Sometimes the hardest part about making a change to your farming is figuring out how to start. Other times it’s about maintaining confidence in a new practice as you overcome challenges.

Join us for this free webinar with farmers Rod and Katrina Butler. They will share their journey of implementing grazing strategies that have built soil and landscape health on their sheep trading enterprise at Gimlet Ridge over the past 30 years.

Rod and Katrina will speak about the challenges they overcame, what they learned in the process and the benefits they experienced. These benefits include increasing stocking rates, reduced costs and also improved landscape health. Since changing their grazing management, they have observed increasing grass cover, pastures that stay green for longer and trees and birds coming back into the landscape.

This webinar is one of five events with graziers featured in Soils for Life’s recently launched Grazing for Soil and Landscape Regeneration Practice Guide. Developed with experienced graziers from around Australia, and some of Australia’s most respected grazing educators and training institutions, we’ve produced a resource that distils the most common principles and practices used by graziers to regenerate soil health and landscape function.

The Grazing for Soil and Landscape Regeneration Practice Guide was produced with funding from Twynam Investments and guidance from Judi Earl (Agricultural Information and Monitoring Services), Helen Lewis (Australian Holistic Management Cooperative), David McLean (RCS), Grahame Rees (KLR Marketing) and Brian Wehlburg (Inside Outside Management). We also acknowledge and thank the case study farmers profiled in this guide for their generosity in sharing their stories, knowledge and experience. Soils for Life remains solely responsible for all content, and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the funder or advisers.

This webinar is supported by “The Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal” and Hand Heart Pocket.

Image: Amanda Rowland

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Due to heavy rainfall we have decided to cancel the Thistlebank field day planned for Monday the 26th of October and adapt to bring the learning to you in the form of a webinar with Ben Simpson and David McLean from RCS.

Ben and Kim Simpson run Thistlebank, a 22,800ha beef cattle operation near Aramac, QLD. Since 2022 they have shifted their grazing practices to more intensive cell grazing management on 6,000ha of the property and manage the remaining 16,800 ha of land in a less intensive rotational grazing approach.

They made the change after looking for ways to increase profitability. They’ve seen early improvements in carrying capacity, drought planning and responsiveness and profitability following the changes they have made to their grazing management. From a period of higher outgoings than income they quickly turned things around to rank in the top 20% for profitability in Farmeye, RCS’s business analysis and benchmarking platform, in 2023 and 2024.

The webinar will cover:

David McLean will introduce the RCS Grazing principles

Ben Simpson will share how he is applying these grazing principles at Thistlebank to improve soil health, build farm resilience and create new opportunities for his business.

Question and answer session to help you discover how to apply grazing principles for soil and landscape health in your own situation.

This webinar is part of a series of events with graziers featured in our recently launched Grazing for Soil and Landscape Regeneration Practice Guide.

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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 looking for a different approach. In 2022 he did the KLR Marketing and RCS Grazing for Profit courses, followed by RCS’s Next Steps coaching and Executive Link programs. Since then, Ben and Kim have moved from set stocking to cell and rotational grazing. Their minimum ground cover has gone from around 40% to 60% or more, and their benchmark carrying capacity has risen from around 6 to 15–20 stock days per hectare per 100 mm of rain. They now rank in the top 20% of RCS’s profitability benchmarks. Ben has also started working with RCS as a coach and adviser.

In this episode, we talk about:
How Ben went from the Gold Coast to running Thistlebank, and what made him stay
Why financial pressure during drought led him to seek out training, starting with marketing and business skills
Starting small and scaling up, from 16 or 17 mobs down to four mobs of 700 to 1,200 head
Running intensive cell grazing on 6,000 hectares and a slower rotation across the rest of the property, working with flooding, access and labour constraints
Planning grazing 12 to 18 months ahead with feed budgets, so that small adjustments made early avoid forced sales later
Shifting from breeders to trading cattle to match stocking rate to carrying capacity, and to suit the people running the place day to day
How goats fit into the system, and the paradigm shift of seeing grass grow back under timber
Why coaching, peer support and a written vision have been central to the change


Ben features as a case study farmer in our Practice Guide: Grazing for Soil and Landscape Regeneration.

Soils for Life Practice Guide: Grazing for Soil and Landscape Regeneration:⁠ https://soilsforlife.org.au/practice-guide-grazing-soil-landscape-regeneration/⁠
Webinar with Ben Simpson and Dave McLean: ⁠https://events.humanitix.com/grazing-for-soil-and-landscape-health-field-day-thistlebank⁠ 
RCS:⁠ https://www.rcsaustralia.com.au/⁠
RCS Grazing for Profit:⁠ https://www.rcsaustralia.com.au/farming-grazing-for-profit-programs/⁠
RCS tools, including FarmEye:⁠ https://www.rcsaustralia.com.au/tools/⁠
KLR Marketing:⁠ https://klrmarketing.com.au/⁠
The Long Paddock (Queensland Government ground cover and climate data):⁠ https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/⁠
CarbonLink:⁠ https://www.carbonlink.com.au/⁠


More from our grazing series
From feeding animals to feeding biology, with David and Ruth Read:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/episode/21dVEksiDbbDDQTWLrZxGT⁠
Regenerative grazing and the key insights of Holistic Management, with Brian Wehlburg:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/episode/7bWGHbRB332rYcw9bLwt90⁠


This episode was hosted by Eli Court, produced by Jen Sheridan and edited by Chris Wieffering.

We’d love to hear your feedback, questions or ideas for future guests. Get in touch on social media or at [email protected].

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Today’s guest Frank Ashwood is a soil scientist 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 turn his camera to the life in the soil on farms across six regions. The photographs were astounding, and a number of them have now been included in his new book: The World Beneath our Feet: The Hidden Life of Soil and Why It Matters to Us All.

In today’s chat, we discuss some of the incredible creatures that live in the soil, diving into how each layer of soil differs, and some of the experiences and observations on farms around Australia.

Links and resources:

The World Beneath our Feet: The Hidden Life of Soil and Why It Matters to Us All, by Frank Ashwood https://www.frankashwood.com/twbof

Frank Ashwood book launch at Fat Pig Farm on 10 October: https://zfszi4-wi.myshopify.com/products/frank-ashwood-book-launch?variant=50520122654964

A recap of Frank’s work with Soils for Life, visiting and photographing Australian farms: https://soilsforlife.org.au/frank-ashwood-soil-life-up-close/

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you - reach out on social media or at [email protected].

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Jake Ryan is part of a family farming business, Three Ryans Farm at Manjimup WA where they grow brassica vegetables, run merino ewes, cattle and grow pasture seeds. Jake makes liquid fertilisers on farm for foliar applications on vegetable crops and pastures and uses soil testing, brix testing and plant sap testing to guide decisions regarding these applications.

Monitoring has been used to guide the transition to incorporating mixed species cover crops, holistic grazing, and making their own foliar fertilisers.

What we will cover:
How Jake got started monitoring
What Jake monitors through the year and how he uses this information (soil tests, plant sap analysis, brix testing)
The difference between leaf tissue testing and plant sap testing, why sap testing is working well for them.
The benefits monitoring provides their business

Soils for Life's Soil is launching its Soil, plant and landscape health monitoring guide late September to get farmers started with monitoring practices. Leading up to that launch we’ve invited some speakers to share their experiences and the benefits that are gained through paying attention in a more deliberate way, capturing what you see and letting the land (and the data) tell you what’s working.

This webinar is supported by the James N Kirby Foundation

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Gillian Sanbrook has been monitoring soil and landscape health at Bibbaringa since she purchased the 927ha cattle farming property in 2007. Gillian will discuss how she got started monitoring, and the benefits she has experienced from monitoring, including the changes she has seen in her farm landscape as a result.
David Hardwick is an agroecologist with extensive experience in supporting farmers to undertake soil monitoring.


Gill and David will share their tips for:
Getting started with monitoring soil and landscape health
Tracking changes over time
Committing to a regular monitoring practice.
Soils for Life's Soil is launching its Soil, plant and landscape health monitoring guide late September to get farmers started with monitoring practices. Leading up to that launch we’ve invited some speakers to share their experiences and the benefits that are gained through paying attention in a more deliberate way, capturing what you see and letting the land (and the data) tell you what’s working.
Gillian is a featured farmer in the guide, and you will be able to read and watch more about her monitoring practices, observations and the benefits she has observed.

This webinar is supported by the James N Kirby Foundation.

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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 NSW South Coast, through a disillusioning stint in conservation, to discovering regenerative agriculture

The economics of getting into farming today, and how Courtney and Ian navigated the challenge of accessing land

Building soil and crop health on their 100-acre property and the family's 2,000-acre organic farm at Berrigan, including intercropping wheat with clover and improving grazing management

The decision to start milling their own flour, turning a commodity crop into a paddock-to-plate product with a loyal following among Melbourne bakers

How Courtney and Ian test new ideas cheaply and quickly, and "fail fast" rather than risk the whole business
Soils for Life's new Cropping Communities program, an eight-location, on-farm and online initiative helping grain growers and mixed farmers interpret soil and plant health data and turn it into action plans

Find out more
If you're interested in the upcoming Cropping Communities training program for growers and cropping advisors, head to soilsforlife.org.au/cropping-communities/

Get in touch
If you have any feedback or questions about this podcast, or suggestions of topics or people you’d like us to include in future episodes, please ⁠reach out⁠ on social media or via [email protected].

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