Isolation Ideas – actions that help the planet

Posted on April 1st, 2020

For CQ landholders feeling well but confined to their homes, we have compiled a list of great resources and activities that will keep you busy!

Must-reads

Carbon Mooooves (blog)
Smiling Tree Farm Get your head around the carbon cycle and the role grazing livestock plays with this short educational blog.

Call of the Reed Warbler – A New Agriculture – A New Earth
Author – Charles Massy
This ground-breaking book will change the way we think of, farm and grow food. Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health

Cows Save the Planet
Author – Judith D Schwartz
In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems – climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity – there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.

Dark Emu
Author – Bruce Pascoe
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag.

Dirt to Soil – One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
Author – Gabe Brown
Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown–in an effort to simply survive–began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture

For the Love of Soils: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems
Author – Nicole Masters
‘For the Love of Soil’ is a land manager’s roadmap to healthy soil, revitalised food systems in challenging times. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm profits.

Growing a Revolution
Author – David R Montgomery
For centuries, agricultural practices have eroded the soil that farming depends on, stripping it of the organic matter vital to its productivity. Now conventional agriculture is threatening disaster for the world’s growing population. In Growing a Revolution, geologist David R. Montgomery travels the world, meeting farmers at the forefront of an agricultural movement to restore soil health. From Kansas to Ghana, he sees why adopting the three tenets of conservation agriculture–ditching the plow, planting cover crops, and growing a diversity of crops–is the solution. When farmers restore fertility to the land, this helps feed the world, cool the planet, reduce pollution, and return profitability to family farms

Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment
Authors – Jody Butterfield and Allan Savory
Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources. Livestock grazing is not the problem; it’s how we graze livestock. If we don’t change the way we approach land management, irreparable harm from climate change could continue long after we replace fossil fuels with environmentally benign energy sources

Podcasts

The Ripple Effect Season 1
Fitzroy Basin Association
Listen to the work taking place in the world of natural resource management. In season one, we take to the skies to see how helicopters are a part of pest control, travel to watery depths in Yeppoon to reassess marine debris and discover a native sanctuary hiding in amongst industry in Gladstone.

Ground Cover Podcast
The Regenerative Agriculture Alliance and Southern Cross University
Welcome to Ground Cover. A podcast created for farmers, by farmers. Ground Cover is a uniquely Australian podcast series exploring real life stories of land managers who have undertaken the transition from conventional farming to regenerative agriculture. In this series, we share unique and honest conversations about the challenges and opportunities of regenerative agriculture, so you can make informed decisions about how to best manage your land.

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
Hosted by John Kempf, Founder of AEA (Advancing Eco Agriculture)
On this show, John and his guests describe why most growers have crop challenges, and how to resolve them. You will find straightforward, actionable information about growing that can be implemented right away to increase crop quality, yields, pest resistance, and climate resilience — to regenerate soil health, and most importantly, increase farm profitability.

Tractor Time Podcast
Acres U.S.A.: The Voice of Eco-Agriculture
Tractor Time guests help educate growers on ecological techniques that are proven to increase yield and decrease the need for costly toxic inputs. Follow our regular podcast to listen to interviews with top eco-agriculture experts and newsmakers. Learn proven techniques and connect with other growers to take your farm to the next level

Working Cows Podcast
Your weekly dose of out of the box thinking!
The Working Cows podcast gives you something to think about as you seek to maximize the effectiveness of your cattle operation and the joy your family receives from this lifestyle.

Courses and videos

Learn About Weather – free online 3-week course
Future Learn
Explore all things weather – from storms to climate – with this course that looks at the basic processes behind the weather.

Cows, Carbon and Climate | Joel Salatin
TEDxCharlottesville
Starting with sunshine Joel walks you through how to get the most from your pasture.

Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance – free online four-week course
Future Learn
Learn mindfulness techniques to reduce stress and improve your wellbeing and work/study performance in this online course.

How to make stress your friend
TED Talk
Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive.

Business Building Tools

Bookkeeping for Personal and Business Accounting – free online four-week course
Future Learn
Discover how money flows in personal and business environments and develop the skills to manage your finances with this online accounting and bookkeeping course

Brush up on your workplace health and safety duties
Safe Work Australia
Under the WHS Regulations, owners and managers need to make sure that workers and other people on the farm are not exposed to risks to their health and safety. Make sure you’re compliant.

Keep your goals to yourself
TED Talk
After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it’s better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.

Gardening Ideas

Three easy ways to build a worm farm
Gardening Australia
Composting worms are not fussy and there are several ways you can harvest the rewards of their hard work. All they need is food, water & shelter – watch this video to learn three different ways of making the worms welcome at your place without the need for a fully constructed farm.

Australian Seasonal Planting Guide
Organic Gardener
Get some seasonal fruit and vegetable growing in your garden!

Companion Planting – in edible gardens
Sustainable Gardening Australia
Here’s everything you need to know about companion planting, including a comprehensive list of friend and foe plants.

How to grow plants from tip cuttings
Organic Gardener
Many soft-stemmed plants can be grown from tip cuttings at this time of year. Increase the size of your garden by propagating your favourite plants!