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.