Natural Capital
A precious resource that we are committed to nurturing and working with to profitably regenerate the landscape.
There are many definitions of Natural Capital, however, we like to think of it as encompassing everything within the natural environment around us and we acknowledge that human life depends on this environment functioning as it was designed to.
As farmers, we are custodians of our natural capital, and we feel it is important to take this responsibility seriously. As such we are consciously working towards transitioning our farming practices so that we can profitably regenerate our natural capital.
We are monitoring and measuring our impact on our Natural Capital through the Land to Market Ecological Outcome Verification Program and we have registered a soil carbon project with the Australian Government Climate Solution Fund. We see this as a great opportunity to be rewarded for managing our natural capital and believe there will be many other opportunities to build on this in the future.
Soils
Whilst we’re not sure we will ever fully comprehend the complexities of soil, we understand and appreciate that soils are a living ecosystem and we are adjusting our management practices to reflect this.
Soil carbon is just one component of the soil, but as the building block for life, we know that if we can increase our soil carbon we will be improving our soil’s ability to function, leading to improved productivity and profitability whilst also helping tackle climate change.
Environment
We are trying to increase the biodiversity and regenerate the natural environment under our management.
We are doing this through our farming principles, but also through other methods such as planting trees and looking after our precious water resources; with the Hopkins River flowing through ‘Chatsworth House’ and artesian water below ‘Ellerslie’, we gain perspective of how our management practices have a flow on effect.
Pastures
To help improve our soils and provide quality feed for our livestock, we are putting as much diversity in our pastures as possible. We are using multi-species fodder crops to help prime the soil, before sowing down multi-species perennial pastures, including plants such as phalaris, cocksfoot, fescue, clover, lucerne, chicory and plantain.
This is sometimes known as a ‘salad-bowl’ pasture.
Livestock
We see our composite sheep and beef cattle as a key tool in managing our natural capital. It is with them that we are able to implement regenerative grazing principles. This effectively means using large mobs to graze paddocks for short periods of time; with these paddocks then left to rest and recover before being grazed again.
The management and production of these animals is what drives our profitability and they are key to our success.
