the land and it's about bringing other people in and giving it and actually really standing up and saying we're doing this. You know, and this is the first one off for us, and then probably on some of our other land we'll probably end up doing the same, you know, setting up other modules and if we can set that blueprint of this and then maybe others can follow. So that's what we're looking at and we're open to other ideas where we haven't got all the ideas of how this might be done. But if someone wants to bring an idea and it's good but it's about he's a parcel of land, let's do it.
Anthony:
Wonderful. I wonder, in closing, what piece of music might symbolize the Wiley property or your time there.
Ian:
Well, first one, I should forget what it's called photograph. It's about memories and things.
Di:
Oh, is that the Nickelback?
Ian:
one yeah.
Anthony:
I knew you'd choose Nickelback, yeah.
Ian:
Oh, just because they talk about things in their songs, you know, and it's really good, you know good to it, and they talk about things with meaning and yeah, just to look at that.
Di:
Yes, that was a point too, because we've been tidying up the place as they've been moving out of it, because we've made that decision and, as you mentioned, aj, previously, it's been a bit like a museum going back there and we've been collecting all the photographs too, and it has been bringing back lots of memories of when we first started there with the kids and, you know, not having much and making do with whatever we could at that stage and just yeah, it's been a very powerful property for us and a very powerful connection.
Ian:
Just in that office you've had a gander at that age and just the stuff we were going through there. It's just, you know, years and years of all these records. And when a lot of these brilliant, you know scientists came, you know, to start when Christine Jones first started coming out and Walter started coming out and when Arden Anderson was over, all the documentation and all the records and correspondence there and you know these people 20 years ago in there, korea's, when we're all, and the correspondence, when we're all working things out together, you know, from all different edges of the globe, it was just an amazing amount of. We just realised the amount of groundwork that has gone in to come to where we've come today and it was a good thing to do, really, rather than have it just sitting there.
Anthony:
Yeah, well, that's what I mean it does need. If that's not going to be the museum, if that's not going to be Graceland, it needs something because, you're right, it's a hell of a story there, layers of it and even seeing your initial pamphlets in that space and signage was just so interesting, and let alone the horse riding champion, horse riding pictures of trophies everywhere, etc.
Anthony:
Etc. And when you first met you know I could go on. So in very grounded ways, like how best for people to get on to you about the opportunity if they want to.
Ian:
Probably either contact us direct. It is in, w e have had an agent have a look at it. So that'll be there on the on the web or in the media there as an agent contact under Nutrien Har courts, but, um, but yeah, either us, direct, you know.
Ian:
or Rex Lewis? Yeah, you know, because we needed someone there just to filter. You know all those inquiries and you know he's a great man to do that and understands where we're coming from. And yeah, it's just exciting to see what what might come in that. We really hope it could give someone a great opportunity. AJ: 100% it's begging for it.
Anthony:
Terrific to speak to you about it. Let's hope it lands with the right ears out there and it gets done.
Di:
Thank you so much, AJ. IAN: Thanks AJ. DI: Wonderful your support.
Anthony:
That was Di and Ian Haggerty, globally renowned founders of natural intelligence farming from the WA wheat belt. For more on Di and Ian and, of course, the sale, see the links in the show notes. I've put a few additional photos I took out at the property on the website too, and if you'd like to hear more from and about Di and Ian, I've also included links to our longer conversations on the podcast out at the farm. Finally, another angle to the opportunity here Di and Ian are also inviting contact from anyone who might like to support research into large water cycle changes - yep, changing their own weather, aka bringing the rain back - or related biodiversity changes, on the larger 70,000 acre landscape they're now working on in the wheat belt. This is now possible, so do get in touch if you're interested or know someone who might be. With thanks, as ever, to the generous listeners supporting the podcast for making this episode possible. If you've been thinking about joining us, I'd love you to - just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. And thanks too for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your preferred app.
Anthony:
The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden from the Film Regenerating Australia, and at the top you heard Green Shoots by The Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.