Grounded Australia kicks off in Tassie at Fat Pig Farm

On World Soil Day we attended the first Grounded Festival at Matthew Evans’ Fat Pig Farm near Hobart. Our CEO Eli Court hosted the Soil Tent, and we heard from some amazing speakers from around the world.

Soils for Life CEO Eli Court getting ready to host the Soil Tent at the inaugural Grounded Festival held in Cygnet, Tasmania

James Rebanks – Farmer and author

From James Rebanks, British sheep and cattle farmer and author of A Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral:

• “Don’t pick on dads, it’s probably structural”. James talked about the squeeze that many English farmers have faced since the 1970s, and how personally his dad took the declining fortunes of the farm.
• For profitability and landscape restoration, “choose the species of animal that’s best adapted to doing the job without props”, rather than the biggest, most productive animal. His Herdwick sheep (“Viking sheep”) and Belted Galloway (“Cute stripy”) are, according to James, “specialists in not dying of pneumonia outside in the north of England”.
• For biodiversity, find the ecologists who will “tell you kindly what’s f*%ked up” and go beyond the edges (“90% of the farm is not the edges”). Remember that “wild is not abandoned, not fenced off from herbivores – all land needs disturbance”.
• Don’t be afraid to do things differently. “You need to grow a thick skin. The boys at the pub will cheer you all the way till you go bankrupt.”

Dan Kittredge – Organic farmer

From Dan Kittredge, organic farmer from Massachusetts:

• “The more I understand nature, the less work I have to do” and along similar lines, “Create the environment for nature to thrive, then go take a nap”.
• The theory of evolution has been interpreted as a theory of competitiveness (survival of the fittest) but equally, “the virtuous cycle of symbiosis is the model of nature”, and plants cooperate with microbes to share resources and thrive.
• “The bottom of the pyramid is microbes – you need to build them in order to build the higher levels” of plants and larger animals. Microbes need: Air, food, water and minerals to survive and thrive.
• Enzymes are the molecular tools that “put things together and take things apart”. Those enzymes need trace minerals to function. For example: The nitrogenase enzyme requires molybdenum to fix nitrogen. 80% of species of soil life are B12 dependent, and B12 has an atom of cobalt at its centre. He spread rock dust from basalts and granites on his land once, and sea water annually, in order to replenish trace minerals depleted over the land’s farming history.
• “90% of microbes can only be reproduced in the presence of a living root”. Instead of compost teas or other microbial brews, he seeks out indigenous microbes by taking soil from a variety of healthy environments on or near his farm, mixing with water and coating his seeds before sowing.
• Importantly, Dan said: “Don’t take my word for anything. Do what any self respecting farmer would do, and experiment”.

Stacey Curcio – Naturopath

From Stacey Curcio from Cultivating Wellness:

• “We eat food not nutrients”. Foods generally can’t be reduced to their component parts, the elements in food work best together.
• We track 150-200 compounds in food, but recent studies have found that there are more than 139,000 molecules in foods, most of which we know little to nothing about. This is called ‘nutritional dark matter’.
• 90-95% of polyphenols in foods (the molecules in foods that tend to provide medicinal benefits) are consumed by microbes in our bodies, that then excrete things that we need
• “The microbiome of the human body is a mirror of the microbiome in the soil… Nature does not have a separate set of principles for human health and ecological health”

Craig Liddicoat – Soil microbiome researcher

From Craig Liddicoat, soil microbiome researcher at Flinders Uni in Adelaide:

• “We are mostly microbes… almost all of our microbes come from the environment”
• Studies have shown that the right amount of exposure to healthy soil can reduce allergies, reduce disease, increase immunity, reduce depression and anxiety.
• In just one month, allowing children in daycare to play a healthy soil environment improves their immune system.

A huge thank you to Matthew Evans and the team at Fat Pig Farm for putting on such an incredible event. Not a bad setting for it either… Keep an eye out for news of the next Grounded Festival, expected to be on the mainland.