2009 Summary of Peter Andrews, post Australian Story's update on his work

MANY Gippsland farmers suffering from a string of dry years are wondering if an innovative concept to rehydrate their harsh brown landscapes could take hold in the region.

New South Wales farmer Peter Andrews, who shot to prominence as the only person ever to be featured in a four-part Australian Story on the ABC, believes his system of landscape management developed over 30 years could fix many local problems.

Using his Natural Sequence Farming system he reinstitutes natural processes which creates far more water retention in the soil, to the uninitiated it appears as if he conjures up water from nowhere.

Indeed on a 2003 visit to his Bylong property then deputy prime minister John Anderson, among others, was astounded that the stream through ‘‘Tarwyn Park'' was a biodiverse oasis full of water, while both upstream and downstream of his property the same creek was completely dry, complete with the familiar vertical and crumbling 10 metre high riverbanks.

For now, the major problem facing local land managers is the fact many of his rehabilitation works are illegal.

Government departments at all levels condemn the planting of weeds as pioneer species to begin the rehabilitation process, and there's huge resistance in the bureaucracy to slowing down the flow of water in our streams and rivers.

Yet Andrews has done this across the country, in many terrain types, with extraordinary success.

Near Canberra a property he worked on has seen its creek become a permanent fixture instead of a drain which ran muddy water for a few days after a big rain.

Now, in these dry times and with no upstream inflows, it's returning two megalitres each day to the system simply from the minimal rainfall collected and stored by the surrounding country.

Andrews says if this was replicated across every farm there would be no shortage of fresh water anywhere in the country.

And, with millions of megs stored underground on every farm, not only would there be plenty in the bank to return to the rivers in dry times, that water stored in 'grassy dams' would be irrigating pasture from underneath for no cost.

That's why Andrews has clover on his farm at the height of summer, in a drought.

That's why his property from the air is a lush green when neighbouring fields are parched brown.

As early as 1989 CSIRO principal research scientist doctor Baden Williams touted Andrews' work as having ‘‘far-reaching applications in terms of increasing productivity in floodplain areas'' and he recommended the CSIRO validate Natural Sequence Farming theories for their potential in wider applications.

In 1993 CSIRO hydrology agronomist David Mackenzie recommended similar trials, but despite similar requests in the intervening decades Andrews and his supporting scientists believe massive behind the scenes' lobbying has crippled his system's adoption by the mainstream.

Andrews also claims his techniques, by putting massive amounts of water back into the landscape, would prevent the proliferation of wildfires.

He says the Eucalypt monoculture forests so prevalent throughout southern Victoria, which were far more biodiverse even 200 years ago, are explosive, and that, coupled with dried out land, provide no protection against big fires.

He's not the only one pushing for NSF to be analysed and adopted, billionaire Richard Pratt was a supporter and retail magnate Gerry Harvey has seen the landscape on his Hunter Valley horse stud transformed, these are not names which come to mind when talking about failure.

Now former governor general Michael Jeffery has taken up the cause, along with television identities Ray Martin and Don Burke and businessman Tony Coote, he's determined to see the broad concepts of Natural Sequence Farming adopted Australiawide.

Natural Sequence Farming in a Nutshell

 By Jim Arnold - President of the local Chapter of the Natural Sequence Association

Before European settlement, rainfall rarely channelled into incised streams but spread across the landscape from interconnected ponds and swamps, often described by the early explorers, sometimes in chagrin. The slow drainage allowed it to soak in, and along with the evolved biodiversity, kept the countryside fertile and virtually drought-proof.

Due to our farming practices since, all this has practically disappeared, Mulwaree River (South of Goulburn) now unique in much of its meandering length still being of the chain-of-ponds type. Elsewhere the water quickly rushes away, taking topsoil with it, inexorably degrading what's left into vulnerability to drought, erosion and salination.

  Former floodplain

Of course impossible to completely restore the landscape to its original topography and native biodiversity, but Peter Andrews' insight, condensed into his Natural Sequence Farming principles, strives to emulate the ancient natural system, on the two keys of hydrology and vegetation; fertility follows, without recourse to artificial inputs. Unmystical (beyond Peter's admirable gift for reading groundwater flows) and summarised as:

1. Hydrology

1. Slow the flow
2. Spread the flow
3. Let it soak-in
4. Conserve the moisture

1. Biodiversity

1. All plants beneficial
2. Symbiotic enrichment
3. Natural succession

1. Fertility

1. Spread nutrients
2. Cover ground
3. Slash for mulch

Hydrology

The drainage of the landscape over the floodplains was effectively step-wise, ie, terraced, with reedy bottlenecks between. The gully-drains now short-circuiting them are most in need of restoring to this benign state, essentially by slowing the erosive rush of water. Simply done, by emulating the former scenario in miniature; leaky (but rock-solid, ie, boulder) barriers, so that entrapped debris slows the current, allowing silt to settle and form the base from which vegetation grows, to further slow the flow. Typically, several of these need be placed to recreate the terracing, spaced so that the resultant back-pools reach the base of the next such weir. Eventually the silt accumulates to fill these ‘mini-flood-plains', thereby restoring the surrounding ground-water-table to that degree.

Beyond the gullies, where the gradient threatens scouring and channelling by the runoff, light contouring, either by grading or windrowed mulch, gives it time to soak in.

Biodiversity

No plant is a weed to Nature; every one contributes to its soil health and fertility, especially in combination. Deep-rooting perennials assist water- and carbon-penetration; shallow-rooted annuals aerate the soil and provide carbon (mulch) for microorganisms, worms etc to convert into plant-food, and they all add protective cover against the weather. ‘Weeds' which tolerate poor fertility build it to the stage where other more desirable species take hold and ultimately proliferate. The less-palatable ‘weed' offers bridging protection to the soil when others are heavily grazed, and by timely slashing, hastens its contribution to mulch cover. Often the ‘hayed' offcut provides palatable (eg, thorns soften) and more nutritious fodder than the grass.

Fertility

The fertility-enhancements can be further augmented by recycling strategies; for instance, inducing stock to resort to the high ground (with shade, troughs, handfeeding etc), so that manure gets disbursed from there by the surface runoff.

Weathering by the sun not only dries out the topsoil but devastates the microbiota, whose diversity is equally important. An allied principle is to disturb the protective cover (dead or alive) as little as possible - rip rather than plough.

Though these principles are commonsense, they face an entrenched academic and bureaucratic orthodoxy. For instance, recipients of millions fruitlessly spent for a realistic remedy to salination, naturally discount Peter's relatively-cost-free solution, based on freshwater-overlays.

His first book "Back from the Brink" found a ready audience, with over 50,000 sales, and its more pointed successor, "Beyond the Brink" is still a hot item; enlightening reads for those receptive to his plain-speaking wisdom.

See also www.naturalsequencefarming.com

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