Charlie Arnott joins me to discuss one of the most important topics relating to the health of our planet and our own health - regenerative agriculture. We discuss holistic land management and the important role it plays in our environment. We know that nutrient-dense food is important for our health, but so too is the way it is grown.

Selected Links from the Episode

Charlie Arnott website

Landcare prestigious Bob Hawke Award 2018

Carbon8 website

Thankful4Farmers website

Unstress episode with Terry McCosker on property management

Unstress episode with Charles Massy on regenerative agriculture

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Ron Ehrlich:                           Hello and welcome to Unstress. I'm Dr Ron Ehrlich. Now, the topic of regenerative agriculture is one that our regular listeners would be very familiar with and know that I feel passionate about that. I think it's really important that we understand not only where our food is coming but understand the differences in the way that food is produced and that's why regenerative agriculture is such an important thing for us, I believe, all to be familiar with.

I've heard it said recently that there are only 60 harvests left, 60 harvests left if we continue in this industrial/agricultural way of going. And that's just unsustainable because I've got grandchildren and I think they're going to be around a lot longer than 60 harvests. And I think we make the point that if nutrient-dense food is important for our health, then the way it's grown, who provides that, the soil in which that nutrient-dense food is grown is really important.

So, the story continues. And my guest today is somebody who I've been looking forward to talking to. I've heard of for many, many years and I've been looking forward to talking to him. His name is Charlie Arnott. Now, the name Arnott is, of course, a very well-known name in Australia on its biscuits, very famous. And I have today in this episode resisted the temptation to talk to Charlie about those biscuits.

My wife asked whether she could ask him about the Arnott's multicolour but, no, I resisted that. There were far more important things to talk to Charlie about. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Charlie Arnott.

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Welcome to the show, Charlie.

Charlie Arnott:                    Ron, lovely to be here.

Ron Ehrlich:                           Charlie, regenerative agriculture, holistic land management is a topic we've covered on this show many times and we will continue to, and I've been looking forward to speaking to you for a long time. I wonder if you might share with our listener a little bit about your own story. What's brought you to this point?

Charlie Arnott:                    Well, many things. I guess I grew up on a farm in Boorowa with my mom and dad and brother. And we farmed very conventionally from day one. And so, in 1970, my family bought that property there, Hanaminno. And conventionally, by that I mean, we were... It was high input/high output farming. We had multiple enterprises. We had cattle and sheep. We did lots of cropping.

We were growing wool. We were trading cattle and sheep. We had multi-enterprises within each of those, sheep and cattle enterprises. So, it's very busy, intense, even though it was extensive farming on some thousands of acres. It was intense because of the, I guess, the number of inputs we were using in that business. And I went away to school. I went to university and did a few other things.

And when I came back to Boorowa, I farmed as my father had farmed and as I had grown up to the farm, and it was also reflective of the university degree. I did rural science down at our university. And so, it was a very normal thing for me to be spraying everything all the time, pretty much. So, it was a lot of chemical use on crops, on pasture, on cattle, in cattle, in sheep, on sheep.