Film & (Home)Feast: Regenerative Agriculture

It’s been such an exciting time to take our events online! Making the most of connecting with individuals and communities who live outside the local Bondi area… and that was most certainly the case at our most recent event Film & (home)Feast: Regenerative Agriculture.

We tuned into living rooms and kitchen tables across Bondi, Melbourne, Watson’s Bay, Randwick, South Melbourne, Darlinghurst, the Monaro, Mosman, Southern Highlands, Wollongong, North West Tasmania, Bellevue Hill, Moruya and more! It was such a pleasure to connect with everyone in attendance. A special shout out to Charlie Maslin and Amy Browne who so generously shared their time and expertise with us.

The group came together to watch two films followed by a group discussion and Q & A session with Charlie. Charlie Maslin is a regenerative farmer in the Monaro district, growing wool and beef. He is part of the research project Soils For Life and is known for his work in taking up and promoting regenerative land practices: keeping water in the soil, strengthening soil health, restoring streams, increasing biodiversity and increasing ground cover. Regenerative agriculture sits eleventh in the list of 80 projects in the book Drawdown – The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.

It was a juicy, delightful evening! But we didn’t expect any less 🙂 It was obvious that we had to pull together a summary of resources from the evening including links to the films and ‘big ideas’ that surfaced across the evening, so that we could continue to broaden our understanding of this important topic. Feel free to dive deep into this list, and share among your networks.

Resource List

Films

• Regreening the Desert
• From the Ground Up
• Land Regeneration with Peter Andrews Australian Story. Peters book can be viewed/purchased here.

Articles

• Soaking up Australia’s Drought, Mulloon Creek in 1977 and 2015

Websites

• Soils for Life – Gunningrah case study here
• Natural Sequence Farming with Peter Andrews
• The Mill “Virtual” Farmers Market

Books

• Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West by Courtney White
• Let the Water Do the Work by Bill Zeedyk
• The Greatest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage
• Call of the Reed Warbler – A New Agriculture, A New Earth by Charles Massy
• Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
• Hollistic Management by Allan Savory

Charlies Wisdom

• Stock is an important part of land restoration and Charlie has seen improvements in his pastures and water retention capacity from short term grazing about 1-2 times per year, depending on ground cover
• Charlie was inspired by others work and others are now inspired by him
• The common theme for change across the case studies presented in Charles Massy’s book was crisis/financial shocks. Generational farmers are comfortable in their practices and require a dramatic event to think about and question habits
• Not enough incentives to grow/produce quality food, nor enough information for consumers to make the distinction between produce that is produce with degrading vs regenerative practices. A move towards accreditation from a farmers cooperative could address this issue
• Government must provide incentive for regenerative agriculture in a similar way to how we are now talking about supporting/revitalising the Australian manufacturing industry. Some funding was allocated towards a case study to support farmers, to acknowledge the importance of sound soil management practices, and over the last six months the general trend/direction/approach has been very encouraging.
• Some farmers in his region have tried to incorporate Indigenous burning regimes
• Charlie spoke to the intensive pressure the world’s human population puts on our natural resources
• Follow @charliemaslin on Instagram for more!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] …. otherwise, see you at our next Film & (Home)Feast: Urban Agriculture. Click here for tickets.

Yours in transition,

Transition Bondi Steering Group
www.transitionbondi.org