At home with a newborn in southeast Queensland Bennett recently read a an article on regenerative agriculture in the special Fieldays issue of Farmers Weekly.
Bennett is a principal research fellow at the university’s Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Systems and the immediate past president of Soil Science Australia.
He knows agricultural science well, from published papers to working with farmers and industry and living on a tough, 21,000ha station.
He’s not convinced it helps to define any type of farming as regenerative agriculture.
The label doesn’t fit with his personal or professional experience of primary industry, where people are suspicious about being boxed into a certain type of farming.
“I have read through the article with interest but do not see it doing anything much to close the scepticism gap,” he said.
A key feature missing from the usual discussion about regenerative agriculture, including the Farmers Weekly article, is a cost-benefit calculation and a look at the saleability of the regenerative approach.
Regenerative ag certainly has merit, like an area of semi-arid rangeland around Brewarrina, New South Wales.
“I lived at Coolaburra Station with my mum and dad east of Brewarrina in the last 10-year drought.
“We carried stock through the whole thing, breaking even on the other side when some others in the region had gone into significant debt and/or destocked completely.
“We owe this in part to the bloke we bought it from, Garry Turnbull, whose family had numerous generations of experience in the region.
“He showed us how to manage the land the in the good times, to be set-up to survive the bad times, the differences across the 21,000ha property in terms of its response to flood and subsequent management into drought. We did not refer to this regenerative agriculture but rather just good management that was sensitive to the landscape and its behaviour.”
A problem with the regenerative agriculture approach, particularly in drought, is that people are suspicious of the label itself.
It might work well at Coolaburra Station and be suited the Brewarrina region but getting people to adopt something labelled regenerative agriculture there was an uphill battle.
It was much easier to encourage landowners to share practices of good land management without using a label, Bennett said.
“We need to refocus the conversation around good land management that is sensitive to how the land functions, rather than subject it to brands and labels of agriculture.
“Let the individual self-categorise themselves into whatever brand they like but educate them on best management practices that sustain production in hard times and remain profitable with potentially less intensive management and we achieve the same end state.”
Bennett finds any discussion on jargon and identification always reduces people to sides. He agrees with recent comment that, unfortunately, the term regenerative agriculture now carries a holier-than-thou stigma.
“Let’s walk away from labelling and focus on management.
“This is our point around soil security and the ability to create markets that reward sustainable practices and resilient landscapes.”
The debate is whether unsustainable farming is contributing to the woes of drought-stricken Australian farmers and whether regenerative agriculture could help.
In terms of the latest drought, the answer is a resounding no, Bennett said.
“The tenets of the regenerative agricultural movement generally come back to changing management to suit the local landscape and its function, which takes time.
“So, the current drought would not benefit from immediate change in practice but immediate change in practice can commence the process of greater landscape resilience.”
There is no agreed definition of regenerative agriculture but it was essentially about best management practices for land sensitive to the nuances of the way it responds to the continuum of rainfall in the given local climate, he said.
The soil science community refers to that as soil security, meaning the land becomes secure to change and external intervention – its resilience increases.
Practices that enhance it are worth looking into, particularly a look at why they work. That should include the existing broad range of regenerative agricultural approaches, Bennett said.
“There is no doubt that the general mindset surrounding this regenerative agricultural movement will have an enduring effect on soil resilience into future droughts. However, the credibility lies in understanding why certain practices are better than others and this is where all stakeholders in agriculture must take an interest.”
Under a pre-election plan announced by the Scott Morrison government in March, the federal government will set up a biodiversity credits scheme similar to a carbon credits scheme.
Farmers who pass strict conditions will be paid for the amount of forest and endangered species on their land, it has been reported.
And $3 million will be spent on a certification scheme to be developed by the Australian National University in consultation with the National Farmers’ Federation.
Bennett says the public should never ask a landholder to use practices that prop up and enhance the environment at the expense of their livelihood.
“This is unfair.
“Therefore, we need to come up with mechanisms that reward good stewardship. If you eat and wear clothes you are a stakeholder in agriculture; you are a part of the agricultural industry.
“Therefore, it’s a shared problem. If we in society want to see land managed in such a way that it improves carbon sequestration, maintains and improves biodiversity, amongst other ecosystem services such as food and fibre production, then we must value this.”
By value Bennett means all stakeholders must be prepared to pay for it. There are emerging markets for biodiversity credits, carbon offsets and credits and other markets will follow, he said.
These mechanisms, in essence, put a value on good management.
It is not money for doing nothing, locking up parcels of land or payments for not clearing land that would not have been cleared anyway – all those approaches have failed before, Bennett said.
“Rather, this would need to be an ongoing payment. We would have some farmers ending up potentially farming environment rather than conventional agriculture as we know it now – probably a harder job than managing a monoculture and with as much value to society as food and fibre.”
Bennett does have a caveat on support for the payments. They should not be at the expense of broad acre cropping and grazing.
“There is no reason that a unit of land cannot provide both agricultural production and natural capital value,” he said.
