Reflections from 🇦🇺 Australia
(What happens when soil health becomes a survival strategy...)
Just back from 5 weeks across Aus for my Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust study (funded by Yorkshire Agricultural Society 🙏). A few highlights 👇
💡 What motivates change?
I saw 4 key triggers for soil management change:
⚡ External crisis (e.g. drought)
💔 Personal crisis (e.g. illness)
💰 Benchmarking (seeing others make more money)
🌟 Charismatic educators (Gabe Brown, Nicole Masters etc.)
💧 Profit per drop
In Aus, one number motivates fast: $ profit / mm rain. When 300mm is a good year, that metric speaks volumes. Advisors like Planfarm, Agripath&Agrista help farms benchmark it. Motivate farmers first, then unpack the agronomy.
In the UK, benchmarking exists: AHDB’s FarmBench &Gary Markham do great work. But in Aus, it felt more central to behaviour change on many more farms.👂 Have I missed other UK examples? Let me know.
🌾 Survival of the soil-fittest
Australia’s strong knowledge exchange systems helped speed up the shift to better soil management — but didn’t cause it.
The deeper driver? A tough climate with no safety net:
🚫 No subsidies
🔥 Frequent drought
Farmers who invested in no-till etc. survived tough years. Those who didn’t went bust. That’s why the best soil management I saw was on big, professional farms. It's not that big = good. Managing soil well helped them survive and grow. A kind of natural selection.
In the UK, a milder climate & subsidies have protected less resilient farms. Our most progressive farms are as good as Aus, they’ve just had fewer chances to scale.
Will IHT changes and SFI pauses (and perhaps climate change) remove that safety net? And if we really want to reward soil outcomes, are we willing to accept a big reduction in farm numbers?
🌾 Grower groups
Bigger & more ambitious than UK clusters. I’ll share more soon ahead of my Groundswell Agriculture session on grower groups.
🧠 It’s about systems
Terry McCosker has worked with 10,000 farms; he's trusted because he knows soil management is a system shift, not a one-tweak fix.
Same goes for research. Farmers actually use John Kirkegaard’s work because his farming systems research reflects reality: change one thing (e.g. move to min till) and other's shift too (e.g. earlier drilling, better outcomes).
But it's hard to fund. Long-term trials don’t fit neat 3-year funding cycles. Like us, Australia hasn’t cracked this.
🚀 Confidence
In Aus (like Brazil), the mindset isn't just 'limit my impact', it's 'improve my land'
E.g. soil amelioration: “Don’t like these sandy soils? Dig up some clay and make better ones” (see 🖼️ of Ty Fulwood's delver in action 🚜). We could do with a dose of that.
📣 Now sharing findings
My final report lands in November, but I’m already sharing findings.
If you run a discussion group or conference, I’d love to join. Let’s explore how these 🇦🇺 ideas fit with what's already happening here in 🇬🇧.
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