THE Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities conference at the Fremantle Sailing Club recently looked into the future of agriculture and the public food system.
It focused on pathways for regeneration from farms to forks and the complexity of our food systems.
Wyalkatchem broadacre farmer and guest speaker Dianne Haggerty said it was the responsibility of farmers to ensure they were growing the best possible food.
Ms Haggerty looked into regenerative farming in 2001 after hearing a presentation from United States author, farmer and sustainable agriculture consultant Arden Andersen, who is very strong on human health and the links between soil health and human health.
Dr Anderson’s presentation highlighted the link between chronic disease and the decline in food quality.
Ms Haggerty and her husband Ian, who operate 13,000 hectares across Wyalkatchem, Dowerin, Cunderdin and Meckering, were dissatisfied with conventional farming practices that wouldn’t cut it with their budgets, so they went looking for answers.
“We were doing conventional farming to start with which was successful, in the 1990s when there was a good rainfall patterns and we could make some good money out of growing crops,” Ms Haggerty said.
“But there was the odd season thrown in there, where the season wasn’t so flash and you could see quickly that the system was fairly vulnerable to shocks.
“The recommendations all the time were you need to be putting more fertiliser on to grow the same amount of crop or you need to be putting more fungicides because of the rust, then insects were becoming an issue, so the prescriptions all the time meant we were putting more and more on to grow variable yields.”
American microbiologist and soil biology researcher Elaine Ingham was another turning point for Ms Haggerty.
“She described how those microbes in the soil have a beautiful self organising system when they are allowed to function appropriately to provide the best opportunity for plant health and ultimately animal health that are consuming that,” Ms Haggerty said.
The Haggertys, who run grassfed sheep for meat, sheep for wool and breeding ewes and rams, use natural intelligence which relies upon nature restoring itself, meaning those indigenous grasses and plants can come back.
