We are now in the sixth greatest
extinction event in the history of Earth
this time caused by Humans. And I'm talking about runaway events in climate and
biodiversity you know a million species
at least now made extinct and without
diversity you're not going to have a stable functioning organism, Earth organism.
So it's getting pretty alarming the destabilization of a system.
Well agriculture for the last hundred years you could say has been
focusing towards what we call the Green
Revolution that is how do we reduce as
much as we can by putting as much as we can into the soil or into the process of
producing food and fibre. Now that sounds good and it's been very
good for an improvement in standard of
living but there's been outcomes which
have done damage to the environment in
particular and what has happened is
there's been a total devotion to
reduction of science to how to look
after the parts but not look after the
whole. Inherent in any big natural
complex adaptive system is a capacity
to self organize, self he'll get back to
greater complexity stability of health
and they do that by choosing solutions
that reside within the system which are
call emergent properties.
There are basically two types of systems I think that human beings can relate to one is
where they dominate the system and they make sure that all that happens within
their control or performs to what they
intend. The other follower of the system
is where the farmer or the person sees
themselves as part of the web of life
integrated within the web of life and
they have an understanding that what
they do has an impact on so many other
things and what regenerative agriculture
does it takes a different perspective it
turns it all upside down and it makes us
look at the whole as well as looking at
the part. So we see a different type of
agriculture emerging one that I think we
need to see based on all this happening
around the world at the moment.
Farmers are very deep thinkers
and farmers are observers so they know their landscapes better than anyone.
They are attached to it as a start and
they can see changes they can see
something's not right or you know what
what is wrong with this picture and they
will look and look and question and lie
awake at night until they work that out.
So they are the best researchers we have
they are applied researchers so they are
constantly changing the way they farm to get a better outcome.
This is why regenerative agriculture for me provides a lot of hope in that we can start to
balance not only our production levels
but we can start to rebuild the
ecosystems and we can look after social
well-being and and the communities that
are supported by our agricultural systems.
Southern Cross University is leading the way in this new approach
to thinking about agriculture and what more
they're thinking about it in a holistic
term about functioning of systems and
how that is most needed in the way in
which we do business on the farm.
