Our first speaking engagement as a team

Louisa and I made history when we addressed 250 farmers from the Manning District in Gloucester, NSW yesterday at a LandCare Innovative Farmers’ Forum. It was the first time we had ever spoken publicly about how we farm at “Uamby”. It was the first time we had spoken together as a team. And it was a complete success, despite our nervousness and misgivings.
Our presentation - “Uamby: A Carbon Farm” – was based on our submission to the CMA Farming Systems program as well as a presentation about the Carbon Coalition. It was a real eye-opener for us to be recognised as “innovative farmers” worthy of such exposure because there are many farmers who know more about farming than we do. But probably not so many who have tried as many different techniques for building soil as we have. (I will blog parts of our presentation in later blogs.)
The highlight for me (after the thrill of appearing on the same platform as my wife as a team) was meeting and having a long conversation with Peter Andrews – the man who has dedicated his life to restoring the water balance in the Australian landscape. His methodology is called Natural Sequence Farming.
Peter is universally described by people who meet him as a difficult, one-eyed, self-obsessed man. But I found him to be a charming, personable, passionate bloke on a mission from God to save the planet. He has a special insight into how water moves through the Australian landscape – insights not always based on science but nonetheless valid.
His beliefs are based on the bedrock principle that we should be managing the landscape to mimic Mother Nature. “This country ran itself and ran its water and it costed nothing. So if we start to plan these things and it costs a lot of money, then we’ve probably got it wrong,” he told the gathering. (We were on the bill as the support act for Peter.)
Peter’s story is dramatic and was widely published on ABC TV’s “Australian Story” - he lost his wife and family due to his obsession with his vision, was almost committed to an asylum, and has spent the best part of 30 years as a voice crying in the wilderness, only now coming to prominence as Australia’s water problems have become acute.
I will blog Natural Sequence Farming and Peter some more later.

Our Big Pitch For The $100,000

(For those visitors who have just joined us, "Uamby" was selected last year by our local Catchment Management Authority to compete with 10 other farms iin developing an innovative whole farm management plant that helped improve water management and salinity levels in the Cactchment. Three winners could receive up to %100,000 to put their plans into action. We are due to suibmit our plans next week - on the 31st May - and here is an outline of what we will be submitting)

YOU'D LOOK WORRIED TOO IF THE DEADLINE FOR THE BIG 100 GRAND BID WAS NEXT WEEK

Farming Systems Program
Natural Resource Plan

Plan Title: Uamby, A Carbon Farm

Total Area that plan will be implemented on: 1780 acres

Will this plan address salinity flows in the landscape Yes

Is this plan innovative in method or arrangement? Yes

Will this plan communicate benefits to the wider community? Yes

Give a brief description of your plan (two sentences): Using soil carbon as the key indicator, we plan to trial various pasture management techniques to identify the most productive for each soil type on “Uamby”, then farm the soil to its maximum carbon capacity. We intend to make “Uamby” a learning centre for landholders interested in Soil Carbon Farming for the purposes of better soil fertility, water usage, environmental outcomes (soil structure and salination), and sequestering (Carbon Credits).

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Salinity? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Water Quality? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Vegetation And Biodiversity? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Soil Health? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to People And Community? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Cultural Heritage? Yes

Will this plan address Catchment Action Plans relating to Monitoring? Yes

Executive Summary:

By turning Uamby into a ‘carbon farm’ we intend to manage the soil for increased carbon because we believe this will solve the problems we have with the natural resource base (poor soil structure, poor water retention, salination, and low fertility). Additionally we look forward to the opportunity to derive income from carbon sequestration and the sale of carbon credits.
Soil Carbon is to be the primary KPI.
The plan calls for mapping the soil types, then core sampling to assess base carbon levels, then assigning test plots for measuring and demonstrating the impact of a variety of pasture management techniques.
Such techniques will include the following:• Pasture Cropping • Composting • Nitruhumus • Paramagnetic Rock Dust • Mulching
These techniques will be tested against a background of native perennial pastures subject to Time Controlled Grazing. The influence of regrowth of native vegetation on soil biota and biomass will also be measured.
Until you measure something, you can’t manage it. So establishing the measuring system is paramount to the success of carbon farming.
The ultimate goal is to be able to determine the rate of carbon increase/sequestration for certain types of grassland under a certain type of management. So we can have an accurate estimation of how much sequestration is possible in what type of country under what type of conditions.

Catchment Targets Summary:
(Please explain how your plan will address the vision of the Central West Catchment Authority- “Healthy Landscapes And Vibrant Communities”)

The food chain starts with the microbial life in the soil. Carbon rich soils are well aerated and house healthy communities of soil flora and fauna. As such they hold much more freshwater where it falls, preventing the rise of salty water and erosion from too-vigorous run off. Improved soil structure and 100% ground cover should rebuild native grass communities.
Higher productivity resulting will enable Uamby to offer more local employment When adopted over a wide area, sequestering carbon back into the soils has the potential to revive the flagging productivity of farms with flow on effects to local communities. Ultimately it is envisioned that farmers will be paid for carbon storing in their soils. Logically, anyone who is rewarded for doing something will probably produce more of it, and the flow on benefits of carbon farming include positive outcomes for water storage, biodiversity and salination.

As a study published by William Holmberg, a consultant to the U.S president discovered “all we need to do to to offset the carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels is to build the organic content of our farm lands just one tenth of one percent each year” (Source IN Practice, HRM offical journal Nov/Dec 05. Article by Malcolm Beck (A Different Farm Subsidy Approach)
Knowing this, and the flow on effects of greater organic matter (carbon) in soils
for a large number of catchment and community goals, farmers could be encouraged (as is now happening) to farm for carbon via incentives available, and then be financially rewarded for their efforts in the market place.
There are also studies showing that a more natural (more diverse) landscape is better for our health, and that farms with greater native vegetation are worth more.
The Uamby Project also aims to build links with the indigenous community by preserving artefacts and sites already identified and using our location for Indigenous Land Use Workshops.
Our role is as a pilot project and a demonstration farm.

Animal impact is where it's at

One of the 'tools' we have at our disposal as 'holistic' farmers is animal impact. We use this instaed of a plough and a sowing machine to provide us with pasture. Native pasture species respond well to the tilling effect of the animals' hooves and the fertilising effect of their urine and dung. This is best applied by bunching the animals together in tigh groups. This is why we have small paddocks (or fields) and move the animals quickly through them.
We have a paddock we call Viv's because it is adjacent to a neighbour's property (separated by the Cudgegong River.) It's only a couple of hectares. I became overgrown with Scotch Thistle and rank grasses. So we let the sheep in.












This is what it looked like after 24 hours with 2000 sheep in there. They wrecked it! That's called animal impact and plants need it in order to grow fresh shoot.














And this is what we got 6 weeks latyer, in a non-growing season. Fresh pasture, thanks to the feet of our trusty sheep.

"Can't buy a decent wool garment in the local town"

I received a letter from a woolgrower, in response to the article in The Land newspaper (see post below).

Dear Mr Kiely,

How can we help make Wool. Cool.

Your ideas are exciting as they are simple.

We are long standing fine woolgrowers who can't buy a decent wool garment in the local town, Goulburn.

How can we get together with who ever we need to? Do we need a woollen.

I just thought if you found there was a body of growers out there anxious to get on board, you might know where to steer us.

Regards,

Jenny Bell
"Bohana"
Breadalbane NSW 2851

The Carbon Farmer to speak at forums across Australia

Meet the Carbon Farmers at Carbon Forums around Australia.

I'll see you there!


'Managing the Carbon Cycle' Forums

Featuring Dr Christine Jones - "The Carbon Goddess" - and expert speakers, including successful 'carbon farmers' from across Australia.

HORSHAM VIC 26-27th July 2006
KATANNING WA 13-14th September 2006
KINGAROY QLD 25-26th October 2006
CANBERRA ACT 22-23rd November 2006

REGISTER AT http://www.amazingcarbon.com/

This information packed two day 'Managing the Carbon Cycle' Forum will showcase emerging initiatives and innovative management practices in the rapidly changing arena of carbon sequestration, particularly in soil. It will be of enormous benefit to policy makers, research, agency and consultancy staff, landholders, landcarers, conservation farming groups, catchment management authorities, educators, students and environmentalists.




SPEAKERS HORSHAM

Christine Jones 'Organic carbon - what's in it for soils?'
Ray O'Grady 'Importance of soil carbon'
Andre Leu 'Organics and soil carbon'
Rod Rush 'Understanding mycorrhizal fungi'
Tim Starick 'Biological farming"
David Thomas 'Green manure and compost'
Liz Clay 'Carbon Tender'
Michael Kiely 'Carbon Coalition Australia'
Bob Belford 'Overview of Victorian soils issues'
Bob Mackley 'Potential for Carbon Farming in the Wimmera/Mallee'
David Marsh 'Carbon farming through regenerative grazing'
Colin Seis 'Carbon farming through Pasture Cropping'
Matthew Reddy 'Landcare Australia/AGO Greenhouse Audit'
Ben Keogh 'National Carbon Pool'


REGISTER AT http://www.amazingcarbon.com/

Woolgrowers vote no confidence in AWI

Will the last woolgrower leaving AWI please turn out the lights.

The stampede is on to get out from under the dead hand of AWI's marketing regime. It started out with growers' groups forming to brand wool from districts and then further afield. Now whole states are opting out, first Tasmania, now the West Australian superfine growers.
Here at "Uamby" we're sending an application to join the New Zealand woolgrowers. They seem to know what they're doing when it comes to marketing.
FarmOnline reports that WA superfine woolgrowers and Primaries WA are looking to follow the Tasmanian wool industry plan to separate itself from the national clip by branding its Merino wool.
Primaries wool representative Matt Pedersen said they want to establish relationships with end-users of superfine wool and creating long-term specification contracts. "We're looking at trying to form partnerships within the processing chain, right through to a retail partnership," he said.
Quality assurance, animal welfare and product trace-ability are expected to be a positive flow-on from direct marketing.
"In return, the producers have a better idea as to what they're ultimately aiming to produce and know they will be rewarded financially for it."
Tasmanian agri-business company Roberts recently launched a marketing arrangement called Roberts Wool Link, aimed at increasing the sale of Tasmanian wool to key customers in Japan and North America.
Roberts MD Miles Hampton says, “The Tasmanian wool industry has a unique opportunity to separate itself from the Australian clip. It will develop itself as a branded product, instead of being viewed as just a commodity. Our work over the past three years has clearly established that there is value in product that is branded as Tasmanian wool.”
A number of major retailers in Japan and North America are marketing products branded as Tasmanian wool. Increasing consumer interest has them asking for an increase in the range. Roberts Wool Link aims to take Tasmania’s high quality wool to customers as raw wool, yarn, fabric, and even garment solutions. The Roberts Wool Link program will use a managed pool system in order to deliver certainty of supply to customers.

The Empire Strikes Back

It had to happen. The forces of traditional agriculture are fighting back. In a letter to the editor of The AUSTRALIAN FARM JOURNAL, a leading rural business consultant David Sackett attacked David Marsh for being a "carbon farmer", accusing him of running a 'subsistence farming' operation because he wasn't driving the soil to maximise short term profitability. He complained that the article in the Journal which featured David's extraordinary performance over the three years of drought did not provide enough financial data. He claimed David was understocked when David was stocking to the capacity of the landscape. In other words, Sackett complained that David did not destroy and deplete the soil by running his property hard, spreading artificial fertilisers which increase the acidity of the soil, lead to algal blooms in waterways, and kill the natural microbial life in the soil that builds carbon.

As David is too much a gentleman to engage in a spat, and as it is an attack on carbon farming concept, I wrote a letter in reply:


Dear Sir,

David Sackett’s contribution to Australian agriculture is well known, but his dismissal of David Marsh’s approach to farming is unworthy of him.
David made a profit in the three worst drought years in living memory. (How many farmers can say that?) He did not have to handfeed at all. He did not lose groundcover in that period. He therefore did not have to resow pastures after the drought, a considerable saving in capital expenditure.
He did it by “matching livestock carrying numbers to the carrying capacity of the landscape” and by keeping input costs down. Gross turnover is irrelevant. Profit is what counts.
Input costs have rocketed ahead of prices that farmers can get for their produce. At the same time the natural resource base on which they depend for future profits is rapidly declining.
Environmental entrepreneurs like David are interested in tomorrow’s profits as well as today’s. If businesses benchmarking in the top 5% of production economic performance were forced to account for the real cost of their operations (deferred cost of depeleted resource base), their balance sheets would be cause for indigestion.
This is not an ideological divide. It is a paradigm shift. There can be little understanding between people operating under different paradigms because the past cannot understand the future and the future cannot talk to the past in terms it will understand. Farmers like David are simply getting on with learning how to increase profits while improving their resource base. They are not insisting that others be like them.
David is a member of the Council of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, a new farmers’ movement which aims to enable farmers to sell carbon credits on the global greenhouse emissions market, based on the carbon sequestered in agricultural soils. This development will significantly alter the economics of farming as well as attitudes to the natural resource base.

Michael Kiely
Convenor
Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming
“Uamby”
Goolma NSW

A weekend with Deepak Chopra

There were no animal carcasses among the thousands of human bodies swept away by the recent tsunami. What happened to the animals? They all ran away 2 hours before the wave arrived. They could feel the wave coming, says Deepak Chopra. Like birds that fall silent an hour before an earthquake. Uncanny? No. All things exist in a field of intelligence and animals are tuned in to this field and can pick up messages and sense things that we self-conscious humans cannnot detect. We can train ourselves to access this field of intelligence.

Last weekend we spent with Deepak Chopra and 500 other people, learning about SynchroDestiny. (It's about accessing the field of intelligence. I'll tell you more about it when I understand it better.) Deepak was very hot under the collar about Global Warming. "The Planet has a fever," he said. We have only 10 years left to do anything about it, he said he read in a magazine like Time. Deepak, don't read Time magazine - they set out to scare you. We think we've got 20 years at least. Tons of time.
Deepak said some other things that were more accurate and more pertinent for our quest*: "We are not outside Nature. We are inside of Nature." This means, "The Laws of Nature out there are the same as the Laws of Nature in here," he says.
Failure to understand that has led to our present predicament.** "Human beings feel they are superior to Nature, that we can conquer Nature. That world view has made us a permanently victorious species," he says.
The last permanently victorious species were the dinosaurs, and we know what happened to them.

Deepak has joined some other luminaries in forming the Alliance for a New Humanity***, a movement which aims to use consciousness and good works to reverse the negative energy. We think the Carbon Coalition is a positive energy action of the kind the Alliance is planning.

.................................

*Our journey into the farming life was in part driven by the need to find an answer to the meaning of this ancient Hasidic saying (which sounds a lot like the field of intelligence stuff mentioned above):

"When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy,
then from all the stones, and all growing things,
and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you,
and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you."

**I'm no Chicken Little, but I say "Let's act like the Chicken Littles are right and hope like hell they're wrong."

***"The Alliance for the New Humanity came to light spontaneously, when individuals from all walks of life, concerned about the dehumanizing trends that prevail in the world, got together to assess the deterioration of human values as perceived in the upsurge of, accelerating economic and social inequalities, terrorism and wars, social violence, ecological degradation and a generalized spread of social fear, individual frustration and lack of respect for life.
"They concluded that the root cause of these problems is the indifference to the other , as a result of the materialistic models adopted as organizing principles of society, with their emphasis on selfishness, competition, accumulation, and separateness. Many people in the world perceive the need for more positive thinking, for a more compassionate society, for a less poignant media envelope. The purpose of the Alliance is to connect these sensitive individuals, into a global human network, that leads to the creation of a critical mass that influences national and international policy towards a more compassionate humanity."