Australia's Johnny Appleseed Low Energy Input NoTill Ecology Farming Innovator

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In a very, very rough rule of thumb, and unfortunately I talk in old acre terms, but round our neck of the woods about $85 per acre would be a regular conventional cropping cost; we do it for $6. So relating that to the output side of things, you see we don't need to generate much to double our money, do we, versus the conventional croppers need to have a massive output to double their money. It's so simple and yet it's obviously so hard to grasp for so many people, because the whole agricultural sector is geared to maximum production, and increasing your yields every year, otherwise you're not doing well enough to keep your head above water.
~ Australia's Johnny Appleseed Low Energy Input NoTill Ecology Farming Innovator ~

Yesterday a teenager sent me an email letter in which he said, "I feel cheated that it's all UP TO ME. By being in the younger generation, I have to save the world before I can even begin to think of building a life for myself, or there will be nothing to build my life on."

Here is Quinn's Second Law: What people think is what they do. And its corollary: To change what people do, change what they think.
~ A Path of Hope for the Future; Keynote Ecological Leadership Address by Daniel Quinn ~

"The aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else. ~ H.L. Mencken, The American Mercury

"Perhaps school's greatest danger is that it may convince you life is nothing more than an institutionalized rat race," ~ Grace Llewellyn, The Teenage Liberation Handbook
~ The Exhausted School: "How Did We Ever Come to Believe that the State Should Tell Our Children What to Think?" ~

Australia's Johnny Appleseed Low Energy Input NoTill Ecology Farming Innovator

ABC Rural Online

Michael Mackenzie: Now conventional wisdom does suggest that to be an innovative farmer, you actually need to be working on the farm. But our guest today has a different theory. His philosophy is to use innovative practices on the farm to free up time to work off farm. But how can you be an innovative farmer if you're spending half your time away from the business?

It's something that cropping and cattle farmer Bruce Maynard, from Narromine, on the Central West Plains of New South Wales knows all about. Bruce not only runs a cattle and cropping property that's almost sustaining itself, he also works three days a week for his local Landcare office and on top of that, he has a number of other offshoot businesses that help to fill the coffers. Some of his mates call him lazy; he sounds more like a genius to be, and Bruce Maynard has popped into our Dubbo studios to have a chat. Hi, Bruce.

Bruce Maynard: Hi, Michael how are you?

Michael Mackenzie: I'm well, thanks. Do you mind being called lazy?

Bruce Maynard: No, it's a tag we're fairly happy with.

Michael Mackenzie: let's go back to the beginning: have you always been on the land?

Bruce Maynard: Yes, my working career has been on our family farm; I'm fourth generation on our property.

Michael Mackenzie: And did you stay on the farm from the moment you were born till now, or have you been elsewhere as well?

Michael Mackenzie: Yes, been pretty much on the place. I did spend a year away with Rotary Exchange straight after school, which was a wonderful broadening experience.

Michael Mackenzie: And being a fourth generation farmer, what kind of farming practices did you inherit from your parents?

Bruce Maynard: Well our property was a mixed sheep/wheat/beef farm, when I came back after school, and we were typical of our area, and we were conducting a lot of what was assumed to be best practice management at that time, and in some cases it's still recommended best practice. But over time, we realised that it wasn't as sustainable as it was being presented.

Michael Mackenzie: So in your parents' time, the kind of practices they practiced in that sort of mixed farm cropping situation, you obviously don't necessarily agree with any more, you don't think they are best practice.

Bruce Maynard: No, we began to take a broader and a longer term view about what we were doing, in fact what we found was a lot of the time we were doing things to make money for the immediate time, that sort of thing, but they were really against our long term interests, a lot of the short term things we were doing.

Michael Mackenzie: So in terms of farming innovation where you're standing at the moment, future planning is vital then.

Bruce Maynard: Yes, we like to try and take the 50-year and the 100-year view on things really, and try and design our surroundings to not only serve our family interests, but serve the natural processes as well.

Michael Mackenzie: Now as we mentioned, you've had a long family tradition of being on the land. Had you always wanted to be a farmer?

Bruce Maynard: No, I hadn't, Michael, no. I guess I finished up school and came back to the farm mid-'80s and that was a very, very difficult time; as a lot of farming folk would know, runs of bad seasons, coupled with incredibly high interest rates, above 20% and that sort of thing, and so it was a difficult time, and it was a decision to be made Well, do I stay and help out or do we finish up completely?

Michael Mackenzie: So your Mum and Dad were in fairly dire straits when you came back to the farm in the '80s, were they?

Bruce Maynard: Yes, we were having difficulties at that time, and that continued pretty much through the 1980s and we got to the end of that stage and really had sat down as a family and decided Well why were we doing what we were doing, and what did we want to do in the future? And the end result of that was really coming to realise that we weren't really there for the money in the long run. Yes, we did have to have enough to support ourselves in a decent standard, but really we were there for some bigger purpose as a family.

Michael Mackenzie: And what was that purpose?

Bruce Maynard: Really to hopefully hand things on in a better and better shape, as our generations went on. We really see ourselves now as just stewards and only land managers, even though we own the property, we're only temporarily there, and in our lifetime we should be looking to try and do as best we can and get our farm as close to its natural state as possible, and natural functioning, while still making an economic return.

Michael Mackenzie: I think that's a really wonderful philosophy and I think it's something that perhaps isn't discussed as much as it could be in the rural sector, and that is that Yes, of course you want to make a living and turn a profit when you're a primary producer but you've also got to bear in mind that perhaps you have some other long-term responsibilities, and that the use of the word 'stewardship' really rings true for me.

Bruce Maynard: Yes, I think when you ask groups of landholders at any time what's really important to them, you know, you get the answers that are very similar to if you asked a group of city people or in any other lifestyle, a good family life and enough money to get by and to be seen to be making a difference and a contribution. And all of those things at times we tend to leave aside if we're only reacting to the immediate emergencies in front of us.

Michael Mackenzie: So just take us to the time in the '80s, Bruce, when you and the rest of the family sat down around the table and decided OK, first, do we continue? OK, yes we do, we will continue to farm this land, but we're going to change the way we farm it. What year did that occur?

Bruce Maynard: Right, that was at the end of the 1980s, so I guess it was over a period of time, it wasn't just one meeting or one discussion at all. It gradually came out that very obviously we could do a lot better financially by selling up and going and doing other things, other industries, the rate of return would be higher. But so then given that, we then had to really question ourselves about why we were staying then; if that was the case then why were we there?

Michael Mackenzie: And in so making those decisions on perhaps changing the way you view the land and the use of the land, were you then put in charge of seeing that change through?

Bruce Maynard: Not necessarily put in charge, no. We've certainly adopted the attitude that it is the whole of our family that makes decisions about how we move forward.

Michael Mackenzie: Does that mean there's been conflict over issues at times?

Bruce Maynard: Oh yes, but we have disagreements and arguments about things, and that sort of thing, like every family; but in the end we drive towards a consensus about moving forward. And everybody's viewpoint is important. It's so vital, I felt, that we just weren't if you like, in the stereotypical image where the father or the main breadwinner makes all the decisions and everybody else gets carried along. All of us get together, and whatever we do on our farm has to serve everybody's interests.

Michael Mackenzie: So it's by consensus that decisions are made, and that can take time but I guess the results are rewarding. And what has that meant for the way the property now runs. We talked about the fact that traditionally it had gone through four generations of being a mixed property of sheep, wheat, beef, cropping; what's different now in your place in Narromine?

Bruce Maynard: Well it's vastly different from what it was before. We're now just growing beef and doing some cropping, but our place looks vastly different in that our paddocks now are becoming more and more complex grasslands with trees regenerating in them of their own accord, so the place is moving back towards an open woodland that it would have been in its natural state.

Michael Mackenzie: So you've stopped clearing, obviously.

Bruce Maynard: Oh yes, absolutely, and we don't do things like burning wood or anything like that, or 'tidying up' the place and so forth. We very, very importantly look at all the ecological niches that we can provide on our place. We try and make our business as simple as possible but the nature on our property as complex as possible. Whereas there's every societal pressure on all landholders to do just the opposite, to make businesses very complex, but to simplify everything out in the landscape.

Michael Mackenzie: By being almost monocultural in the kind of output from the property?

Bruce Maynard: Indeed, yes. And we go further and further away from that, and we continue to add complexity to it.

Michael Mackenzie: So how do you add complexity? Do you just let things slip away from your control, then let the environment take back what was its originally? Is that how it works?

Bruce Maynard: There's a little bit of that, but like all landscapes in Australia, they've been managed one way or another for 47,000 years, and our future is the same. There's no going back to a pristine state and that's virtually everywhere, whether it be locked up in a national park or whether it be completely privately owned. So we have to manage the resource as best we can, and we're all going to make mistakes as we move forward, but if our aim is just to continue to add diversity into the situation, then that's actually adding to our long-term wealth as far as we see it in the natural sense.

Michael Mackenzie: So you say at the moment though, the main purpose for land in your family is to raise beef, is that right?

Bruce Maynard: That's the tool we're using to get the landscape effect that we desire. So our landscape ideals are not just all altruistic to do the best we can there, we do still have to make money on the top of it. So we use predominantly cattle over the top to make the pastures more and more complex with more and more native species. We don't rely much on any of the introduced species at all such as lucerne or other pasture species such as that. And also along with that we do a method called advanced sowing, where we actually go cropping into our grasslands but we don't use any tillage or use any chemicals or any fertilizer, so we in fact grow a crop over the top of our native pastures, in addition to what they're doing.

Michael Mackenzie: To traditional farmers this must sound extraordinary. I mean you're planting seed but without tilling the soil; do you water the seeds in?

Bruce Maynard: No we don't, we actually place them in dry, which is a key to the advance sowing method, so in fact we're just trying to mimic nature here, and we're putting a seed in the ground and then when the seasonal conditions allow, that's when the plant will germinate.

Michael Mackenzie: This sounds extraordinarily lackadaisical I've got to say, here Bruce. No wonder you got this maybe a misnomer of being a lazy farmer; you're just chucking seeds all over the place and when it rains, it rains, and we'll see what happens. I mean, how do you maximise output from that.

Bruce Maynard: That's an excellent question and that's exactly the question that farmers will put to you straight away. They'll put it in a slightly different way because they'll ask you about yield, which is exactly what you've just asked me about maximising output. And my reply to that is that we don't care about yield, we care about profit, and natural processes.

Michael Mackenzie: Aren't they the same thing though?

Bruce Maynard: No, not at all. Unfortunately it's often confused and in fact this has been going on for decades, and worldwide. And if you can imagine since especially the Second World War, the amount of production that's increased off agricultural land worldwide has been massive. It's been quite phenomenal, the extra production. But at that same time, farming industry has become less and less profitable, we've lost more people out of our rural areas and our natural environment has been declining.

Michael Mackenzie: We've been talking about all those issues ad infinitum on this program this year, and that's because they're current, and you're right, that's very much the growing sense of what's happening in our rural areas.

Bruce Maynard: Indeed. And it's a trend, and it continues to happen, and I would suggest that one of the main barriers to that has been the thought process that has been to maximise production. I'd say to any farmers, I really don't care how much they produce, I care very deeply that they profit and that they look after their land, but I would not care at all what they produced. This is a very, very hard argument for most people to accept because we're talking about head versus heart stuff. And think about when you go and try and win a category at an agricultural show or the Royal Easter Show, you grow the biggest pumpkin, say, you don't win the prize for three little pumpkins that might be a bit funny-looking, but might have made more profit and look after the land, you win the prize for the big pumpkin.

Michael Mackenzie: We're talking to Bruce Maynard, who is our farming innovator hailing from Narromine in the Central West of New South Wales. And Bruce, let's put that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle in, when you're talking about maximising profit while still maintaining the environment. This is where you save on the means of production, don't you, rather than the outputs on production.

Bruce Maynard: Indeed, yes. It's exceedingly low cost to go and do the cropping method that we use.

Michael Mackenzie: Well can you give us the dollar terms and what the comparisons might be for people?

Bruce Maynard: In a very, very rough rule of thumb, and unfortunately I talk in old acre terms, but round our neck of the woods about $85 per acre would be a regular conventional cropping cost; we do it for $6. So relating that to the output side of things, you see we don't need to generate much to double our money, do we, versus the conventional croppers need to have a massive output to double their money.

Michael Mackenzie: It's so simple and yet it's obviously so hard to grasp for so many people, because as you say the whole agricultural sector is geared to maximum production, and increasing your yields every year, otherwise you're not doing well enough to keep your head above water. And what you're saying is you can balance the environmental concerns of your property and your stewardship and still make a comfortable living.

Bruce Maynard: Yes indeed, but it does take a big mindset change to look at our paddocks and see our cropping paddocks, they look like a mess because they might have 120 different species, a lot of those species being weeds, versus a conventional field, which is just all wheat or whatever and nothing else. So it takes a big change to accept that the mess looks better than the neat and tidy monoculture.

Michael Mackenzie: And are your neighbours coming around to your point of view?

Bruce Maynard: I think it's always hard to be a prophet in your own land, so the biggest change in adoption comes from people that are a bit further away from us. But we're starting to get a lot of progress, yes.

Michael Mackenzie: And do you laugh when people call you lazy then, knowing exactly what's happening there?

Bruce Maynard: Oh yes, well we got that because when we go sowing with our cropping method we sow from 9 to 5, and that's it. We don't go trying to chase any harder than that.

Michael Mackenzie: Now that's my kind of farming, Bruce. In the meantime of course, this approach to land use has meant - and very quickly, we're running out of time, I'd love to talk to you all day, but you have this other alternative life off-farm as well, and you're doing things with Landcare, and what else are you doing off-farm?

Bruce Maynard: We have some accommodation businesses which are some apartments and houses that we've been doing up since we've changed our farm methods, that's allowed me the time to go off-farm and do these other things. If we'd continued to do the old farming methods, I wouldn't have had the time or the opportunity to go and pursue these other interests.

Michael Mackenzie: OK, so there's that, the tourism angle, there's the Landcare, obviously which falls in very nicely with your philosophy about land use inside the property. Do you have sons and daughters who are looking forward to taking over your innovative approach?

Bruce Maynard: Well we'll see. They're 4 and 2 at this stage, so their minds are on other things at the moment. But yes, we'll see in time, but at least they'll have the opportunity to choose. Not only will they have one business, but they'll have multiple income streams so they'll be able to make some choices about what they want in life rather than feeling trapped into anything.

Michael Mackenzie: I've got a feeling you're the Narromine version of Johnny Appleseed. Do you mind me saying that to you?

Bruce Maynard: Well I don't know about that, but hopefully they say small stones in a pond sometimes can make big ripples, and here's hoping.

Michael Mackenzie: Bruce, it's been an absolute pleasure, thank you so much for joining us.

Bruce Maynard: Thank you very much, Michael, goodbye.

Michael Mackenzie: He is truly a farming innovator, I don't think he's lazy I think he's a genius. Bruce Maynard, who hails from Narromine, which is in the Central West Plains of New South Wales, truly a farming innovator. You can still make a great profit, you've just got to look at the means of production versus your yield. And of course the side benefit for his particular property is that he's maintaining an environmental balance that he can hand on to the next generation of land users in that particular region.

Source: ABC Rural Online