Regen Ag #12- Understand your Context
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Time to read 7 min
Welcome to our 12 Principles of Regenerative Agriculture series- where we define "regen ag" and show you how regenerative farming changes the planet, the system, and our food.
Regenerative agriculture seeks to restore and enhance ecosystems by working with natural systems rather than against them. Principle 12 sums up all our other principles, and shines a light on one of the most important aspects of a successful viable regenerative farm - that you must understand your context.
Understanding the Context of Your Farm: A Key Regenerative Agriculture Principle
Regenerative agriculture goes beyond sustainable farming to actively restore and enhance ecosystems, soil health, and community well-being. Every farm is unique, shaped by its climate, geography, history, and the needs of those managing it. We see one of the most fundamental principles of regenerative agriculture is to "understand the context of your farm." This principle encourages farmers to assess their specific conditions and adapt their practices accordingly, benefiting both their farm and the wider environment. This principle is deeply connected to the other 11 regenerative agriculture principles. Let’s explore how understanding farm context interweaves with these guiding principles.
Principle 1: Minimise Soil Disturbance
Healthy soil is the foundation of regenerative agriculture. Reducing tillage and other forms of soil disturbance helps protect soil structure, retain moisture, and support beneficial microorganisms. Understanding the current condition of your soil allows for more effective strategies that promote regeneration while minimizing harm. In Western Australia, where soils are often sandy and fragile, minimizing disturbance is crucial to prevent erosion and loss of organic matter.
Principle 2: Keep the Soil Covered
Maintaining ground cover is essential for soil protection and water retention. The right choice of cover crops or mulch depends on local climate conditions and soil types. Farmers who understand their land can choose the most suitable methods to prevent erosion and enhance soil health. Given WA's hot, dry summers, maintaining cover crops like legumes and deep-rooted perennials helps retain moisture and reduce wind erosion.
Principle 3: Maintain Living Roots in the Soil Year-Round
Keeping living roots in the soil throughout the year supports microbial life, improves soil structure, and enhances nutrient cycling. By understanding local growing seasons and soil conditions, farmers can select crops that maintain continuous root presence, ensuring year-round soil health. In WA, deep-rooted native grasses and summer-active perennials are beneficial for keeping soils biologically active during dry months.
Principle 4: Feed the Soil Food Web
Soil is a living ecosystem, and feeding it properly ensures long-term fertility. Compost, organic matter, and diverse plant residues enrich the soil food web. Recognizing the specific needs of your soil helps determine the best organic inputs to enhance biological activity and nutrient availability. In WA, where soils are often low in organic matter, adding compost and biochar can significantly improve microbial activity and soil fertility.
Principle 5: Increase Diversity in Production Systems
Biodiversity strengthens resilience by reducing pest pressures, improving soil health, and enhancing ecosystem functions. Farmers should assess their local environment to introduce a variety of crops and livestock that thrive in their specific context, creating a balanced and self-sustaining system. WA farmers can benefit from integrating native bushfoods and drought-tolerant crop varieties to enhance biodiversity in a challenging climate.
Principle 6: Multi-Species Plantings
Growing multiple plant species together maximizes photosynthesis, supports soil microbes, and improves overall farm resilience. The types of species chosen should align with the farm’s climate, soil type, and water availability to ensure sustainable and productive growth. In WA, intercropping with legumes like lupins can improve nitrogen fixation, boosting soil fertility in nutrient-poor conditions.
Principle 7: Integrate Livestock
Livestock plays a crucial role in regenerative systems by cycling nutrients, improving soil fertility, and managing vegetation. However, each farm has different capacities for livestock integration based on pasture availability, climate, and landscape. Understanding these factors allows farmers to optimize grazing strategies and animal management. In WA’s dry regions, rotational grazing with drought-resilient breeds like Dorper sheep can help maintain pasture health while conserving water resources.
Principle 8: Enhance Above-Ground Biodiversity
Biodiversity above the soil is just as important as below. Encouraging natural pollinators, beneficial insects, and diverse plant species creates a healthier ecosystem. The specific biodiversity strategies employed should be based on regional conditions and the farm’s ecological context. In WA, planting native trees and shrubs such as saltbush and wattles can provide windbreaks, improve soil stability, and support wildlife corridors.
Principle 9: Nurture the Water Cycle
Effective water management depends on understanding how water moves across and within the land. Factors such as rainfall patterns, soil infiltration rates, and topography influence irrigation and drainage strategies. Farmers who assess their unique water cycles can implement systems that optimize water retention and prevent runoff. WA farmers can benefit from keyline design and swales to capture and distribute water more effectively in dry landscapes.
Principle 10: Social and Community Contribution
A farm’s context is not just about land—it includes the people and communities connected to it. By fostering relationships with consumers, local businesses, and other farmers, regenerative agriculture strengthens food systems and contributes to social well-being. Understanding the local economic and cultural context enhances these connections. In WA, working with local Aboriginal communities can provide valuable insights into sustainable land management practices that have been used for thousands of years.
Principle 11: Commit to a Learning Journey
Regenerative agriculture is an ongoing process of adaptation and improvement. By staying informed, experimenting with new techniques, and learning from both successes and failures, farmers can refine their practices. A commitment to continuous learning ensures that farming systems remain resilient and regenerative in an ever-changing environment. In WA, joining networks such as RegenWA and attending field days can help farmers stay up to date with best practices suited to local conditions.
Understanding the context of your farm is not just one principle among many—it is the foundation for implementing all other regenerative agriculture practices effectively. By assessing and responding to the unique characteristics of their land, farmers can restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, optimize water cycles, and strengthen community ties. Embracing this principle leads to a more sustainable, resilient, and thriving agricultural system for generations to come.
How Our Farmers work within their context
How our farmers adapt to their own context is specific to where their farms are located, and what they produce. Western Australia has a broad range of different rainfall zones, soil types, and produce. Our farmers are focusing on producing beef, lamb, pork, chicken and oats.
Kent Rochester - Beef in the Great Southern
Kent rotates their cattle throughout their pasture to promote the growth of annual and perennial forbes and grasses. Kent's coastal location at Manypeaks in the Great Southern means he receives more rainfall on the shoulder seasons of summer and autumn, so perennial pastures tend to grow for longer in spring, and start growing again earlier in autumn.
Blythe Calnan at Runnymede Farm in the South West
Blythe runs both egg laying chickens and cattle on her farm near Harvey. This combination owrks well for her farm both in terms of cash flow, and soil health. Beef cattle are usually only sold a couple of times per year, however eggs are collected daily and sold weekly, providing weekly cash flow into the farm business. Cattle are great at eating the longer grasses and pasture, whereas chickens scratch and forage for insects and grass at any stage. The combination of these two farm enterprises compliment each other, the soil and the farm's bottom line.
Ewen Nettleton at Unison Farm near Boyanup
Ewen has been running pasture raised chickens on his farm for the last 4 years, and has recently added in egg laying chickens to diversify his farming enterprize. This has helped him reach a scale where he can employ staff to help with the workload. This is very important in a small pasture raised farming enterprize, as burnout is the number one concern for these farmers. Growing meat birds and managing egg chickens is a 7 day a week, 365 day a year commitment, so it's important to be able to take a break and share the load. Ewen uses mobile chicken chalets for their meat birds, which provide more protection for the chickens form the elements and from predators, which provide very dense grazing on the pasture to optimize the effect the chickens can have on regenerating their pasture. The laying chickens are also housed in mobile chalets with electric netting defining the areas they are ranging on.
Steve Ford and Jamie Anderson - Oats at williams
Steve and Jamie produce oats at Williams in the Upper Great Southern. This area tends to be much hotter in summer than the south west and great southern, where long hot summers mean no living pasture plants. Adding perennials into this system helps to extend their growing season, while diversifying with sheep means they can add animals into their cropping rotation. Adding pasture phases improves soil health, whilst utilizing sheep to clean up weeds, spilt lupins and extra stubble.
Bryan at Yanmah Pork
Bryan helps his piglets get an extra head start in life by feeding them fresh cow's milk as they are being weaned. Bryan has developed a unique system that he calls a creep gate, where a gate with small piglet sized gaps is placed between the piglets and their mother. The smaller piglets can move through the gap, whereas the larger piglets are too big. As the piglets are weaned over a couple of weeks, they choose to come back through the gate to spend time with their mother, until they are big enough to not need any additional feeding. This is a low stress way where the piglets wean themselves, helping Bryan monitor piglet health before they move out to a bigger pasture area with the other grower pigs.
It's essential to recognize that successful integration of livestock into farming systems requires careful planning and management. Farmers must consider factors such as animal welfare, grazing patterns, and herd health to ensure the well-being of both the animals and the environment.
Integrating livestock into farming systems is a fundamental principle of regenerative agriculture with numerous benefits for soil health, biodiversity, farmer livelihoods, and ecosystem resilience. By harnessing the natural behaviors of animals and working in harmony with nature, farmers can create more sustainable and resilient food systems for future generations.
‘Regenerative agriculture is an ecological approach to farming that allows landscapes to renew themselves.’
