Farmers Helping Farmers (VicNoTill)

VicNoTill farmers were rapt to welcome food writer, farmer, television broadcaster and chef Matthew Evans to the Food for Thought Conference in Wagga Wagga. After Matthew walked around the paddocks, stood in a soil pit and sampled the beef grown on the cattle stud of VicNoTill’s Michael Gooden, they sat down to talk about the links between healthy soils, food and people. Matthew shares how he went from a city boy who was always hungry to a reluctant celebrity who uses his fame to ‘bang on about healthy soils’. His purpose is to spread a deeper appreciation of the broader health impacts when people values farmers like those in VicNoTill who are changing their farming systems and improving their soils to grow more nutrient-rich foods. Based in Southern Tasmania, Matthew lives and works on Fat Pig Farm, a mixed holding where he tends a garden, makes cider, fattens the namesake pigs and tries to entice milk from two full cream dairy cows for his onsite restaurant. Matthew’s personal farming journey has been the focus of six series of Gourmet Farmer on SBS, and he’s presented two documentaries, For The Love of Meat, and What’s The Catch. Matthew is the author of 15 books on food, including the authoritative ethical meat manifesto On Eating Meat. He’s an advocate for open, fair, accountable food and farming systems, and has pushed for honest labelling so we can all enjoy sustainable seafood. His book SOIL is a hymn to the remarkable, and underappreciated bit of Earth that gifts us life. It’s a swashbuckling tale of soil that arms us all with the knowledge and respect to care about its health, the perfect complement to his latest completely revised cookbook The Real Food Companion. His most recent book, MILK, came out in July 2024 and unpacks the truth and lies behind the original superfood.

In the FARMERS HELPING FARMERS PODCAST Episode 21, Dan Fox sits down with WA farmer Rob Hetherington who is seeing a lifetime of soil study come to fruition on the Lake King farm he runs with his wife Judi and son Daniel, Kate and family.

This is a fascinating and indepth discussion with an experienced farmer and Wheatbelt NRM Soil Health Champion who was a guest speaker at VicNoTill's 2024 Food for Thought Conference.

Rob discovered a long time ago that calcium was the limiting factor to his soil health on the cropping farm that has been in his family since 1946. Rob and Judi took over the management of ‘Walma’, named after Rob’s parents Wally and Mary, in 1983. They grow multi-species for a dairy as part of an ongoing arrangement, as well as winter grains and opportunistic summer crops.

Using his scientifically-geared knowledge he identified calcium, along with some phosphate, as being the first step to bringing their whole system together.

Calcium has stimulated their root, stem and foliage growth, helped build stem strength in crops and made them more resistant to attack by disease or insects and helped raise Brix levels which helps them withstand frost.

Rob's most important lesson of all is understanding that knowledge is power.

"In the regenerative space there’s a lot of talk out there that you’ve got to look after the soil biology, so put a crop in with minimal fertiliser or no fertiliser. This might work on some areas and you might get away with it one year. In the long term though, it’s a downward spiral. I know that because I’ve experienced it myself. It’s a matter of knowing the chemistry and the biology, finding that knowledge and moving forward from there. At the end of the day, farming is all about mineral energy and controlling conductivity and knowing what to apply and where to apply it to get those reactions happening.”

When farmers speak about diversity being one of the hallmarks of a resilient farming system, Stacey Curcio asks them to consider the diversity within their diets and the way they move to keep their body’s cells and microbes thriving.

Stacey is a Naturopath at Cultivating Wellness with a Masters of Human Nutrition and was guest speaker at VicNoTill's Food for Thought conference in 2024. She links human health and soil health, regenerative practices and systems thinking.

In this Farmers Helping Farmers The Podcast episode with Michael Gooden, Stacey delves into more detail about the way people respond to the environment, the food they eat and the emotions they experience.

Palates reflect the intricate relationship between the land, the plants, and the animals we consume. This connection reminds us that healthy, diverse ecosystems are essential not only for sustaining the Earth but for nurturing human health, as the foods we eat carry the imprint of the land and its vitality.

Nutrition starts in the soil, not in the packet or on the plate. "We are what we eat eats."

Over the past decade, Field Systems Australia founder Michael Eyres and Soil Science Australia vice president Edward Scott have stood in around 7000 soil pits around the world. They focus on soil performance in managed agricultural landscapes, and help farmers identify the most limiting factors affecting production. From that starting point they generate soil management strategies that result in profitable outcomes. In this episode they cover precision agriculture, building carbon in broadacre cropping systems and a whole lot more. One of the big take home messages for farmers is to have confidence in the changes you’re making but be patient. Sometimes it takes a few years to see the impacts of the change.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the Farmers Helping Farmers podcast and if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review. The more people who join the conversation, the more we learn from each other.Subscribe to Farmers Helping Farmers on your favourite podcast app and connect with VicNoTill by becoming a member and following us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Internationally renowned nutritionist and farmer Graeme Sait is a wealth of information. 

After a tragic family accident, he has dedicated the past 28 years of his life to sharing all that he knows and all that he has learnt about improving plant and human health. VicNoTill is honoured to sit down with Graeme in this episode where he encourages farmers to take small steps towards change and they will reap the rewards, both financially and personally.

You can find out more about Graeme on our website – he knows so much about growing nutritious food and we’ve only crammed in a tiny portion of what he knows into this conversation! 

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the Farmers Helping Farmers podcast and if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review. The more people who join the conversation, the more we learn from each other. 

Subscribe to Farmers Helping Farmers on your favourite podcast app and connect with VicNoTill by becoming a member and following us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The road to regeneration with NSW farm manager and Sober in the Country Bush Tribe Member Matt Tonkin looks at how important it is for farmers to be profitable, not only in the financial sense but also from personal and landscape perspectives.

When Matt's life on the land hit rock bottom he realised he needed to make big changes. Instead of a farming system that relied on chemicals and synthetic inputs he chose to start thinking about one that promoted life, took a more natural approach and had the long-term health of the ecosystem at its heart.

His decision to explore regenerative farming systems also provided a life-altering jolt on how he was managing his own health and wellbeing.

Farmers Helping Farmers guest host Michael Gooden walked around the paddocks of the farm Matt manages in the NSW Riverina district before catching up for this deeply personal conversation. They cover a lot of different topics, including how easy it is for farmers to get so wrapped up their financial health that they lose their own health along the way.

Matt was a special guest speaker at VicNoTill's 2023 annual conference, Tran$ition23.

If this episode raises any concerns for you, please reach out to your mates, family or:

• Sober in the Country: https://www.soberinthecountry.org/
• Lifeline: phone 13 11 14
• Beyond Blue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/

Join our host Dan Fox in Part 2 of an indepth conversation with Phil Peterson about rebuilding soil carbon on farms.

Dan has talked numerous times with Phil in the paddock, and wanted to capture some of these conversations in a podcast. He spoke to him earlier in the year but still had so many questions that he has recorded a follow up.

If you haven’t listened to Part 1, we suggest you go back to Episode 6 of Farmers Helping Farmers first.  In Part 2 Phil discusses the importance of sap tests for identifying your risk to plant disease, how to rebuild your soil structure, the importance of context when you’re making farming system changes, and what some of Loam Bio’s paddock trials of simplifying the seed dressing process are finding.

Phil has been at the grassroots of agriculture for many years, asking questions about the environment and how farmers can improve both the yield and quality of the crops and pastures they grow.

This has led to a role with Loam Bio, which researches how farmers can build more carbon in their soils and improve their bottom line.

When sixth generation farmer Grant Sims reintroduced stock into his no-till cropping system, he discovered a whole new world living underneath his soils. Grant’s excitement and passion for a new approach to how farmers feed the world is contagious, as podcast host Dan Fox discovers in the very first episode of Farmers Helping Farmers - soil health, soil function and grassroots agriculture.

Sixth generation mixed farmer Grant Sims is also the founder of DownUnder Covers. You can find out more about Grant at the VicNoTill website – he’s a wealth of knowledge and we’ve only just scratched the surface! 

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the Farmers Helping Farmers podcast and if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review. The more people who join the conversation, the more we learn from each other. Subscribe to Farmers Helping Farmers on your favourite podcast app and connect with VicNoTill by becoming a member and following us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

One of the world’s most respected leaders in soil health, carbon sequestration and regenerative agriculture Dr Terry McCosker struggled terribly in primary and high school, before discovering he 'learnt by doing'. Since then he has never stopped learning or doing, and is one of the masterminds behind farmers getting paid for improved land management practices and building their soil carbon. After 20 years of lobbying for monetising soil carbon increases, Terry’s focus has now turned to farmers getting paid for their ‘natural capital’. In this episode he provides a valuable insight into the dos and don’ts of setting up a carbon project, and how the model of ‘farmers helping farmers’ is the key to a better future for our landscape and our people.

In this episode of Farmers Helping Farmers our host Dan Fox catches up with vice president Tom Briggs. As a third generation farmer in Victoria, Australia, Tom was never a big fan of school; especially the reading and research assignments that were required. But since discovering the practice of regenerative agriculture there isn’t enough reading, research reports and information available to consume.

Tom has been known to say on many occasions, “I eat, sleep, breathe this stuff and consume every bit I can get.”

Tom is candid in this conversation about the things that have gone right and the things that have gone wrong as he's worked with his father to introduce new ideas into their mixed broadacre cropping and livestock system. They take a positive and open-minded approach to challenges so they can keep moving towards the goal of better soil health and better farming.

• This episode is proudly brought to you by LawrieCo: https://lawrieco.com.au/

The worms at NutriSoil are treated like royalty, because they are the key to sustainability, healthy soils, plant, human and planet health.

Nakala Maddock is the chief executive officer of the Baranduda-based business and is helping Nutrisoil take worm farming to all new heights. Nakala, also the host of the Biological Farming Roundtable Podcast, stepped out from behind the hosting microphone for this interview with Dan Fox during VicNoTill's annual conference in July 2023.

A farm chemical accident for Graham Maddock in the mid-1980s triggered a rethink of chemical and fertiliser applications and set in motion the establishment of Nutrisoil.

In this Farmers Helping Farmers podcast episode, Nakala gives a wonderful insight into the Maddock family's lifelong journey to learn how plants and soil function naturally, and how they're developing their biological stimulant products. This episode is proudly brought to you by Nutrisoil.

Fifth generation broadacre farmer and agronomist Keiran Knight grew up on an irrigation, cotton, sheep, cattle and cereal farm between Walgett and Narrabri in NSW. She married her next door neighbour John and they still farm the land their previous generations settled in 1891.

While working as an agronomist and with a young family, Keiran became increasingly concerned about the amount of fertiliser conventional agriculture was asking farmers to use, both from an economic and environmental perspective.

She and John started using bio-stimulants and she made a career change to become an agronomist for Best Farming Systems Australia.

Keiran says farmers are getting agronomy advice they believe is evidence-based and scientifically based, but not enough people are talking about the damage synthetic inputs do to their most precious resource, soil.

Keiran is well attuned to growing up in a rural area, and the culture of farming where it’s difficult to step outside the lines. She encourages more farmers to ask more questions about the products they’re using and what those products are doing to their soils as well as the quality of the food and fibre they are producing.

Keiran was a guest speaker at VicNoTill's Food for Thought conference and says more questions also need to come from consumers around the nutritional integrity of their food such as who grew it, how did they grow it and what is their soil management plan.

Australian families have grown up eating their fair share of Kentish potatoes, but have we ever considered the story behind the pioneering family who brought this staple ingredient to our tables? Michael Gooden sits down with third generation potato grower Nic Kentish, who shares the ups and downs, soil health and life lessons from growing the humble potato. From the drought which preceded Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 to discovering his love for sheep and cattle while jackarooing on the Hay plains and central Queensland in the 1980s to watching the Murrumbidgee River run dry. From being in $2million debt with 17% interest rates growing organic potatoes to restoring their soils, and bank balance, growing pastures for organic for sheep and cattle - the depth and breadth of Nic's experience in his life so far is a winding road with plenty of big lessons along the way. The biggest lesson of all goes far deeper than the soils he's so passionate about, and he's now one of the country's leading educators in Grazing for Profit. Settled on a farm in the Adelaide Hills near Hahndorf, with his wife Alexi and three children, Nic works full-time for RCS as a teacher, advisor, facilitator and coach.  Combining his passions for livestock and people, Nic approaches life with zest, humour, feeling and a genuine endeavour to see land, animals and humans together realise their true potential. Since the earth is the earth and animals are simply good at being animals, Nic takes up the human challenge to share what’s possible if people can change. 

Our host Dan Fox catches up with Col Bowey from CB Farming Systems, who was one of the guest speakers at VicNoTill's 2023 conference. Col also led a soil pit discussion and spent the week visiting NSW farms.

Col says success in farming always comes down to having a good ‘farming system’ in place. In 2008 he founded CB Farming Systems and dedicated himself to learning as much as he could from soil scientists and other farmers. He helps farmers build systems that understand healthy soils are at the heart of farm and ecosystem health, while also understanding they need to be productive and profitable.

Col’s interest and drive to know more and understand more about the links between soil health, landscape and personal health has introduced him to some of the most successful farmers in the country.

This episode is proudly brought to you by VicNoTill sponsors:

• YLAD Living Soils
• Carbon Link
• Excel and Gyral

UK arable farmer of the year and Green Farm Collective founding member Tim Parton spent a week in Australia as part of VicNoTill's annual conference TRAN$ITION23. As well as inspiring over 100 farmers in the conference room, Tim hung out in soil pits and dug into soils with a shovel to gain a deeper understanding of regenerative farming systems in the Australian context. Dan Fox sat down in the podcast studio with Tim to discover what new ideas his visit had sparked. VicNoTill was also keen to find out how Tim is changing the narrative about farmers being the heroes when it comes to sequestering carbon and feeding the world.

• This episode is proudly brought you by Loam.

Young farmer Jake Chandler has always had a deep connection with all things agricultural, and has experienced the landscape from many perspectives. The son of an Ag teacher, he worked as a jackaroo in the Northern Territory before studying environmental science at university then moved into a corporate career in the mining industry.

After falling in love with and marrying Gemma Wilkinson from Young, he left the mining industry to return to the Wilkinson's family farm. Adjusting to the farming lifestyle after intense corporate life was a challenge so he worked in retail ag where he developed a strong local network before getting his hands dirty on the farm. Jake works with Gemma's parents to run their mixed enterprise farm of sheep, cattle and cropping.

After completing a Grazing for Profit course, he was inspired to break his paradigm and show that farming environmentally can be profitable as well. Jake is passionate about making changes that maximise environmental value, keeps their business profitable and puts family first.

VicNoTill board member Michael Gooden stands in for podcast host Dan Fox to find out more from this young Australian farmer, who will leave you feeling energised about the future of agriculture.

Joel Williams spent several days with VicNoTill at the 2024 Food for Thought conference in Wagga Wagga NSW. Tune into his insightful conversation with Riverina broadacre cropping farmer Dan Fox about the latest science and the on-ground change that is happening thanks to farmers like those in the VicNoTill network.

With links to VicNoTill going back almost a decade, Joel was rapt to be at the conference and having important conversations linking food as medicine with practical strategies for farmers to build carbon in soils.

Joel loves working with farmers because they're practical and good at working out the 'how'. It is his passion to continually explore 'why' it's so important to build carbon in soils and grow more nutrient-rich foods.

Dan also shares some of the successes he and his family are having in their cropping system as their focus shifts more towards quality rather than quantity of yield by taking simple steps with nutrition, different forms of nitrogen and looking at energy efficiency in plants and how different soils impact plant health.

VicNoTill is dedicated to helping farmers achieve better results at harvest time, while encouraging greater adoption of sustainable and profitable food production systems through reduced-tillage and regenerative farming systems that produce nutrient-rich food. Farmers helping farmers!

When Victorian cattle farmer Callum Lawson went to a holistic grazing course, it turned the way he approached farming on its head. He came home from the first day feeling baffled about the way he was farming.

What they were presenting about regenerative and holistic grazing concepts felt like common sense. This started him on a path of discovery, and the more research he did the more fascinated he became. Callum started growing multi-species crops in 2017 and flipped his farming system around to solve problems rather than treat symptoms.

When he started farming more regeneratively he loved watching things grow and seeing the real difference in how healthy the crops and animals became.

Callum says it’s easy to get caught up in regenerative agriculture, which can be both good and bad. He says it’s important farmers remain profitable otherwise they won’t be there to do it again next year. Feeling good is important but if it’s not making money, there’s not much point doing it.

Callum joined the VicNoTill board in 2023. After a tour around the property Callum manages at Avenal in Victoria's Highlands region, Michael Gooden sat down to chat with him about how his farming system has evolved.

VicNoTill board member Michael Gooden visits Jim Alexander on the Cootamundra farm where he lives with his wife Em and two young daughters to talk about his switch from commercial scale broadacre agronomy on the Liverpool Plains to permaculture to regenerative agriculture.

Jim has made a major shift in the way he approaches life, as a result of his own farming experiences and through what he discovered during a Nuffield Scholarship which took him across Australia and to Asia, Europe, Israel, the US, the UK and New Zealand.

Being among like-minded people for the past several years as a VicNoTill member has also been an eye-opener for Jim in how leading broadacre farmers are managing to make significant changes to the way they farm, while remaining profitable.

He says the farmers helping farmers approach highlights how important it is that people don’t follow an ideology at their own expense.

VicNoTill members can read more about Jim's experiences and insights in the latest issue of the member magazine ⁠From The Ground Up.⁠

In this episode of Farmers Helping Farmers our host Dan Fox catches up with Phil Peterson who is passionate about rebuilding soil carbon on farms. In the many conversations Dan has had with Phil in the paddock, this passion has come through clearly, and Dan thought it was about time he captured some of these conversations in a podcast episode. Phil has been at the grassroots of agriculture for many years, asking questions about the environment and how farmers can improve both the yield and quality of the crops and pastures they grow. This has led to a role with Loam Bio, which researches how farmers can build more carbon in their soils and improve their bottom line. Phil’s advice to farmers is don’t be too proud to learn something new. Read, listen, observe. And learn and try something new every day. He says we need to think outside the paradigm as often as we can and be open minded, which all of us at VicNoTill thinks is very sound advice.

This is a conversation for farmers not to be missed! Allan Parker OAM was a crowd favourite at VicNoTill's conference Transition23 and captured the attention of the whole room within 10 seconds of starting his presentation.

VicNoTill board member Michael Gooden catches up with Allan in Wagga Wagga during his 2024 Regional Brain Reset Tour to talk about succession planning, improving negotiation between family members when making farm decisions, transitioning to a more regenerative farming system without compromising the profitability of the business and a whole lot more.

Allan introduces himself as an eccentric Micro-Behavioural Neuroscientist, International Negotiator, and Educator. Outside his work life he has been a professional golfer and has run 16 marathons and 11 ultra marathons (including 24 hours twice). He wrote Australia’s first degree in negotiation in 2012 and was the recipient of an Order of Australia Medal for his contribution to business and dispute resolution in 2019.

From the boardrooms of the biggest corporate organisations in the world to the kitchen tables on rural and remote farming properties, Allan Parker’s approach to negotiation is the same. The author of The Negotiator’s Toolkit, the bestseller Switch on Your Brain; and co-author of Beyond Yes – Negotiating and Networking says there is great wisdom in Charlie Arnott’s saying ‘the paddock between our ears is what we’ve got to get sorted out first’.

“Negotiation, whether informal chat on the phone or chat in hallway or something bigger and more serious, we are involved in negotiating the whole time. Everything you think inside your head turns up in your verbal conversation in some form or another," Allan says.

VicNoTill is at the forefront of change in Australian agriculture, and for the past three years fifth generation Marrar farmer Dan Fox has been president of this farmers helping farmers organisation. Dan sits down with new president Michael Gooden to share how leading change in Australian agriculture has helped him from both a practical and personal perspective.

Soil health has been a progressive journey for Dan. His non-negotiables are 100% groundcover and no soil disturbance, which come about through his strip and disc system. But once he understood what else he could achieve, he opened Pandora's box.

Stepping into the president’s role enabled Dan to further understand soil systems and how soils function, through the opportunity to form stronger relationships with other farmers, agronomists, soil health specialists and scientists that are passionate about ‘good farming’. During the past three years he travelled extensively to farms across southern Australia and learnt a ‘hell of a lot’ about soils in different contexts and soils in general.

Meeting people from around the world who are as passionate as he is about a positive, progressive future for agriculture that is focussed on growing nutrient-rich food has helped Dan take what he and his family are doing in their own paddocks to the next level.

In 2016 a VicNoTill story with Ardmona irrigation farmer Fraser Pogue’s began with: ‘The pages in books might be black and white but farming certainly isn’t.’ The analogy drew on Fraser’s ever-increasing book collection on soil biology and his pursuit of a new way of farming that was outside the norm, and definitely not black and white.

Fraser and his wife Leanne are always looking outside the square and among the innovations they are pursuing are organic farming and value-adding under the name 'The Good Dirt'. In spring 2020 the Pogue farming story moved from the pages of books to the silver screen and a chance appearance on the documentary ‘2040’ from award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) opened a Pandora’s box of new questions and reignited Fraser’s inquiring mind and passion for sharing what he’s learnt to help others.

“We always talk about wanting to have healthy soils but we need to talk more about why we want healthy soils. Originally I was attracted to soil health as a means to increase yields and profits when I could see that conventional farming methods weren’t delivering. Now I understand the ‘bigger picture’ advantages of creating healthier yields, healthier food and healthier catchments.

"We’ve gone through all the different names to describe the way we farm, but our hearts have always been in the same place - to be 'good farmers'. Be good to the environment, be good to other people and be good to the bank balance of course." Don’t forget to tell your friends about our podcast and if you enjoyed this episode please leave a review. The more people who join the conversation, the more we learn from each other. Subscribe to Farmers Helping Farmers on your favourite podcast app and connect with VicNoTill by becoming a member or following us on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

LINKS

• VicNoTill: https://www.vicnotill.com.au/
• The Good Dirt: https://www.gooddirtfoods.com.au/