Soils For Life

Ben Simpson runs Thistlebank, a 22,800 hectare cattle property near Aramac in Central Queensland that has been in his family for five generations. He came to the property from a very different life as a fitter and turner on the Gold Coast and has run it since 2010, joined by his wife Kim in 2014. A hard drought in the late 2010s meant more money was going out the door than coming in, so Ben went l...

Today’s guest Frank Ashwood is a soil ecologist with a side passion for macrophotography - photographing the incredible creatures and organisms living in the soil. He has an academic background in biology and land restoration to woodland. He mostly studies the biological diversity and associated functions of forest soils, but three years ago Soils for Life brought Frank Ashwood to Australia to tur...

Courtney Young farms organic grain with her husband Ian in Rutherglen, Victoria, and is also Soils for Life's Farmer Learning Manager. In this episode, she talks with Eli about building a farming life from scratch, growing healthy soil and grain, and turning wheat into a value-added business. In this episode How Courtney's path into farming began, from her dad's oyster farming on the N...

World Fungus Day is in October and to mark the occasion we spoke with two mycologists - fungi experts - Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher and Julie Fielder about this amazing and mostly hidden lifeform. Sapphire is a lecturer in plant and fungal Ecology at the University of New England and Julie runs consultancy Phytos Environmental in WA, and both are involved with Fungimap, one of Australia’s longest...

About the podcast David and Ruth Read own and manage Woodcote, a 470 hectare beef cattle trading farm located in East Gippsland, Victoria.  In this episode, we talk about: How the Millennium Drought sounded a wake-up call for their farm The changes they have made since that time including moving towards higher density grazing, establishment of fencing and water infrastructure to support that Shift...

Hugh and Katie Finlay manage a 30 hectare farm in Central Victoria, including a commercial stone fruit orchard and fruit tree nursery. The farm also includes a range of small enterprises run by others under the banner of the Harcourt Farming Co-op, including a dairy, market garden, and bush foods plot. Since 2013, Hugh and Katie also have been educating others in how to grow organic and regenerati...

Murray Gomm is a regenerative farmer and winemaker based near Albany in Western Australia. With his partner Pamela Lincoln, he runs Oranje Tractor Farm, a small organic vineyard and orchard that’s become known for its focus on soil health, biodiversity and carbon-positive farming. Since the late 1990s, Murray has transformed a degraded property into a thriving, diverse landscape producing wine, fr...

Emily House began her career as a geologist before an unlikely path led her into ruminant nutrition. After moving to New Zealand, she started working with two vets who wanted to shift from treating livestock disease reactively to preventing it, which meant looking closely at pasture as the major component of the diet.  Emily brings a background in earth science to her work interpreting pasture and...

Brian Wehlburg is one of Australia’s most highly regarded Holistic Management educators and a board member of Holistic Management International and the Australian Holistic Management Cooperative. He has delivered training and consulting to businesses, land managers, families, environmental groups and pastoralists all over Australia, as well as in New Zealand, USA and Zimbabwe. He is also a farmer...

Grant Williams is a dairy farmer at Hallora in West Gippsland, Victoria, where he and his wife Leesa run Willora Farms - an almost 600-cow operation across 430 hectares. He has been a generous and engaged contributor to the dairy community for many years, and previously served on the Board and as Chair of GippsDairy. Despite having been an early adopter of robotic milking, Grant describes himself...

Dr Paul Horne is an award winning entomologist and founder of integrated pest management consultancy IPM Technologies. He began his career at the Victorian Department of Agriculture in the mid-1980s, his work has been published across scientific journals and industry platforms, and he has written several books on insects and pest management. Paul’s work focuses on supporting adoption of IPM strate...

Graeme Hand is a holistic land management and grazing educator based near Bairnsdale, Victoria, where he has farmed for more than 35 years. He came to the land via an unlikely route, a decade as an industrial chemist, before applying that scientific background to regenerative agriculture. A Certified Holistic Management educator and Board member of Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania, Graeme...

Find out more and register for the special event to launch our Introductory Guide to Grazing for Soil and Landscape Health, on 20 May at Nick Austin’s farm in Mundarlo, NSW (near Wagga) - events.humanitix.com/grazinglaunchfieldday This episode was recorded live at the third Grounded Festival at Yan Yan Gurt West farm in Victoria’s Otways. One of my highlights of the festival was hearing from third...

What happens when a commercial dairy farm runs regenerative and conventional systems side-by-side, and measures the results? In this episode, Clare Buchanan from Align Farms shares insights from an ongoing trial in Mid Canterbury, New Zealand. Half the farm is managed conventionally, while the other half uses diverse pastures, lower synthetic inputs and a different approach to grazing and stocking...

Australia's fertiliser crisis has been building for weeks as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. Around 60 per cent of Australia's urea imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been severely disrupted, leaving shipments stranded and future orders cancelled. Some reports suggest urea prices have already more than doubled since December 2025, from around US$350 per tonne to US...

Dr Jonathan Lundgren runs 1,000 Farms, the largest and most comprehensive study of regenerative agriculture anywhere in the world. Despite the name, the program now includes more than 2,000 farms across all eco-regions in North America, with a minimum of 500 data types for each farm, including data on production, economics, soil, water, biodiversity, carbon, nutrition and more. The results - accor...

Dr Mary Retallack is an agricultural scientist, third-generation viticulturist and agroecologist who has spent more than three decades advancing environmental stewardship within agricultural landscapes. She grew up on a fruit block in SA's Riverland growing grapes, apricots and pears, and now lives on a small vineyard and apple orchard surrounded by native insectary plants in the Adelaide Hill...

Matthew Evans is a chef, farmer, author, food advocate and founder of Australia's Grounded Festival (coming up in April - tickets available at groundedaustralia.com.au ). Soils for Life is kicking off a new national program working with dairy farmers around the country (join our launch event in March, details via https://events.humanitix.com/dairy-profitability-and-resilience-through-diversity...

Today, we’re bringing you something a little different. I’ve recently been involved in a new podcast series called 'Soil: Rewilding the Underground'. It does a fantastic job of telling the big picture story of soil, why it’s so important not just for farmers and food production, but also for water, for biodiversity, for climate stability, and for human health. Today we’re giving you a snea...

Dr Susan Orgill is Chief Scientist at Impact Ag Australia and a leading soil scientist with more than 20 years’ experience. She specialises in soil health, carbon farming, and regenerative agriculture, delivering science-based strategies that improve farm resilience, natural capital, and climate outcomes across research, policy, and sustainability initiatives. Suz has long been a friend of Soils f...

Western Australian farmer Brad Campbell has spent years refining his mixed cropping system to build healthier, more resilient plants and reduce reliance on synthetic inputs. Over time, he’s cut out routine fungicides and insecticides, moved away from chemical seed treatments, and now only uses pesticides strategically when needed. In this conversation, Brad talks about how targeted plant nutrition...

This episode of the Soils for Life podcast is part of our series of mini-episodes with farmers profiled in our series of cropping practice guides. In this short episode, Eli Court chats with Victorian farmer Grant Sims about how multispecies cover cropping has transformed his mixed farming system at Pine Grove near Lockington. After moving away from synthetic fertilisers, fungicides and insecticid...

We recently attended Grounded in WA, and heard ecologist Dr David Watson's fascinating talk on the important role that mistletoe can play in farm ecosystem. It made us think of one of our favourite podcast episodes - this one. It's a dive into the role that so-called weeds can play in ecosystems. Well worth another run! Enjoy. A little about this episode: The industrialisation of agricultu...

This episode of the Soils for Life podcast is part of our series of mini-episodes with farmers profiled in our series of cropping practice guides. In this episode we talk with Steven Ford. Steven and his wife Kelly have been farming near Williams, Western Australia, for 16 years. After 10 years working as a livestock agent, Steven returned to the family farm in 2008. Being advised to use a new exp...

Jake Robinson is a microbial ecologist and researcher whose career spans parasitology, symbiosis, and the study of invisible communities of life that shape the health of humans, animals, plants and ecosystems. He is the author of Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us , and his work explores the connections between soil health, gut health and mental health. We spok...