Facilitating Large Scale Transitions to Regenerative Agriculture with Terry McCosker

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Earth Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2020

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In our latest episode, John sits down with one of Australia's most recognized thought leaders in Regenerative Agriculture, Dr. Terry McCosker. Over the course of three decades, Terry has worked with about 10,000 Australian farmers—a staggering 10% of all farmland on the continent—coaching them through an agricultural approach that emphasizes both soil nutrition & pasture ecology.

Terry currently serves as the director of RCS, an Australian agriculture consulting firm, but his career started at an early age when he had the opportunity to work on an Australian cattle station. Driven by a fearless pursuit of excellence, Terry found that most of the problems that faced the cattle station, as well as other operations across the country, stemmed from an outdated reductionist view of farming. As he continued his research, which included traveling to farms across the globe, he saw firsthand the power of holistic practices and their effects on livestock. Terry began challenging the paradigms of conventional farming and what he observed were results like an increase in livestock reproduction and mortality rates.

Throughout the episode, John and Terry discuss the work of Stan Parsons and Allan Savory, the importance of cell grazing alongside other regenerative practices, the proper strategies farmers use to approach succession planning, and the fascinating future potential of carbon sequestration.

"A client of mine once said that he thought he was a livestock producer. And then he came to one of our programs and went away thinking that he was a grass producer. And then over time, as he's learned more and more, he now believes he's a soil manager. If you understand that you're a soil manager, the production and the economics of your farm will actually look after itself…to be truly regenerative, a farmer needs to understand that they are a part of the ecosystem, not apart from it." -Dr. Terry McCosker

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi friends, this is John and this is the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about
0:05.2	the agronomic science and the cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, soil
0:11.1	health, and ultimately public health. This podcast has a lot of listeners from the land down under,
0:17.9	but we haven't yet had a guest appear on the show from Australia.
0:22.6	And today I am very pleased and honored to have Terry McCosker here.
0:27.6	Terry has a very intriguing story.
0:32.6	He is one of these wise elders of regenerative agriculture in the Australian landscape has had a tremendous influence and
0:39.3	tremendous impact on the adoption of regenerative agriculture across Australia.
0:45.3	So Terry, I'm very excited to have you here and to get you to share some of your wisdom with
0:50.3	those of us here in the States.
0:52.3	I think there are many people in the regenerative
0:56.3	agriculture space here in North America who haven't heard your name, who are not familiar with
1:00.8	your work. And so I'd love to begin this conversation by hearing more about your story. Tell us
1:08.2	about your pathway and what brought you here. You've been in agriculture
1:12.5	for a number of decades and have a lot of wisdom to share. So what's the story that brought you here?
1:18.5	Thank you, John, and thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm a great fan, and there are many,
1:24.4	many Australians now that are listening to your podcasts. Myself and my children and many of our staff now are a really great fan and there are many, many Australians now that are listening to your podcasts. Myself and my children and many of our staff now are really great fans of yours,
1:32.1	so it's an honour to be on your podcast.
1:36.2	I think I arrived at regenerative agriculture partly by accident, but partly by design.
1:45.0	And I have been in the game now for five decades, but not necessarily.
1:49.0	I think I spent my first two decades in conventional agriculture.
1:54.0	When I was a young person, I had an unbelievable opportunity to work for an American company on an Australian cattle station.
	...

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