A busy start to the year saw NACC NRM’s Sustainable Agriculture team deliver events and workshops across our region, bringing together farmers, small landholders, horticulturalists and industry reps to focus on building resilience in our food production systems.
These events paved the way for a new Resilient Farming Community of Practice that NACC NRM has now established – an active learning group allowing participants to share information, resources, challenges and opportunities as they work towards similar goals.
Our events featured inspiring international guest speakers with expertise in soil health and farming systems, and all attracted good audiences. At the end of March, we welcomed internationally renowned soil and plant health educator, Joel Williams, who led sustainable farming workshops in Wanerie and Wannamal. Drawing on his broad expertise, Joel tailored his presentation each day to the burning questions or challenges that workshop participants had brought with them.
A wide range of topics were covered across the two days, including carbon use efficiency, foliar treatments, plant nutrition, plant analysis, root exudates, and basic soil health principles. And again, the workshops attracted a broad range of property holders, including vignerons, horticulturalists, mixed farmers and small landholders. One of the participants later told us she had “several light bulb moments” during the workshop – exactly the kind of thing we and Joel hoped for!
In mid-February, we hosted a week of events with respected Canadian agronomist and regenerative agriculture educator Kevin Elmy. As well as headlining our successful Not Just Dirt forum in Dongara, Kevin also facilitated two engaging Resilient Farming Peer Learning Workshops in Cowalla. Run in partnership with RegenWA, these small workshops attracted two cohorts of highly motivated participants, including livestock and broadacre farmers on the first day, and smaller landholders including fruit and vegetable growers on the second. The workshops were designed to facilitate and encourage peer learning, while also meeting RegenWA’s ‘Where to Start’ offering.
Each day, Kevin began by explaining and demonstrating the soil food web, i.e. how soil is a complex living system, where every plant and animal, including weeds and pests, has a function or a story to tell that can contribute to improving soil health and productivity. Participants then shared the challenges or goals that had driven them to come along, with common themes emerging. On day one, some of the dominant topics were increasing fungal diversity, overcoming non-wetting soils, and cover-crop species selection for different livestock; day two topics included biological controls, efficient compost use, unlocking minerals for nutrition, and improving paddocks and pasture.
The conversations shared each day forged deep connections – both between participants and also joining the dots in their knowledge and understanding of what they’ve observed on their property, and how to work with that – rather than fight it – to improvement their soil health. Each group of workshop participants was connected afterwards through a WhatsApp group chat to continue to share information, learn from and support one another to grow healthier, more resilient soils on their property.
NACC NRM has since incorporated those two chat groups to create a broader Resilient Farming Community of Practice on the WhatsApp platform, focused on continual learning and information/resource sharing in soil health/systems and climate-smart practices. With quarterly meetings or events planned, the opportunity to establish topic-focused chats and to add discrete chat groups to connect future workshop participants, we are excited about where this Community can take our local farmers and landholders. Ultimately, we hope it will help people across the region to build food production systems with increased resilience to our changing climate.
Are you interested to join the Resilient Farming Community of Practice? Then please get in touch! We’d love to welcome you in.
NACC NRM’s Future Farm Foundations project is supported by the Australian Government through funding from the Natural Heritage Trust under the Climate-Smart Agriculture Program.