Voice of Real Australia: Back to basics | The temperature

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Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter of Australian Community Media, which has journalists in every state and territory. Today was written by Voice of Real Australia host Tom Melville. On Charles Massey’s farm near Cooma in southeastern New South Wales, kangaroo grass has started to return. It’s a hardy, hardy native that probably carpeted Severn Park – Charles’ Monaro farm – at one time. I’ve talked about it before, the Dja Dja Warrung near Bendigo, Victoria, are trying to cultivate it. You can buy kangaroo grass bread in some places, and they use it to make beer in some trendy microbreweries. Native grasslands here and in large parts of Australia have been herded and lost – less than 0.5% of the native grasslands of the southern tablelands of New South Wales remain and are listed as critically endangered of extinction. But it comes back to Severn Park, and Charles is thrilled about it. Charles has been passionate about regenerative agriculture for decades. “Regen ag”, as he calls it, is for him an extremely hopeful way of life. It’s an admission that yes we’ve done a number of them on a lot of landscapes but if we let Mother Nature regenerate she will. And he says the kangaroo grass here is proof of that. He didn’t plant kangaroo grass, it just slowly came back when he stopped spraying his enclosures extensively. The seeds must have been in the ground, dormant, for decades or a century, waiting for the right conditions to return. Grasslands are also brilliant at storing carbon. Grasses are deep-rooted and open up the soil, providing a rich, spongy home for germs, insects, and worms. There is also a lot more water in the soil – Charles reckons it gets into drought later and comes out of it earlier than its neighbours. We discussed carbon farming on this week’s episode of the Voice of Real Australia podcast, and whether it could save the world. Charles is not a carbon producer – not in the sense that he gets paid to sell carbon credits and goes through the bureaucracy and hullabaloo of getting certified by the government. But many of the techniques he uses – he doesn’t till, has planted thousands of trees and spends his life maintaining the soil cover and biodiversity on his property – are straight out of the agriculture textbook in carbon. Carbon farming is presented as a way to slow and reverse climate change. The idea is that you can suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in plants and soil. But critics fear the carbon credit system isn’t working – farmers are being paid for useless credits, our soil can only hold so much carbon, and focusing on carbon farming distracts us from the real work of reduced emissions – but while it’s not a panacea, farmers believe the added carbon in their soil will result in healthier landscapes, livestock and people. It’s a hopeful way of life, and if it means the waving orange-green of kangaroo grass – a landscape devastated for over two hundred years – can return, then it’s also a hopeful thing. ‘hope. If you want to filter all the latest news into a single late afternoon read, why not sign up for The Informer newsletter?

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REAL AUSTRALIA

Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter of Australian Community Media, which has journalists in every state and territory. Today was written by Voice of Real Australia host Tom Melville.

Charles Massey and ACM Podcast Host Tom Melville

Charles Massey and ACM Podcast Host Tom Melville

On Charles Massey’s farm near Cooma in southeastern New South Wales, kangaroo grass has started to return.

It’s a hardy, hardy native that probably carpeted Severn Park – Charles’ Monaro farm – at one time. I already talked about it, the Dja Dja Warrung near Bendigo, Victoria, are trying to cultivate it. You can buy kangaroo grass bread in some places, and they use it to make beer in some trendy microbreweries.

Native grasslands here and in large parts of Australia have been herded and lost – less than 0.5% of the native grasslands of the southern tablelands of New South Wales remain and are listed as critically endangered of extinction. But it comes back to Severn Park, and Charles is thrilled about it.

Charles has been passionate about regenerative agriculture for decades. “Regen ag”, as he calls it, is for him an extremely hopeful way of life. It’s an admission that yes we’ve done a number of them on a lot of landscapes but if we let Mother Nature regenerate she will. And he says the kangaroo grass here is proof of that.

He didn’t plant kangaroo grass, it just slowly came back when he stopped spraying his enclosures extensively. The seeds must have been in the ground, dormant, for decades or a century, waiting for the right conditions to return.

Grasslands are also brilliant at storing carbon. Grasses are deep-rooted and open up the soil, providing a rich, spongy home for germs, insects, and worms. There is also a lot more water in the soil – Charles reckons it gets into drought later and comes out of it earlier than its neighbours.

We discussed carbon farming on this week’s episode of the Voice of Real Australia podcast, and if it could save the world. Charles is not a carbon producer – not in the sense that he gets paid to sell carbon credits and goes through the bureaucracy and hullabaloo of getting certified by the government. But many of the techniques he uses – he doesn’t till, has planted thousands of trees and spends his life maintaining the soil cover and biodiversity on his property – are straight out of the agriculture textbook in carbon.

Carbon farming is presented as a way to slow and reverse climate change. The idea is that you can suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in plants and soil.

But critics fear the carbon credit system isn’t working – farmers are being paid for useless credits, our soil can only hold so much carbon, and focusing on carbon farming distracts us from the real work of reduced emissions – but while it’s not a panacea, farmers believe the added carbon in their soil will result in healthier landscapes, livestock and people.

It’s a hopeful way of life, and if it means the waving orange-green of kangaroo grass – a landscape devastated for over two hundred years – can return, then it’s also a hopeful thing. ‘hope.

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