Opinion

Making the right changes

By Dr Les Sandles

Sep 19, 2023

While the inner green shading represents the proposed safe operating space for nine planetary systems it is the red wedges which represent the greatest immediate threat to the planet. The boundaries in these three systems (rate of biodiversity loss, climate change and human interference with the nitrogen cycle), have already been exceeded and modern farming practices are a major contributor. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/461472a

We love farming, this is why we do it. But would we love it as much if we knew it was destroying the planet? Because it is, and it’s already beyond time we did something about it.

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For things to change, first we must change is a quote from Jim Rohn — perhaps the first real influencer, and both of things of substance and six or seven decades ahead of the modern Insta-famous lightweights. We must heed his counsel.

I’ve elected to postpone my dive into soil science once more as an alarming headline caught my eye today: Earth is well outside safe operating space for humanity, scientists find.

Twenty-nine scientists conducted the first scientific health check for the entire planet drawing from 2000 studies, and concluded that six of vital nine planetary boundaries have been passed, and another two are on the verge.

It’s 10 years since I first became aware of Rockstrom’s prescient paper on planetary boundaries published in Nature in 2009, but just four or five since I truly grasped its importance.

You can see from the diagram that at that time only three boundaries had been crossed.

While the human insult to our planet has clearly accelerated since then, is what is leading the destruction — loss of biodiversity, reactive nitrogen and phosphorus leaking into the environment and climate change (largely attributed to carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) that concerns me.

The link to agriculture is there for all to see.

Globally, about three times the ‘safe’ level of N is used in agriculture.

In Australia, only a quarter of the N applied in the dairy industry is utilised by the plant — the rest is lost to the environment, so we are right up there.

We also widely acknowledge that only about 10 per cent of the P applied is used. We are a significant part of the problem!

But we also have a massive opportunity to drive the solution — and it is not to ‘go organic’! We do, however, need to transform our soils into organic ecosystems.

Most — and I will tread heavily here — organic farmers are not farming organically, despite what the shingle suggests.

A farm that has soils where microbes are thriving and producing a huge range of organic nutrients to feed the plant is truly an organic farm.

Creating healthy soils reverses agriculture’s contributions to the planet’s problems. It may be one farm — or even one hectare — at a time, but if we make this change, everyone will benefit.

And the cost? Well, that’s where the news is particularly great. Creating healthy soils massively reduces the cost of pasture production.

Some of the benefits we have measured already include dropping N use to less than half, reducing irrigation by 40 per cent and increasing pasture growth by 25 per cent, and we are just getting started.

Dr Les Sandles is a renowned thought leader and provocateur in the dairy industry. Best known for his role in revolutionising nutritional and pasture management practices, Les has turned his attention to the ‘last frontier’ — transmogrifying the forage production system into a C-munching machine.

By Dr Les Sandles

Dr Les Sandles