168. From Movie Sets to Regenerative Farms: Rachel Ward & Mick Green on new film & new life at Rachel's Farm

it . This is the way , this is another way to go . Let's take a turn from Borgland and the Green Revolution and start going the biological way , not the chemical way . And how and why wouldn't that work ? And God , there's just so many examples of how it is working .

Rachel's farm is made by none other than Rachel Ward , the famed actress , filmmaker and now grandmother . I was grateful to have been invited to join Rachel at the farm amidst family celebrations over Easter and , as it happens , her 40th anniversary with much-loved actor-husband Bryan Brown . The morning after those festivities we sat down for this conversation .

Actually , later that day I had another terrific conversation with Rachel's daughter and her husband . That'll be out next And in truth the chat I shared over lunch with Bryan would have made an alright podcast too .

The first half of today's conversation is with Rachel alone , about her deeply felt , unexpected and incredibly uplifting journey towards transforming her cattle farm into a carbon sequestering biodiversity haven through regenerative farming practices .

And for the back half we rope in the farmer who started it all Rachel's co-star in the film , former industrialised farmer and coal miner , mick Green Jr .

Yeah , it was a decent money and I could , there was some job satisfaction there and you know you could still take pride in your work , but didn't feel right , not like this does You know ? this feels right and there's a future in it .

I loved comparing notes with Rachel about our respective journeys around the country , exploring this movement as newbies to it , and to learn about the twists and turns , deep wrenches and ecstatic releases along the way , along with , of course , the systemic shifts of play in markets , economies , finance , certifications , education , next generations , resistant generations

including some family members , the majority of this district jumping on board the regeneration now and the potential of unleashing many more opportunities around the country and world , with this stuff all summing to some incredibly beautiful closing exchanges .

Before we start , though , a little heads up , i've now got chapter markers and transcript immediately available via the show notes in case you'd like to navigate or return to parts of this conversation that way , and most of all this week , i'd like to express great thanks to Paul Hawken for your extremely generous donation and correspondence all very timely too , given

we recorded the most popular episode on this podcast together when I was last in the Kimberley . It's the way this ad-free , listener supported podcast happens , so if you're also finding value in this , please consider joining Paul and a great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month , or whatever amount you can and want to contribute .

You can enjoy a variety of benefits and , of course , continue to receive the podcast every week , even a little more often than that out here . Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com, Forward slash support And thanks again .

Okay , let's take a seat with Rachel on the front veranda at her place . Rachel , first thing to say is thanks very much for having me here , me and us here at your place . It's really special to meet you at your farm .

I love the physical rigour of it . I like to be exhausted at the end of the day . I like to work my body , not just my mind . I've always been someone who needs to exercise , Otherwise I end up in a rut . Yes , me too , and yeah , so for me it was like , oh my God , if I can find .

I mean , i'd never occurred to me I could find farming so interesting , and probably farming before coming across regenerative farming would not have interested me , but maybe it would have done , maybe it would have done .

I mean , i grew up in a farm but we grew up in a very patriarchal system and there was primogenitor and the farm was always going to be my brothers And so there was really no .

He went to agricultural college , you know he was very much going to going to have the property And so there seemed to no reason really for us to be interested in it for a minute , because it was never encouraged or thought of or imagined that women would be on farm or in any meaningful way .

And certainly when I had farm managers here there seemed to be no meaningful way that I could participate . But that changed with this whole , with the regenerative idea and suddenly became so many areas that I could participate And that required more than I mean I . You know , mick is somebody like Mick is so skilled and mixed seniors .

You know these farmers are so multi skilled I mean , mick has plumbing , electrical , you know he could . There's nothing he can't do , there's nothing he can't fix . If the gas goes wrong on the gas ring , he can come . He knows what little spark is missing .

I mean , i've got a whole new sense of appreciation for the guy that can do all that stuff is is I've always been surrounded by useless artists , wonderful artists , but you know , impractical artists . Generally actors can't change a light bulb .

us bloke's even need is just the other half of the population to be coming into the sea .

You know my sprayer , my , my , my biological sprayer . I might add onto the back of the tractor as opposed to the slasher or as opposed to the fence , you know the fence post thing , And that needs a bit of brute strength . But and also , and because we use electrical fences , I definitely have to do a bit more work on my electrical skills .

I mean , I'm sure there's a lot of women on very tough country who go no , that's going to do the job , I'm going to use that , whether it's chemical , biological or whatever you know , or just brute , brute turning over the soil or spraying this on , I'm sure you know , when it comes down to thin , tiny margins , I mean , the thing that really is working nature's

favor at the moment is that all of these , all these biosides are so expensive . All of these you know insecticides and herbicides and fertilizers and you know chemical fertilizers . They're getting to be just very expensive . So that's on nature's side , because people are really having to look at other ways to deal with things .

And maybe women have more patience not me , but I think generally women have more patience because it definitely does

take . You know it isn't immediate some of the stuff that we do . You know it takes . You know a number of applications . It takes putting the fungi into the rat tail and you know the number of applications . It's just not a sudden thing . Okay , spray that dead . You know which God .

I understand the immediate thing of that , but I don't know , so maybe I don't know why it is . Why do you think it is ? what are you getting from other women ?

One of Charlie's moments Charlie Massey's moments was with his grandson who just innocently comments as they're driving through some farms . Why do we have to kill stuff ?

to grow stuff , The fact that so much of that farming we've come here with and it's sought to wipe out so much that it wants to grow , that we just don't want in our narrow frame of what we need to produce for the cash for the commodity that to have a form of farming that's more well , literally takes life as its central port of call .

More biodiversity , more ground cover , etc . More animal health , like that's its priority , and then anything else beyond that we'll see . Type of thing almost . Perhaps there's something in that .

I mean , there's no way I would have taken on McSenial or on anything you know and I remember questioning the chemicals and he knew I didn't like the chemicals And at one point he did blitz a field that led down into the dam and suddenly there was a lot of algae appearing in the dam .

So it was getting a huge hit of either urea or some protein that was really hitting the algae . And I remember going I haven't seen that before that must be a response to the hill that you've just blitzed . And anyway , he knew I wasn't crazy about it .

But the fact of doing something new together with someone , i mean the fact that Mick and I are still exploring , still seeing things and seeing the results of what we've put into action , and there's nothing prescribed , there's nothing we don't know really .

It's so interesting because you don't really know what's going to work and what's not going to work , and what you've got to tweak to try and encourage . And you've got to , or you've got to change , or you've got to make the paddock smaller , or you've got to make the herd density more , or you've got to do we slash , do we not slash ? do we put on ?

do we feed minerals all year round or do we not ? when does that change from ? you know , like grain feeding , something as opposed to something else ? You know , all of those questions are so interesting and it will take time , take years really , for us to get it right .

But in the meantime we're , you know , a , we're certainly not losing money and B , it's such an interesting journey .

And yeah , it stands in stark contrast to that And when you know that , by and large , most farmers are suffering with their sense of isolation and depression but this is a real thing and it's partly related , to say , to the world , but just partly related to their lot And I can't help but think , then that their way of living , where it's not like that , the

daily life isn't like that , it is more mechanical . I know what I'm going to do every day and I've just got to get out and put in the hard yards .

I wanted to see that agroforestry that people had been doing and that planting they'd been doing . I wanted to steeply see the difference . And that's really what got me off on the documentary , because I went originally .

I went , okay , we just got a film Charlie Massey's book , let's go to all these people and see what they're doing and see what he's talking about . So , but that was really his documentary , it wasn't really mine .

So , but that's the thing that I just wanted to be inspired by what people were doing with their land that was so different , that was getting such an extraordinary response and an exciting and such a natural response .

And obviously , you know , with climate change , we're so crushed by the stories of destruction and mechanization and industrialization And we , you know , i just wanted to see it where it was living again , where it was , where it was in sync with something that was right , that was in sync with us , where we could be part of nature without it being woo , woo part

of nature where it was actually . You could see it .

You can do the tours and you go around all these farms and see the difference , see what people are talking about Really , yeah .

I committed to doing a fortnightly podcast right in Hale or Shine and wanted to get to know our country really for the first time , and we were going to do it by going to these sorts of places .

Charlie's book had just come out , but really we'd met , we'd already met some of the people , and so we started with them and one thing would lead to another , that sort of thing . But it's interesting then to relate to your impulse of I want to speak to them all . And this is partly what has ended up happening in my case , five , six years on .

It's doubly interesting because , going back to your background in the UK and you indeed talk about in the film your a sense of belonging that's never quite existed here and that this is perhaps the closest you've come to it through this connection with the land , in this life-giving way , life enhancing way , and even as an Australian born , i feel a piece of that .

That we set off in 2018 to get to know our country properly because there was an absence there , like I knew places , but I'd gone , i'd travelled without connecting with the people , and much less the people who are really stewarding country in a powerful way And , in the current context that you know briefly alluded to there , that can be very daunting .

Yeah , i think we've come out of it with more a sense of belonging here and with these people , and then to look back and think , wow , that I found kin , if you like , in this space .

There they are up in that , you know , northarm , quite far out , quite away , growing these extraordinary vegetables And I just find them fascinating . How are they doing that ? What are they doing And how do they what ? you know what's brought them to this place ?

And I just you shift over over your lifespan about what people are interesting and to you or not , you know .

I mean , at one point actors were fascinating to me , directors were fascinating , you know , moved on , people who can grow things and grow them just because , you know , grow them in a way that is gentle on the earth but has found a way to make , make nature work for them and with them and get these extraordinary things to come out of .

You know , certainly in this area , pretty hard soil . You know we are not blessed with great soil here . We're very leech country and we've got very little potassium and boron and sulfur , so it's hard , you know . So there you know , when people can make magic out of not a great start .

You know , when I saw , you know for the first time , my top soil , how thin my top soil was in this country , you know , coming from England where it's just you know , so deep and so rich .

you know it's , it's , there's work to be done , it's , and I don't know how you change , because it's very leeched , very old country and it's just semi tropical means we get a lot of rainfall , a lot of top soil washes off , a lot of the minerals have already gone . So how do you do that ? Do you constantly spray it onto the ground ?

No , we've decided that we actually give it direct to the cattle , and anything the cattle doesn't use goes onto the ground . But instead of bullying the soil , you just give it to the cattle . Okay , they're not getting it out of the ground . identify what they're not getting out of the ground and give it to them .

hey , to get back to , if we trace the roots of where this all started , for you it was with a real internal test of your own emotional crunch time in a way , yeah , yeah . How I mean in a way , i think , watching the film . It was actually through your daughter , matilda , that that reality was told most starkly , with the emotion that was present in her .

and the reality of something that you deeply love being affected by something where we seem to be unable to control and change , and the crisis that he's going to have to deal with and his generation is going to have to deal with . Yes , it definitely put into stark contrast

. And then we had the fires here too , and that was a real wake up call of just how I'm a nice , you know not . I think of those people in the tornadoes in down the East Coast of America And wow , just to see nature unleashed is a terrifying spectacle .

And there was something about it to me that was you know , it's trying to wake us up , it's giving us little . I mean not little . People in the tornado area would not say little . But okay , wake the fuck up , do something . You know , this is just that , you know .

Again , it's such a fine line because , of course we've all had we've always had bushfires , but this was just something beyond being a bushfire . It was just out of control .

Wasn't it The whole way was kept going from one area to the , so we were at the very , very beginning of it up here , so we had no idea where it was going to go when it started And we'd never had a bushfire up here . I'd never seen one before .

Well , so was the whole country , as it proved .

you just felt your back was in a corner and you could never budge . These people They're , you know , they're being in bed with these corporations who were pushing this and , you know , pushing the mining and pushing the fossil fuels .

You just felt okay , we've got dry country , but we are doing nothing to help ourselves here And there's nothing we can do about the dry country . We're not going to change that , that's . You know . We're not going to be able to change our droughts , but we could change how we respond to it .

or couldn't see a way to , to unleash into Yeah , yeah .

I just couldn't do anything that was powerful enough really in just in my sphere And you know , when I discovered that farming was so responsible for so much of the of the carbon that was being released , and you know all the and all the biosides and what we were doing to the country and the diversity , and I just went whoa well , that's pretty obvious where I

have to go as a someone who owns land .

And I thought he was going to say you know , we have to grow trees , we have to do , but you know , then he had this whole other , whole other way of working with cattle . So that was a . You know , it all takes , it sort of drips , feeds for a while and then it just snowballs . It takes little steps . Well , it all seems insurmountable to start with .

It seems impossible , you know , to sort of take on a whole new way of doing things . It seems enormous And then it just seems absolutely possible and small steps and it just gathers momentum and then you have lay periods where nothing moves forward , and then you have times when it all goes backwards and then you take , and then you have to think again .

We're now back now into really looking at the genetics of our cattle and going why have we got English , scottish , angus cattle on this land ? It is just not meant to be . You know , we've got we've got the sort of grass that really doesn't sustain a big , burned big animal like an English , like English cattle . We don't have the weather for it .

We've got the , we've got the ticks , we've got the buffalo flyer , we've got all these sort of subtropical enemies , really , of an English cow . So it's about thinking about where we get our genetics now , which is going to help us with with being in a subtropical space environment .

It seems like who can tell the difference between a center pole cattle and a drought master and a and a and a Farakabad and an Angus ? I mean , who really can tell the difference ?

you know , and yet you go to the markets and you get a line of these little small Angus out the door immediately The minute it's got any pistol on it or it's got any sort of floppy ears or it's got any drought thing to it . It's , you know , it goes , it's slightly less .

So I was saying to Marlon you know how does he fight the sort of fashion of the market ? And it is just fashion , really just you know they just decided that that's that's . The most desirable cow is the Angus . At the moment It's a little black Angus .

You seemed to start filming pretty early in your process . Is that right ? Like when was the moment you thought actually let's pull the cameras out while we're going through all this ?

You know , it was one of those ones and and I just thought there's only one way forward and I just have to , and I thought I want to do it , a documentary about it . But I didn't know where to begin . It seemed massive . I'd never done one before . How do you start with this whole subject ?

I know nothing about the subject And I thought you know , like anything , there's nowhere to start , but at the beginning and you just take a first step and see where it goes and just keep going . And I'm , i'm quite bloody-minded . So I just kept going .

I took , i got , i said to Matilda bring up your camera , because she had a pro , a pro camera which I hadn't really used . There's a director . I'm really not around , you know . I work with people who know how to work the camera . I don't know how to work the camera Anyway .

So she brought it up and one day I just went out and found Mick and Normie out there . They were tearing down some of the fences that are all been burnt . They were , they were pulling , you know , all charred posts and were rolling up big , big rolls of wire and and the cicadas were absolutely crushing the noise of the cicadas at that point .

And I remember just going out with , you know , fiddling around with the sound thing , which , of course , i got everything wrong . Everything was out of focus , but actually I was fascinated by what they were saying and they were fabulous with what they were saying and they absolutely got into it .

And I came back and although , although everything was out of focus and the sound was all over the place , i went oh , i'm interested , i'm interested , i'm interested in what they're saying and that's a . That's a start . That was and I felt I could do it too . I felt I can ask these questions , i'm interested , i can take it somewhere .

And then we fiddled around for ages , you know , trying to find a bit of a form for it , where it was going to go , what I was going to do . And then I found someone , a fabulous cinematographer , mary May , who was up in Maury , and the two of us got together and we were over . We got together and we went .

We went all over the Inverrell area and I talked to so many of the farmers up there who were doing the regen farming up there , so I suppose I spoke , interviewed about 20 on both sides And so we spent about I don't know a month doing that , going around and doing all of that , and then I came back with a ton , of ton of film and did all of the

transcripts , did all the transcripts , put that all together . And then I went to Wild Bear and said , look , i've got this . And Tina Dalton , who is one of the Wild Bear producers , said I really like the idea that this , but I don't want to see anything you filmed . I'm not interested in anything you filmed . I'm not interested in that .

I'm interested in your journey . And I went well , i don't have one . She said well , you better start one .

That's so much easier , Cause at least you know you've got a beginning and middle and end . And I certainly didn't have an end . I didn't have a third act . We don't want to spoil what happens , but that happens when we were almost at the end of filming And we got this , we got this third act .

And when that happened I went , oh well , that goes , the film , that's over , that's done . And of course , no , it was actually just the third act happening .

Obviously , they put their money in the foundations of the things that they care about . But there are a lot of people out there who are really plugged into this space and who go , yes , that's what we need to have out there , and so we couldn't have made this documentary without , without that list of of donations from foundations .

And anyway , he gave us a two week window , so we have a two week window of showing it publicly in theaters , which is fantastic for us to be able to do that , and then that gives us an opportunity to be in some festivals And then we've got an impact campaign which means that we can go I can go all over the country with this and go to areas that people

wouldn't necessarily get to go into a city to see the film . So we can have discussions , we can have . You know it's a gathering place for other people who are thinking like this or thinking they might like this idea , or people even who are absolutely opposed to it and want to go and piss on the idea .

So there's a whole lot of educational devolvements from the film that will go into , i don't know , colleges or high schools , or just introducing people to another idea about working with the land , looking after the land , bringing in the indigenous perspective , listening to what they have to say about it , yes , bringing them into an area which they so naturally fit

to make them you know so much part of it and to rush to learn so much from them , because they are just I mean , when Kenny Walker was out here and his family were out here , they just live it on a very different consciousness And it's so fascinating to feel suddenly they totally , they just made sense for me , you know , you suddenly realize , of course that's

their place of power and place of connection and where we so can learn from them . The ones that still are connected to it and listening to it , and certainly the ones here in the Nambakar Shad , the Nambanya tribe , are just extraordinary how much the ones I've met just are reading land so well .

And so you know , like I said about this wasp up here , Kenny hadn't come , i would have gotten rid of that wasp nest because of the grandchildren and stuff . Nope , now it's there . There's nothing wrong with that . He will be fine , leave him alone . And there we've got that lovely wasp nest up there .

Quite often , you know , when people buy land up here , they're starting to get the elders in and people who have a in the know just to talk about what they should and shouldn't get rid of in the bush and what's valuable and what's what's a so-called weed or what's what's a new , something that's new , that's come in like invasive , invasive Yeah what's invasive ,

What should be here , How we can help our waterways .

You know they're very much in line with I mean I was extraordinary when I started talking to Kenny how much like he was anything that Charlie Massick was saying or any of the Regen guys or Mick was saying , or Charlie defers to the lawman in his area that he defers to him as a master , and this is some of what .

So it's interesting that there's a there's now a diversity of perspectives on regenerative agriculture and some of those maintain the complete shutout of all that knowledge .

Well , they call it , they call it regenerative , and yet it's shut out , and yet , yes , but also the very best , where literally some farmers and I know the masses had a few indigenous mobs over there harvesting grasses for the first time in whatever 200 years Recently . they're not the only ones . Some of the stories we heard about on the panel were farmers .

even if they only got small patches of land , they're just giving some of it over . So , this is yours . Do what you need to do . So there's the very best of finding ways that are emergent . We don't really know what we're doing , but finding ways to just say the right thing here includes your land was never seeded .

So , what does that mean as land nominal landowners now under this regime ? What does that mean to really connect ? So there's the very best broaching that and some that lags , and so I think , the relationships you forming there , they seem so foundation We have to get you know it's certainly not for all indigenous people .

And these kids came out here and they went why don't you have a pool ? And why ? I said , go and get the wood from that , from the river over there . No , I'm not going anywhere near there , You know , they just wanted the pool with the chlorine in there And they wanted all the all the comfortable bits you know , And I kept saying what trees that one ?

That's what's so great to meet the walkers , who was still Kenny , was so still Understood it and his whole family , and there was a wonderful moment down here where they just knew there was a place there , a dark place , and they needed to ask permission to go before they went any further .

And they're reading that and they're asking the entities not to follow me home , not to give me a bad time , and I'm like whoa didn't even occur to me that there might be these things going on . And that whole thing of asking the ancestors , and you can obviously go through the world perfectly well without asking permission .

But how great that they all have these levels out there .

And then I've come across stories like even at the Haggerty's late last year on the wheat belt in WA , with an indigenous woman who came out for the first time And then had a dream during the night of the rainbow serpent And it was . It was called from literally outside the room . She happened to be put in in the abode And she didn't know the land .

She'd come in at night and then went out there in the morning And then literally was the rainbow serpent in rock form . A drone shot was taken and it says clear as day You wouldn't take it for anything else And from there then she explored country and was sensing all these things And we could see the reality , if you like , in our terms .

Yeah , that really brings it home that there are multiple layers to this And we're just unconscious of it .

So instead of just blind , blindly bullying your way through , you do that , You grow , you don't grow . You , you know , and I'm , we've cleared the campfires down here , in this gully here , And so we've had to disturb the ground . And now we've had rain and the rain has washed into the river And I'm saying , oh my God , what have I done ? What have I done ?

And then , but I then just keep sort of going . No , the campfires are an invasive species . I you know , I'm sure I'm on the right side trying to deal with it , but nature would just , yeah , she would just say can't this now , all the way up this gully you're going to have , you know , and and no one's really proved how poisonous they are .

But I don't think , you know , they do say that they put off , you know , they stop the indigenous trees growing around them and whatever . So I'm sort of going , i mean two minds about thinking have I done something that's really destructive , But then I'm given . I'm given faith because it's full of birds already .

It's more of a mystery and you've got to sort of intuit your way through , but I guess there's just a sort of a there's a different mindset , that that enables you to tune in ever deeper into what the best way to go is .

It's been doing it a lot longer than I have And I just see our ignorance and arrogance of thinking yeah , we've been , look at us . Go , you know , we were just so good at cocking things up and hitting the wrong target And instead of observing and being accountable , that's the whole thing .

It's just got to be accountable and observe what part you're playing in it .

Is it the fact that I'm doing something different , or I'm not using a tractor , or I'm trying to use ? you know there's a lot in that and you know I'm just learning that . There's so much in it , you know and everyone's that is different . You know What happens on my farm is different to what happens on the next farm and even amongst regenerative farmers .

You know Everyone's got a different that We're all trying to do , just do better . You know , and understand it better and work

with it . And What was the change in ?

You know There's got to be something . You know , wow , what's , what's the future in this ? You know , yeah , it was a decent money And I could . There was some some job satisfaction there and you know you could still take pride in your work , but Didn't feel right , not like this , does you know ? this feels right and there's a future in it .

Ripping coal out of the ground doesn't feel like there's much future in it for me , or not for a long time anyway , Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah .

frugally and yeah , I love mix live frugally thing .

Deb likes bacon , sourdough , bread and hand delivering it to Neighbours and you know , just being part of a community and and I love being part of a community and trying to build healthy environments , and That's a choice . We're choosing to live that lifestyle . That's what we want to do .

that's the main thing for me with the documentary is just bringing awareness that Everybody can contribute in this space by choosing the power of the dollar and what , how they choose to spend that , how they do they choose to spend it in some way that supports and props up a system that is working for the , for us or Against us .

In the end , it might be cheaper , faster , more economic in one way , but that is not sustainable . So we're going to find the a sustainable way . We need to really think about how we spend every , every dollar . And I guess people you know young kids go to the city and that that that they're there , they are at their most Consumptive time when they're buying .

You know fast fashion and You know buying at fast food stores and they're supporting their supporting systems that that are not supporting us .

They're supporting the 1% supporting them Yeah they're supporting the corporate , which of course you know lots people have shares in those corporations and do very well out of it , but You know really if you want to support a system that's going to support you , support the one that's be really .

Think deeply about what is a system that's really going to support you in the end . Yes , it may be a bit more expensive to buy organic vegetables or regenerative meat , but it won't in the end because actually it's a cheaper way of doing things , because we're just not using the inputs We're not using . We're like .

You know , nature is doing up most of the work for us .

Well , actually you can , because actually what you're spending , or by not having eating well , yeah , and the heat , the health implications about not eating well , we're all starting to now see very clearly that those are the things that are really holding us back . That's right .

I can tell you yeah , right , but thanks to listeners I'm getting by and can keep doing it for the moment and We'll see where it goes .

but I've certainly been aware enough in more recent times , thanks to others mentoring me , that if I can live in a way that stops the bleeding of costs Yes , in health repair , yes , and a car that I would drive around in a city with all the others Just idle half the time and then dormant 96% of the time when I'm not driving , that that makes no sense For

one person to shoulder all that cost . you find the ways that you live more in sync . Strip all these well it's the equivalent of the inputs in farming .

You know they said , well , you just have to start making better food , more available for people . And He said well , the polly just said , well , it's just a lever . We can easily pull that lever Towards subsidizing food so that people get better food and we have better systems .

But then you watch all the other people come down on you , all the you know the electronics people . Well , you've taken the subsidies away from them in order to push it towards the agriculture . So you've got them all clamoring and going way near the support We need , the fact , we need the , the subsidy here .

So you've always got to be pushing that lever so that you know no particular realm loses out , you know . Otherwise they all gonna lose their jobs .

We hear it a lot , thankfully now in energy , yeah , but the same thing in farming , arguably , and probably everything else . Hey , just what are the ways we can assist people to Shift that don't leave them exposed ?

and there was a telling part in your story too , right where Terry McCoskell calls it the belly of death when you take , when you're sort of withdrawing your license from the old system and Try to go into the new , but you can be left Yeah , exposed financially , then loan emotionally or whatever and you guys experience that too .

People have to learn to use less , especially if it , and be happy using less . You know , it's almost become a game to me now to be a tight ass , and it's fun .

you know . Rent the land and also this thing of leasing Yeah , both normie and me very pro this whole just oh , yeah , yeah .

But if they really understood , you know what it was about . It's trying to make sure Everyone knows where they're going and you know I just see underutilized land for years .

You know when it , when things are especially around here , if you leave land idle , it starts going back to timber and You know and I can take you for a drive and show you places that nothing's been done . It's almost a eucalypt forest in 30 years and and you can't have a house There anymore because it's .

It's such a has when it dries out you're gone , wow . But but if , if someone had to be in running a few head of cattle there and you know , had an agreement , yeah , how about ? I look up , they've actually added value or kept value on the land , yes , but but that can even be what like with the land to market ecologically .

You know you can monitor that and go , go to your The leader and and say , well , here we go , i'm improving Your asset . Oh , this is so interesting , you can show , show you can measure that and show them That you not only , that they can still come there and use it and it's theirs and enjoy it . And people are doing it .

I imagine they're living fairly frugally . Yes , they said , but you know , it's about people who want a life of amongst the birds , amongst the trees , who get it being in nature , who are , you know , i'm . I just am so grateful that my mother instilled in me a love of it .

You know , I mean she would stop the car and go , look at that tree , look at the way the shadow is falling over there . You know my eyes will . I was awoken , i needed to appreciate it . She'd stop and go , what's that ?

but oh my God , there's a nightingale , shush everybody , and you know it would be a sense of excitement And that was , and that can remain , very closed . if you grew up in the city , you just aren't , that muscle of appreciation is not awakened . We have it in the country . But you know a lot of people who don't , and you know my sense of beauty .

I just get off on the beauty of what we're doing in the forest and the grass and the way that I mean everything is just breathtaking sometimes isn't it ? We drive out there and we're just like oh , we're just made speechless by how beautiful it is sometimes , Particularly when you go out early in the morning there's mist is moving .

They don't know how dependent they are on these tiny little things that are happening out here , and it's not much to awaken it .

If it's allowed to come back , just a level of appreciation , they were not oblivious at all . They were absolutely clued into how beautiful it was , and that is saying something isn't it .

And I'd been doing that for a while and it had built up . But the last one I did was Charles Massie , with the couple from Woolen Station over west when Rebordler came out . But one thing that hit me was I thought we can't just have I mean , it's great that 300 people come to this thing , but we can't just have you guys coming to the city to do this .

People have to get onto the places because this is what it , and I had to get onto the places because this is what it does . It speaks for itself . You guys add a bit of layer on top and and certainly of your own story , which is how we thank god for the air bnb's .

to go off track and go all the way back there and love the river and love the birds and love , you know , even if we got them up early the other day because the cattle were in the yards and they love that . Yeah , you know what's really interesting to me .

We had to live in bloody station caravan park over on the side of the range but , more importantly , 30 families had really just had to exodus .

So is there the coffee shop there , or is there just nothing that's the irony exactly you look like nothing , so you've come in right , but you got well . They'll soon die well that's the thing .

I don't know how it works or how it's going , but to have learned more about its problematic nature but then to hear this about the way it could be harnessed for possibility , is really interesting yeah , and you know , and just doing this sort of farming too , we , we .

We do need to have other things in place to just when the market goes down , that there is something else that sustains us , because we're small farms here when we're you're really dealing , or we've got one of the biggest ones and we're only 358 hectares yeah so , um , you know , people are on small acreage and you can't .

You can't make a living doing that on a small acreage .

I can tell you just yeah , evacuated um to restore that is part of this dynamic , this regenerative dynamic we're talking about and then to find ways that it's you can make a living , like when i first learned that farmers can't make a living like that's absurd , but the role that we're learning , that you're playing for all of us in this way .

So what do you guys think have come to think about the other mechanisms that are hedging it , coming on board with , uh , you know , biodiversity markets and carbon markets and so forth . What's your impression of those things ?

well . In as far as the carbon things , we're too small to to really make a big difference really , so that can't even help at this scale . Oh , i'm always . I always want to put more carbon where it should be .

So it's too expensive really for a farmer's eyes to knit wind yeah , it's you know . But you know those costs will go down eventually and it's always the pioneers that take the brunt . And has to take , you know , take the hard .

I mean , for me i think , anything that gives a farmer a bit of subsidy yeah you know we're one of the least subsidized countries in the world as far as farming goes , certainly in the in the western world . So i mean we're very subsidized when things go wrong .

So we're subsidized with farming , with with floods and droughts and all of that , you get the same people having to get saved . So that's in a way it's like a subsidy , and we've taken our fair share of subsidy as well in those sort of situations .

The other thing is great is these hip camps too . Have you heard of the hip camp ? fabulous . So the hip camps are basically where you let people come in their vans and their caravans and their suv's or whatever , or put out a camp and you have a designated area , usually by a dam .

People have their little areas , you can build a fire , so it's instead of being in a caravan park , which is very regulated , obviously , you come on to people's land and you can actually have your own space on a here , you can , you know you can have your farm .

There's something to like about that inherently , hey , that an opportunity for livelihood in these contexts is to invite people in with all the effects it has on them that you would describe , particularly if you've got some water there .

A river is just so magical well it it also .

So just at that level it , i just love it for the life that's around the river i mean you swim in the river and there's ducks , and there's butterflies , and there's and there's dragonflies , and there's kingfishers , and there's just such life all around you which i don't find .

Obviously , when you go to the ocean , it's under you , but it's not , you know , you get a few seagulls but when you're in the river .

this will be this is in the film , so we won't go into detail about it here but does that help in terms of , i don't know , do you access a premium or can you ? could we imagine accessing community support ?

This is a very robust measurement of our land and this is and it is basically going forward in the right direction .

It doesn't have to reach the right direction , but as long as you can measure it so that you are increasing and holding water and building biodiversity and building microbes in the soil , you are definitely doing the right thing by your land and but the issue at the moment is that the recognition for land to market for having an ecological verification outcome

measurement is not known . One of them will probably take come to the fore , whether it's that one or not people recognize . But you know , i think people who are into eating well are starting to recognize those sorts of labels and you know a lot of labels are green .

You have to be very , you have to do your homework about them still , you know , you still have to do it with the green tick . Yeah , and it's , and it's difficult if you're not selling .

We're very much a breeding enterprise up here , so we're not finished cattle , so really it's for a finished market , it's for letting people know that it's great for us at the beginning when we were measuring to seeing if we were doing the right thing really essential for us to know we were moving in the right direction .

And if the the name of the game is me having productive land and regenerating and having potential to earn a better income , for me it's i don't even care about it , the the market end , at the production end . If i can be assured that i'm building our , our ecology , that's , that's a win win for me .

But if you know your , your verifications , then you can , you know then you know that you're buying from the right source rules yeah but they're not big enough yet and of course it's all in there .

It's infancy and it's just so everybody's taking a little bit of a punt on all a lot of these things and and you know , and hopefully it will come to a point where you know , things like this documentary will help to make people more aware , or to , or to seek it or to go , okay , well , where can i get ?

oh , and the brilliant thing is with the , with the sustainable table and Tanya Massey doing this brilliant thing of the mapping , the mapping of of all these regenerative , organic farms , and where you can just go into your map and you can find your area and you can immediately find who is who is marketing beautiful paddock to plate beef , chicken , vegetables .

.

Do you spend time thinking about that and how that might be broached ?

You know , if we're talking about profit put and this is the where we got it profit per hectare , once enough farmers and that have enough time to to filter through hand i mean these blokes like terry mcosker and that he's telling you know the amount of people he's influenced over the years . And profit per hectare .

You know the , the , the principles that they're using to make profit and and regenerate the land . You know it'll filter out , it's , it's getting there and and because people aren't silly , eventually they're going to realize hang on a minute on pushing shit uphill with a pointy stick and we , we have to start start doing it different .

And there's principles that they're using and people are working . You know it's , it's working for and it is a habit , you know .

farmers taking on regenerative meat but basically is getting to know .

Actually we hope to go out of business in a sense , because if the supermarket starts to insist on this sort of type of produce that is full of nutrients and full of goodness and treats animals well and looks after the land , what's not to love ? you know what's not to love . And the more it gets you know , the more we do it , the more people join in .

The smaller the you know , the the bigger the economies of scale , the cheaper we can make it .

And but it's just a , you know , slow change , change and at that deeper level but you know , we haven't really felt it except for , like our um , we came to a roadblock with our abattoirs because all the abattoirs have been bought out now , so they're centralized abattoirs everywhere . They're miles away .

Cattle have to go great distances to bloody get there it's hard to know what happens . It's hard to know what happens there . We weren't allowed to take our cattle to our nearest abattoir . They didn't want to do a specific because they're , all you know , streamlined to go straight to their certain supermarkets , their , their , their buyers .

They didn't want to do one that was on the outside , going somewhere else . That was too much effort for them . The body , the weights of the body that they killed by , you know , it's all very regulated and people want consumer , wants the , the exact measurement of state that they got last week . I mean , we need to embrace variety .

We need to embrace , like the ugly , vegetables . We need to embrace the non-perfect of vegetables . I mean very often i'll see an apple with a dent in it and i'll pick that up because i go if i'm not doing it , you know somebody else might not , and that's ruined .

You know what we've got to sort of stop this thing of wanting these perfect polished commodities , these perfect size commodities , these perfect tasting commodity beef , grass-fed beef needs to be a different experience almost every time you eat it rather than these absolute uniform ones . Yeah , you want to taste the soil in there .

Taste different regions oh , tasting this is . This must be a . It's got a slight bellendon taste to it . Doesn't ? got a slight wogga-wogga taste to it ? this ?

And , yeah , i'm just getting better at having that , those conversations , not just with him but with other more conventional people , and given him the reason why i'm doing this . And yeah , yeah it's tough , but this is what , what we're experiencing and you know , for for so many years we've we've pushed it this way , thinking it was right , but it's actually not .

You know , we're making things harder for ourselves and less , less profitable . So if we're following nature's laws a bit better , because fuels only getting dearer , these are these principles we keep talking about That work everywhere . Yeah , yeah , and that's truly some of the only places that's . what we can control is how much you pay in to produce it .

We don't have a lot of control over the market And these principles will be working . And I explained to Mali , the daughter , the other day about if you can keep your overheads down and not go into debt and live within your means , you can actually have a profitable little business .

You don't have to have to sell volumes , sort of in 100% , yeah , and feel good about doing it . That's the cherry on top .

I wonder , almost to come full circle on where we started with some of what triggered it in you all this , what part of you it touches to do that , to have reignited your spirit ? How would you put words to that ?

I feel I'm doing something about something that I felt very powerless to change And that's been huge , just to be part of something that I know is positive And I just and I think it is the time of life but as well , but I just cannot imagine doing anything .

I'd rather do than like we were doing the other day , mick , where we were just building bonfires and clearings , i don't know physical labor , tired at the end of the day , exhausted by the end of the day Then , and seeing the cattle even when we took you up and saw those cattle on the hill the other day , i mean just sort of just magic , just being plugged

into it and just being here quite quietly . I'm here a lot alone And just the evening I'm watching the light and getting to know all the my little chickens and guinea fowls and geese and the horses . Just it's heaven . It just is really a . it's an absolute delight to be here .

It's an absolute delight to be here and to be able to make it , and it is very important for me as I say to Mick all the time , it's very important to me that we make this work fiscally . You know it has to work financially . We have to balance .

We have to know that we have a viable business here , that this is not pulling our put , which are broadly there No no , absolutely We are . We are . And if I was running , i mean , it's very different when you , you know , you have the farm manager and normally somebody this side would be doing their own work on it .

You know , and I'm a sort of a hindrance rather than a help most of the time .

You know , he's getting into catalgenetics and he's doing the free gen as well And that's it And we're seeing this in your neighborhood .

So connectedness to country is on offer everywhere And urban spaces is what she's working at because that's can be assumed where most people are and where it can be assumed that it doesn't exist anymore you know , But she's big on that . You guys , this

has been a terrific conversation . Thanks for sharing it with me so openly . You won't know this me probably .

I close every episode asking my guests to talk about a piece of music briefly that has been significant for them in their lives , or perhaps even they're just enjoying now , And some part of me wants to give you the option perhaps to , instead of a piece of music , talk about a film , even if that resonates , but music or film , something that's really been part

of you , your spirit , if you like or yeah , that you're just reveling in at the moment .

But it's a book by Johann Zietzman , a Zimbabwean cattle farmer , and he's what's it called man , cattle and velled , and it just sums up how we've got off track and how we the way to get back on track .

You'll also now find a link to chapter markers and a transcript , and I've put a bunch of photos on the episode web page too .

By the way , the Airbnb alternative I was trying to recall is Wayfairer and , as it happens , it's actually one of the recipients of funding from the WWF Innovate to Regenerate Fund that Damon Gameau was promoting when touring his film Regenerating Australia .

Now Damon and co-founder Anna's team at Regen Studios is helping Rachel tour her film , starting in New South Wales , ACT and Victoria in July . Tickets are on sale from today . I know they're hoping to get around the rest of the country too , and if you'd like to partner with them to help make that happen , get in touch with Regen Studios .

I'll put all relevant links in the show notes And , in true Regen Studios fashion , they've got many more links to go on with on their website . Come August the film will be released in Australian cinemas nationwide . If you're interested in hearing more about the Sustainable Table Report that Rachel mentioned , tune into episode 161 .

For the World Science Festival panel we talked about , go to episode 157 , and for the story of the rainbow serpent at the Haggerty Farm in WA , listen to episode 143 . And if you're interested in the next big regenerative agriculture event in Australia , join me in Margaret River , wa , in September . I'm privileged to be emcee and hope to see some of you there .

Finally , huge thanks to Blair Beattie from Farmers Footprint Australia For taking the driver's seat on our journey south from the Northern Rivers to visit Tom and Kaycee for last week's episode and Rachel's farm for this episode And , as it happens , an additional episode .

Next we'll feature Rachel's daughter Matilda and her husband Scott , both of whom you might also recognise from Screen Life . We had a heck of a conversation about the regenerative flank they are bringing up beyond the farm , and that's all , with hearty thanks to the whole family for having us at their place .

For subscribers , i'll continue to send you behind the scenes stuff and other news of what's unfolding as I get around the country , and if you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber , i'd love you to join us . It's with thanks , as always , to this community of generous supporters that this episode was made possible .

Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com Forward slash support And thanks again . And , as always , please do share this episode and rate and review the podcast on your favoured app . It all helps . The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia . My name's Anthony James .

Thanks for listening .