Farmers Helping Farmers

Farmers Helping Farmers, The Podcast is dropping into your ears with a paddock chat between VicNoTill president Michael Gooden and board member James Manning around how they're managing budgets, future plans and other farm activities during the current fuel and fertiliser shortage.
James manages 'Northwood Park' at Seymour for one of three farms in a 10,000 acre thoroughbred stud owned by Sheik Mohammed of Dubai. James, his wife Lisa and their two young children also run a small regenerative beef block near Eurora.
When it comes to breeding race horses, James' focus is on improving the nutritional value of pastures to give the horses the best possible opportunity to be the best athlete in the stable. He's not saying it will make them run any faster, but if they can improve their overall health, fertility and longevity, that's a good thing.
We've also included an off-topic paddock chat between Michael and James to give you an insight into the grass roots conversations that are happening every single day in the VicNoTill network.
Farmers Helping Farmers since 2002. All welcome.

April 2026: Life is full of challenges, especially in farming, and the global situation can be a heavy weight. It feels like the perfect time to re-release this encore conversation with UK farmer Tim Parton. If you want to be inspired, Tim is your man. We’re wanting to remind everyone that Farmers are Heroes, nobody else can do what we do.
Since this episode was recorded in 2023, Tim has faced even more personal challenges due to a serious farming accident. We caught up with him when we attended Groundswell in the UK last year, and look forward to another podcast chat with him soon - watch this space!
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UK arable farmer of the year and Green Farm Collective founding member Tim Parton spent a week in Australia as part of VicNoTill's annual conference TRAN$ITION23. As well as inspiring over 100 farmers in the conference room, Tim hung out in soil pits and dug into soils with a shovel to gain a deeper understanding of regenerative farming systems in the Australian context. Dan Fox sat down in the podcast studio with Tim to discover what new ideas his visit had sparked. VicNoTill was also keen to find out how Tim is changing the narrative about farmers being the heroes when it comes to sequestering carbon and feeding the world.

In 2017, a Sydney TedX crowd went wild when farmer turned agronomist Guy Webb stood on stage to pitch his idea for using fungus to capture carbon in the atmosphere and plant it back into the ground to combat the lack of carbon in Australian soils.
The applause was thunderous and what followed has been almost a decade of intensive research into developing a technology that provides a return on investment to farmers through their efforts to be ‘Carbon Capturing Superheroes’.
Guy sat down in a canola field with Angus Ingram at the VicNoTill conference field day in spring 2025 to talk about how his lifelong mission to ensure the agricultural industry remains sustainable and profitable for the long-term future.
Large scale broadacre cropping is his focus, providing a massive opportunity for change – and to hear how this humble and very passionate innovator has gotten to where he is today will both surprise and delight.
We would like to share with listeners in advance that the sound quality in this episode varies due to some technical difficulties. VicNoTill is a farmer-based, grassroots organisation of Farmers Helping Farmers, and although we are proud to be at the forefront of change and systems thinking, we are honest and open about the challenges along the way – mastering the art of podcasting equipment is one!

VicNoTill is proud to re-release what was our second episode of Farmers Helping Farmers The Podcast for those who may have missed it!
Dan Fox sat down with Graeme Sait during VicNoTill's 2022 annual conference Carbon Power to record what continues to be one of our most popular episodes On Why Nutrition Rules.
Graeme knows so much about growing nutritious food and we’ve only crammed in a tiny portion of what he knows into this conversation! Three years on, and everything Graeme shares in this podcast remains as relevant and true as ever.
VicNoTill is also sharing a whole range of other resources we have with Graeme Sait on our website as we're sure listening to this will spark your interest in wanting to know more!

VicNoTill president Michael Gooden describes stepping intothe paddocks of broadacre cropping farmer Brendan 'Patto' Pattison at Marrar NSW, as like stepping 10-15 years into the future and seeing what broadacre cropping systems have the potential to become.
Michael sits in the tractor, ute and walks through Patto's paddocks for this Farmers Helping Farmers episode that brings real farm life to your ears, learning more about cropping and soil health in just over an hour than what he could in a decade.
"Whenever I visit Patto on farm, am blown away bywhat he’s doing and how far he’s taken it,” Michael says. “He is a quiet achiever and a true innovator. He is deeply knowledgeable about systems farming and where he wants to take his. In his own quiet way he has contributed a lot, not only to VicNoTill, but to Australian agriculture as a whole.”
Brendan has a long history with innovation, being the first in their district in the NSW Riverina to use a disc seeder in 2007 as a way to gain more groundcover.
He started minimum till 10 years prior to this, and gradually phased out sheep to go 100% cropping. He took a 'whole of system' approach to introducing the disc and has maintained that focus ever since.
It has taken time for their system to click into placeand he says it has been a ‘pretty slow’ journey for the dual benefit of improving soil quality without compromising profitability.
After joining the board, Patto made big steps forward in his system by dropping synthetics out and putting more focus on biology. He says being involved with VicNoTill continually inspires him to further tweak his system and trial new things.
Patto was a VicNoTill board member from 2018-2024. An indepth look at his farming system features in Issue 74 of VicNoTill's member magazine From the Ground Up. His presentation at the VicNoTill Carbon Power conference is available to watch on VicNoTill's You Tube channel.