On The Land
15 June, 2023
Event inspires farmers
A high calibre line-up of 18 speakers, some of them world-renowned, was one of the highlights of the 2023 “Soil to Food Conference – healthy soil, people and profits”, held at the Trimarchi farm this month.
A high calibre line-up of 18 speakers, some of them world-renowned, was one of the highlights of the 2023 “Soil to Food Conference – healthy soil, people and profits”, held at the Trimarchi farm this month.
Conference organiser Sally Fields said the conference formed part of the Healthy Farming Futures five year project and was a “deliverable” for the project.
Currently also being the team leader for this project for Terrain NRM, Sally is passionate about regenerative agriculture and using both her skillset and strategic mind to support collaboration and adoption in Queensland’s Far North.
“The measure of success for me was to get farmers here, out of the 120 people here over the weekend, 100 were farmers,” she said.
In a first of its kind event, another of the many highlights of the weekend was renowned ABC gardening personality Costa Georgiadis attending and being a guest master of ceremonies on the Saturday.
Costa facilitated “the farmer connect” session, speaking about famers connecting to their land and also with their farmer peer group networks. It was a powerful session getting farmers out of their heads and into their hearts.
“Out of the 18 speakers that were here over the two days, 14 of the 18 were actually farmers, that’s 78 per cent. The other four speakers were from farming families or actively engaging with farmers,” Sally said.
“The thing that set this conference apart was that farmers wanted to hear about farmer-led innovation.
“This conference did just that, it facilitated a mindset of change through sharing farming lead innovation that supports health soils, peoples and profits.
“As the Healthy Farming Futures project leader and an agronomist, coaching farmers towards regenerative practices has been the most rewarding culmination of my five years of work.
“Being able to showcase the highlights, bring new farmer-led innovation to the region and see farmers being totally engaged with each other, build their support networks as the essential ingredients in facilitation and supporting change definitely makes it all worthwhile.”
Some of the speakers over the weekend included Grant Sims who is a sixth-generation farmer and the 2015 Coles Weekly Times Farmer of the Year running an 8500 acres family farm in Victoria.
His family focuses on diversity and grow a variety of crops and have been utilising “no till” since the 1980’s, have replaced synthetic fertilisers with biologically made liquid fertilisers and have adopted multi species companion, animal integration and cover crops.
They have seen many positive changes in their soils and plants.
Internationally renowned ground cover and soil ecologist Dr Christine Jones, an internationally recognised grazier who has written numerous journals and publications, also addressed the conference.
Based in the Daintree, Dr Andre Leu was also a speaker. Andre is an organic tropical fruit farmer, author and internationally renowned speaker on regenerative agriculture.
He is a founder and International Director of Regeneration International, the organisation that started the regenerative agriculture movement.
With a PhD in agricultural and environmental systems, Andre has travelled the world for nearly 50 years teaching and lecturing on agroecology, agroforestry, organic farming, permaculture, ecological agriculture, holistic grazing and biological farming. His recent book ‘Growing Life – Regenerating Farming and Ranching’ is available through Acres USA.
Niels Olsen, who also spoke at the conference, is the inventor of the Soilkee renovator, a key component of the patented Soilkee System that earned the first carbon credits under the government regulated Emissions Reduction Fund.
The 2023 Soil to Food Conference was delivered by Terrain NRM with funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.
