Episode 144: The Regenerative Blood Business with Gavin Heywood

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Science, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.7 • 548 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gavin Heywood is an Australian farmer and entrepreneur from New South Wales, whose family has worked on the same land for over 120 years. He runs a unique business, Serum Australis, which supplies animal blood for medical diagnostics, research, and commercial applications while managing his farm with holistic grazing practices.

Gavin's journey into the blood industry began with his background in laboratory work and an early attempt to sell goat serum, which led to his discovery of a larger market for horse blood. Alongside his business, he is committed to regenerative agriculture, using time-controlled grazing to restore degraded farmland, increase biodiversity, and improve soil health.

In this episode, John and Gavin discuss:

Running 250 horses in a single mob using time-controlled grazing
Supplying blood and serum for hospitals, universities, and research labs under strict ethical guideline
Gavin's years of trial and error building a successful niche business
Using horses as a tool for breaking up soil, regenerating pastures, and fostering tree growth
Creating ecosystem improvements, including better water retention and increased plant diversity
Gavin's plans to expand his regenerative efforts by transitioning toward cattle and sheep grazing

Additional Resources
To learn more about Serum Australis and the work Gavin is doing, please visit: https://www.serumaustralis.com.au/

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, friends. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. I really enjoy the conversations I have here exploring all the topics related to human health and soil health and what region of agriculture should be what we should aspire to, what we can learn from each other, and the opportunity that we have to be good stewards of the landscape of ecosystems of this planet
0:22.8	and improve its overall function and performance for the pieces and parts that we interact with.
0:29.7	I've really been looking forward to having a conversation with Gavin Haywood from Australia
0:34.5	ever since I heard about his operation that work that he's doing a couple of
0:38.7	years ago when I met a friend and a colleague at RFSI Gavin I don't want to spoil the surprise by
0:46.4	pretending I know very much about your operation I know you're doing some things that are several
0:50.8	things that are quite unusual out of the ordinary. So can you tell us a little bit about
0:55.3	your operation, your history, your journey? What's the scope of the work that you're working on
1:00.7	today and how did you arrive here? Thank you, John, for having me today. It's a great honor to be
1:06.2	here and to tell our story. So we're in Australia in New South Wales.
1:11.4	We have a family farm, which we've been on for 120 years,
1:19.5	and we run a business that sells animal blood.
1:24.1	And so this is the point where my kids all start rolling their eyes because they've heard people ask this question so many times and they'll switch off.
1:33.3	And we run up to 250 horses in one mob in a time-controlled grazing fashion.
1:41.3	We also have a large mob of sheep and a handful of cattle and we sell
1:48.6	blood into the medical diagnostic market to make blood aga plates for hospital microbiology labs.
1:59.0	We sell blood and serum and plasma to university labs for teaching and for research
2:06.1	and to commercial labs for all sorts of weird and wonderful testing and research as well.
2:15.5	And we've been making a little bit of snake antibodies in horses and yeah that's
2:23.9	it's it's uh we've been at it for 20 20 years and the idea came from uh someone i used to work in a laboratory at New South Wales
2:37.1	uni and after after I'd completed uni as I was leaving someone said oh well you should you should
2:45.4	sell goat serum to us and so I thought oh that sounds like a great way of making lots of money
	...

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