The irony of this illustration sticks out like dogs' balls when you read this blog. It was on a flyer handed out to promote a management consultancy at our Edge Management meeting. To me it represents a farmer handing over his farm to the next generation in the midst of a cataclysmic crisis.
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There were some dumbfounded looks and even some hostility shown when Louisa and I revealed our business plan to our 'new board' in Edge Management. Jenny, the facilitator for our session, took me aside at lunch afterwards and suggested that what we presented was unsettling for some farmers because it challenged their basic models. But, she said, when I drew on the board a graph that they could use to identify where they stood, the temperature in the room came down. Given how radical our plan is, these people showed enormous flexibility and professionalism to come to terms with it/
The graph I drew was the Bell Curve of Diffusion of Innovation (picutred here somewhere.)
What is Edge Management? It is an independent group of farmers and agribusiness operators who form themselves into self-help groups of 6 families to help each other develop ideas or solve problems and build business plans, assisted by a facilitator. Members act as 'board members' for each other. My observation is that these farmers are in the top echelon of their profession. They deny it, but they have great expertise and management smarts. It is a great education for Lousia and I to be exposed to their conversation. As indeed it is for them to be exposed to ours.
We are 'regenerative' farmers who believe traditional high input, 'plough, spray, sew, graze, go back to go and start again' farming is raping the soil and depleting our most precious resource. Destroying the micro-ecology, making soils acid, encouraging salinity, etc. Two of our board agreed they were raping the soil*. They sued the term "mining" which means depleting a resource by over exploitation. This level of self-awareness gave us a glimmer of hope. We don't want to be seen to be pushing a greenie agenda. In fact we oppose most green beliefs, especially the bedrock belief that mankind's presence is always contrary to nature's interests.
As it turned out, the board members go into it and contributed mightily to our brainstorming up new dieas to help us put together our 'pitch' for the Catchment Management Authority's $100,000 Farm Systems challenge.
To give you a taste of what we presented, here is a Business Statement (Vision):
1. What do we want to achieve?
To transform a grazing business into a profitable, integrated wool production, trading, education and communication enterprise.
2. Why do we want to achieve this?
To demonstrate that agriculture can be managed in a way that regenerates the ecology and proves that man has a role to play in the natural environment and is not by nature a toxic intruder.
3. How will we produce this result?
• Move 'Uamby" into a 100% Holistic Resource Management operation through creating the 80 paddocks where there are 23 at present, to increase our soil carbon scores and become the first of a network of carbon-rich demonstration farms.
• Establish a Learning Centre at "Uamby" where the Philosophy of Agriculture is discussed and taught, revealing the existence of options in the paradigms farmers live by.
• EStablish the Carbon Coalition which recruits farmers to be part of a carbon credit trading scheme.
• Establish a Carbon Credit Brokerage or Bank.
• Establish "Carbon Credited" as an endorsement brand for produce from Carbon Rich properties.
• Build an online fanbase for "Uamby" via blog and web sites so we can sell "Carbon Credited" products from our own production.
• Buy more land in syndicates of local and city-based families and investors to bridge the city/country gap and gain advocates for Carbon
• Write a book on the Carbon Revolution that is turning farmers into environmental defenders.
• Promote the concept of "Back To The Farm Week" whereby city families stay with country families and learn what life is like on the land.
*Several years ago, during a consultancy to the Tasmanian Timber Industry Association, an old timber miller admitted to me, wistfully, "We've buggered these forests." And they have, destroyed old growth forests, selling the timber off for low prices because of a low value added strategy. It was a moment of truth for the old man and for me. It didn't stop the continued depletion of this resource/ These guys will continue until governments step in to stop it.
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