Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators

Vanessa Smolders, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Healthy Land & Water

My name is Vanessa Smolders. I'm one of the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators at Healthy Land & Water.

What has most value is listening to landholders, listening to what's troubling them, listening to their challenges.

Sometimes farming can be a pretty lonely business. Sometimes you're out in the paddock by yourself, having to make decisions on your own. Just having someone to talk it through with, that can be enough in some cases.

But sometimes I can take that information and look for answers, find someone else that might be able to provide that missing link for producers.

In my role as SAF, I worked really closely with the Somerset Beef Producer Group to co-design a project through the Climate-Smart Agriculture Program to trial and adopt climate smart practices with support, and not just support in the form of funding, to actually implement the practices, but support from each other, learning from each other, and then also learning from experts and researchers that we engage.

What funding allows producers to do is to engage or trial or participate in practices that they might not have otherwise been ready to jump into.

Darren Fisher, Beef Producer, Brisbane Valley

We run a commercial beef breeding operation. We are located in the Brisbane Valley on the Wivenhoe Dam. Our family, we are now fifth generation cattle producers.

We'd just like to be able to look after our cattle and our pastures and our fences and keep life simple. But we formed our group of local producers just having regular pub nights. We found that most of us are experiencing similar problems.

Being on the Wivenhoe, we've got a constant wind. So the project we would like to tackle here, we want to introduce shelter belts. So I'm hoping to reduce the wind, stop drying out the soils and create more shade for my cattle.

Amanda Roughan, Beef Farmer, Upper Brisbane Valley

We run a beef property. We have a small breeding herd here on 500 acres in the Upper Brisbane Valley catchment. It's just a lovely oasis and a great place to bring up our three daughters.

I think that for beef producers increasingly, we need to become more aware of the landscape and the biodiverse system that we're managing in addition to producing kilos of beef.

So when we established our producer group and really looked at what are some things that we can do collectively as a small network of producers that can create a movement and inspire other producers in our region, it's then that we really started to engage with the Sustainable Ag Facilitator who works in Healthy Land & Water.

The SAF has run field days, educational events. They're not just coming in to facilitate a one-off event. So the SAF role we feel is quite different from other advisors. They are impartial. They are our trusted partner, living locally, providing us with the resources and the means for us to improve our knowledge and to create practice change to ensure that we continue to have agriculture as a sustainable enterprise in our region.

Renee Ould, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Healthy Land & Water

I think the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator role is important, especially in the South East Queensland region, being in a biodiversity hotspot.

The biggest challenge for our landholders is that overwhelming amount of information and trying to figure out what to prioritise on their property.

My role as a SAF helps aid landholders in deciphering all the information that they're getting.

Amy-Lee Provost, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Burnett Mary Regional Group

So one of the things I love most about my role is getting out of the office. Who doesn't love an opportunity to get out in the field and dig up some dirt and look at some grasses? We've been hard at work doing lots of property visits.

So we're the Southern area of the Great Barrier Reef, which means there's a lot of pressure on producers and general landholders in the area to be conscious of impacts to the Reef.

So one of the big things we talk about a lot is ground cover. So soil impacts ground cover. And so we've had a really good opportunity to work with our Regional Soil Coordinator and have him out to a few different workshops and present information on soil health.

Cameron Leckie, Regional Soil Coordinator, Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales

I'm the Regional Soil Coordinator for the Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales region, which covers some 1.7 square million kilometres.

We have a National Soil Strategy and we're the people, the eight Regional Soil Coordinators who are on the ground. So we're helping to share the information so that we can better manage our soil.

Most of our soil organic matter's actually held in those top couple of centimetres of topsoil, and the soil organic matter is what gives us our fertility, it's what gives us our resilience in our farming system, so it's critically important that we manage our soil, so we minimise erosion.

Changing farming systems is difficult because they're very tightly coupled systems, so you're not really changing one thing, you're changing a whole system.

Having increased knowledge and understanding of the resources you're working with, for example soil, is critically important because from that you can make better decisions.

Amanda Roughan, Beef Farmer, Upper Brisbane Valley

We live in the riparian catchment for Brisbane water supply. It's really important that we minimise any soil loss into the water catchment.

So something that we identified on our property was the need to increase our herd density. To subdivide existing paddocks is costly, but it's also time consuming to go out there and shift cattle daily.

So our SAF through the Climate-Smart Ag Grant that we have acquired has enabled us to participate in a trial with virtual fencing.

Cameron Leckie, Regional Soil Coordinator, Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales

I'm everywhere from Longreach in Western Queensland down to the North Coast of New South Wales. Running workshops, giving landholders tools they need to be able to assess their soils and also interpreting soil test results.

And they've used that data, which they didn't have before, to actually relook at how they're managing their farming system. They've since implemented some changes to improve the productivity of that particular area of their farm.

Darren Fisher, Beef Producer, Brisbane Valley

Well, sustainable agriculture to me means being able to run your business profitably, being able to keep your head above water, but not only that, like to me I like to leave the country in a better place than when I found it.

I'm looking to improve soil health through biodiversity, improving multi-species cropping and applying organic fertilisers that we source locally.

And we've been getting big wins that way. We've been able to increase our carrying capacity through better productive grasses. Maybe that'll increase wildlife to the area, which we'll gain benefits from that too.

We've just recently installed some acoustic monitoring to measure our biodiversity.

Renee Ould, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Healthy Land & Water

I think the thing that I love the most about being a SAF is seeing passion in our producers' eyes. Seeing them light up when they talk about how this new grazing system has changed their pasture or how they've noticed more koalas on their property that they haven't seen there for 10 years or so.

Amy-Lee Provost, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Burnett Mary Regional Group

Producers are some of the most patient people I've ever met and it's a big commitment some of these changes.

Vanessa Smolders, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Healthy Land & Water

When you get the privilege of being invited onto a property, into someone's world, it's more than just a business. It's an opportunity to learn as much as it is an opportunity to give and advise.

I get a real sense of purpose and bringing value to sustainable agriculture in my region.

Tibby Tuckett, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Perth NRM

My name is Tibby Tuckett. I'm the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator at Perth NRM. What I love most about my role is coming out to farms and meeting farmers. And then being able to connect them with someone or something that's going to help them to implement sustainable ag practices.

Joc Dwyer, Beef Farmer, Bindoon

I'm 80 kilometres north of Perth at Bindoon and I'm a beef cattle producer and also producing earthworms for composting. It's getting drier and drier. The issues that I'm trying to solve on my property are how to increase my production by increasing the nutrition in the soil to grow more feed for the cattle. So over the years I've attended a number of workshops that have been conducted by the Perth NRM. It saves me the drama of trying to reinvent the wheel or have to do all the research. You're not paying for the information and it's unbiased. So you're in safe hands.

The Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators are important because they're the connection. They create the event that attracts people who are like-minded. We can learn from each other at these events or go on to further collaborate.

Rosannah Hindmarsh, Chittering Landcare Group

The Ellen Brockman Integrated Catchment Group is the umbrella group for the collaboration of five groups working out of the Landcare Centre here. Over the years we've done quite a bit of work with the farmers in perennial pastures, other ways of dealing with water and salinity, biodiversity to protect their waterways. So we've tried a number of things including biodiversity corridors.

Keith Pekin, Chief Executive Officer, Perth NRM

The change that we need now is really about practice change. That's underpinned by science and new technology. The Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator roles are really important to encourage that change. They come from rural or farming communities and that makes a big difference.

Karen Whitehead, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, South West NRM

I'm Karen Whitehead and I'm the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator at South West NRM. My role is the conduit taking that research, science terminology and lens and talking about it in a way that farmers understand and is applicable to them.

James Scott, Beef and Fruit Producer, south of Perth

We farm here on about 425 hectares, about 320 kilometres south of Perth. We've got 10 hectares of apples and pears and then another 10 hectares of nectarines, peaches, plums and apricots and then the 200 beef cattle. The main challenges we're currently facing, the climate variability is a big one, having to adjust our capacity within the business to endure those harder drier years. Sustainable agriculture means to me running a business that's profitable and one that's not degrading what we're doing here. The Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator role is important to our business, really good to get independent people that are presenting timely coverage of research that is being done in our area and that's relevant to our business.

Peter Clifton, Manager – Sustainable Agriculture, South West NRM

I met Mark Scott and his son James some time ago when we started the Grazing Matcher program, the year-long program where farmers met eight times throughout the year. It was one of the recommendations we made to keep animals off the paddock while they establish. It's not an easy process, it's very difficult to you know keep animals off long enough but just with some moral support and confidence they were able to do that.

James Scott, Beef and Fruit Producer, south of Perth

That has been of great benefit to us, really honing in our fodder conservation strategies in terms of making the very best feed that we can. That has really assisted us in being able to keep a more sustained, higher number of cattle on the property. That's given us much more resilience again for those years that we do have a dry start or a lesser rainfall winter.

Peter Clifton, Manager – Sustainable Agriculture, South West NRM

We've also helped Mark and James just with some nitrogen trials where they put out some different rates and we used a drone just to look at what the pastures look like from the air. How best to apply nitrogen to the farm and how can we maximise grass growth through the year. That has been very important as a part of our system.

Rosannah Hindmarsh, Chittering Landcare Group

The best thing about the Perth NRM SAF is that they've provided a lot of information we don't have the time to collect, helping us to focus in on the important things in sustainable ag. They're knowledgeable and they've got their finger on the pulse.

David Broadhurst, Manager - Sustainable Agriculture, Perth NRM

We've got 10,000 small landholders around Perth.

Amanda Bland, Chittering Landcare Group

We recently had a workshop that was called the "Get the Nitty Gritty on your Itty Bitty Block" and it was targeted at smaller landholders.

We had David who did a talk on natural capital.

David Broadhurst, Manager - Sustainable Agriculture, Perth NRM

All agriculture draws down on our natural capital. It degrades and there's options that we have available that farmers can adopt that can just reduce the amount of damage that we do. If you don't have good soils you're going to struggle to produce food. So understanding your soils, how to manage it with what you've got on your property is critical.

Joc Dwyer, Beef Farmer, Bindoon

The Regional Soil Coordinator, their role is so important to me because they know who to contact. You know you can tap into their database then you can find where somebody's done some testing or a trial and get hold of that information.

Bridget Watkins, Regional Soil Coordinator, Southern Western Australia

We're working with the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators to deliver better outcomes together. Yeah some of the challenges that people are dealing with out in the regions in the soil space includes wind and water erosion, soil water repellents in some areas, water logging in other areas, salinity, compaction of sandy soils.

Joc Dwyer, Beef Farmer, Bindoon

The earthworms produce this very fine vermicast which is like a silt and I dissolve that into water. So I want to be able to use that as my main nutrient on the soil. Some people are getting fantastic results out of very small quantities. So I want to learn how they do that and then I think you know that will help other people to do the same thing. If we can you know start to be very, very efficient at growing grass with less cost and less impact on the environment and the bottom line, it's a win-win for everybody.

Peter Clifton, Manager – Sustainable Agriculture, South West NRM

Practice change is often complex, there's lots of issues that arise when you change practice, there's lots of questions that come up there's individual situations and so people need ongoing support to actually reach adoption.

Amanda Bland, Chittering Landcare Group

What I really love is working with the small landholders across the region. They're really starting to see the benefits of sustainable agriculture. They see that they can't continue the way it has been done in the past.

James Scott, Beef and Fruit Producer, south of Perth

So just having that sustainability in your business as much as anything means that you've got some really good continuity and my family's been here for 125 years. I'd love us to be here for 125 more so yeah trying to keep on the cutting edge of what's happening is really important to me.

David Broadhurst, Manager - Sustainable Agriculture, Perth NRM

West Australian farmers are amongst the best in the world you know what they manage to produce on the soils that we have with the rainfall and the climate that we have in this state you know we really have to give them credit.

Tim Ackroyd, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, NRM South

My name is Tim Ackroyd. I'm the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator and the Land Program Coordinator for NRM South in Southern Tasmania. So my day to day role is to support farmers by sharing information and opportunities in sustainable agriculture. We do that in many ways. Things like going to producer group meetings, sharing information about grant opportunities. I think I enjoy helping people and coming up with solutions for local issues. But I think one of the things that I’ve enjoyed over the years is building those long term connections with farmers.

Sophie Milic, Walnut Producer, Coal River Valley

My name is Sophie Milic. We’re here at Coaldale Walnuts. This is my family farm. My parents planted the trees nearly 30 years ago and my husband and I run it now, producing walnuts and pickled walnuts, just outside Richmond in the Coal River Valley, Tasmania. I love farming because it's, you know, it's my own little patch in a very beautiful part of the world. I get to make a difference, to the way that this land is managed and make sure that the soil and the ecosystem in the orchard is sustainable and I'm producing a really healthy product that people can eat as well.

Even in the last three years since I've been running the farm, I've noticed that there's really a change towards people wanting to be more sustainable in the way they farm. I mean, that's been happening much longer than three years, but that's building all of the time and there's also a continual evolution in consumers’ minds about how their food is farmed and where it comes from as well. The Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators Program has been brilliant because it establishes an ongoing relationship with farmers.

I'm vice president of the Cole River Products Association, so as a farmer group, we have a really strong relationship with our facilitator, that's been built over many, many years and that means that we have that two-way communication where we're feeding information back about what would benefit us as farmers.

Belinda Nielsen, Regional Soil Coordinator, Tasmania

For us in Tasmania, in adopting better soil health practices farmers have to manage a lot of different soil types across their property, and those behave differently according to different management practices. So part of our role is to help people understand those different soils and help them understand how to manage them differently. What you can see here is kind of one of our kind of typical soil types, so a bit of a duplex.

So you've got kind of heavier clay on the bottom that kind of shrinks and swells and creates these cracks and then you've got this kind of finer, different material on top and something like this is pretty typical across lots of our cropping and pasture areas across Tasmania and so water will kind of sit differently through this profile than it will in some of the other soils that we've got kind of up in the North West.

Sophie Milic, Walnut Producer, Coal River Valley

Our Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator Tim, that relationship has been going for a really long time and it's a really productive working relationship. So I would absolutely recommend that farmers in the region connect with the Sustainable Agriculture Facilitators. It's a great way to really keep aware of the programs that are available and quite often there are workshops running and all sorts of things that farmers can really tap into and can continually learn from.

Tom O'Malley, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Cradle Coast Authority

Well, my name is Tom O'Malley. I'm a Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator for the Cradle Coast Natural Resource Management team at the Cradle Coast Authority here in North Western Tasmania. Probably one of the best aspects of the role is getting to meet and interact and become friends with so many farmers in our region.

Matthew Gunningham, Dairy Farmer, Montumana

My name is Matthew Gunningham and we're on our dairy farm here in Montumana, which is in far North West Tasmania. Today we're standing in our dairy shed where we milk our lovely dairy herd. So the biggest change is that we went from, let's say, conventional farming. We're now a certified organic dairy farm, meaning that we don't use any synthetic fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides, antibiotics or anything of that sort and you would say that our farming has probably evolved to a more regenerative model now. So very much working a gentler farming type of farming system.

The change to organic farming wasn't a complete change of direction but it was certainly maybe an evolution of the way that we were and the way that we thought. We've been very, very much a great fan of going to field days that that have been put on by Cradle Coast NRM and learning from other farmers. One of the really key things that we've had to do is to upgrade our skills and our knowledge and really our mindset on how to operate a farm so that we're working very much, as I said, with nature. Learning from other people and gathering information has been a really important part of that journey for us.

Tom has the great advantage that gets to go around and look at a lot of farms and see things that are working well, see ideas that might fit in your context and you're able to upgrade your skills and your know how, you’re able to take ideas from other places. It really, really helps to move you forward. There's just not enough time to learn every single thing for yourself and so that's why we find it such a valuable resource.

Tom O'Malley, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, Cradle Coast Authority

While it might seem that changing one little thing in a farm production system isn't actually a very big change, it can be difficult to change one thing in an already very complicated farming system. One of the roles of extension I see is that helping farmers to make changes to be more sustainable, to adopt more sustainable practices by making it easier and breaking down some of those barriers to change.

James Greenacre, Dairy Farmer, Cressy

Cressy’s about 20 minutes south west of Launceston. Here we milk 1300 cows. We've been here for seven years. So being a dairy farmer we run a pasture-based system. So we rely a lot on the grass and less so on bought in feeds and the system that is most like us around the world is New Zealand and so looking across the ditch and seeing what we often look at what they're doing and what might be coming down the line for us. Environmental sustainability credentials need to be top notch and we need to do significant work in trying to make sure that we're having as minimal impact on the environment as possible.

Adeel Afzal, Manager – Sustainable Agriculture, NRM North

Sustainable agriculture is kind of balancing between making the farm profitable and conserving natural resources at the same time and helping, you know, the community and the landholders stay more resilient and also being more sustainable in terms of agricultural practices and keeping the profitability of the farms, not only for the present, but all in the long term for the future as well.

Ruth Murphy. Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, NRM North

So to me, sustainable agriculture is about the long term profitability of the farm, ensuring better soil health, water retention, biodiversity, crop quality which leads to livestock health and in turn human health.

James Greenacre, Dairy Farmer, Cressy

So here on our main farm we have 500 hectares and we would have something like ten kilometers of frontage to drains and waterways. And about three years ago, NRM had a program of fencing off tributaries of the Tamar River and we approached NRM and were able to attain funding to fence off those waterways, which allowed us to keep stock out of waterways, minimise waste water going into those waterways, and upgrade our water reticulation system so that we're getting more water out of troughs, like clean water out of troughs rather than dirty water out of dams.

Sushma Banala, Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator, NRM North

I connect with farmers talking about government policies, funding opportunities and new management practices which have research backing, this is what I do on a day-to-day basis, but this will be different. One day I talk about carbon and the next day I talk about soil health. In this region we support farmers by connecting with other farmers, agricultural communities and industry experts to advise them on the best practices they can do on the farm. We are here to know the best interest of the farmers and how we can help them to improve their production and keep it sustainable as well.

James Greenacre, Dairy Farmer, Cressy

A lot of the other people that you might reach out to send you a bill once you're finished with them, whereas the great thing about NRM is that they have, you know, proper programs and tangible programs that provide benefit and they actually, it's kind of like the boots on the ground of actually getting things done rather than just, you know, being a consultant, putting something on a spreadsheet. So I think it'd be a no brainer.

I think the other beauty with the NRM crew is that they don't have a barrow to push, and merely what they're actually doing is extending the programs that the government provide and doing it in a way that prepares you best for environmental change or for change in your business.

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

A lot of people do not know; the RALF is the Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

The RALF role to me is about networking with people, engaging and bringing them together so they can learn

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

Getting them to understand some practices, learn from each other, provide them with some knowledge, training and try to find out what they need.\

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

Really engage with them and build their capacity

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

We have got growers in a whole lot of different commodities. But we have also got training, knowledge symposiums and engagement activities

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

Helping them with grants, grant writing and running grants

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

The RALF role is the conduit for the agricultural community. We will get everyone together on the same page and they will learn different techniques from each other

Kellie Evans, Grazier, Atherton Tablelands QLD

The RALF role in my community is basically that social networking and I have gained so much knowledge from all different aspects that I can put back into my field

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

It is really engaging with people, supporting them and being there for them. It has been great working with people like Kellie and just seeing the growth, the capacity, and the love for learning

Kellie Evans, Grazier, Atherton Tablelands QLD

I had questions about trying to learn a little bit more about sustainability and soil health. Straight away she had three or four options. She had phone numbers and contacts of people she knew could answer the questions

Liza Maeasigan-Nguyen, Dragon fruit farmer, Northern Territory.

We see that we can work with the RALF when it comes to soil health and sustainability, because we know that there is a lot of things we need to learn

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

Everyone is keen to do the right thing in their area but they’re not necessarily aware of how to do it, that’s where we can draw on people’s knowledge from interstate and the RALF network itself

Mark Savina, Sugarcane farmer, Wet Tropics QLD

Mark: I have struck up a good relationship with them and a working relationship. I have got numbers in my phone that I know I can ring and say “Look, I’ve got a problem, who do I go to see?”. Because of their experience in the industry and that is what we need

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

I hope that this publication can really showcase what the RALF role is all about for the people in the region, for the farmers and pastoralists.

Vuong Nguyen, Dragon fruit farmer, Northern Territory

I am happy that I’m included, I feel involved with the RALF

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

I would love to see the publication for the RALF role engage people and make them understand what a RALF does

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

It is a non-commercial, non-biased, not trying to sell anything, independent advice on sustainable agriculture.

Vuong Nguyen, Dragon fruit farmer, Northern Territory

I think it has opened to Darwin and Australia. It opened to many people that care about their land and what they do

Mark Savina, Sugarcane farmer, Wet Tropics QLD

We need that person to coordinate help for us all the way along

Kellie Evans, Grazier, Atherton Tablelands QLD

Her phone number is on speed dial, it is in my favourites section of my phone. She is the first person I call

Evizel Seymour, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Wet Tropics QLD

I love the RALF role because I am a people person

Emily Hinds, Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator (RALF), Northern Territory

When you get to meet these people face to face and create real relationships and friendships.

Vuong Nguyen, Dragon fruit farmer, Northern Territory

It is a thumbs up for everyone