Terry McCosker, an internationally acclaimed teacher in research and property management joins me today to discuss ecosystem health, farm-family wellbeing and regenerative agriculture.

Selected Links from the Episode

Resource Consulting Service website

Unstress episode with Allan Savory on civilisations

Unstress episode with Joel Salatin on regenerative agriculture

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Dr Ron Ehrlich:             Hello, and welcome to Unstress, I'm Doctor Ron Ehrlich. I continue to be fascinated by this world we live in, and what holistic means. My guest today is Terry McCosker, and Terry is an internationally acclaimed teacher and has worked in research and property management. Now, that's agricultural properties, in both government and private sectors for over 45 years. Now, in his research era, Terry published over 40 papers, and made several world-first discoveries in the 1980s, in the fields of ruminant nutrition and fertility, as well as a deep understanding of pasture ecology. And he shares some pretty amazing facts with us today.

Terry's ideas took farming out of a war against nature, to an association with it. It's not just a lesson for farmers, it's a lesson for us all. He introduced Australian farmers to the concept of ecosystem health and developed methods of measuring it alongside financial health. Rather importantly, he introduced the concept of farm-family wellbeing and welcomed female partners, siblings and parents into courses about decision making. Again, it's probably lessons not just for those on the land, but for us all as well.

I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Terry McCosker.

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Welcome to the show, Terry.

Terry McCosker:           Good, thank you. Good to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich:             Thanks, Terry. Listen, Resource Consulting Services, RCS. How did you get started? Tell us a bit about it.

Terry McCosker:           Well, I think it came about because I jumped the fence in my earlier career. I'd been with the Queensland Department of Private Industries for 11 years as a scientist and an advisor, and then I went on to a property to implement everything that I thought I knew. And within six months I realized that I actually knew nothing that worked and fitted into a system, and pretty soon after that, I decided that one day I would set up a private extension service, which operated differently to the public extension services. I had no idea how to do it, and I had no idea when I would do it, and it was probably ten years or more after that, that I started RCS, and then it took me another five years after that to work out how to put together and grow a private extension service that operated differently to the public extension services.

So that's a sort of a plotted history of how we got started.

Dr Ron Ehrlich:             So you had spent a considerable number of years in Queensland Private Industry Department, advising farmers?

Terry McCosker:           Yes, so the history goes back a fairway. I joined the Queensland Department of Primary Industries as a cadet in 1967. So, I've been operating professionally in agriculture now for a little over 50 years.

Dr Ron Ehrlich:             God, Terry. Sobering, isn't it? Sobering.

Terry McCosker:           Well, it is, yeah. And it that I've had all sorts of different experiences. So, in the government sector, on a property for seven years, trying to implement what I thought I knew, and figuring out that I didn't know enough to make it work. And that was a sobering experience. And then having a go at operating a consulting business for several years, and that wasn't successful, and then I stumbled on, in a way, holism, and I had learnt while I was on the station to... I've learnt a lot about systems thinking, and pulling things together, and pulling all sorts of threads together, and I was in a wonderful position there.

I was, as a young kid,