Experts gather in Seymour to discuss soil health, sustainable agriculture

Dr Schefe said Seymour was picked to conduct the seminar because of the high interest in the area with the kind of landholder demographics and a broad desire to be more sustainable.

Mr Evans then discussed how good produce started with good soil health.

He said because of climate change and other external problems, achieving good soil health can sometimes be a struggle.

“Farmers who are at the forefront of adapting to climate change, they want to know what they need to do to look after the soil,” Mr Evans said.

“We can ruin soil, or we can repair soil depending on how we manage it, and it has an impact on climate.

“Farmers want to feel that they are adapting, but also being part of the solution and not part of the problem to climate change.”

Mr McDonald added that with the current twin problems of supermarket pricing and the cost of living, farmers were under more pressure to produce more with less.

“That puts pressure on the land,” he said.

“We have to figure out how we can meet the needs of consumers for healthy and affordable food, but without wrecking the resource on which we’re growing it.”

Mr McDonald said that despite abundant interest in sustainable agriculture, there needed to be a more real understanding of its application.

“That’s because ... farmers are under the demands of supermarkets and consumers alike for cheap food,” he said.

Dr Schefe said that as all input costs increased and everything in farming continued to cost more, practices used to grow food potentially had a greater impact.

“We actually get more bang for the buck in terms of not just using our resources more effectively to grow that food, but doing it in a way that we can continue to grow that food for generations,” she said.

Mr Evans highlighted what was at stake.

“The problem with not paying the right amount for food, or paying the true cost, is that we either ruin farms and landscapes because farmers managed landscapes on behalf of everyone else, or we ruin farmers or we ruin both.”

“That’s what we risk.”

Despite the problems caused by the rising cost of living, Dr Hayden saw a brighter side.

“I think the upside of the cost-of-living crisis is that people are starting to think about, ‘I don’t just get my food from the supermarket; it comes from a farm to get to the supermarket’,” she said.

“(People) are starting to think a bit more deeply about that, and how fresh their food is and about the people that are making it.

“We have this big city-country divide sometimes when it comes to food, and a lot of people are not thinking about where it comes from, and at least this is highlighting from the farmer’s side of things.”

Mr McDonald said soil science was responding to the challenges of sustainable agriculture differently now.

“The practice that is dominating food production is still very much a chemically based agriculture,” he said.

“We’re understanding now that sustainable soil management requires more than a chemical approach to food production.

“It’s very much a chemical and biological approach required, and it’s the integration of those that is the challenge for soil science going forward.”

Mr McDonald and Dr Hayden highlighted the importance of soil testing and getting good advice to understand the constraints to production and using expensive inputs strategically.

“Sometimes people just leave it to the adviser to interpret the soil test, but having a bit of knowledge yourself can really help you understand better what’s happening on the farm,” Dr Hayden said.

Mr Evans said he hoped people learned through the seminar that soil was fundamental.

“If we get it wrong, we won’t be able to farm in certain areas into the future because soil is what grows all of your food and fibre,” he said.