(Duration: 5 minutes 43 seconds)

[Music]

[Screen reads, ‘Carbon farming, a climate change solution’. Screen shows a farm gate with a sign that reads, ‘The Carbon Farm, phone Gwydir Shire Council: 02 6724 2000, www.thecarbonfarm.com.au’]

Rick Hutton (The Living Classroom Manager):

[Screen shows Rick inside a greenhouse surrounded by plants.]

We're looking to showcase ways in which farmers can increase the carbon in their soils.

[Screen shows a tractor ploughing soil, followed by images of the sky, plants, fungi, rain and soil.]

And remembering that most of that surplus carbon was originally in soil but it's been removed through disturbance and it is now more in our atmosphere and from the atmosphere into our oceans. And this is one of the main problems we've got with the acceleration of global warming is the fact that our changing the position of where the carbon is stored, if we can get it back into our soils, we get a triple advantage. We take it out of the atmosphere, so we reduce the load in the air, we put it in the soils, which will stimulate both the microbes and the fungi to give us more fertile soils, more fertile root growth of the plants that we grow. And water is bonded to carbon. For every 1% carbon that we can add to our soils we will store 175,000 litres per hectare of water bonded to the carbon, not freely moving in the profile.

So those three reasons alone are worthy of our attention and to showcase how we can do that and encourage farmers to consider it in their systems. The Carbon Farm is a community component of the living classroom which is managed independently by a community board.

[Screen shows a drone shot of a farm. Screen cuts to a handwritten signpost in red dirt, reading, ‘weather station, the cattle club, the carbon farm, rock energy circle’.]

And it's a hundred hectares of land that we've set aside to showcase a number of regenerative processes, including those focused on carbon capture and storage in soil and in plants. And the three main elements are to increase the amount of carbon in the soil from what at the moment our measurements tell us are about 1 to 2%. We think that traditionally these lands probably supported 4 or 5%, so we can store more carbon. We can create a more carbon enriched environment both in the microbiota and the in the fungi activity. We could get a more diverse and more productive pasture regime from it which case we would get healthier and better animals who'll graze that. And we also want to be able to capture more water. So we want to be able to store more water in the soil profile where it's less likely to evaporate and more likely to infiltrate into the groundwater.

[Screen shows photographs of groups of people on a property.]

We've established within The Carbon Farm, the collaborator farmers, there are 22 of them, and we have discussed, met and had some of them visit here and look at various aspects that they can apply to their farms and how they will communicate that to us.

[Screen shows The Living Classroom website.]

Our aspiration is that we build on that so their storytelling becomes part of our storytelling and we showcase what they're doing. And eventually I think using the IT and building into those STEM components, we want to be able to link it through the cloud so that we can put measuring devices and we can compare even day to day how the aspect of their approach to carbon capture for example, is mirrored in what we are doing here.

[Screen shows a roller crimper knocking down crops.]

From the point of view of the farming activity. We need to encourage farmers to look at those ways and means of increasing their soil carbon. Put your plants residues back into your soil, crimp your stems of a harvested crop so that the fungi and the algae can attack it more readily and convert it more quickly back into soil.

[Screen shows a field of bare soil.]

Don't leave your soils bear and fallow especially in summer where we know that the surface temperature is going to be over 60 degrees.

[Screen shows different crops and trees planted alongside each other.]

Maintain a ground cover, as much as you can, interplant and intercrop. Don't look at monocultures, look at how you can combine those. Create wood lots and wood belts to try and control the movement of insect eating. Birds reduce the amount of wind which reduces evaporation. All of those methods are possibly farmers options.

[Screen shows fruit beginning to grow on a tree.]

Then you've got the reward to the farmer for the capturing of carbon.

[Screen shows images of farms and farming activities.]

So just looking at the ways in which the carbon farming works, the farmer is required to make a commitment to the process. There is a requirement for a base lining of the property. So how much carbon do you have on your property to start with, and that may vary between paddock to paddock across the farm. How is that then equated to a farm total figure, a starting point? How is the farmer then going to plan and manage for the carbon capture? What system is he going to use, is she going to use to increase that carbon? How is it measured progressively? How do they then submit that application for what they have achieved? How are they going to be remunerated for their achievement?

[Screen shows people standing in a field using a tablet.]

All of those things require commitment, measurement, science, accuracy.

[Screen shows ice caps meting and a flood-stricken town. Screen also shows plumes with smoke and a city with traffic.]

When we look at climate change and we accept that the climate has been changing over millennia, we also have to accept that the records show that the accelerated change can only be associated with human activity. So even if we were trending towards a warmer climate, we have accelerated by what we are doing on the earth. Who can save the day? The answer is farmers. If farmers are more aware of the importance of the carbon and the ways and means available to them, than I think they're far more likely to adopt that as being part of the process going forward. And they'll need to have a few skills that they perhaps don't have now, in order to be able to do it well.

[Screen shows the Carbon farm logo.]

[End of transcript]

(Duration: 5 minutes 56 seconds)

[Music]

[Screen reads, ‘The Living Classroom, from degraded town common to centre for regenerative agriculture’.]

Rick Hutton (The Living Classroom Manager):

[Screen shows Rick walking slowly beside crops and a drone shot of a farm.]

The key elements of a regenerative agriculture, firstly, to tread lightly on the soil and on the environment you don't want to bully environment. We've got to work with nature. Secondly, we've got to value those main attributes, the water, we've got to try and maintain as much water in as good a quality as we can that is provided by nature.

[Screen shows Rick inside a greenhouse surrounded by plants.] 

And if we do bring extra water in, we do it with moderation and we do it with care and we make sure that that water has a quality, it's worthy of being brought in. The next thing is our soils, we need to try and make our soils deeper and capable of holding more of that water and higher end carbon. Carbon is an ideal measure for a number of reasons, it's a measure of fertility, it's a measure of water holding capacity, and it's a measure of structure in soils, which we should aspire to have as an improvement on our land.

[Screen shows a drone shot of a farm and surrounding land.]

The Living Classroom is an area of 150 hectares, which is a bit over 300 acres. We were on the South and Western side of the town of Bingara and it was what was called the town common. And about 12 years ago, a group of community people started to give some thought to what other purpose it might serve, rather than just being a bit of an eyesore on the edge of town. And we saw it as an opportunity to roll out four pillars of growth.

[Screen shows groups of students with instructors on the land.]

One was education, and we had a very low level of education achievement in the shire at the time. The second was agriculture, but looking at agriculture as how it would progress into the future.

[Screen shows a handwritten signpost in a garden, reading, ‘Paradise found, Mediterranean garden, nourish, bush tucker garden’.]

The third one is tourism, and we were starting to develop a little bit of a tourism market at that stage. And the fourth one was conferencing.

[Screen shows a series of shots of people gathering and walking the farm.]

Right from the very start we were very conscious of making an indigenous story to go here. And we had an archaeological weekend where we looked at the site and had both archaeologists and indigenous elders come in and young people come in and spend the weekend here and just walk about the site and see what we could find.

[Screen shows a photograph of a student beside the trunk of a large tree with a large marking.]

And lo and behold, one of our great delights was near the entrance of the site, which had been simply chosen because it was the best part of the road, there is a very big yellow box tree. And when the archaeologists looked at it they realized it was a scar tree and the estimate is that the scar is possibly 150 to 200 years old. And the tree probably 250 to 300 years old. I won't say a fossil because it's alive, a living reminder that this land is older than European settlements.

[Screen shows a drone shot of a farm with three distinct buildings, labelled as per Rick’s description to follow.]

We've started about eight projects thus far. The buildings that we've got here are a part of the primary industries trade training centre. So we've got a classroom, we've got a workshop, we've got a nursery and we're about to build out interpretive centre. Now that is going to be like a virtual museum where we can showcase not only the story of the living classroom, but the story of world food and the problems and prospects of agriculture going forward.

[Screen shows a series of shots of farming practices.]

From those four original concept, the project has begun to go in a number of different directions, including some very exciting ones like with native grasses, developing bush tucker food and food options, showcasing ways to integrate different food systems from around the world, looking at ways of developing our soils and recovering our soil health and controlling water on the site. We capture nearly all of the water which now falls on the site and we hold it for a longer period because we don't have it as large areas of surface water, we try to get it into ground water, and then to have means of developing the soil so that it will hold more moisture, ultimately be drought proof.

[Screen shows a farm gate with a sign that reads, ‘The Carbon Farm, phone Gwydir Shire Council: 02 6724 2000, www.thecarbonfarm.com.au’] 

So in the case of our carbon farm here, we're looking to showcase ways in which farmers can increase the carbon in their soils. And remembering that most of that surplus carbon was originally in soil but it's been removed through disturbance and it is now more in our atmosphere and from the atmosphere into our ocean. And this is one of the main problems we've got with the acceleration of global warming, changing the position of where the carbon is stored.

[Screen shows a series of shots of farm land.]

If we can get it back into our soils, we get a triple advantage. We take it out of the atmosphere, so we reduced the load in the air. We put it in the soils, which will stimulate both the microbes and the fungi to give us more fertile soils, more fertile, root growth of the plants that we grow. For every 1% carbon that we can add to our soil, we will store 175,000 litres per hectare of water, bonded to the carbon, not freely moving in the profile. So those three reasons alone are worthy of our attention and to showcase how we can do that and encourage farmers to consider it in their systems.

[Screen shows cattle and grain farming.]

We are here in an area of conventional farming. Most of the farming in the Bingara district is cattle grazing for beef cattle. As we go more to the north in the shire, we go into what's called the golden triangle and we get into the fertile black soils and it's more extensive grain production. And those two dominate. And they are systems which rely on a lot of machines, a lot of fuel, a lot of chemicals, a lot of artificial fertilisers. And that system has been continuing probably since before the second world war. The challenge that we've got is to try and move back towards a more natural system. And we're not here to tell or teach our farmers how to run their businesses. But one of our objectives is to showcase ways of doing it differently and let them make choices.

[Screen shows The Living Classroom logo. Screen reads, ‘bingara.com.au’.]

[End of transcript]

(Duration: 5 minutes 43 seconds)

[Music]

[Screen reads, ‘The Living Classroom, from degraded town common to centre for regenerative agriculture’.]

Rick Hutton (The Living Classroom Manager):

STEM in agriculture. I think it's an essential component of agriculture and agriculture study going forward. The traditional way of dealing with agriculture was that many farmers were inspired and learnt from Granddad and Dad, and they continued the ways that had been done. There'd be lots of advertising on TV by people trying to flog you product to get rid of the worms in your cattle and the weeds in your paddock. And they're in there for a market. And there's a considerable amount of science in there. But I think that by looking at STEM, we are able to measure more accurately, more scientifically and a more appropriately as to what does our farm and our farmlands need? What does our soil need? What does our water systems need? What do our plant breeding and our plant diversities need? And I think this is where the exciting part comes, from applying STEM to agriculture.

The combination of STEM and agriculture brings it to be more science-y, more fun, then more students will want to do it and it will move up that ladder of aspiration for students who want to go and study more. The Living Classroom is an area of 150 hectares, which is a bit over 300 acres. We're on the south and western side of the town of Bingara and it was what was called the Town Common.

This one here was very degraded ground. And about 12 years ago, a group of community people started to give some thought to what other purpose it might serve, rather than just being a bit of an eyesore on the edge of town. If you look at the world's agriculture and look at its distribution geographically, we could say that this site here is one of perhaps only three on the planet which ticks the main boxes for showcasing agriculture. We're 30 degrees south latitude, which means we're halfway between the equator and the normally considered extent of agriculture, which is 60 degrees north or south. We are 300 metres above sea level, which is about the average for agriculture in terms of elevation. We are 300 kilometres from the coast, which is about average for continentally of world agriculture. And, unfortunately, you've got to go back to the Imperials. We have just under 30 inches of rain, which is about what's considered the average for world agriculture in terms of rainfall.

So if you take that all into account and add the fact that we've got quite a variety of soils on this site, we present a spot which is as good as anywhere to showcase world agriculture. We've started about eight projects thus far. The buildings that we've got here are part of the primary industry's trade training centre. So we've got a classroom, we've got a workshop, we've got a nursery and we're about to build our Interpretive Centre.

Now that is going to be like a virtual museum where we can showcase not only the story of The Living Classroom, but the story of world food and the story of problems and prospects of agriculture going forward. We wanted always to be at the cutting edge of science and of learning, not just in agriculture, but in food production. And that is greatly facilitated by IT, information technology, and with low range wireless systems, we can set up a lot of our experiments and link it back to the cloud and back to the internet so people can see what's happening here. We've set up a mini weather station. So we now get our up to the minute conditions of the atmosphere, the wind, the rainfall, the wind direction, temperature, the humidity and barometric reading.

But we've also tied that in with some of our planting. So we've got a couple of our olive trees. One a mature 20-year-old tree, and the other one an immature three-year-old tree. And we've banded them with a device which will measure their sap flow, so effectively their growth rate. We've also put two probes in the ground beneath those trees to measure the soil temperature and the soil moisture content.

So now we can combine those together and they are freely available on the website, on the Bingara website, under The Living Classroom. And you can see what the conditions are of those trees responding to those weather conditions. This we think will happen more and more. We know of other crops, tree crops in particular, where it's done and we think we can move in the direction of more and more probes, more and more measurement of soil changes and plant changes and then try and figure how we can tweak them further, so that using those natural systems, but not using the the herbicides or the artificial and synthetic additives to try and make those changes, to make them on a more gentler scale.

We've done some soil design equipment where kids have been asked to look at how we might measure the flow of water in a profile of soil and how we might be able to use technology to embed probes into the soil to measure that. And whether or not you do that by measuring physical water or electricity, the conductivity of the soil. So we've done a number of classes like that. And, again, kids get quite excited when they see the technology applied. And then tell 'em that they can pick it up on their phone and check it at any time, like two o'clock in the morning, it's even more exciting because it's available at all times. You don't have to come here to see and do it. And I think that's part of the trend in agriculture generally.

We should be looking at being able to manage our farms more remotely, but just as importantly is getting backed down onto our hands and knees on our farms and putting our hand back in the soil. For those who are looking for a career that has purpose, that has challenges, that has rewards, what better than to look at how we can improve the environment of our farms, improve our food quality, improve our food economics.

We've got to look at our distribution system of our food, our food miles, the way in which we improve or potentially damage the quality of our food. We've got to understand the importance of diet. We've got to understand how we can have good quality food at a reasonable price and available to people no matter where they live.

And all this relates back to things that we do at The Living Classroom. We are a site which presents itself as a focal point to deal with all of those different aspects and to support those other institutions that are working towards those gains.

[Screen shows The Living Classroom logo. Screen reads, ‘bingara.com.au’.]

[End of transcri