Farmer wants some biodiversity

0:07 Eliza Herbert: Is there a more iconic sound to represent quintessential farm life than the clang of a gate as it opens? How about a kelpie at your heels? The tractor waking up or a herd of cows mooing. It might surprise you to learn that these cows are here to greet an ecologist, Imogen Semmler, who is working to boost biodiversity on farming lands. She is joined by farmers Anna and Gus Hickman, who have signed up to a program called Farming for the Future.

00:52 Eliza Herbert: This is Big Sky Country, a podcast by Bush Heritage Australia. I'm your host, Eliza Herbert, and today we're out in central NSW on Wiradjuri Country to learn about an initiative called Natural Capital Accounting and how conservationists can support farmers who are feeding and clothing our planet to also try to protect it.

01:26 Imogen Semmler: My name is Imogen Semmler and I'm an agroecologist at Bush Heritage and we're on a farm owned by Anna and Gus Hickman, who are both cattle farmers. And, I mean, we're currently sitting in a woodland or, you know, an area with some tree canopy in one of their paddocks and I'm going to be doing one of our ecological assessments for Farming for the Future.

01:47 Anna Hickman: We're Gus and Anna Hickman. We've got six and a half thousand acres roughly, and we're 20 km east of Cowra. We're sort of undulating country, undulating red country to steeper hills and granite out the back. We've got a beautiful creek that runs through the property down the back, Milbum Creek, and it's one of my favourite spots to go and have picnics. It's got beautiful big Red Gums and beautiful Yellow Box down there and it's always lots of bird life and just the water. It's really beautiful.

02:24 Eliza Herbert: Before we get to the part of this episode that shows how conservationists are working with farmers like Gus and Anna to improve biodiversity outcomes on their properties, let's set the scene of where we are today. Anna and Gus are what's called holistic farmers, which means they manage the land to achieve sustainable environmental, economic and social benefits. They've been farmers here for over 30 years, and in 1996 made the decision to shift their operations to this style of management, working more closely with nature.

02:56 Anna Hickman: Well, just you know it, it allows you to question yourself and, you know, ask why are you doing it this way and you know is there another way? So, it was sort of all a bit about changing your mindset.

03:07 Imogen Semmler: Gus and Anna now have quite a lot of native diversity on their farm species like Red Grass, Wallaby Grass, Spear Grass. If you want the Latin names Bothriochloa macra and spear grasses, Austrostipa. There's also like Chloris, which is like a windmill grass. There's Sporobolus, which is called Slender Rat’s Tail.

03:27 Gus Hickman: Let's say we're looking here to have massive amounts of perennial grasses and species on this property moving from annualized grasslands to perennials, and in turn that allows us to put a lot of carbon in the soil. But you'll find that when we're rotationally grazing and resting our country properly, the grass species will grow where it naturally wants to grow. Yeah, just basically move out of the way and stop dominating the landscape. Let nature take its course to a certain extent.

04:02 Eliza Herbert: When I talked to Anna and Gus, it's clear how much they love this land. It's a lifelong devotion. Imogen shares this devotion to the land. However, she comes to it from a different perspective. She has arrived at the farm today to undertake 4 to 5 of approximately 30 assessments per farm. Each assessment takes around 30 minutes to complete, and Imogen collects a range of ecological data to understand the health of the farm's vegetation and landscape. This includes ground cover diversity, litter, erosion, pasture and woodlands condition.

04:35 Imogen Semmler: So, I am at a site in a kind of small area of eucalyptus canopy cover which we would call a woodland of about 15 to 30% canopy cover.  And so, we'll make sure that we've got a couple of sites in that kind of ecosystem and I'm going to be doing an assessment that goes for about half an hour. The first thing I do is we go for what we call a meander, so there's an area I've got to assess, which is kind of this woodland area, like going up over the hill. I'm not going to see the whole area, but I will walk up the hill a little bit and I want to have a look at kind of what I'm seeing and I'm looking out for tree recruitment. So, any seedlings. I'm looking at how many tree species there are in the woodland. I'm looking at how many age cohorts there are, so whether there's staggered ages or if they're all the same age. I'm looking for things like any weeds of national significance or anything like blackberries.

05:35 Eliza Herbert: Imogen is part of a discipline called agroecology, so ecologists who are working in farming systems. And her job is to look at how farming systems function and how they benefit from and enhance native biodiversity, which has been significantly altered by widespread land clearing since European settlement.

05:53 Imogen Semmler: So, I guess as our agroecologists, we sort of come in and we say, well, how can we utilize and benefit from what we might call ecosystem services. So that's a term that we have that suggests that nature can provide us with all these benefits as humans, which is kind of funny because as humans we are part of nature and we've built cities and we've sort of created this sort of lifestyle that separates us from nature and makes us feel separate from it. And so, ecosystem services is a way that ecologists, often a term that ecologists use to explain to everyone that nature can actually give us lots of benefits.

06:28 Eliza Herbert: Ecosystem services flow from natural capital in good condition and are the thriving ecosystems that keep our whole planet healthy in its broader sense. Natural capital is the stock of all renewable and non-renewable natural resources that combine to provide a flow of ecosystem services or benefits for people in society. But what does that really mean?

06:48 Jim Radford: So that includes particularly things like the soil, the water resources, both underground and surface water flows, native vegetation and the native ecosystems and including all the flora and fauna that's part of that. So all of the natural resources that are used to generate agricultural outputs in a farming sense.

07:11 Eliza Herbert: Associate Professor Jim Radford is an ecologist at Latrobe University who leads a smart farming partnership, Farm-scale Natural Capital Accounting Project, which is another research project working alongside Farming for the Future.

07:23 Jim Radford: Traditional financial accounting practices that only includes things like the land value, the capital value of tractors and machinery, and farm equipment, the input of material such as diesel and fertilizer and seeds. That's in terms of their financial costs. And then obviously what the farmer generates from the farm in terms of their livestock or their meat or their wool or their grain or whatever they take off the farm. All of those other underlying inputs, the soil, the forage, the native systems, the pollination services that are provided, all the pest control services that are provided by nature aren't accounted for. They're invisible on the books. So, what we're trying to do is say. OK, let's find out a standardized, repeatable way of measuring these natural elements that are on a farm and record them in a biophysical sense, in a quantity sense, in a way that can be repeated at regular intervals, maybe not annually, but maybe every two or three years, so that a farmer can see how they're tracking in terms of how they're managing their natural capital on a farm.

08:27 Eliza Herbert: Natural capital accounting is an area of work that has been evolving throughout the last decade. Bush Heritage first entered into a partnership with Latrobe University under their Smart Farms grant, which was the first time they began working with ecologists such as Imogen to undertake ecological assessments on farms to generate natural capital accounts and more recently, that's evolved into an additional partnership with Macdoch Foundation’s Farming for the Future. The uptick in interest in the agriculture sector amongst conservationists has been driven largely by need. It's important to note that this isn't a discussion about what you should be eating or what you should be consuming. It's about the current status of land tenure in Australia.

09:09 Angela Hawdon: So, it's really important when you look at Australia, we've got 58% of land that is under agricultural production and when we've looked, there's been research that has been done that's showing that about 50% of threatened species are actually in private land, agricultural land, freehold land. So, there is a big whack of biodiversity that is sitting on agricultural land and currently not really necessarily being valued by those farmers, both for what it can do for a farm, but also for what it can do for the public good in terms of that its protection in a long term sense.

09:52 Eliza Herbert: Angela Hawdon is Bush Heritage's Business Development and Strategic Projects Manager who's been involved in both of these partnerships from the beginning. 

10:00 Angela Hawdon: Well, I like to think about it that you've got our reserves, and obviously national parks and other protected areas, and then you've got this land of freehold agricultural area in between. If we can make that area in between as healthy as possible, as functional as possible, we create a healthier landscape in its entirety and we're looking more holistically at the landscape, not just at the pockets that we've managed to purchase, but how can we support those farmers who are our neighbours and who are managing, you know, the bulk of the country really.

10:37 Jim Radford: So one of the wicked problems that we face in Australia is that a lot of our conservation reserves and parks, national parks, were leftovers from what wasn't wanted for agriculture, so they tend to be less fertile areas of the landscape, often in arid areas, or semi-arid areas like Mallee or in in the interior or higher up on the slopes in more temperate zones, so they tend to be ridgetops and mountain tops, and that's great for the species that live in those areas. They're generally well protected, but for those species that prefer more fertile valleys and plains, most of that country has now being converted to farmland. So, farmland is critical for conserving a lot of threatened species that persist in those areas, things like Superb Parrots, Grey-crowned Babblers, Diamond Firetails, Robins, Brown Treecreepers, a whole range of woodland birds. That's from my area of interest, but also, you know, Earless Dragons, Striped Legless Lizards and a whole range of plants as well.

11:45 Imogen Semmler: Yeah. So, in my hectare plot, now I'm looking at how much I think is native ground cover compared to exotic ground cover. And so all of these grasses, pretty much every tuft of grass. Mostly what I'm seeing is native, they're all red grasses and some microlaena and …

12:02 Angela Hawdon: The planet is in peril, you know. We keep talking about 2030 being the date before we can trip over into, you know, climate disasters, which will mean biodiversity disasters, which will mean economic disasters, which will, you know, where will it end? We need to maintain biodiversity corridors. We need to be able to have that genetic exchange between populations and if we end up with islands of protected areas, over time that's just going to decrease and you know we'll just watch that degrade over time. We need to have healthy landscapes.

12:39 Eliza Herbert: Jim and Angela both agree that there are a few ways farmland can supplement and complement private protected areas, and the formal reserve system. The first is by protecting different habitat types. The second is by providing movement corridors for species, and the third is by what's referred to as softening the matrix. And they aren't talking about Keanu Reeves in a long leather jacket with a red pill or a blue pill. They're talking about situations where farmland may not be the perfect habitat or the preferred habitat for a species, but it will be used to some extent for movement or foraging. It builds connectivity.

13:13 Jim Radford: For example, a wheat field might provide a barrier to movement for some species, but there are things that could be done, such as maintaining scattered trees in the paddock or putting a narrow corridor through it that might take up, you know, 20 meters width through that paddock or around the edge of it. That can help to soften the agricultural matrix, so that for species, it's less hostile to move, and that's where that movement and that movement through the agriculture matrix is really important so that they can expand their population, colonize new remnants, new habitat and hopefully increase the population size locally. But just it adds resilience to the population.

13:54 Angela Hawdon: So the Smart Farms Project with Latrobe and other players has been a real team effort of pulling together, working out what the protocols need to be. How do we, how do we even recruit farmers? How do we engage with them to deliver the things for them that best suit their needs. Farming for the Future takes this all a step further and again, another big collaboration supported by the Macdoch Foundation. It's looking at how we can take the information from all of these farm accounts and produce regional benchmarks of natural capital. This natural capital accounting work is providing the evidence base that the farmers need to show to those regulators, to their supply chains, to the banks who are going to have requirements to start looking at how they're accounting for biodiversity on the properties that they're lending to etc and investors generally. So, it's a really nice meeting point.

14:57 Jim Radford: So, one of the angles that I'm interested in is looking at sustainable farming systems as a part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis that we're in, so as is splashed across the pages, we know that Australia has an abysmal record. For example, in mammal species extinction loss, more mammal species have become extinct in this country in the last 250 years than in any other country in the world. Globally, we know we're losing species at around about 1000 times faster than the background rate of extinction. You know, if it wasn't for anthropogenic or human induced forces such as have at most particularly habitat loss, but also in different parts of the world over exploitation through hunting and harvesting of natural native species. And obviously climate change is compounding all of these pressures and impacts as well. And so, if we're going to avert and reverse this biodiversity loss and diversity crisis, we need to not just focus on parks and reserves, which are a critically important foundation for our reserve system, but we need to also look at what's happening on private land and on farmland.

16:06 Gus Hickman: When we first started, we just set a goal to have 100% ground cover across the entire property all the time. It comes with great benefits because it has amazing water retention and also preventing erosion, stopping dust and sheet erosion, allows the species to get going, nurtures that top layer of the landscape.

16:29 Eliza Herbert: Anna and Gus are farmers who have chosen to tread as lightly as they can, but at this point you might be wondering what the appetite is from farmers across the board to take up this type of thinking.

16:39 Jim Radford: One of the problems has been there hasn't been a lot of incentive for farmers to farm in a nature-positive way, to manage their natural capital or to be rewarded for managing their natural capital.

16:50 Imogen Semmler: And they might really be passionate about the environment, but  they may not be ready to do these kinds of things because they just don't believe it's going to make them money.

17:01 Angela Hawdon: But we've all got stories of farmers with really poor mental health, with really poor job opportunities out in the regions, families, you know, moving into the city or that sort of story. I think if we can, if we can support farmers to better manage their natural capital, to have thriving functional landscapes, then people will want to be on property.

17:25 Anna Hickman: I reckon if I could look back when I'm 80 or 90 or whatever and see that the landscape is still moving forward and looking really healthy and feeling healthy and sounding healthy. You know just all the sounds and that our children are happy and healthy and that their children are, you know, whether they're passionate about agriculture or whatever, as long as they're passionate about sort of doing the right thing for the planet I'd be pretty satisfied.

17:53 Eliza Herbert: Ultimately, these big environmental issues of our time are complex, and there's no denying that land clearing has pushed many of our most treasured ecosystems to the brink. There's no silver bullet to addressing the challenges we face, and it's going to take a collective response and all the tools in our toolkit to mitigate the damage done.

18:11 Jim Radford: We already produce more than enough food and fibre to globally, to feed and clothe the number of people on the planet now, and even projections up to the 10 billion that or 11 billion I think it might be now by 2050. It's not a question of whether we have the capacity to grow enough food and enough fibre to feed the world. It's a political question about how that's distributed and food waste and inequality of wealth. Can we do it while also conserving biodiversity? History would say that we're tracking in the wrong direction, so we need to make some changes. I think that there have been large geopolitical seismic shifts in that recently. I think the global commitment to 30% by 2030 is a huge shift in the right direction. So, there's a fair way to go, but I think we can turn the ship around in terms of habitat protection and improvement.

19:09 Angela Hawdon: Then there's a saying. Put your hand up if you eat food and if you put your hand up, then you're interested in agriculture because that's where our food comes from. If we can improve the baseline condition of all agricultural properties we will improve the outcomes for our food, for the sustainability of our food, for the sustainability of the fibre, the clothes we're wearing and will provide greater resilience to the protected areas that already exist.

19:39 Imogen Semmler: When it's done, here we go, it's a native grass. Lots of Red grass. You can see this one. Everywhere this is the red native red grass.

19:52 Eliza Herbert: What's inspiring about these natural capital accounting projects is that they are innovative solutions to global issues that utilize what the science is telling us and work to the times that we are in. These projects are trying to protect and restore large swathes of land from contemporary environmental challenges and also make sure that farmers are supported to do what they need to do to continue to feed and clothe us. But what it also makes me reflect on is the simple principle that seems to underscore these initiatives. Look after the land and the land will look after you. These aren't my words, but words that I've heard from traditional owners multiple times in my role at Bush heritage. Traditional owners have had sophisticated land management for millennia that kept their peoples fed and their cultures strong. Tune in to the next episode to learn about a practice called cultural burning just down the road on Waradjuri country.

Bush Heritage Australia is a leading not-for-profit conservation organization, protecting ecosystems and wildlife across the continent. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land in which this episode was produced and recorded and recognize and respect their enduring relationship with their lands and waters. We pay our respects to elders, past and present, and any Traditional Owners listening today. Bush heritage recognizes that for our work to have the most impact, it must go beyond our reserves’ boundaries, working with agricultural partners to achieve nature-positive outcomes, allows us to enhance biodiversity, support and strengthen agricultural production and communities, and mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. Our efforts in this space are self-funded. To learn more about how natural capital and agriculture will help Bush Heritage to double and deepen its impact by 2030, follow the link to our 2030 strategy. A huge thanks to Anna and Gus Hickman, Jim Radford, Imogen Semmler, Angela Hawdon and Nick Montfort for your work, looking after and improving our landscape.

We would also like to thank our partners, the Farming for the Future program and Latrobe University and their respective funders, the Macdoch Foundation and other philanthropists, plus Meat and Livestock Australia, the Australian Wool Innovation and the Australian Government Smart Farming Partnership Program. This episode was produced by Bee Stevens and myself, Eliza Herbert. Theme music is “Invertebrate City” by the Orbweavers and this episode was mixed and mastered by Mitch Ansell.