Soils For Life
13 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago -The Soils for Life podcast brings you the voices of farmers around Australia who are regenerating our precious soils and landscapes.
In each episode we share the stories of farmers who are discovering ways to farm with nature, and explore how we can all help more farmers to head in this direction, for healthier food, humans and planet.
These stories show how resilient, regenerated soils and landscapes can support profitable food-producing businesses, thriving and resilient people and regional communities, and abundant and nutritious food.
Produced by Grow Love Project and Soils for Life.
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Episodes
Small steps for big change in cropping, with Joel Williams
February 12, 2024 05:02 - 44 minutes - 51.2 MBIn this episode we talk with Joel Williams about how growers can start weaning off costly chemical inputs, rules of thumb for seed treatments and foliar sprays, why he likes tweaks and incremental improvements, the growing scientific evidence behind regenerative farming practices and more! Joel Williams is an independent plant and soil health educator based in Canada, working on soil management, plant nutrition and integrated approaches of sustainable food production. Joel is interested in...
You are what you eat… and the soil it’s grown in: Is soil the key to better human health?
December 26, 2023 04:24 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBWe’ve all heard the saying “You are what you eat”. But, as we'll hear in this episode, it really should go “You are what you eat, and the soil it grows in.” Over half of our adult population are considered to be malnourished, and this is in part due to a decline in the nutrient density of our food. As the world's population grows and remaining arable land decreases, growing healthier, nutrient dense food might just be a part of the answer to improving human health outcomes. In this episode...
Mick Green and Rachel Ward on the power of getting started
August 17, 2023 00:12 - 34 minutes - 27.3 MBIf you’re a long-time listener to this podcast, you’ll be used to our in-depth episodes co-hosted by Grow Love Project’s Susie Kable and Soils for Life’s James Diack. We’re continuing to make these episodes, but from time-to-time we’ll be bringing you shorter interviews with farmers doing interesting things to regenerate soils and landscapes. This is the first of these interviews, with actress-turned-farmer Rachel Ward and farm manager Mick Green. Mick and Rachel jointly manage a farm in th...
From mono-culture to poly-culture cropping
June 05, 2023 06:09 - 42 minutes - 29.2 MBBuilding cropping resilience through diversity In this episode we hear from croppers who are growing multispecies crops as a way of building soil health and improving diversity. We discover why and how these farmers are moving from growing monocultures to establishing polycultures. Find out more about how croppers around Australia are regenerating soil and landscape health by reading Soils for Life’s new cropping case studies: soilsforlife.org.au/case-studies Thank you to all our guests: ...
From monoculture to multispecies cropping: Making diversity work
June 05, 2023 06:09 - 42 minutes - 29.2 MBBuilding cropping resilience through diversity In this episode we hear from croppers who are growing multispecies crops as a way of building soil health and improving diversity. We discover why and how these farmers are moving from growing monocultures to establishing polycultures. Find out more about how croppers around Australia are regenerating soil and landscape health by reading Soils for Life’s new cropping case studies: soilsforlife.org.au/case-studies Thank you to all our guests: ...
Weeds are telling us something - are we listening?
December 20, 2022 23:48 - 49 minutes - 113 MBThe industrialisation of agriculture has created large paddocks of monoculture crops and increased the chemical burden on farmers and their environments. Global herbicide use has continued to increase as farmers have shifted to no till practices and adopted herbicide-tolerant crop cultivars over the last 30 years. One result of this is that the list of herbicide resistant #weeds is growing. Some farmers spend huge amounts of money on herbicide and scarce time removing weeds; Meanwhile, exac...
Farmer led research – embracing complexity
November 03, 2022 23:02 - 48 minutes - 66.8 MBAgricultural scientific research is really good at honing in on specific issues in the sector to investigate targeted solutions. But nature doesn’t always work that way. A fundamental principle of regenerative agriculture is to observe landscapes as a whole system and to build resilience by embracing ecological complexity. The importance of farmer and researcher collaboration is highlighted in this episode with the need for research models and questions to meet with the complexity of farmin...
Next Generation Farming Matters
July 14, 2022 11:33 - 46 minutes - 63.5 MBAustralian agriculture currently has a labour shortage of over 100,000 people. It’s not an easy gig for someone to start from scratch on a farm and many younger generation farmers are moving from farms to urban areas. We rely on farmers to sustain our way of life as they produce our food and fibre. It’s critical that young and new farmers are encouraged and supported to supply for our needs in a way that regenerates soils and landscapes. Some major barriers and challenges that young and ne...
Working Together And Navigating Environmental Markets
July 14, 2022 10:57 - 43 minutes - 98.8 MBThe 8 families farmer group formed more than a decade ago after a holistic management course. Since then, the group has evolved and experienced transitions in all the businesses and families. In this episode we explore environmental markets through the lens of two members of the 8 Families group. The 8 families explain how their motivation to build natural capital was not primarily to gain market outcomes, but rather a desire to fulfill their Holistic Context. This includes building the pr...
The Missing Middle: Farming Trees for Conservation and Profit
December 17, 2021 00:59 - 56 minutes - 129 MBFarmer, forester or conservationist. It might seem like you need to choose one but more and more landholders are challenging this. With the right management, trees on farms can provide better farm productivity and forest products and increase biodiversity. But in many ways forests are still treated as either conservation reserves or plantations, making it difficult for farmers to take this path. In less than 100 years as a nation we have gone from removing trees to wanting to plant them bac...
Compost ain't compost
November 23, 2021 18:34 - 55 minutes - 128 MBThere are millions of hectares of degraded soils in Australia's agricultural landscapes. But there are a billion reasons why compost offers a solution to this problem, teeming with micro-organisms and organic matter that can help regenerate soils. But not all composts are the same and there is still a lot that we're learning about this precious, carbon rich resource. How can governments, farmers and industry work together to return organic matter to the soil and close the loop from paddock t...
The Great Soil Carbon Catalyst?
September 22, 2021 23:28 - 36 minutes - 83.7 MBHow could the emerging market for soil carbon support farmers to regenerate soils? Soil carbon offers so many benefits both above and below the soil surface, from improving farm productivity to revenue raising in carbon trading. But while the case for building soil carbon is clear, the carbon market is still evolving. So what’s the potential, what are the risks and what can be done to unlock the potential of soil carbon as an enabler of better farm management and soil stewardship? In this e...
Soils For Life Trailer
August 13, 2021 12:52 - 4 minutes - 11.5 MBThis is Soils For Life. A podcast about connecting farmers, researchers and policy makers, to shed light on agricultural best practice and explore current policy barriers and mindsets that are getting in the way of adoption and how to overcome them. Each episode we’ll delve into a topical issue around soil health in agriculture. We’ll hear from farmers about what inspired them to change their practices and we’ll talk to industry experts about the challenges and opportunities to help improve ...