When farmers speak about diversity being one of the hallmarks of a resilient farming system, Stacey Curcio asks them to consider the diversity within their diets and the way they move to keep their body’s cells and microbes thriving.

Stacey is a Naturopath at Cultivating Wellness with a Masters of Human Nutrition and was guest speaker at VicNoTill's Food for Thought conference in 2024. She links human health and soil health, regenerative practices and systems thinking.

In this Farmers Helping Farmers The Podcast episode with Michael Gooden, Stacey delves into more detail about the way people respond to the environment, the food they eat and the emotions they experience.

Palates reflect the intricate relationship between the land, the plants, and the animals we consume. This connection reminds us that healthy, diverse ecosystems are essential not only for sustaining the Earth but for nurturing human health, as the foods we eat carry the imprint of the land and its vitality.

Nutrition starts in the soil, not in the packet or on the plate. "We are what we eat eats."

Fifth generation broadacre farmer and agronomist Keiran Knight grew up on an irrigation, cotton, sheep, cattle and cereal farm between Walgett and Narrabri in NSW. She married her next door neighbour John and they still farm the land their previous generations settled in 1891.

While working as an agronomist and with a young family, Keiran became increasingly concerned about the amount of fertiliser conventional agriculture was asking farmers to use, both from an economic and environmental perspective.

She and John started using bio-stimulants and she made a career change to become an agronomist for Best Farming Systems Australia.

Keiran says farmers are getting agronomy advice they believe is evidence-based and scientifically based, but not enough people are talking about the damage synthetic inputs do to their most precious resource, soil.

Keiran is well attuned to growing up in a rural area, and the culture of farming where it’s difficult to step outside the lines. She encourages more farmers to ask more questions about the products they’re using and what those products are doing to their soils as well as the quality of the food and fibre they are producing.

Keiran was a guest speaker at VicNoTill's Food for Thought conference and says more questions also need to come from consumers around the nutritional integrity of their food such as who grew it, how did they grow it and what is their soil management plan.

In the FARMERS HELPING FARMERS PODCAST Episode 21, Dan Fox sits down with WA farmer Rob Hetherington who is seeing a lifetime of soil study come to fruition on the Lake King farm he runs with his wife Judi and son Daniel, Kate and family.

This is a fascinating and indepth discussion with an experienced farmer and Wheatbelt NRM Soil Health Champion who was a guest speaker at VicNoTill's 2024 Food for Thought Conference.

Rob discovered a long time ago that calcium was the limiting factor to his soil health on the cropping farm that has been in his family since 1946. Rob and Judi took over the management of ‘Walma’, named after Rob’s parents Wally and Mary, in 1983. They grow multi-species for a dairy as part of an ongoing arrangement, as well as winter grains and opportunistic summer crops.

Using his scientifically-geared knowledge he identified calcium, along with some phosphate, as being the first step to bringing their whole system together.

Calcium has stimulated their root, stem and foliage growth, helped build stem strength in crops and made them more resistant to attack by disease or insects and helped raise Brix levels which helps them withstand frost.

Rob's most important lesson of all is understanding that knowledge is power.

"In the regenerative space there’s a lot of talk out there that you’ve got to look after the soil biology, so put a crop in with minimal fertiliser or no fertiliser. This might work on some areas and you might get away with it one year. In the long term though, it’s a downward spiral. I know that because I’ve experienced it myself. It’s a matter of knowing the chemistry and the biology, finding that knowledge and moving forward from there. At the end of the day, farming is all about mineral energy and controlling conductivity and knowing what to apply and where to apply it to get those reactions happening.”

Australian families have grown up eating their fair share of Kentish potatoes, but have we ever considered the story behind the pioneering family who brought this staple ingredient to our tables? Michael Gooden sits down with third generation potato grower Nic Kentish, who shares the ups and downs, soil health and life lessons from growing the humble potato. From the drought which preceded Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 to discovering his love for sheep and cattle while jackarooing on the Hay plains and central Queensland in the 1980s to watching the Murrumbidgee River run dry. From being in $2million debt with 17% interest rates growing organic potatoes to restoring their soils, and bank balance, growing pastures for organic for sheep and cattle - the depth and breadth of Nic's experience in his life so far is a winding road with plenty of big lessons along the way. The biggest lesson of all goes far deeper than the soils he's so passionate about, and he's now one of the country's leading educators in Grazing for Profit. Settled on a farm in the Adelaide Hills near Hahndorf, with his wife Alexi and three children, Nic works full-time for RCS as a teacher, advisor, facilitator and coach.  Combining his passions for livestock and people, Nic approaches life with zest, humour, feeling and a genuine endeavour to see land, animals and humans together realise their true potential. Since the earth is the earth and animals are simply good at being animals, Nic takes up the human challenge to share what’s possible if people can change. 

VicNoTill is at the forefront of change in Australian

Soil health has been a progressive journey for Dan. His non-negotiables are 100% groundcover and no soil disturbance, which come about through his strip and disc system. But

Stepping into the president’s role enabled Dan to further understand soil systems and how soils function, through the

Meeting people from around the world who are as passionate as he is about a positive, progressive future for agriculture that is focussed on growing nutrient-rich food has helped Dan take what he and his family are doing in their own paddocks to the next level.

Joel Williams spent several days with VicNoTill at the 2024 Food for Thought conference in Wagga Wagga NSW. Tune into his insightful conversation with Riverina broadacre cropping farmer Dan Fox about the latest science and the on-ground change that is happening thanks to farmers like those in the VicNoTill network.

With links to VicNoTill going back almost a decade, Joel was rapt to be at the conference and having important conversations linking food as medicine with practical strategies for farmers to build carbon in soils.

Joel loves working with farmers because they're

Dan also shares some of the successes he and his family are having in their cropping system as their focus shifts more towards quality rather than quantity of yield by taking simple steps with nutrition, different forms of nitrogen and looking at energy efficiency in plants and how different soils impact plant health.

VicNoTill is dedicated to helping farmers achieve better results at harvest time, while encouraging greater adoption of sustainable and profitable food production systems through reduced-tillage and regenerative farming systems that produce nutrient-rich food. Farmers helping farmers!

VicNoTill board member Michael Gooden visits Jim Alexander on the Cootamundra farm where he lives with his wife Em and two young daughters to talk about his switch from commercial scale broadacre agronomy on the Liverpool Plains to permaculture to regenerative agriculture.

Jim has made a major shift in the way he approaches

Being among like-minded people for the past several years as a VicNoTill member has also been an eye-opener for Jim in how leading broadacre farmers are managing to make significant changes to the way they farm, while remaining profitable.

He says the farmers helping farmers approach highlights how important it is that people don’t follow an ideology at their own expense.

VicNoTill members can read more about Jim's experiences and insights in the latest issue of the member magazine ⁠From The Ground Up.⁠

This is a conversation for farmers not to be missed! Allan Parker OAM was a crowd favourite at VicNoTill's conference Transition23 and captured the attention of the whole room within 10 seconds of starting his presentation.

VicNoTill board member Michael Gooden catches up with Allan in Wagga Wagga during his 2024 Regional Brain Reset Tour to talk about succession planning, improving negotiation between family members when making farm decisions, transitioning to a more regenerative farming system without compromising the profitability of the business and a whole lot more.

Allan introduces himself as an eccentric Micro-Behavioural Neuroscientist, International Negotiator, and Educator. Outside his work life he has been a professional golfer and has run 16 marathons and 11 ultra marathons (including 24 hours twice). He wrote Australia’s first degree in negotiation in 2012 and was the recipient of an Order of Australia Medal for his contribution to business and dispute resolution in 2019.

From the boardrooms of the biggest corporate organisations in the world to the kitchen tables on rural and remote farming properties, Allan Parker’s approach to negotiation is the same. The author of The Negotiator’s Toolkit, the bestseller Switch on Your Brain; and co-author of Beyond Yes – Negotiating and Networking says there is great wisdom in Charlie Arnott’s saying ‘the paddock between our ears is what we’ve got to get sorted out first’.

“Negotiation, whether informal chat on the phone or chat in hallway or something bigger and more serious, we are involved in negotiating the whole time. Everything you think inside your head turns up in your verbal conversation in some form or another," Allan says.

When Victorian cattle farmer Callum Lawson went to a holistic grazing course, it turned the way he approached farming on its head. He came home from the first day feeling baffled about the way he was farming.

What they were presenting about regenerative and holistic grazing concepts felt like common sense. This started him on a path of discovery, and the more research he did the more fascinated he became. Callum started growing multi-species crops in 2017 and flipped his farming system around to solve problems rather than treat symptoms.

When he started farming more regeneratively he loved watching things grow and seeing the real difference in how healthy the crops and animals became.

Callum says it’s easy to get caught up in regenerative agriculture, which can be both good and bad. He says it’s important farmers remain profitable otherwise they won’t be there to do it again next year. Feeling good is important but if it’s not making money, there’s not much point doing it.

Callum joined the VicNoTill board in 2023. After a tour around the property Callum manages at Avenal in Victoria's Highlands region, Michael Gooden sat down to chat with him about how his farming system has evolved.