At the beginning of March, I took myself on a scenic 5 hour drive to Quirindi on the Liverpool Plains to participate in a rather fabulous soil science event with Upper Mooki Landcare. One thing you should know about me is I’m one of those annoyingly overly-enthusiastic people who generally wants to give everything a go (ooohhh yes, that sounds very interesting). However, I also have a brain that rapidly swaps impulsive enthusiasm with crippling anxiety. This typically means I spend a good deal of time with my stomach in knots cursing that happy-go-lucky part of myself and dreading the whole thing. But that didn’t happen this time and that’s because Walter Jehne is something of an idol of mine and nothing was going to come between me and his talk – not even my own infernal brain chatter…

The event started off with a truly wonderful welcome by Jason Allen, Chief Executive Officer of The Walhallow Local Aboriginal Land Council, who shared with us the story of ‘Yurrandaali’ creator of the Liverpool plains:

Then came the soil chat which was introduced with a phrase uttered by moderator Stuart Austin, Co-Founder – Audacious Agriculture Advisor, that really resonated with me:

“For too long our Farming mindset has been chemical and we need it to be biological“

Colin Seis

Col champions Pasture cropping / perennial cover cropping and talked us through how this works in practice and the benefits it brings to our soil. He drove home the message that farms should function as an ecosystem and be self-sustaining and resilient – things that are definitely possible once we’ve repaired our soils. Col is a great advocate for letting nature fix the system and for that to happen in a cropping system, that means avoiding soil disturbance as much as possible. Col stated that modern cropping methods haven’t changed fast enough and we can’t go on degrading our top soil in the way we have been.

His pasture cropping practice is extremely fascinating and I’d definitely recommend anyone who hasn’t looked into it before have a watch of the video here. For those who haven’t the time for that but want a bit more information here are some notes:

• Col harvests native grass seed alongside crops of Wheat, oats and rye.

• Zero tilling, using animals.  Never kill perennial species. Weeds managed by creating litter by using quality grazing practices. 

• Crops are usually grown during the pastures natural Dormant period.  Example: So a warm season C4 grass with a wheat crop. C4 grasses are great for sequestering carbon

• Improve functional diversity of cropping lands with grasses, Forbes, trees etc. 
• Direct seed on top of grassland.

Biology doesn’t rest so work with it!

Pasture Cropping Benefits Include:

• Produce superior quality and quantity stock feed
• Faster improvements in soil health, structure, carbon and nutrient cycling.
• Add nitrogen (fix from air) with legumes
• Weed control
• Insect control – flowering plants attract beneficial insects.

12 month cycle in a paddock

1. Grazing of grassland pre-sowing crop
2. Grazing of crop 
3. Grain from top
4. Vegetables
5. Grazing of grassland after harvest
6. Native grass seed

Gabe Brown

What a treat to have Gabe in the house all the way from North Dakota in the USA, he’s so entertaining to listen to and has the ability to make every challenging on-farm situation seem very do-able!

Gabe works a lot with animal genetics and is especially interested in epigenetic factors – how an animals environment and diet impact their genes and therefore their health, feed efficiency and meat quality. I really can’t do his talk justice with my summing up so I’d recommend you take a look at his TED talk for a quick-fire summary of what he’s all about.

My favourite take-home piece he talked about was his direct seeding tip to “Pop seed of species you want to grow in bales feeding to cattle and let cattle direct seed by pooping it out”. Maybe everyone is doing that already, I don’t know as I don’t have cattle myself but I thought that sounded just fabulous! A real mooo-ing factory.

Walter Jehn

I really appreciate and admire Walter for his ability for turning complex scientific concepts into bite-sized nuggets of seemingly everyday ‘common sense’ that we can all digest and enjoy! That level of competence is only possible when you really know your stuff.

Walter really caught my attention when I was researching methane emissions from cattle and all the hoo-ha that exists around that. I love the way he explains the relationship between methane, water vapor, the sun and plants -a self-balancing system given half a chance. There were many take-home messages from Walter but when it comes to methane it was generally that if you are in the livestock business and manage your pasture well, the government should be paying you your contribution to cleaning the air given that you’re probably producing way more air-cleaning free radicals than methane emissions. So once again, it’s livestock to the recsue which warms my little heart!

Here’s a video that explains what he was talking about:

Walter also talked extensively about soil carbon and the politics around the carbon market. Again his take-home message for this audience of (mainly) farmers was a simple and empowering one: Carbon will pay dividends in other on-farm and community ways.  More pasture, better crops, stronger animals, better soil etc.

Working on soil health pays off in the quality and quantity of phytonutrients in food.

Farmers will be rewarded by producing food that really is our medicine.

There’s more information on Walter’s thoughts on Carbon here:

I can’t finish this blog post without sharing a picture of what happened over lunch. Maddie (Watershed Landcare) and I were just tucking into our Chicken Salad when along came Walter – he must have known what fan-girls we are!