Australian farmers tour Sask., Western Canada showcasing regenerative agriculture

Australian farmers Ian and Dianne Haggerty, owners of Natural Intelligence Farming, travel throughout Saskatchewan and other parts of Western Canada sharing their knowledge of regenerative agriculture.

The practice of regenerative agriculture focuses on restoring soil quality to crops and eliminating reliance on herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. “The farmers who are still in business today and are really making things happen, you really have to give them credit for what they’re doing, but what we’re showing is that this is another option,” Ian explained.

The couple decided to visit Canada after coming into contact with Kevin Elmy, an agricultural consultant and founder of Cover Crops Canada, who traveled to Australia last year to meet with producers on the subject. “I was amazed at the amount of life in an area that’s mostly sand and very little organic matter,” Elmy said. “Where it only rains three or four months a year, it gets to 40 degrees and it doesn’t rain anymore. If they can do it there, we can definitely do it here.”

In addition to being environmentally friendly and improving food quality, Elmy told CTV News the practice also benefits farmers economically. “The way we’ve farmed for the last 100 years is we use the best practices to produce crops and food, but what the science shows is that our soils are deaerating,” Elmy said. “The whole idea of ​​regenerative farming is to regenerate their soils. We’re putting more life back into them. The whole goal is to move away from the reliance on chemicals and fertilizers to organic farming. When we do that, all of a sudden the producers are more profitable. We’re producing better food, and you know, by using the principles that Haggerty’s uses in a very fragile, very harsh environment, they’ve proven to be very successful.”

The Haggertys own 26,000 hectares of land – equivalent to 65,000 acres – in Western Australia. Dianne said their practice of “natural intelligence farming” has made their small team of farmers less labour-intensive.

“It made us think that these natural systems are very complex, but also very sophisticated, and that we can just sit back and watch some of these amazing things happen,” Dianne said. “It made our job a lot easier because we didn’t have to worry about diseases and things like that, which you normally would as a farmer. You really have to watch out for those things, but they just melted away. A lot of the soil constraints were also removed and that was purely because of the interaction between the microbes, the soil, the plants and the animals functioning as it should. We learned a lot from that process.”

Ian added that it has also attracted the next generation of farmers. “The younger generation in particular has a really good sense of the value of food and the environment they live in. It’s great to see that they really want to look after it,” Ian said.