Soils For Life

This episode is part of a series of short conversations with the farmers profiled in our cropping practice guides.  For Tom Robinson, foliar sprays aren’t a magic fix, but they’ve become a game-changer. Guided by sap testing and years of trialling, they’re helping him hit crop nutrition targets and lift grain performance while fitting into a broader soil health strategy. In this episode, Tom share...

Nicole Masters is an agroecologist, educator and author with decades of experience working alongside farmers and land managers across Australia, New Zealand, North America and beyond. She is formally trained in soil science, organisational learning and adult education, and is known for taking a practical, systems-based approach to regenerating land and building resilient farm businesses. Nicole is...

This is the first in a series of short episodes we’ll be releasing over the coming months featuring farmers profiled in our series of regenerative cropping Practice Guides. Check out the full suite of guides at www.soilsforlife.org.au. Michael Waring is a North Queensland sugarcane grower with decades of experience improving nitrogen cycling and soil health. Michael walks us through his journey fr...

Dr Mary Cole has spent more than 40 years working with the microbial life that underpins healthy soil. In this episode, she shares what she's learned from a career in plant pathology and soil microbiology, and from farming using compost products, aeration and no synthetic inputs on her own property in Gippsland Victoria. Mary explains how simple practices like aeration, compost, and soil and p...

Australia has often been described as a land of droughts and flooding rains. But what we don’t often hear is that, for millennia, the land had a remarkable ability to regulate itself — through healthy ecology and the natural water cycle. Since European settlement, however, we've seen a steady decline in soil health and water-holding capacity across much of the country. The rivers don’t flow li...

Mick Gooden runs Old Man Creek Bull Farm near Wagga Wagga in NSW and is President of farmer group Vic No Till. In this episode, Eli and Mick chat about the value of having a supportive group of peers around you, the links between soil health and human health, the importance of pulling up and taking the time for observation and reflection, transitioning cropping systems profitably, leveraging the p...

Phil Lavers is passionate about good food. He runs Moonacres, a 140 acre fruit and vegetable farm in the NSW Southern Highlands, and sells his award-winning certified organic produce direct to some of Sydney’s best restaurants. Phil is not a guy to beat around the bush. He sees big problems with typical practices in fruit and vegetable farming and the impacts those practices have on the soil, the...

With record dry conditions across eastern Australia and many of you facing difficult decisions, we wanted to have a chat with Braidwood farmer Martin Royds to share his thoughts and experiences with making decisions in the dry, and coping with the emotional toll of seeing the landscape go backwards. Read more about Martin Royds’ approach to building landscape resilience - https://soilsforlife.org....

Can dairy systems support soil health, productivity and profitability at the same time? In this episode we meet four dairy farmers who are exploring that question. Kate Mirams, Simon Schulz, Sandra Jefford and Chris Eggert share their experiences with introducing diversity into their pastures and farming systems—what motivated them, what they tried, and what they’ve learned so far. We also hear fr...

In this episode we talk with Gabe Brown, a farmer and educator from North Dakota. Gabe and his family run Brown's Ranch, a 6, 000 acre operation that's become a model for regenerating land. After years of tough seasons and crop failures, Gabe recognized a need to build a farming system that works with nature instead of against it.  Through no till, cover crops, diverse rotations and integr...

Over the years we’ve heard from many farmers about creeks and rivers that are severely eroded, and landscapes that have lost their ability to absorb and store water. In big rain events water runs off and is gone in a matter of days or even hours. We’ve become accustomed to this, but what did those landscapes look and function like 100 years ago, or 200 years ago? Can farmers restore creeks and lan...

Jill Clapperton is a farmer and applied rhizosphere ecologist. She grows crops with integrated livestock in Kansas in the U.S. and advises farmers the world over.  Talking with Jill was eye opening and fun. We go big talking about gaia theory and the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. But we mostly dive deep into the fascinating ecological communities that plants create above and below the g...

Taking the first steps into regenerative agriculture can be intimidating. In this episode of the Soils for Life podcast, Eli Court has a chat with Penny Goodwin from Goodies Farm in Kendenup, WA Goodies Farm grows an incredible variety of crops, with minimal inputs, and is an integral part of the south west WA food system. While things can look nice and shiny on the outside, Penny very generously...

Ever wondered about regenerative agriculture and the impacts it can have on farmers? Join us as we learn about real life experiences shared by seasoned farmers at the recent Soil Stewardship Summit near Yass, NSW. Over two enlightening days, participants explored the concept of regenerative agriculture, discussing key topics such as tapping into indigenous wisdom, enhancing drought resilience, tra...

The United Nations General Assembly recently voted 2026 as the International Year of the Rangelands and Pastoralists. An incredible 81 percent of Australia is considered rangelands, and despite the sometimes challenging conditions, the opportunities for landscape repair through agriculture are immense. In this episode, we hear from three farmers who all grew up in the semi-arid rangelands with a d...

In this episode we talk with Joel Williams about how growers can start weaning off costly chemical inputs, rules of thumb for seed treatments and foliar sprays, why he likes tweaks and incremental improvements, the growing scientific evidence behind regenerative farming practices and more! Joel Williams is an independent plant and soil health educator based in Canada, working on soil management, p...

We’ve all heard the saying “You are what you eat”. But, as we'll hear in this episode, it really should go “You are what you eat, and the soil it grows in.” Over half of our adult population are considered to be malnourished, and this is in part due to a decline in the nutrient density of our food. As the world's population grows and remaining arable land decreases, growing healthier, nutr...

If you’re a long-time listener to this podcast, you’ll be used to our in-depth episodes co-hosted by Grow Love Project’s Susie Kable and Soils for Life’s James Diack. We’re continuing to make these episodes, but from time-to-time we’ll be bringing you shorter interviews with farmers doing interesting things to regenerate soils and landscapes. This is the first of these interviews, with actress-tur...

Building cropping resilience through diversity In this episode we hear from croppers who are growing multispecies crops as a way of building soil health and improving diversity. We discover why and how these farmers are moving from growing monocultures to establishing polycultures. Find out more about how croppers around Australia are regenerating soil and landscape health by reading Soils for Lif...

The industrialisation of agriculture has created large paddocks of monoculture crops and increased the chemical burden on farmers and their environments. Global herbicide use has continued to increase as farmers have shifted to no till practices and adopted herbicide-tolerant crop cultivars over the last 30 years. One result of this is that the list of herbicide resistant #weeds is growing. Some f...

Agricultural scientific research is really good at honing in on specific issues in the sector to investigate targeted solutions. But nature doesn’t always work that way. A fundamental principle of regenerative agriculture is to observe landscapes as a whole system and to build resilience by embracing ecological complexity. The importance of farmer and researcher collaboration is highlighted in thi...

Australian agriculture currently has a labour shortage of over 100,000 people. It’s not an easy gig for someone to start from scratch on a farm and many younger generation farmers are moving from farms to urban areas. We rely on farmers to sustain our way of life as they produce our food and fibre. It’s critical that young and new farmers are encouraged and supported to supply for our needs in a w...

The 8 families farmer group formed more than a decade ago after a holistic management course. Since then, the group has evolved and experienced transitions in all the businesses and families. In this episode we explore environmental markets through the lens of two members of the 8 Families group. The 8 families explain how their motivation to build natural capital was not primarily to gain market...

Farmer, forester or conservationist. It might seem like you need to choose one but more and more landholders are challenging this. With the right management, trees on farms can provide better farm productivity and forest products and increase biodiversity. But in many ways forests are still treated as either conservation reserves or plantations, making it difficult for farmers to take this pa...

There are millions of hectares of degraded soils in Australia's agricultural landscapes. But there are a billion reasons why compost offers a solution to this problem, teeming with micro-organisms and organic matter that can help regenerate soils. But not all composts are the same and there is still a lot that we're learning about this precious, carbon rich resource. How can governments, farmers a...