Soils For Life

Grant Williams is a dairy farmer at Hallora in West Gippsland, Victoria, where he and his wife Leesa run Willora Farms - an almost 600-cow operation across 430 hectares. He has been a generous and engaged contributor to the dairy community for many years, and previously served on the Board and as Chair of GippsDairy.
Despite having been an early adopter of robotic milking, Grant describes himself as cautious about making changes on the farm. Over the past decade, however, he has made a change that many dairy farmers wouldn’t dream of, transitioning the whole farm to multispecies pastures, and in the last four years, cutting out all synthetic fertilisers.
In this episode, Grant describes how he ‘fell into’ multispecies pastures, how his early trials didn’t work out the way he hoped, and how he eventually became confident that he could profitably roll out multispecies across the whole farm.
Links and resources:
Soikee machine - soilkee.com.au 

Soils for Life’s dairy resources and activities - soilsforlife.org.au/dairy-resilience-project

If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you - reach out on social media or at info@soilsforlife.org.au.

Dr Paul Horne is an award winning entomologist and founder of integrated pest management consultancy IPM Technologies. He began his career at the Victorian Department of Agriculture in the mid-1980s, his work has been published across scientific journals and industry platforms, and he has written several books on insects and pest management.
Paul’s work focuses on supporting adoption of IPM strategies to manage invertebrate pests in a wide range of crops including cut-flowers, berries, vegetables, tree and vine crops, nurseries, broad-acre crops and pastures.
As our new initiative to support fruit and nut growers kicks off, I wanted to talk with Paul about the state of play with integrated pest management, and what he has found works well to support adoption of IPM in perennial horticulture.
If you’re involved in perennial horticulture, check out our new Orchard Resilience Project. With funding from the Australian Government’s Climate-smart Agriculture Program, we’re working over the next three years with perennial horticulture growers across Australia to strengthen soil health and landscape function in tree and vine crops.
This episode was recorded live from the Grounded festival in Victoria. Enjoy!
Links and resources:
IPM technologies

Soils for Life Orchard Resilience Project

If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you - reach out on social media or at info@soilsforlife.org.au.

Graeme Hand is a holistic land management and grazing educator based near Bairnsdale, Victoria, where he has farmed for more than 35 years. He came to the land via an unlikely route, a decade as an industrial chemist, before applying that scientific background to regenerative agriculture. A Certified Holistic Management educator and Board member of Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania, Graeme has been supporting farmers in adopting regenerative grazing techniques since 1996, and has spent the better part of three decades helping farming businesses rebuild topsoil, restore pasture, improve the water cycle and strengthen their resilience to a changing climate.
At the heart of Graeme's work is a conviction that lasting change on the land starts with the decisions made each day in the paddock, with ‘safe to fail’ trials at the heart of his approach. As Graeme explains in this episode, trials are the key strategy that enables farmers to manage the complexity of biological approaches to grazing. It was a pleasure to record this episode with Graeme, live from the Grounded festival in Victoria, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.
** Keep an eye out for our new grazing practice guide, which will be launched on the 20th of May at a special field day and launch event in Mundarlo NSW. Details and registrations via soilsforlife.org.au/events/ **
Links and resources:
Hand for the Land: Heaps of resources and advice from Graeme Hand’s holistic land management and training consultancy

Monitoring ecological indicators of rangeland functional integrity and their relation to biodiversity at local to regional scales: Study mentioned in this episode, authored by David Tongway and others

If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you - reach out on social media or at info@soilsforlife.org.au.

Find out more and register for the special event to launch our Introductory Guide to Grazing for Soil and Landscape Health, on 20 May at Nick Austin’s farm in Mundarlo, NSW (near Wagga) - events.humanitix.com/grazinglaunchfieldday
This episode was recorded live at the third Grounded Festival at Yan Yan Gurt West farm in Victoria’s Otways. One of my highlights of the festival was hearing from third-generation New Zealand dairy farmer Gavin Fisher. Although, dairy is only the tip of the iceberg of Gavin’s farm. He also raises deer, chickens and ducks, and bees. The pastures are multi-species, but every paddock is also surrounded by diverse plantings of trees and shrubs, including fruit and nut trees, and medicinal plants for the cows.
This is the product of a decades-long process through which Gavin has steadily transformed his family’s farm from a flat, treeless series of paddocks, into a diverse and multi-layered production system. With the principle of biological diversity and synergy at the centre of his vision, and farming deeper and higher rather than expanding his land area, Gavin has created a low cost, minimal input, highly resilient and profitable enterprise that is filled with life:
Links and resources:
Gavin’s Instagram - www.instagram.com/off_the_planet_organics

Gavin’s LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-fisher-a28b8280

If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you - reach out on social media or at info@soilsforlife.org.au.

What happens when a commercial dairy farm runs regenerative and conventional systems side-by-side, and measures the results?
In this episode, Clare Buchanan from Align Farms shares insights from an ongoing trial in Mid Canterbury, New Zealand. Half the farm is managed conventionally, while the other half uses diverse pastures, lower synthetic inputs and a different approach to grazing and stocking. The aim has been to test how these systems perform in the same conditions, across production, environment and profitability.
Clare talks through what they’ve been observing in the five years the trial has been running, including pasture production without synthetic nitrogen, how soil biology is tracking, and what they’ve learned about pasture diversity over time. Early research is also pointing to differences in milk quality, with links between pasture composition and fatty acids and plant compounds in the milk.
Financial performance is a key part of the trial. The regenerative system is currently profitable, but not yet matching the conventional side, largely due to lower stocking rates and production. As input costs shift and the system continues to evolve, that gap is something they’re watching closely.
Clare reflects on what they would do differently, what still isn’t clear, and where there may be opportunities for farmers looking to test similar approaches on their own farms.
Links and resources:

Find out more about the trial and Align Farms here: https://alignfarms.co.nz/

Lincoln University study, Regenerative Farming Enhances Human Health Benefits of Milk and Yoghurt in New Zealand Dairy Systems, 2025, https://www.mdpi.com/2624-862X/6/4/39
If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episodes or guests, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out on social media or at info@soilsforlife.org.au.