Landcare 2022: regenerative agriculture is a story told many different ways

It was great to see the work and hear the stories of regeneration at the 2022 National Landcare Conference, held in Sydney.

Landcare is a volunteer movement that brings conservation and agriculture together under the ethic of caring for the land. Many regenerative farmers have a strong connection to the Landcare movement in Australia. There are approximately 6,000 volunteer environmental group across Australia connected to Landcare. These focus on the sustainable management of Australia's natural resources.

In this presentation, I explore regenerative agriculture and its potential to generate transformation in farming landscapes and mindscapes to deal with converging crises, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, and prevent the collapse of ecosystems.

At our farm over the last three years we have experienced increasingly regular social and natural disasters - drought; the 2019/20 bushfires; floods; landslides; mouse plagues; and Covid-19. None of these experiences should have come as a surprise. We've known for a long time that human activities have been putting the earth under significant pressure. Our experiences on the farm are also reflected in the recent State of the Environment Report - which paints a very grim, but again not surprising, picture of Australia's environmental situation. 

19.7% of Australia is protected, and 55% is agricultural land. If we hope to protect Australian ecosystems, we need to seriously think about regenerating the 55% in order to connect up the disparate patches of protected areas. Much native biodiversity operates completely outside of protected areas, and inevitably that means they are on agricultural land. This is where regenerative agriculture is making a contribution.

I frame regenerative agriculture as a story that is being told in different ways. The way the story gets told determines farm decision-making, and subsequently what agricultural landscapes look like. I introduce two ways of telling the story of regenerative agriculture, and how each of these lead to different outcomes and practices on the farm.

View these presentation slides on Landcarer via https://landcarer.com.au/viewdocument...