Regenerative farming practice knowledge sharing to build soil health

An innovative group of horticultural growers is gaining farm productivity and profitability through a dedicated focus on building soil carbon.

“Partnering With Innovation, or PWI, is a group of like-minded growers who are really focused on building soil health and on-farm productivity,” says Tim O’Grady, Business Development Manager for Bayer.

“Each year Bayer brings the PWI growers together from across the country, for a meeting on-farm where we discuss the practical benefits of soil health and learn about what different growers are doing in this space.”

Soil health underpins the productivity and profitability of all farmers, and it’s an approach that is at the core of the PWI group.

“It's not a one-size-fits-all solution to soil health, so part of the reason we have this group is that we go to different farms in different regions across Australia where the focus can vary from cover crops to targeted tillage, to compost or biological product use,” Tim says.

“Bayer takes its role very seriously in bringing growers together with the important mission of building soil health, and that's the beauty of this PWI group, that growers come from very diverse cropping backgrounds and geographies, and they're able to share ideas on that. 

“Building soil carbon underpins productivity and profitability for these farms and Bayer sees an important role in linking with expertise, locally and globally, to help growers on this critical journey of building soil carbon.”

A key benefit of PWI is the networking that takes place amongst like-minded, progressive growers, all with a common interest in building soil health. Networking at that level takes a significant amount of trust – after all, in many cases the growers are sharing valuable intellectual property.

However, as Anthony Staatz from Koala Farms in the Lockyer Valley (Southern Queensland), points out, everyone in the group recognises how remarkable the approach to sharing information in PWI is. 

“To get progressive growers all to come together and to share what they believe to be critical innovation, I don't know that that happens anywhere else in the world and for it to happen here, you're privileged to be part of it,” he says.

In July 2021, the PWI group visited Bowen in the Dry Tropics of Queensland to visit a diverse range of farming systems from blue agave to vegetable production. The focus was on how to integrate multi-species cover crops in these systems, creating an opportunity to build the ever-important levels of soil carbon.

Chris Monsour, Director of Prospect Agriculture and a member of PWI, hosted the group at an agave farm he manages near Bowen. Relatively new to Australia on this scale, agave is a very drought tolerant plant which will be used by Chris and his team for spirit production initially, with other uses possible in the future. The group also looked at some strip tillage equipment in action, which will play an important role in future cover cropping plans on the property.

Chris believes the relationship between PWI and soil health is the core to the group's existence.

“Soil health is a very important part of how we're looking to change the way growers manage their soils, highlighting the benefits of reducing tillage and improving soil health on the overall production system, whether it be vegetables, tree crops, or agave,” explains Chris.

“To have a group of people who've got an interest in that aspect of farming and to learn from each other and share their experiences is very important to build that knowledge base. It's been very worthwhile over the years.”

David Moon grows broccoli, onions, garlic, sweet corn and cotton on his property ‘Moonrocks’ in St George, southwest Queensland. He agrees with Chris about the impact PWI is having as it connects members with experts from around the world.

“PWI has helped us to put a system together. We know about cover cropping. We know about composting. We know about the need for more biomass on our crops and on our fields,” David explains.

“Together with products like Serenade^® Prime and some of the new biological products that are coming out, we’ve been able to put a whole system together to end up with healthier soil.”

David says the amount of work currently being done in agriculture around soil health highlights the importance of the work PWI is doing to deliver knowledge in this space to the group.

“Every year we get to learn what other members have done in the last year and how they've improved their soil health and what systems and techniques they're using. It's just great to get together and rub shoulders with like-minded people,” he says.

“It's rather unique that a big corporation like Bayer is willing to invest in a program like PWI and take a stewardship approach directly into our businesses and help us with our soil health problems, with a great vision towards improving soil health and producing healthy food.”

Serenade^® is a Registered Trademark of the Bayer Group.