'Seeing' the future

Diana, one of our 'adopting parents' and a medium, sent us the following email:

Hi Michael
When I was reading your newsletter, I got the 'idea' that you could expand or sell your concept to a cover more than just farmers and their stock - it could reach a wider audience - there is a niche group 'out there' for your (selling) concept. Without knowing you, your full concept (whether it is user friendly and can be adapted) I am relying on my mediumship to fill in the blanks.
Roughly I 'see' changes being made to your plan. Next I feel you will meet with an entrepreneurial type man from the X generation. Months pass before the plan becomes the final concept. Marketing will be easy. Finding the right person (male with NLP training) to travel miles demonstrating and selling your concept will be like finding a needle in the haystack but perseverance will pay off. I feel your original plan to save the sheep will then succeed for many years to come.
I feel you should take time out of your busy days to read over this email over and over until you 'see' the 'message'.
I wish you good luck if you take on this extra work (I am rarely wrong when I get 'ideas' concerning businesses) and remember to document the journey to fruition.
I should add that my adopting a sheep caused many of my friends and fellow exercisers to laugh - with words like 'trust you to find a way to help a animal at Christmas time'. Then they slowly realised that it was far better to do one little thing to help a farmer than just sit and watch the affects of the draught - feeling totally overwhelmed.
God bless
Diana

My reply outlines our plans to date:

Thank you Diana.

We have a business concept which we are 'conceiving'. It started with the desire to get a fair price for our wool, commensurate to the quality of the product we grow and the effort we put in. We intend to process and manufacture products for sale to consumers. The adoption scheme gave us the start of the process of identifying likely customers. (Unintentionally.) We will sell fleeces to spinners and craftswomen. We will spin the wool into yarn and sell it to knitters. And we will offer customers the opportunity to select and pattern or submit their won, and we will make up a garment, using a local knitter. I was blocked trying to think of how we could locate customers, but Adopt a Sheep opened the door. Our "Parents" might respond to the opportunity to purchase the fleece from their sheep, or the yarn, or a garment. On top of that we are exploring the opportunity of selling products with 'their sheep's' image on, such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, cushions, mouse pads, key rings, etc. These ideas are based on the belief that some (not all) of our "Parents" would like to deepen their relationship with their sheep and with Uamby. We also expect to have members of our new family come to stay and help with the sheep. Other products we could produce include postcards, childrens' books, photograph books, a book on The New Australian Farmer, a book on the ethics of agriculture (my field of study), a DVD on adapting to climate change. Further, we are deeply engaged in the climate change issue and will have 'soil carbon credits' for purchase soon, based on carbon sequestered in our soils and those of conservationist farmers from across Australia. We want to roll the whole concept out - already I have one young lady selling photos of their farm on Ebay to raise money for feed. I have helped her with publicity and website construction. Louisa and I are starting a series of seminars across the State to teach other farmers how to do it. We see this as part of our Mission to bridge the city-country gap. We then see opportunities for us as the retail shopfront provider for farmers who want to engage their 'new families' in the way we have outlined above - ie. we provide them with the infrastructure and management. We could also provide a farm stay booking service for farmers. All of this is driven by one thought: save the family farm, as an economic unit and as a sustainable environmental unit. Give farmers access to new revenue streams and incentives to conserve the environment by bringing city people and their needs and expectations into the equation. (Ie. an adoption scheme requires that the farmer be 'green' and ethical in their treatment of animals; growing soil carbon requires 'green' land management techniques.

We will read your message several times until we 'see' the opportunity. I welcome it. "ONWARDS!" is our motto.

Thank you for your guidance.

Michael

We stand for Parliament for our grandchildren's future

The Carbon Coalition has been invited to provide a candidate to stand as part of the Climate Change Coalition (CCC) in the next election for the NSW Legislative Council. Convenor Michael Kiely says he agreed to stand in the coalition of independents solely to give soil carbon credits a platform for greater awareness in the community and in government circles. For instance, in its press release headed "10 things the NSW Government can do now", number 10 is "Promote the sequestering of carbon in soil and foster a start up industry for the rural sector"

Soil carbon credits are the only viable solution to climate change in the short term.

The CCC is fielding a full ticket, headed by Patrice Newell, prominent Hunter Valley grazier and olive industry figure.

YOU CAN HELP:
Members of the Carbon Coalition can help us by registering to hand out 'how to vote' forms at their local polling booth for part of the day on 24th March, the election day.


The following is an introduction to the CCC:

We've formed the Climate Change Coalition to accelerate action by politicians from all parties on the most urgent and important issue in human history.

While the Coalition is not itself a political party it supports many Independent candidates who are committed to its platform.

Climate change is no abstract scientific or environmental issue. It impacts on every part of our daily lives. It is personal, local, national and global.

The time for denial is over. The political posturing and games must end. We must unite to ensure urgent action so that our children and grandchildren can have a sustainable future.

While we might be divided by ideology, religion, geography, history, class or self interest, we must come together to ensure the survival of our planet.

It is vital that the Climate Change Coalition’s values be represented in the New South Wales Parliament. All legislation needs to be assessed and scrutinized to evaluate its impact on climate change.

Members of Parliament who support the Climate Change Coalition are committed to asking two key questions about each piece of legislation that comes into the New South Wales Parliament. Does the proposed law address climate change? How can it be amended to make it better?

We recognise that there are MP's on all sides of NSW's politics intent on doing the right thing. They are often prevented from speaking out by party policy or pressure groups. We will work with them to get a freer debate - to produce the dynamics of the "conscience vote" across the legislative spectrum.

Further, the Climate Change Coalition will work with any group, organization, or individual to form alliances and encourage political creativity. There is no guide book to what must be done. There is no precendent for this crisis. It requires entirely new scientific, communal and political approaches.

Whatever our differences on other issues, whether we're left wing or right wing or middle of the road, is irrelevent. We must work together. Now.

Patrice Newell

Flogging a dead horse called "Rainfall"

This is conventional drought management in Australia. This is what is called 'flogging the land'.

If there was an RSPCA for soils, this farmer would be prosecuted for cruelty. Cruelty to the biological communities that live in it. Cruelty to the poor plants that try to grow to feed his sheep. Cruelty to his sheep for depriving them of nutritious pasture. Crulety to his financial position. And cruelty to the public image of farming.When you hear the words 'sustainable' used in agriculture, know that what you see here is unsustainable because there is only one place this operation is headed: down the chute.

Many farmers hang on to their stock for as long as they can... until their soil is bare and even the roots of the plants have been consumed by starving stock... until their stock are so weakened they can barely walk onto the truck to go to market... where their presence under the public eye is an embarrassment to those concerned with the industry's image. Why do they do it? These words came out of the mouth of one of our neighbours last week: "You try to hold on to your stock as long as possible because if it rains that's when you can make some money."*

Farming is an extreme sport. You drag yourself back from the brink as each drought breaks. You consume your asset value until your ship comes in. In every decade there are several dry years, several ordinary years, and - if you're lucky - a couple of boom years. It depends on where you are and what you're in.

Australian farmers have come to accept that the way to survive in the driest continent with the most fragile soil structure is to overstock, to flog the land. "It comes back," is a common statement. But in 200 years we have lost 50% of our topsoil and in the past 30 years we have lost 50% of our soil carbon. This can't go on.

These are the bare hills on the Sofala Road to Bathurst. Flogged bare. The day before, during a heavy rainstorm, we saw whole hillsides of powdered topsoil slipping in sheets down towards the gullies where it will be carried away.

Farmers are the biggest gamblers in the world. They bet on the weather. In Australia. They 'bet the farm' on 'an Autumn break' to get a crop or to give them some fodder to go into the Winter non-growing season. They have heard about 'risk management' - some of them have been to government-funded 2-day seminars. Our neighbour said the government had offered them $3000 to learn about farming. "But what could they teach me?" our neighbour said, without a hint of irony.. Nothing to learn. Been doing it so long... the same way. Flogging out the land during the regular droughts.

I am in awe of the knowledge of many conventional farmers. They can tell when it's going to rain. They can turn a piece of wire into any impliment they need. They can work like navvies. And they listen to new information and take it or leave it. They husband the land, looking after it as best they can. They also husband their animals, looking after them. I can think of 5 or 6 farmers in our district who fit this description. Then there are the others. Greenpeace uses them as targets to damage the entire industry. Some industry politicians will openly support these people while privately they bemoan the damage they do.

I can feel a song coming on. (Orchestra rises in background...

It's what their fathers' taught them.
It's what their neighbours do.
They wont read what you send them.
They don't want nothin' new.
Not from wankers like you.

You grow more grass than they can
They blame in on the rain
F'you ran the stock that they ran
You're understocked, it's plain
N' you're new to the farmin' game



*Just a glimpse of country life: We were speaking to this neighbour because their cattle were coming onto our place and eating our pastures because they'd eaten out their owner's place and even eaten out the next door neighbour's place (it is currently not being used by its owners). Now they were coming across the river and eating our paddocks out. "Well, if they're coming across the river there's not much we can do," said our neighbour. Uamby has traditionally been used as a 'Common' by neighbours who can't understand why time controlled graziers like us go ballistic if we move our sheep into the next paddock in the cell only to find it full of cow shit and empty of feed. They get a look of 'whaddaya complaining about?' when we see them about it. This photo shows how 30 cattle cleared out a small paddock in less than a day before moving on to attack other paddocks. Here in the country, it's not cool to complain about the theft of your pasture in a drought. It reinforces the old saying: "Good fences do good neighbours make."

Aussie Soil Carbon Credits for sale!

Buy Soil Carbon Credits from Carbon•Farmers™

We have dived right in the deep end and are offering soil carbon credits to the consumer market (see http://buycarboncredits.blogspot.com), targetting baby boomer grandparents concerned about climate change and the way the world will be when they aren't there to look after their grandchildren.

Why did we do it?
To raise funds for the Carbon Coalition and enable our work to continue.
To raise awareness of the opportunity soils offer in the climate change crisis.
And to break the cycle of fiddling while Rome burns favoured by bureaucrats and scientists.

Politicians and scientists want to argue about the precise dimensions of the lifeboats on the Titanic - subjecting soil carbon to 4 years of trialling before giving it the go ahead, when Stern and others give us only 10 years to make a dent in the legacy load of CO2 in the atmosphere and soil is the only solution with the existing capacity to sequester legacy load in the time we have left. Forests will cost too much to plant on the scale required, take too long to plant, and too long to sequester. Every other solution is aimed at preventing new emissions, not dealing with legacy load. We have got to get cash flowing into the pockets of land managers who to encourage changes in soil management to sequester more carbon. If we managed to increase soil C by 1% in 10% of Australia's agricultural soils, we estimate we could sequester 10 years worth of our emissions. Can you sense the urgency? We are also - concurrently - seeking funding for trials of 'carbon farming techniques' and seeking to build bridges with scientists, trying to find one or two willing to operate in the real world and not this absurd Alice In Wonderland world where you can measure everything but you can't do anything. Given the extraordinary degree of estimation and averaging in calculating C sequestered in trees and C released by power stations, the death of a thousand core samples inflicted on soil carbon amounts - in context of climate change chaos - either to conspiracy to prevent farmers access to the carbon market, or criminal negligence on the part of those who would rather find reasons why it can't happen than look for ways of making it happen. We live by the words, "Lead, follow or get out of the way." We may fail, but it won't be for want of trying.

DAN'S DROUGHT DIARY

Weaning the lambs from the ewes. By this stage the mothers are sick of them, and most of them have lost their milk. So to give the lambs a better chance a getting a feed (instead of competing with the ewes) and to free the ewes to graze unhindered, we have weaned the lambs.






A half grown lamb butting your udder 60 times a day is no life for a ewe.











The rain immediately set loose the worms. So we had to drench the sheep. We lost only three in this worm attack, a record low - because they are fitter thanks to you.















This is the view of the homestead from high on the hill behind the house.















Dan enjoys a short break.



















We are restoring the pioneer cemetery down by the river.














No matter how dry it gets, the galahs always seem cheerful