Healthy Soils, Healthy People, Healthy Planet
The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to move from a period of human devastation of the earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.
Thomas Berry, The Great Work (1999)
I’ve been working in the healthy, fair and sustainable food systems space in Australia for coming on close to 20 years. In that time, I’ve seen and experienced lots of ups and downs, highs and lows, promises made and promises broken.
Looking back, I can see a clear trajectory of progress, of movement forward, of spreading awareness, rising consciousness and greater coherence in vision and actions. I can also see that the pace of change is accelerating.
Significant food policy milestones in the past few years
- Numerous Food System Strategies and Plans developed collaboratively and inclusively by local governments
- Five parliamentary inquiries into food security: NSW (2021), Federal (2023), WA (2023), Victoria x 2 (2024)
- The Tasmanian Food Relief to Food Resilience Action Plan (2023-2025)
- The launch of the Canberra Region Local Food Strategy (2024)
- The commencement of the process to develop Feeding Australia: the National Food Security Strategy (2025)
These policy shifts and commitments don’t emerge, fully formed, out of the ether. They are the result of years of community organising, networking, education and advocacy. Inquiries and policies typically respond to and follow the lead of public and community sentiment and action, not the reverse.
The underground revolution
A major part of this community-led sustainable food systems movement is what’s been happening on many farms across the country, in some cases for several decades.
This is what farmer-scholar Dr Charles Massy famously called ‘the underground revolution’ in his groundbreaking book, Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth (2017). Massy was referring to the changes he was seeing amongst growing numbers of farmers across the country as they began to realise that conventional agricultural methods and practices were increasingly faltering and began the search for different agricultural methods.
These were ways of working with, and regenerating the land and soils, not working against them.
The WA Regenerative Food Systems Conference, which brought together over 200 regenerative farmers from across Australia and internationally, was a milestone event.
It brought this ‘underground revolution’ fully out into the light, celebrating and recognising the tremendous successes and achievements by farmers in restoring life and fertility to their soils. It provided a platform for cutting-edge science and research into soil microbiology, sharing with attendees the wondrous, unfathomable diversity and symbiotic, life-enhancing properties of soil in microscopic detail.
It’s all about the soil
Being a Food Systems Conference, the event intentionally and powerfully made the connection between the health of the soil and the health of the people consuming the plants and animals nurtured by the soil. The key message, reinforced by speaker after speaker, was that there is an inextricable connection between healthy soils and healthy people, and ultimately, a healthy planet.
Soils are the foundation of life and if they are sick, then it should be no surprise that we are also.
It was Noongar Elder Oral McGuire, CEO and founder of the Noongar Land Enterprise Group, who connected this point to the vital cultural and spiritual knowledge and traditions of the Noongar people:
When the colonisers arrived in 1829, the Noongar people were the healthiest people on the planet. The colonisers were quite possibly the least healthy.
The Noongar people ate well from and with this Country for millennia. Today we’ve heard about the mediocre state of health and food in WA and nationally. We’re trying to improve mediocrity with science. We need to listen and learn from the Noongar.
Uncle Noel was echoing the powerful messages delivered in the Welcome to Country by Uncle Walter McGuire. Uncle Walter reminded us of the necessity of truth-telling, of recovering the real history of the continent we now call Australia, as the necessary foundation on which the far too-long delayed work of reconciliation and Treaty can begin.
Healing the soil must be based on cultural healing, on real reconciliation between First Nations and settlers in Australia.
Regenerative agriculture in action
A highlight and pleasure for me as an attendee and speaker at the Conference was to visit the Wheatbelt town of Mollerin, 3.5 hours north-east of Perth, where Western Australians of the Year (2025) Ian and Di Haggerty hosted 30 of us on a tour of their 60,000 acre Natural Intelligence Farm.
The WA Wheatbelt is one of the most devastated and disrupted ecosystems in Australia. The Haggertys have been farming there since 1991, intentionally choosing some of the most degraded and saline-affected soils. Through years of patient observation, careful experimentation and a unique combination of regenerative practices, they have successfully restored those degraded soils, to such an extent that they have still been able to obtain a commercial harvest during historically low rainfall years of less than 100mm.
Visiting their farm, hearing them speak and bearing witness to their passion and commitment was an honour and a privilege.
I left Perth feeling inspired and full of hope and belief that, whatever the challenges that we face now and will face in the coming years, we have the capacity, the knowledge and the energy to meet them and overcome them.
The Conference articulated a vision of a flourishing food future, in which soils, humans and ecosystems are healthy and thriving. This future has already arrived in many places across Australia. It’s well within our grasp to make it a reality for everyone on this great southern land.
Whatever the challenges that we face now and will face in the coming years, we have the capacity, the knowledge and the energy to meet them and overcome them.
DR Nick ROSE
