Farm project encourages native restoration

The 53-hectare property - now a registered charity - is managed by environmental scientist Tim Jarvis, who was a guest speaker at a recent agrifood workshop in Hahndorf.

"Australia is one of seven countries responsible for more than half of global biodiversity loss," he said.

"We are also one of the most climate-exposed developed countries in the world. Our extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.

"But our energy-generating opportunities are compelling. Australia will inevitably become a renewable energy superpower, in solar, wind, goethermal, while on farms - biogas, bioethanol, biomass. While farming is becoming more technologically advanced, more of the energy burden is being placed on agriculture."

Tim said the Forktree Project aimed to work through some of the opportunities for change.

"We may only have a small amount of country, but we want to become an example as to what is possible," he said.

"Up to 75 per cent of Australian farm businesses are small to medium-sized and although they only occupy 10pc of the land, they punch above their weight in terms of their tree-planting and biodiversity potential, as many are located in coastal areas with high rainfall and good soil types."

Tim bought the heavily-degraded property three years ago as he wanted to provide a "real time" example of "what can happen in terms of land restoration".

"There was no biodiversity here, plus about 3000 tonnes of building rubble was left behind by the previous owner," he said.

"We turned that waste into a positive however, by recycling it on-farm, through track construction, retaining walls and building pads.

"We also spend a lot of time growing native plants in our nursery - 41 species - many of them food-based, working together with the local Aboriginal people.

"There is almost unlimited opportunities to generate income from the farm, while establishing better connection to country for Aboriginal people, as well as re-establishing habitat that is much needed on the property."

The plan is to rewild 50ha of the farm with about 20,000 native trees and shrubs.

"The native vegetation will sequester tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2, and we can derive carbon revenue from that, while also storing carbon in the soil," he said.

"We want to show local farmers that income can be derived from doing things like this, in addition to helping to rebuild habitat, sequester carbon and make their properties more climate resilient."

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Tim showcased the off-grid property and the technologies being used during a recent agtech bus tour.

This included an extensive tank system, solar-powered irrigation pumps, while a long-range wi-fi access network is providing data from soil moisture and temperature probes and potentially rainfall/weather gauges in the future across the nursery and orchard.

"We also plan to use Galcon cloud-based irrigation controllers, which allow us to run multiple irrigation lines with different moisture levels for optimal growth rates of native plants," he said.

"Any seedlings planted also only get a 10-litre water in their first summer, after which they're left to establish roots for stronger survival.

"We have already planted more than 11,000 native trees and shrubs, erected kangaroo-proof fencing on our boundary, put in 800,000L of rainwater storage, removed weeds and introduced species accumulated over the past 180 years, and have begun converting one of the large sheds into a sustainability education centre."

Tim said they were fully transparent in the information they have gathered.

"Anyone that has an interest in how we plan to do things better here or wish to follow suit has access to all of our data," he said.

"We are surrounded by dairy and sheep properties here, that we hope to one day better connect with each other, to rewild even small pockets of their properties to create biodiversity corridors and stepping stones for native wildlife.

"For farmers, simple vegetation corridors, or 'wind breaks', are extremely beneficial as they reduce the speed of the wind across paddocks, which reduces evaporation rates and extends the longevity of feed sources, while also providing shelter in both summer and winter, and improving the survivability of livestock."