Our guest speaker at the BSFG General Meeting held on Thursday November 23, 2023, was Rachel de Lastic. The title of Rachel's presentation was “Regenerative Agriculture and Soil Health".
Rachel informed the meeting how she had been influenced to pursue her interest in soil health. She obtained her honours degree at the University of Queensland completing a Bachelor of Environmental Science (Hons), Soil Sciences 2015 – 2019. Rachel talked about the honours project she worked on looking at the degradation of soil aggregates in Vietnam and Cambodia due to intensive cultivation of maize. To counter this soil degradation fruit tree plantations were introduced which not only resulted in improved soil aggregates but also provided income.
Rachel worked to produce food where plant diversity was key to a resilient and productive farming system.
In pursuing her passion about maintaining soil health through the implementation of sustainable farming practices Rachel is now working at Soil Land Food-Ecological Agriculture, https://soillandfood.com.au/. She described one revegetation project to plant 8000 trees on a property.
One of Rachel's slides provided an image and definition of Ecology; “Ecology is the study of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem and biosphere level.”
Being an enthusiastic hands-on person Rachel demonstrated some practical techniques, termed HASH-Holistic Assessment of Soil Health, which can be used to assess soil health such as by measuring soil pH and conducting a water infiltration test.
Soil Land Food offer training courses and there are some online resources at https://soillandfood.com.au/soils/, with for instance, a video on how to do the Water Infiltration Test. These Soil videos mention a RASH Manual, A landholder’s guide to the Rapid Assessment of Soil Health. This guide can be downloaded from https://cdn.environment.sa.gov.au/landscape/docs/ep/rapid_assessment_of_soil_health_rash_manual.pdf. Another version at https://gmln.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/RASH-manual_web.pdf.
Rachel's enthusiastic presentation was well received by members and the meeting ended with further discussion and networking over supper.
Peter Maddock
Rachel informed the meeting how she had been influenced to pursue her interest in soil health. She obtained her honours degree at the University of Queensland completing a Bachelor of Environmental Science (Hons), Soil Sciences 2015 – 2019. Rachel talked about the honours project she worked on looking at the degradation of soil aggregates in Vietnam and Cambodia due to intensive cultivation of maize. To counter this soil degradation fruit tree plantations were introduced which not only resulted in improved soil aggregates but also provided income.
Rachel worked to produce food where plant diversity was key to a resilient and productive farming system.
In pursuing her passion about maintaining soil health through the implementation of sustainable farming practices Rachel is now working at Soil Land Food-Ecological Agriculture, https://soillandfood.com.au/. She described one revegetation project to plant 8000 trees on a property.
One of Rachel's slides provided an image and definition of Ecology; “Ecology is the study of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem and biosphere level.”
Being an enthusiastic hands-on person Rachel demonstrated some practical techniques, termed HASH-Holistic Assessment of Soil Health, which can be used to assess soil health such as by measuring soil pH and conducting a water infiltration test.
Soil Land Food offer training courses and there are some online resources at https://soillandfood.com.au/soils/, with for instance, a video on how to do the Water Infiltration Test. These Soil videos mention a RASH Manual, A landholder’s guide to the Rapid Assessment of Soil Health. This guide can be downloaded from https://cdn.environment.sa.gov.au/landscape/docs/ep/rapid_assessment_of_soil_health_rash_manual.pdf. Another version at https://gmln.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/RASH-manual_web.pdf.
Rachel's enthusiastic presentation was well received by members and the meeting ended with further discussion and networking over supper.
Peter Maddock
RSS Feed
