The Lomandra Manifesto

Why there must be an ecology-based agriculture

Agriculture is the interface between the Earth and people, who utterly
depend on the soil for their survival.

Done poorly, as it has been for much of history across many landscapes,
agriculture is destructive—not because farming is inherently a destructive
act, but due to ignorance, poor decisions, and flawed notions of the rights of
land ownership.

Done well, agriculture is regenerative, a process that can operate parallel to

nature in delivering fundamental human needs while contributing to the
health of the planet.

“Industrial agriculture”, since WWII the dominant technology-driven farming

culture of the North, works within a curious paradox. In the creation of food,
a core human necessity, it degrades air, water and the soil that food is grown
on. All of these areas are interlinked, so that in harming nature, industrial
agriculture is progressively reducing its future capacity to produce food.

“Ecological agriculture”—a catch-all phrase for agricultural methods that are

life-enhancing rather than life-suppressing—is based on the idea that food
production that degrades other natural necessities is inherently self-
defeating.

Ecological agriculture aims to align food and fibre production with natural
processes. Farm management becomes less focused on minimising nature’s
variables and seeks instead to work within natural cycles; the farm produces
not only food, but clean air, clean water, and progressively more fertile soils—
all of which contribute to the welfare of plants, animals and people.

History is full of individual farmers, and a few cultures, who have envisioned
and created a truly integrated agriculture; farming systems that are not only
productive and profitable, but which complement and extend the natural
world. The world today has thousands of such farmers, with a unique
historical perspective: the breakdown in the perception that there is a
difference between “agriculture” and “the environment”.
Agriculture is the environment, and always has been. How agriculture is
conducted determines water quality and quantity, the extent of habitat
available to plants and animals, air quality and the beauty of landscapes,
among other things.

Nevertheless, agriculture has always been thought of as separate to “the

environment”, demanding different political portfolios and different policies.
That false distinction has been erased by global warming and climate change.
These events demonstrate that there is no part of the planet untouched by
humans, no fenced-off “environment” that is somehow separate from farms,
or suburbs or CBDs. Preserving our environment depends on changing how
humanity everywhere interacts with the Earth.

Agriculture provides the most powerful tool for environmental change that
humanity has at its disposal. Most of Earth’s land surface is influenced by
agricultural activity. Creating an ecology-focused “agri-culture” that
acknowledges humanity’s need to sustain ecological health is the single most
important step we can take as a species.

There is a growing recognition that the agriculture of the past cannot be the
agriculture of the future. Fortunately, this understanding is dawning at a
time unlike any other in history, when new knowledge can be broadcast
across the planet in seconds.

The Lomandra network was established to foster this communication.

Lomandra provides a framework within which creative, regenerative
agriculture can be discussed, refined, re-thought and built upon.

This document attempts to explain why, and how.

The different faces of Lomandra

Lomandra was formed to connect people with the land that sustains them.
This isn’t an original idea. Many individuals, and the philosophies they have
founded, have been aimed at a better relationship between people and the
soil.

Rudolf Steiner founded Biodynamics in the early 1920s, because he believed

that the new agricultural practices then emerging were destroying the
capacity of food to aid people to higher spiritual insight. The Biodynamic
movement is still growing, largely because of the peerless quality of the food
the method produces.

The organic movement began in the 1940s, in reaction against “artificial

manures” which, the founders of organics (correctly) argued, were
diminishing the taste and quality of food. Organics burgeoned in the 1980s
with accreditation systems that gave consumers the ability to identify
chemical-free food.

Holistic Management had its origins in Rhodesia in the 1960s. Allan Savory,
a game ranger, and later politician and educator, found that rangelands
responded to management that mimicked the migrations of the great African
herds. Savory subsequently realised that most land management is
performed reactively, in response to circumstances, when it could only be
ultimately successful if conducted proactively towards “holistic” goals—goals
that balanced social, economic and environment outcomes. He developed a
framework for making decisions that asks that the ecological, social and
financial consequences of an action be accounted for. His philosophy has
become widely known as “triple bottom line” thinking.

Permaculture was developed in Australia in the 1970s, in reaction against

the monoculture systems that have defined post-WWII agriculture. The
system, now taught across the world, uses landscape engineering and plant
“guilds” to mimic natural ecology that requires a minimum of human
interference while being productive.

More recently, the work of Peter Andrews, a naturally-gifted reader of the

Australian landscape, has begun to attract attention. Andrews argues that
pre-European Australian landscapes functioned more effectively because
water was stored year-round in the soil. Using what he terms “natural
sequence farming”, he has demonstrated, among other things, that water is
best stored in the soil profile, where it can restore year-round flows and
health to waterways and underpin much greater productivity from farm soils.

New lines of thought have sprung up in the past few years.

Biological farming emphasises a living, fertile soil as the necessary basis for
successful agriculture. Management practices revolve around maintaining
life within the soil. Unlike organic farmers, practitioners choose to use
chemical solutions, if necessary; but biological farming recognises that soil is
a living community that is often damaged by chemical use. The approach is
proving to be an important bridge between conventional and organic
agriculture.

Interwoven with biological farming is carbon farming. The term identifies

agriculture that builds stable soil carbon. While all of the above approaches
may be considered carbon farming, the founder of the soil carbon movement
in Australia, Dr Christine Jones, regards perennial plant-based farming as
the most effective at building carbon. This approach aims to maintain a year-
round cover of perennial plants, preferably green and growing, while other
agricultural activities are conducted in and around them. Rotational livestock
grazing systems using perennial grasses have been proven effective at
building carbon; now under heavy development across Australia is pasture
cropping, a technique in which crops are sown directly into a base of
perennial grasses instead of bare ground.

Increasingly, farmers interested in ecological agriculture are practising

permutations of these systems. All are based on the same principle: that a
fertile, living soil is the basis of all successful agriculture, and indeed of
successful civilisations.

Lomandra: Why?

Lomandra was formed:

• to provide connections and enhance the flow of knowledge between the

different “ecological agriculture” philosophies.

• as a lobby organisation making the case for ecological agriculture as a

whole, rather than from the perspective of individual methodologies.

Lomandra is supported by leaders within several of the main ecological

agriculture philosophies.

Members recognise that:

- Like nature itself, ecological agriculture benefits from diversity. Different

approaches to ecological agriculture are necessary to suit different
environments and circumstances.
- All ecological approaches to agriculture are based on a similar foundation:
that for the benefit of humanity and the planet as a whole, agriculture must
be life-enhancing, rather than life-suppressing. Enhancing life includes
enhancing biodiversity above and below the soil, improving the water cycle
between atmosphere and soil, and producing food and social structures that
contribute to the physical and mental health of humanity.

- Agricultural politics are primarily influenced by sophisticated corporate

public relations machines with a vested interest in promoting conventional
agriculture. The different ecological agriculture approaches, dispersed and
focused on their separate development issues, have difficulty carrying the
same political clout. A collective voice for ecological agriculture is necessary,
one that unites farmers, innovators, scientists and the public.

- In agriculture, the spread of knowledge is unpredictable. Instead of

spreading outwards from an epicentre of innovation, knowledge tends to be
adopted in apparently random patterns across the landscape. Adoption of
ecological agriculture is further complicated because a smorgasboard of
different approaches available. A central information point is required; one
that allows farmers and their advisors to consider different approaches, and
compare experiences.

- In conservative rural environments, adopters of ecological agriculture

approaches almost universally find themselves isolated from their peers. The
ecological approach can be so radically different from conventional practices
that two practitioners from either side of the fence no longer have a common
language. Ecological agriculture needs a community that can talk in a shared
language.

Lomandra: The Name

Lomandra: the name

The first meeting of the group was held at Chris and Margot Wright’s grazing
property “yerrabinda”, on the Eastern Fall of the NSW New England region,
in late 2007. A defining feature of pastures in the area is a dryland rush of
the Lomandra family. Large sums of money, and thousands of litres of
chemical, have been expended by landholders on eliminating the invasive
rush.

When the Wrights began to practice Holistic Management in the 1990s, they
began to consider Lomandra in a different light. Long rest periods between
grazing allows pasture species like clover to climb up through the rush.
Grazing cattle, seeking clover, also take a mouthful of rush, letting more light
into the plant and encouraging more pasture species to grow through it on
the next rest—and more rush to be eaten on the following graze. Today the
Lomandra population on “yerrabinda” is either steady, or in retreat, simply
by managing for a better pasture.

Along with the understanding that Lomandra, with its enormous root mass,
is holding carbon and moisture in the soil profile, providing a protected seed
bed for pasture species, and spoils winter wind flows over the landscape, the
Wright’s perception of the rush has changed from that of pest to just another
member of the paddock plant community.

To those at the initial meeting, this seemed a perfect micro-example of

ecological agriculture at work. Lomandra was born.

.../to be continued...