NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING
IN A NUTSHELL – by Jim Arnold
Before European settlement, rainfall rarely channelled into incised streams but spread across the landscape from interconnected ponds and swamps, often described by the early explorers, sometimes in chagrin. The slow drainage allowed it to soak in, and along with the evolved biodiversity, kept the countryside fertile and virtually drought-proof.
Due to our impositions since, all this has practically disappeared, Mulwaree R. (S. of Goulburn) now unique in that much of its meandering length still is of the chain-of-ponds type. Elsewhere the water quickly rushes away, taking topsoil with it, inexorably degrading what’s left into vulnerability to drought, erosion and salination.
Of course, impossible to restore the landscape to its original topography and native biodiversity, but Peter Andrews’ insight, integrated as his Natural Sequence Farming principles, strives to emulate the ancient natural system, on the two keys of hydrology and vegetation; fertility follows, without recourse to artificial inputs. Unmystical (beyond Peter’s admirable gift for reading groundwater flows) and summarised as:
1. Hydrology
a. Slow the flow
b. Spread the flow
c. Let it soak in
d. Conserve the moisture
2. Biodiversity
a. All plants beneficial
b. Symbiotic enrichment
c. Natural succession
3. Fertility
a. Spread nutrients
b. Cover ground
c. Slash for mulch
Hydrology
The drainage of the landscape over the floodplains was effectively step-wise, ie, terraced, with reedy bottlenecks between. The gully-drains now short-circuiting them are most in need of restoring to this benign state, essentially by slowing the erosive rush of water. Simply done, by emulating the former scenario in miniature; leaky (but rock-solid, ie, boulder) barriers, so that entrapped debris slows the current, allowing silt to settle and form the base from which vegetation grows, to further slow the flow. Typically, several of these need be placed to recreate the terracing, spaced so that the resultant back-pools reach the base of the next such weir. Eventually the silt accumulates to fill these ‘mini-flood-plains’, thereby restoring the surrounding ground-water-table to that degree.
Beyond the gullies, where the gradient threatens scouring and channelling by the runoff, light contouring, either by grading or windrowed mulch, gives it time to soak in.
Biodiversity
No plant is a weed to Nature; every one contributes to its soil health and fertility, especially in combination. Deep-rooting perennials assist water- and carbon-penetration; shallow-rooted annuals aerate the soil and provide carbon (mulch) for microorganisms and worms to convert into plant-food, and they all add protective cover against the weather. ‘Weeds’ which tolerate poor fertility build it to the stage where other more desirable species take hold and ultimately proliferate. The less-palatable ‘weed’ grants interim protection to the soil when others are heavily grazed, and by timely slashing, hastens its contribution to mulch cover. Often the ‘hayed’ offcut provides palatable (eg, thorns soften) and more nutritious fodder than traditional fare.
Fertility
The fertility-enhancements can be further augmented by recycling strategies; for instance, inducing stock to repair to the high ground (with shade, troughs, handfeeding etc) so that manure gets disbursed from there by the surface runoff.
Weathering by the sun not only dries out the topsoil but devastates the essential microbiota. Allied principle is to disturb protective cover (quick or dead) as little as possible – rip rather than plough.
Though these principles are commonsense, they face academic and bureaucratic orthodoxy. For instance, recipients of millions fruitlessly spent for a realistic remedy to salination, naturally discount Peter’s relatively-cost-free solution, based on freshwater-overlays.
Good news is that not only do post-offices now stock his “Back from the Brink”, but at cut-price $20, a convenient and irresistible bargain for those receptive to his plain-speaking wisdom.
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Natural Sequence Farming in a Nutshell
Moderator: webmaster
-
Shirley Henderson
- Posts: 356
- Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 4:03 pm
- Location: Thirlmere
question
Hello Duane, I love your summing up of NSF. I have a question about the weirs. As you are assisting the environment to get on with doing what it should be doing, how do you see the weirs? In my minds eye I imagine the weirs to be mimicking the large roots of trees. I have seen how willows and many other trees form long barriers in creeks and rivers with their long meandering roots. Sometimes due to erosion and water flow falling over, forming new barriers and of course always allowing the water to pass though somewhere. Usually uneven and not level . Is this what the leaky weirs are doing? I think I get it, but am I correct in thinking this way?
regards
Shirley
regards
Shirley
You got it Shirley, thats how it works.
Roots rocks sediment, it's a cycle that builds on itself. Laying down organic matter, undisturbed by hard hooves.
Moiture in the soil, green growth, transpiration providing cool, less heat stored, less evaporation, more moisture, it's a cycle.
Got to get it started.
Slow the flow, thats the way.
Start in a saline eroded waterway, create a dam, go downstream, create another, then watch....
See the animals and birds begin to play. Watch them breed. See mosquitoes first, soon you will have fish. Yes fish.... from where? Does it matter?
See your creek come to life, ducks then ducklings.
What next?
Keep watching, Keep building.
We have a whole country to teach, a whole people to reach.
Keep building. Show them, Show them.
Save our land.
Roots rocks sediment, it's a cycle that builds on itself. Laying down organic matter, undisturbed by hard hooves.
Moiture in the soil, green growth, transpiration providing cool, less heat stored, less evaporation, more moisture, it's a cycle.
Got to get it started.
Slow the flow, thats the way.
Start in a saline eroded waterway, create a dam, go downstream, create another, then watch....
See the animals and birds begin to play. Watch them breed. See mosquitoes first, soon you will have fish. Yes fish.... from where? Does it matter?
See your creek come to life, ducks then ducklings.
What next?
Keep watching, Keep building.
We have a whole country to teach, a whole people to reach.
Keep building. Show them, Show them.
Save our land.
Taken from www.naturalsequencefarming.com
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING (NSF)
Introduction
Peter Andrews, is a third generation farmer who has been involved in farming and horse breeding for 60 years. He believes that heavy grazing of streambed banks following European settlement has, mainly by reducing vegetation, significantly increased stream velocities. This has resulted in gouging of streambeds and the lowering of water tables in floodplains.
Peter Andrews sees the effect of these changes in the landscape resulting in dry spells turning into drought conditions faster than they should, biodiversity being reduced, and in many instances fresh water that once sat on top of saline water being drained off, resulting in salt being released into the streambed.
Mr Andrews has developed, and is constantly refining, a system of farming based on his observations and interactions with a variety of natural landscapes. The insights he has gained are contained in the principles of Natural Sequence Farming (NSF).
While employing a holistic view of all the interactions in the landscape, Peter Andrews believes that the health of floodplains and their streambeds can be significantly restored by slowing the rate of water flow, especially after rain events, by a series of physical interventions in the landscape.
Implementing Natural Sequence Farming over a range of climatic regimes does not mean trying to take the landscape back to what it was pre-European settlement. Rather, NSF focuses on establishing how the natural system worked in a particular area and how it is working now.
Peter Andrews, uses some of the same natural techniques, and mimics others, to address soil and water degradation and loss of biodiversity. He does so by re-connecting natural sequences of activities within the NSF management approach.
Interest in the approach has grown recently. Record drought has highlighted the ability of NSF to contain salinity and generate water savings and minimise dependence on conventional irrigation extractions from streams.
A growing number of experts believe that this holistic approach to natural resource management can be applied on a day-to-day basis to property, catchment and landscape management across diverse regions, in harmony with the Australian environment.
Natural Sequences
Natural sequences that can be harnessed by informed management include the movement of grazing animals, birds and insects from valley floors by day to higher levels on the valley sides at night and the transfer of fertility with them. There is a gradual movement of nutrients and seeds back down the valley sides via the water cycle, vegetation and soil processes, constantly refurbishing the fertility of the landscape.
In the process, various plants collect specific substances and the plant communities change in predictable sequences. As part of the biodiversity of a property and catchment, these plants are also a part of multiple food chains and a key to enhancing fertility.
Nutrients contained in soil or water are mobile and can be quickly lost off-site. Nutrients contained in biodiverse living bodies are stable. NSF management keeps natural functions connected which allows for quick exchange and conversion of nutrients within ecosystems on properties.
Peter Andrews has found that even plants labeled as weeds can serve as pioneering species in inhibiting nutrient and soil erosion. They collect and supply essential substances for environmental health. Once slashed, fertility is built up and the weeds are replaced naturally by palatable grasses. To maximize production and conservation results requires a good understanding of interaction of the roles of clays and sands in the process.
This process is complemented by NSF property management when the initial erosion and fertility stabilising need has been met. The once degraded soils are then able to contribute to increased water use efficiency and optimal production levels through their increased organic content.
Areas such as floodplains, that collect large amounts of nutrients, can be harvested to redistribute some of the fertility. Like the daily migration of birds and animals, downpours flushing streams to a floodplain are a sequence in the periodic fertilisation and harvest cycle.
In this process, surface running water dissolves natural substances and collects sediments, algae, microbes and plant residues from all parts of the catchment. Re-connecting running water to the stepped land formation of the chain of ponds that used to dominate traditional Australian landscapes, slows water flow. This enhances the ability of growing plants, coupled with decreasing inclines, soils and sands, to filter the water feeding into streams running along the valley floor. This process, in turn, feeds plant roots from the sub-surface and caps saline groundwater from surrounding slopes by perching a freshwater lens above saline layers.
All substances are functional in this naturally managed environment. Salts managed as saline groundwater, where evaporation is excluded from concentrating and crystallizing the substances, allow plant, animal and water ecosystems to balance salinity in the landscape as a natural function. In this way a hillslope pasture or floodplain water meadow is re-created.
On the floodplain, hydrostatic pressure is maintained on the heavier lower saline layers though maintaining high freshwater tables in the perched chain of ponds. At the same time, the stream replenishes the floodplain and its meadows, through lateral transfer to the freshwater table just below the surface.
The floodplain is convex. The perched stream runs along the higher elevation or apex and the billabongs and backswamps are at the lower positions on the perimeter of the floodplain where it meets the valley sides. This shape is created by the natural flow of the stream and reinforced by heavier sediment being deposited on and near the stream-bed in flood.
A farming system founded on working with nature
In many regions of Australia, floodplains are disconnected from creeks and rivers and natural flow regimes. This leaves them unable to store water to support productive farming and the growth of riparian vegetation.
Many of today’s floodplains are incised with deeply scoured gullies and gorges. These are channels that expedite the swift flowing removal of much of the land’s fertility and the carriage of increasing amounts of salt. The soil and its nutrients are highly susceptible to leaching and erosion owing to the application of inappropriate agricultural and pastoral practices creating depleted soils and vegetation cover.
NSF takes a holistic approach to natural resource management by re-establishing the stream’s connection to the surrounding landscape and restoring floodplains as ‘sponges’. Although most landscapes have unique qualities, the principles of landform and management are the same. The physics remains constant.
Peter Andrews’ interpretation of the landscape accepts that, pre-European settlement, the soil’s natural salt content was kept in check by slow sub-soil movements of fresh water.
Under natural systems that are replicated by NSF, movement of fresh water is by surface and sub-surface flows. The surface flow is by the stream which is perched at the highest level of the floodplain on an accumulation of sediment. Surface water is buffered at each narrowed step position in the chain of ponds. Under NSF, this is achieved by a naturalised ‘leaky weir’ of rocks, sediment, trees, branches, reeds and grass roots mimicking the original natural slowing impediments to flows.
In floodplains in their pristine form, water is stepped slowly down the stream valley floor from one end of a catchment to the other. The stream valley floor is segmented with steps. These steps are where a new floodplain starts and the up-stream one finishes, and below which, large reed beds form on recharge areas.
The floodplains are soil, vegetation and water-filled ponds, forming links in a chain as they progress through each step down the valley. They are joined at each step where the valley sides narrow. Stream water travels through each linked floodplain as a sequence in the stream valley.
The stream meanders over each sequence. It covers the floodplain with sediments as it steadily descends the valley. Each floodplain has stream meanders, pools and riffles as well as wetland and water meadow filters.
Where an incised stream bed exists, during low to medium stream flows, the sides of the stream are contained by levee banks built up by flood deposits. The banks are protected from severe erosion by wetland plants such as phragmites, other natural grasses, and streamside trees and shrubs, which have colonised the area.
At the same time, hydrostatic pressure from the perched water table in the stream prevents the lateral intrusion of salinity from the floodplain even in low flow periods.
To recreate the chain of ponds effect, NSF uses small secondary diversion channels to reconnect streams to their floodplains. These channels braid out through the lush meadows to the edges of the floodplain and water then returns to the main stream through surface and sub-surface flows. They pick up peak flows that are diverted by the leaky weirs which maintain normal base flow to downstream properties.
During high flows, as water spreads across the floodplain in the braided diversion channels, some water is absorbed through sandy intake beds, recharging the groundwater lens above saline layers and just below the plant root systems.
Another portion of the surface water is carried in the channels towards historic floodplain terraces on the edge of the floodplain to refresh hollows and billabongs, facilitating fish passage in the process.
During flood events, the reed buffers along the stream sides and at the narrow ends, where each pond is joined in the chain, lay down to laminate the ground surface with their protective mat but are ready to grow upright again when the flows have subsided.
The hydrostatic pressure of water in the topped-up meadow and billabong storages on the floodplain prevents the plants on the floodplain from ‘drowning’ in the short interval when the water is at a high level. This process can mitigate the impacts of salt ‘slugs’ that may have been scoured from saline deposits in uplands.
The stream water that is impounded in the recharged groundwater lens within the floodplain soils also provides a buffer against drought. There can be a period of several years of thriving plant growth before the water is fully transpired and the soil, which is heavily shaded by extensive vegetation cover, dries out. In normal years recharge from flooding would arrive earlier to restore the groundwater.
As part of NSF management, the farmer can divert flows between channels to dry out a meadow area for harvest while starting to produce increased growth in a new zone of the floodplain.
Maximum natural outcomes with minimum financial and manufactured inputs
Peter Andrews’ NSF concepts are being applied at project sites as diverse as those featuring upland fast-flowing water courses, to broadacre cropping areas, dry gullies, and salt encrusted degraded lands as well as broad stream valleys and wetlands. Where human-induced impediments to natural growth and production are gradually replaced by the system built around the natural sequences of plants, animals, water and soils, properties have a solid foundation for increased profitability and long term sustainability. Industry analysts have been particularly attracted by the lush growth produced during drought conditions under Peter Andrews’ system.
Under NSF, natural water flows are reintroduced to alluvial soil plains. In many ways natural alluvial soil floodplains form the whole waterway down the valley whether through surface or sub-surface flow. In contrast, irrigation is the artificial application of water to the land. Invariably, the source of the irrigation water is from artificial storages and highly moderated streams with incised and eroded channels. These have generally been created by past poor environmental practices such as the removal of ground cover.
Owing to its base of natural processes, NSF achieves more sustainable outcomes than traditional pipe and pump irrigation systems as it does not incur large financial costs or create long-term environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and increasing salinity, as often occurs catchments with highly regulated stream regimes. NSF employs few imported or manufactured inputs such as pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilisers. In terms of financial capital and operating inputs, it is not an expensive system to introduce and it brings Greenhouse gas benefits through increasing carbon levels in the landscape.
The investment required is in training for the landholder to interpret the natural processes of the landscape and time spent by the farmer in ‘reading the country’ and applying the NSF principles to the particular property and landscape features of their region. It is no surprise to find that Peter Andrews grew up on a property near Broken Hill area and spent much time with his stockman father and members of the Aboriginal community learning to read country.
In most cases, Peter Andrews finds that resources available on-site only require intelligent redistribution for natural processes to work in favour of productivity and a reversal of human-induced environmental imbalance and degradation, as most of the naturally developed ‘infrastructure’ is still there.
In working with nature, NSF requires very low maintenance inputs. Where outside inputs are employed on a farm they can be targeted. Small amounts can be applied to specific areas or species where the system is temporarily out of balance owing, in most cases, to factors outside the property boundaries. NSF harmonises modern technology with natural plant progressions to achieve a resilient model of farming.
Where neighbouring landholders in a sub-catchment adopt NSF, even more rapid progress to increased profitability and environmental sustainability can be achieved, as NSF adopts a whole-of-catchment approach to farming.
NSF applied to Grazing
Under NSF, many forms of grazing are appropriate if a vigorous perennial plant community can be maintained. If cell-grazing methods are used, especially across valley segments from ridge to ridge, protection of the riparian zone needs to be considered. Over the medium to long term, weed control, nutrient balances and pest management can be managed by using Natural Sequence Farming methods.
The improved groundcover and reduced cultivation under NSF not only minimises farm costs but also reduces erosion, avoids soil compaction and maintains a soil structure with increased water holding capacity.
The use of water balances within NSF, brings the most increases in productivity and sustainability. Costs are also minimised, as water storage is in the groundwater lens rather than expensive above-ground dams, prone to siltation and with high evaporation rates when the water is needed most. Pasture is fed naturally from the roots rather than requiring extensive capital investments in pumps, pipes, irrigation gantries or feeder networks.
Traditional livestock husbandry methods can be complementary to Natural Sequence Farming. Under NSF, livestock are considered as a major tool in land management, including for transferring fertility and controlling weeds. However, feedlot methods of production and other methods of confining herds or flocks need to be well-sited in the catchment to utilise self-removal and self-collection of residues for fertility management.
Once the initial phase of re-establishment to natural sequences is well on the way, which in most cases only takes one or two years with low cost inputs, monitoring and the application of NSF principles in harmony with Nature achieves continuing sustainable production.
NSF applied to Agriculture
Under NSF, cropping is best suited to methods complementary to retaining significant areas of season-specific perennial pastures. If needed, cultivation may be confined to soils on valley slopes rather than floodplains but it can be worth exploring direct-drill minimum-till broadcast methods first.
Horticulture can be sited off flood plain areas, with careful transfer of valley floor fertility and water within the NSF system.
NSF harmonises well with organic approaches to producing premium farm produce for a growing domestic and export market. Increasing numbers of consumers and vendors are demanding products produced with environmentally sustainable systems coupled with farm accreditation and certified produce before acceptance.
The use of outside inputs or recycling farm produce on the property can be part of managed fertility transfer, both on the farm and in the sub-catchment. For instance, hay making of legume-rich pasture can be rotated around various areas of a property to work in with weed reduction needs and fertility management.
Irrigation is best-sited on valley floors although most areas managed with NSF require minimum supplementation of water transfers already naturally occurring on and beneath the floodplain.
Sustainable Landscape Outcomes under Natural Sequence Farming
Under Natural Sequence Farming, a sustainable farm landscape evolves where:
· Stream water is carried on the highest formed land on a flood plain, which includes not only the stream channel and wetlands but also water meadows fed by subsurface flow and braided channels.
· The wetlands and meadows evolve a form of periodic harvest through NSF practice to maintain ecological balance and promote biodiversity
· Farm managers factor in flood inundation as a beneficial part of the natural sequence.
· Floodplains are maintained by fresh water-filled subsurface flows through porous soil intake beds.
· Erosion is balanced by sedimentation.
· Polluted stream water is filtered as it moves through the chain of ponds, its wetlands, lush floodplain meadows, sandy groundwater intake beds and reedbeds along the length of the stream valley floor.
· Whole-of-farm ground cover is at a high ratio, with season specific perennial and annual plants maintained in a balance of natural sequences in turn confining weeds to a small percentage of the plant community.
· The farming system and livestock movement is harmonised with the periodic harvest sequence of crops, grasslands and water meadows to maintain habitat and nutrient balance in the landscape.
· Biodiversity is maintained at a high level with the diversity of habitats created by the natural vegetation and aquatic sequences.
Overview
Preliminary research suggests that Natural Sequence Farming offers a cost-effective approach for dealing with a national challenge – the management of landscapes that are prone to leach salts into water courses and to lose fertility owing to unsustainable cropping and grazing practices.
NSF has the potential to offer significant environmental, economic and social returns to landholders and communities.
Early adopters and entrepreneurs, such as Gerry Harvey, see Natural Sequence Farming based on re-creating the core of the past to manage the present, as the future foundation for Australian farming.
Paul Newell AND Garry Reynolds
August 2005
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING (NSF)
Introduction
Peter Andrews, is a third generation farmer who has been involved in farming and horse breeding for 60 years. He believes that heavy grazing of streambed banks following European settlement has, mainly by reducing vegetation, significantly increased stream velocities. This has resulted in gouging of streambeds and the lowering of water tables in floodplains.
Peter Andrews sees the effect of these changes in the landscape resulting in dry spells turning into drought conditions faster than they should, biodiversity being reduced, and in many instances fresh water that once sat on top of saline water being drained off, resulting in salt being released into the streambed.
Mr Andrews has developed, and is constantly refining, a system of farming based on his observations and interactions with a variety of natural landscapes. The insights he has gained are contained in the principles of Natural Sequence Farming (NSF).
While employing a holistic view of all the interactions in the landscape, Peter Andrews believes that the health of floodplains and their streambeds can be significantly restored by slowing the rate of water flow, especially after rain events, by a series of physical interventions in the landscape.
Implementing Natural Sequence Farming over a range of climatic regimes does not mean trying to take the landscape back to what it was pre-European settlement. Rather, NSF focuses on establishing how the natural system worked in a particular area and how it is working now.
Peter Andrews, uses some of the same natural techniques, and mimics others, to address soil and water degradation and loss of biodiversity. He does so by re-connecting natural sequences of activities within the NSF management approach.
Interest in the approach has grown recently. Record drought has highlighted the ability of NSF to contain salinity and generate water savings and minimise dependence on conventional irrigation extractions from streams.
A growing number of experts believe that this holistic approach to natural resource management can be applied on a day-to-day basis to property, catchment and landscape management across diverse regions, in harmony with the Australian environment.
Natural Sequences
Natural sequences that can be harnessed by informed management include the movement of grazing animals, birds and insects from valley floors by day to higher levels on the valley sides at night and the transfer of fertility with them. There is a gradual movement of nutrients and seeds back down the valley sides via the water cycle, vegetation and soil processes, constantly refurbishing the fertility of the landscape.
In the process, various plants collect specific substances and the plant communities change in predictable sequences. As part of the biodiversity of a property and catchment, these plants are also a part of multiple food chains and a key to enhancing fertility.
Nutrients contained in soil or water are mobile and can be quickly lost off-site. Nutrients contained in biodiverse living bodies are stable. NSF management keeps natural functions connected which allows for quick exchange and conversion of nutrients within ecosystems on properties.
Peter Andrews has found that even plants labeled as weeds can serve as pioneering species in inhibiting nutrient and soil erosion. They collect and supply essential substances for environmental health. Once slashed, fertility is built up and the weeds are replaced naturally by palatable grasses. To maximize production and conservation results requires a good understanding of interaction of the roles of clays and sands in the process.
This process is complemented by NSF property management when the initial erosion and fertility stabilising need has been met. The once degraded soils are then able to contribute to increased water use efficiency and optimal production levels through their increased organic content.
Areas such as floodplains, that collect large amounts of nutrients, can be harvested to redistribute some of the fertility. Like the daily migration of birds and animals, downpours flushing streams to a floodplain are a sequence in the periodic fertilisation and harvest cycle.
In this process, surface running water dissolves natural substances and collects sediments, algae, microbes and plant residues from all parts of the catchment. Re-connecting running water to the stepped land formation of the chain of ponds that used to dominate traditional Australian landscapes, slows water flow. This enhances the ability of growing plants, coupled with decreasing inclines, soils and sands, to filter the water feeding into streams running along the valley floor. This process, in turn, feeds plant roots from the sub-surface and caps saline groundwater from surrounding slopes by perching a freshwater lens above saline layers.
All substances are functional in this naturally managed environment. Salts managed as saline groundwater, where evaporation is excluded from concentrating and crystallizing the substances, allow plant, animal and water ecosystems to balance salinity in the landscape as a natural function. In this way a hillslope pasture or floodplain water meadow is re-created.
On the floodplain, hydrostatic pressure is maintained on the heavier lower saline layers though maintaining high freshwater tables in the perched chain of ponds. At the same time, the stream replenishes the floodplain and its meadows, through lateral transfer to the freshwater table just below the surface.
The floodplain is convex. The perched stream runs along the higher elevation or apex and the billabongs and backswamps are at the lower positions on the perimeter of the floodplain where it meets the valley sides. This shape is created by the natural flow of the stream and reinforced by heavier sediment being deposited on and near the stream-bed in flood.
A farming system founded on working with nature
In many regions of Australia, floodplains are disconnected from creeks and rivers and natural flow regimes. This leaves them unable to store water to support productive farming and the growth of riparian vegetation.
Many of today’s floodplains are incised with deeply scoured gullies and gorges. These are channels that expedite the swift flowing removal of much of the land’s fertility and the carriage of increasing amounts of salt. The soil and its nutrients are highly susceptible to leaching and erosion owing to the application of inappropriate agricultural and pastoral practices creating depleted soils and vegetation cover.
NSF takes a holistic approach to natural resource management by re-establishing the stream’s connection to the surrounding landscape and restoring floodplains as ‘sponges’. Although most landscapes have unique qualities, the principles of landform and management are the same. The physics remains constant.
Peter Andrews’ interpretation of the landscape accepts that, pre-European settlement, the soil’s natural salt content was kept in check by slow sub-soil movements of fresh water.
Under natural systems that are replicated by NSF, movement of fresh water is by surface and sub-surface flows. The surface flow is by the stream which is perched at the highest level of the floodplain on an accumulation of sediment. Surface water is buffered at each narrowed step position in the chain of ponds. Under NSF, this is achieved by a naturalised ‘leaky weir’ of rocks, sediment, trees, branches, reeds and grass roots mimicking the original natural slowing impediments to flows.
In floodplains in their pristine form, water is stepped slowly down the stream valley floor from one end of a catchment to the other. The stream valley floor is segmented with steps. These steps are where a new floodplain starts and the up-stream one finishes, and below which, large reed beds form on recharge areas.
The floodplains are soil, vegetation and water-filled ponds, forming links in a chain as they progress through each step down the valley. They are joined at each step where the valley sides narrow. Stream water travels through each linked floodplain as a sequence in the stream valley.
The stream meanders over each sequence. It covers the floodplain with sediments as it steadily descends the valley. Each floodplain has stream meanders, pools and riffles as well as wetland and water meadow filters.
Where an incised stream bed exists, during low to medium stream flows, the sides of the stream are contained by levee banks built up by flood deposits. The banks are protected from severe erosion by wetland plants such as phragmites, other natural grasses, and streamside trees and shrubs, which have colonised the area.
At the same time, hydrostatic pressure from the perched water table in the stream prevents the lateral intrusion of salinity from the floodplain even in low flow periods.
To recreate the chain of ponds effect, NSF uses small secondary diversion channels to reconnect streams to their floodplains. These channels braid out through the lush meadows to the edges of the floodplain and water then returns to the main stream through surface and sub-surface flows. They pick up peak flows that are diverted by the leaky weirs which maintain normal base flow to downstream properties.
During high flows, as water spreads across the floodplain in the braided diversion channels, some water is absorbed through sandy intake beds, recharging the groundwater lens above saline layers and just below the plant root systems.
Another portion of the surface water is carried in the channels towards historic floodplain terraces on the edge of the floodplain to refresh hollows and billabongs, facilitating fish passage in the process.
During flood events, the reed buffers along the stream sides and at the narrow ends, where each pond is joined in the chain, lay down to laminate the ground surface with their protective mat but are ready to grow upright again when the flows have subsided.
The hydrostatic pressure of water in the topped-up meadow and billabong storages on the floodplain prevents the plants on the floodplain from ‘drowning’ in the short interval when the water is at a high level. This process can mitigate the impacts of salt ‘slugs’ that may have been scoured from saline deposits in uplands.
The stream water that is impounded in the recharged groundwater lens within the floodplain soils also provides a buffer against drought. There can be a period of several years of thriving plant growth before the water is fully transpired and the soil, which is heavily shaded by extensive vegetation cover, dries out. In normal years recharge from flooding would arrive earlier to restore the groundwater.
As part of NSF management, the farmer can divert flows between channels to dry out a meadow area for harvest while starting to produce increased growth in a new zone of the floodplain.
Maximum natural outcomes with minimum financial and manufactured inputs
Peter Andrews’ NSF concepts are being applied at project sites as diverse as those featuring upland fast-flowing water courses, to broadacre cropping areas, dry gullies, and salt encrusted degraded lands as well as broad stream valleys and wetlands. Where human-induced impediments to natural growth and production are gradually replaced by the system built around the natural sequences of plants, animals, water and soils, properties have a solid foundation for increased profitability and long term sustainability. Industry analysts have been particularly attracted by the lush growth produced during drought conditions under Peter Andrews’ system.
Under NSF, natural water flows are reintroduced to alluvial soil plains. In many ways natural alluvial soil floodplains form the whole waterway down the valley whether through surface or sub-surface flow. In contrast, irrigation is the artificial application of water to the land. Invariably, the source of the irrigation water is from artificial storages and highly moderated streams with incised and eroded channels. These have generally been created by past poor environmental practices such as the removal of ground cover.
Owing to its base of natural processes, NSF achieves more sustainable outcomes than traditional pipe and pump irrigation systems as it does not incur large financial costs or create long-term environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and increasing salinity, as often occurs catchments with highly regulated stream regimes. NSF employs few imported or manufactured inputs such as pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilisers. In terms of financial capital and operating inputs, it is not an expensive system to introduce and it brings Greenhouse gas benefits through increasing carbon levels in the landscape.
The investment required is in training for the landholder to interpret the natural processes of the landscape and time spent by the farmer in ‘reading the country’ and applying the NSF principles to the particular property and landscape features of their region. It is no surprise to find that Peter Andrews grew up on a property near Broken Hill area and spent much time with his stockman father and members of the Aboriginal community learning to read country.
In most cases, Peter Andrews finds that resources available on-site only require intelligent redistribution for natural processes to work in favour of productivity and a reversal of human-induced environmental imbalance and degradation, as most of the naturally developed ‘infrastructure’ is still there.
In working with nature, NSF requires very low maintenance inputs. Where outside inputs are employed on a farm they can be targeted. Small amounts can be applied to specific areas or species where the system is temporarily out of balance owing, in most cases, to factors outside the property boundaries. NSF harmonises modern technology with natural plant progressions to achieve a resilient model of farming.
Where neighbouring landholders in a sub-catchment adopt NSF, even more rapid progress to increased profitability and environmental sustainability can be achieved, as NSF adopts a whole-of-catchment approach to farming.
NSF applied to Grazing
Under NSF, many forms of grazing are appropriate if a vigorous perennial plant community can be maintained. If cell-grazing methods are used, especially across valley segments from ridge to ridge, protection of the riparian zone needs to be considered. Over the medium to long term, weed control, nutrient balances and pest management can be managed by using Natural Sequence Farming methods.
The improved groundcover and reduced cultivation under NSF not only minimises farm costs but also reduces erosion, avoids soil compaction and maintains a soil structure with increased water holding capacity.
The use of water balances within NSF, brings the most increases in productivity and sustainability. Costs are also minimised, as water storage is in the groundwater lens rather than expensive above-ground dams, prone to siltation and with high evaporation rates when the water is needed most. Pasture is fed naturally from the roots rather than requiring extensive capital investments in pumps, pipes, irrigation gantries or feeder networks.
Traditional livestock husbandry methods can be complementary to Natural Sequence Farming. Under NSF, livestock are considered as a major tool in land management, including for transferring fertility and controlling weeds. However, feedlot methods of production and other methods of confining herds or flocks need to be well-sited in the catchment to utilise self-removal and self-collection of residues for fertility management.
Once the initial phase of re-establishment to natural sequences is well on the way, which in most cases only takes one or two years with low cost inputs, monitoring and the application of NSF principles in harmony with Nature achieves continuing sustainable production.
NSF applied to Agriculture
Under NSF, cropping is best suited to methods complementary to retaining significant areas of season-specific perennial pastures. If needed, cultivation may be confined to soils on valley slopes rather than floodplains but it can be worth exploring direct-drill minimum-till broadcast methods first.
Horticulture can be sited off flood plain areas, with careful transfer of valley floor fertility and water within the NSF system.
NSF harmonises well with organic approaches to producing premium farm produce for a growing domestic and export market. Increasing numbers of consumers and vendors are demanding products produced with environmentally sustainable systems coupled with farm accreditation and certified produce before acceptance.
The use of outside inputs or recycling farm produce on the property can be part of managed fertility transfer, both on the farm and in the sub-catchment. For instance, hay making of legume-rich pasture can be rotated around various areas of a property to work in with weed reduction needs and fertility management.
Irrigation is best-sited on valley floors although most areas managed with NSF require minimum supplementation of water transfers already naturally occurring on and beneath the floodplain.
Sustainable Landscape Outcomes under Natural Sequence Farming
Under Natural Sequence Farming, a sustainable farm landscape evolves where:
· Stream water is carried on the highest formed land on a flood plain, which includes not only the stream channel and wetlands but also water meadows fed by subsurface flow and braided channels.
· The wetlands and meadows evolve a form of periodic harvest through NSF practice to maintain ecological balance and promote biodiversity
· Farm managers factor in flood inundation as a beneficial part of the natural sequence.
· Floodplains are maintained by fresh water-filled subsurface flows through porous soil intake beds.
· Erosion is balanced by sedimentation.
· Polluted stream water is filtered as it moves through the chain of ponds, its wetlands, lush floodplain meadows, sandy groundwater intake beds and reedbeds along the length of the stream valley floor.
· Whole-of-farm ground cover is at a high ratio, with season specific perennial and annual plants maintained in a balance of natural sequences in turn confining weeds to a small percentage of the plant community.
· The farming system and livestock movement is harmonised with the periodic harvest sequence of crops, grasslands and water meadows to maintain habitat and nutrient balance in the landscape.
· Biodiversity is maintained at a high level with the diversity of habitats created by the natural vegetation and aquatic sequences.
Overview
Preliminary research suggests that Natural Sequence Farming offers a cost-effective approach for dealing with a national challenge – the management of landscapes that are prone to leach salts into water courses and to lose fertility owing to unsustainable cropping and grazing practices.
NSF has the potential to offer significant environmental, economic and social returns to landholders and communities.
Early adopters and entrepreneurs, such as Gerry Harvey, see Natural Sequence Farming based on re-creating the core of the past to manage the present, as the future foundation for Australian farming.
Paul Newell AND Garry Reynolds
August 2005
Another article from www.naturalsequencefarming.com
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING
Have we unknowingly weakened the resilience of our Australian landscape?
It is generally acknowledged that large areas of our productive heartland have been degraded.
Biodiversity, moisture and carbon retention are under major threat by many rural and urban landuses.
Our best land is being worked harder with increasing artificial inputs of imported fertiliser, fuel and chemicals.
Drought and climatic change are exacerbating the difficult situation.
There is increasing pressure on our limited water resources in the countryside and cities.
In most catchments we have unwittingly depleted the ability of the Australian environment to conserve water and resist drought. Many of our landuses are reversing natural processes and increasing salinity.
The loss of wetlands has been especially critical in this loss of resilience. Most of these natural filters and fertility distributors have disappeared through clearing, filling and draining.
Extensive clearing of natural vegetation and the erosion of soils have accelerated the destruction of the fertile chain-of-ponds system that dominated many landscapes.
Creeks that were frequently flowing streams are often little more than deeply-eroded drains quickly removing water from local landscapes.
Most of the time, soil and nutrients are whisked away with little more than a moderate downpour.
There is barely a chance for local creeks to refresh the fertility of hillsides or floodplains as they once did.
There is not enough time for streams to replenish the freshwater lens that keeps ancient salts below the surface of the floodplains.
Our catchments desperately need to be rehydrated to work properly once again.
How did the natural Australian system work?
Plants govern Australia’s natural land and water systems. They are aided by the natural lifecycles of animals, including us.
Streams were once the healthy arteries of a catchment system that carried the environmental lifeblood from waterways to floodplains and billabongs.
Rocks, branches and sediment carried by floodwaters accumulated at narrow points in valleys, creating ‘leaky natural weirs’.
From this point, the Australian environment had time to do its productive work through a series of natural sequences. These sequences involve a complex relationship between soils, moisture, plants and animals built up over thousands of years.
The sequences resulted in a steady environmental flow of water in the streams and wetlands that replenished the shallow watertable.
Natural reed beds teemed with wildlife and flourished with the latest arrival of fertile sediment from the streams.
In turn, the reeds cleansed the water flowing through the leaky weir to the next shallow pond or wetland in the valley chain.
The chain of ponds grew larger and more resilient, even to the efforts of early explorers who remarked on the dominance of what they called swamps.
From these shallow ponds, water flowed across the surface and through the soil. The floodplain and its billabongs were recharged with moisture and nutrients to enhance the biological diversity and productivity.
What happened to our resilient Australian system?
From a focus by several well-intentioned generations on short-term, hard-engineering, river-taming approaches we have inherited a long-term decline of the environmental resilience of the Australian landscape.
Quick fix measures have often worked against rather with the Australian environment’s natural processes.
The result has been reduced economic and environmental sustainability leading to threats to the future of our smaller rural communities and to the water supplies of cities.
Perhaps we have over-used production technologies initially developed for foreign environments without fully considering the impacts on the special features of our own ancient continent.
Natural Sequence Farming – the first step off the treadmill
Natural Sequence Farming offers an effective way of reversing the momentum of degradation.
It does so by applying observation and analysis to understand and work as part of the natural processes rather than against them.
Because of its low capital cost, Natural Sequence Farming is a viable approach for everyday farmers and urban dwellers.
Natural Sequence Farming offers farmers a way of getting off the treadmill of increasing costs of artificial inputs of fuel, chemicals and fertilisers but declining terms of trade.
Urban dwellers no longer have to suffer the frustration of watching precious water flowing out to sea while they wrestle with water restrictions.
What does the consumer want? Environmentally-sustainable systems of producing their food and fibre.
Traceability to the ecological source of production is increasingly becoming a mandatory requirement of international food chains.
Ecological branding is the new ‘clean and green’ but we know that much of our clean and green image is a myth when we look at the increasing injection of artificial inputs.
As we lose more and more of our best land to urban development and lifestyle pursuits the remainder has been worked harder.
Some say we’re creating agriculture on steroids and a biophysical desert in cities.
As a reaction, it is no surprise to find that the organics segment is the fastest growing market in food production and attracts a premium price.
More and more buyers are looking to be reassured of the environmental soundness of their purchases.
Ask the consumer – business as usual is not an option and they won’t buy it.
Natural Sequence Farming is based on holistic principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability.
Peter Andrews – a farmer helping mainstream farmers
Peter Andrews is a practical visionary. His development of Natural Sequence Farming is based on a deep knowledge of the past and an intense focus on the unique features of the Australian landscape.
Peter’s passionate focus on improving the sustainability of Australian farming has come at enormous personal cost.
But Peter retains the courage of his convictions because of the outcomes he achieves on the ground.
His system of Natural Sequence Farming equips farmers with a cost-effective set of tools and a way of interpreting the landscape to achieve increased sustainability.
After training with Peter Andrews’ approach, landholders can work in partnership with the natural processes of the Australian environment.
Relatively simple environmental sculpting can restore or mimic the original sustainable processes developed over thousands of years to reunite waterways with their floodplains.
This is the key principle in restoring natural systems and re-hydrating the fertile processes of the original chain-of-ponds system.
But there are additional benefits. Through slowing and directing water flow through local floodplains, a freshwater lens is perched in the soil just below the surface. It feeds the roots of vegetation and keeps down salt.
Organic matter and sediment from upstream now has a chance to accumulate and form soil rather than being whisked away down deeply eroded creek channels.
Under Natural Sequence Farming, livestock is managed in harmony with the Australian landscape to spread fertility from the floodplain to the hillsides to rejuvenate the whole farm landscape.
Seen through the eyes of Peter Andrews, animal enterprises, crops, pasture, fruit and vegetable growing are ripe for Natural Sequence Farming approaches.
Natural Sequence Farming enables farmers to leave a real Australian legacy to their next generation.
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING
Have we unknowingly weakened the resilience of our Australian landscape?
It is generally acknowledged that large areas of our productive heartland have been degraded.
Biodiversity, moisture and carbon retention are under major threat by many rural and urban landuses.
Our best land is being worked harder with increasing artificial inputs of imported fertiliser, fuel and chemicals.
Drought and climatic change are exacerbating the difficult situation.
There is increasing pressure on our limited water resources in the countryside and cities.
In most catchments we have unwittingly depleted the ability of the Australian environment to conserve water and resist drought. Many of our landuses are reversing natural processes and increasing salinity.
The loss of wetlands has been especially critical in this loss of resilience. Most of these natural filters and fertility distributors have disappeared through clearing, filling and draining.
Extensive clearing of natural vegetation and the erosion of soils have accelerated the destruction of the fertile chain-of-ponds system that dominated many landscapes.
Creeks that were frequently flowing streams are often little more than deeply-eroded drains quickly removing water from local landscapes.
Most of the time, soil and nutrients are whisked away with little more than a moderate downpour.
There is barely a chance for local creeks to refresh the fertility of hillsides or floodplains as they once did.
There is not enough time for streams to replenish the freshwater lens that keeps ancient salts below the surface of the floodplains.
Our catchments desperately need to be rehydrated to work properly once again.
How did the natural Australian system work?
Plants govern Australia’s natural land and water systems. They are aided by the natural lifecycles of animals, including us.
Streams were once the healthy arteries of a catchment system that carried the environmental lifeblood from waterways to floodplains and billabongs.
Rocks, branches and sediment carried by floodwaters accumulated at narrow points in valleys, creating ‘leaky natural weirs’.
From this point, the Australian environment had time to do its productive work through a series of natural sequences. These sequences involve a complex relationship between soils, moisture, plants and animals built up over thousands of years.
The sequences resulted in a steady environmental flow of water in the streams and wetlands that replenished the shallow watertable.
Natural reed beds teemed with wildlife and flourished with the latest arrival of fertile sediment from the streams.
In turn, the reeds cleansed the water flowing through the leaky weir to the next shallow pond or wetland in the valley chain.
The chain of ponds grew larger and more resilient, even to the efforts of early explorers who remarked on the dominance of what they called swamps.
From these shallow ponds, water flowed across the surface and through the soil. The floodplain and its billabongs were recharged with moisture and nutrients to enhance the biological diversity and productivity.
What happened to our resilient Australian system?
From a focus by several well-intentioned generations on short-term, hard-engineering, river-taming approaches we have inherited a long-term decline of the environmental resilience of the Australian landscape.
Quick fix measures have often worked against rather with the Australian environment’s natural processes.
The result has been reduced economic and environmental sustainability leading to threats to the future of our smaller rural communities and to the water supplies of cities.
Perhaps we have over-used production technologies initially developed for foreign environments without fully considering the impacts on the special features of our own ancient continent.
Natural Sequence Farming – the first step off the treadmill
Natural Sequence Farming offers an effective way of reversing the momentum of degradation.
It does so by applying observation and analysis to understand and work as part of the natural processes rather than against them.
Because of its low capital cost, Natural Sequence Farming is a viable approach for everyday farmers and urban dwellers.
Natural Sequence Farming offers farmers a way of getting off the treadmill of increasing costs of artificial inputs of fuel, chemicals and fertilisers but declining terms of trade.
Urban dwellers no longer have to suffer the frustration of watching precious water flowing out to sea while they wrestle with water restrictions.
What does the consumer want? Environmentally-sustainable systems of producing their food and fibre.
Traceability to the ecological source of production is increasingly becoming a mandatory requirement of international food chains.
Ecological branding is the new ‘clean and green’ but we know that much of our clean and green image is a myth when we look at the increasing injection of artificial inputs.
As we lose more and more of our best land to urban development and lifestyle pursuits the remainder has been worked harder.
Some say we’re creating agriculture on steroids and a biophysical desert in cities.
As a reaction, it is no surprise to find that the organics segment is the fastest growing market in food production and attracts a premium price.
More and more buyers are looking to be reassured of the environmental soundness of their purchases.
Ask the consumer – business as usual is not an option and they won’t buy it.
Natural Sequence Farming is based on holistic principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability.
Peter Andrews – a farmer helping mainstream farmers
Peter Andrews is a practical visionary. His development of Natural Sequence Farming is based on a deep knowledge of the past and an intense focus on the unique features of the Australian landscape.
Peter’s passionate focus on improving the sustainability of Australian farming has come at enormous personal cost.
But Peter retains the courage of his convictions because of the outcomes he achieves on the ground.
His system of Natural Sequence Farming equips farmers with a cost-effective set of tools and a way of interpreting the landscape to achieve increased sustainability.
After training with Peter Andrews’ approach, landholders can work in partnership with the natural processes of the Australian environment.
Relatively simple environmental sculpting can restore or mimic the original sustainable processes developed over thousands of years to reunite waterways with their floodplains.
This is the key principle in restoring natural systems and re-hydrating the fertile processes of the original chain-of-ponds system.
But there are additional benefits. Through slowing and directing water flow through local floodplains, a freshwater lens is perched in the soil just below the surface. It feeds the roots of vegetation and keeps down salt.
Organic matter and sediment from upstream now has a chance to accumulate and form soil rather than being whisked away down deeply eroded creek channels.
Under Natural Sequence Farming, livestock is managed in harmony with the Australian landscape to spread fertility from the floodplain to the hillsides to rejuvenate the whole farm landscape.
Seen through the eyes of Peter Andrews, animal enterprises, crops, pasture, fruit and vegetable growing are ripe for Natural Sequence Farming approaches.
Natural Sequence Farming enables farmers to leave a real Australian legacy to their next generation.
This is my personal take on NSF....the following is part of my McKell Nomination of Peter delivered back in 2006.
McKell Medal FULL NOMINATION
"It is absolutely essential to change the way we think. All other attempts at change will fail if we do not transform our thinking… A proper understanding of the way the world works requires people to think systemically, holistically, integratively and in a futures mode.”Lester Milbrath (1996) “ Envisioning a Sustainable Society’
INTRODUCTION
Peter Andrews is a systemic thinker, environmentalist, a farmer and thoroughbred horse breeder from “Baramul Stud”, Widden Valley in the Upper Hunter. He is a man who many believe is way ahead of his time. Peter has spent a lifetime on the land and his Natural Sequence Farming principles have been derived from a holistic understanding of the unique processes laid down in the Australian landscape. Peter has gained fundamental insights into the natural functioning of the land that leave him almost without peer. He has applied these insights in restoring his and other landholdings, to fertility levels that he says existed upon European arrival in this country. His unique NSF methods have been thought out integratively by looking at the properties of whole systems that emerge from the interaction of individual parts. This interdisciplinary, holistic approach is then applied with adaptive management practices to create a sustainable system of farming at individual sites.
On ‘Australian Story’ recently, Peter Andrews, backed by Dr John Williams¹, asserted that NSF methods were the SOLUTION to restoring the health of the Murray Darling. This potentially has the capacity to restore to present and future generations an enduring legacy.
Currently, Peter Andrews is engaged in overseeing the implementation of NSF techniques at “Baramul Stud” in the Widden Valley. He is also acting as a consultant to private and public sector parties interested in installing NSF in other parts of the country.
BACKGROUND.
Peter Andrews was born on a property outside Broken Hill and did not attend formal school until he was 13 years old. All the men were away at war and Peter grew up with the aboriginal stockmen who taught him how to ‘read’ the landscape, like the indigenous people would and to interpret it’s meaning. Later, he moved to Adelaide and then to Gawler in South Australia, to a small, degraded, salt-laden farm. It was here he began to explore the embryonic beginnings of NSF. Thirty years ago, Peter bought a larger, run-down 2000-acre grazing property called “Tarwyn Park”, near Bylong in the Upper Hunter Valley. He then set about testing his theories on a larger scale. With remarkable success, he converted a degraded, salt-ravaged landscape into a fertile, drought-resistant property. Peter Andrews has done what no person ever thought to do – he has reconnected the natural functions of streams and wetlands by “jump-starting” the Australian landscapes unique processes of managing drought, flooding and salinity.
The startling results of his ‘natural sequence farming’ have been achieved very cheaply, simply and quickly. Peter has recognised how important the chain-of-ponds system is to many landscapes but prior-farming techniques had basically destroyed the connection of many streams and rivers from the floodplains and aquifers. Peter’s NSF could ‘jump-start’ this system quickly and inexpensively. By 1976 Peter Andrews claimed that the model he had set up on “Tarwyn Park” was an example of a sustainable agricultural system subsequently verified by a CSIRO-led Expert Panel in 2002.
CONTEXT
Since the arrival of colonial settlers in 1788 we have changed the nature of our rivers and streams profoundly. The balance and resilience that existed in the Australian landscape has been depleting since that time. Our river systems did not always have a strongly defined channel or gully in them, what scientists now call INCISED. In fact, they were dominated by slightly convex flood plains and chains-of-ponds. The explorer, Edward John Eyre, as he was exploring through South Australia in 1841, complained of discontinuous water, or chain-of-ponds separated by massive reed beds.
‘NSF describes an environmental management system or EMS, applied in agricultural landscapes, which is based on an understanding of landscape and ecological processes and implementing practices to achieve sustainability. This unique and affordable rural community-initiated method incorporates environmental management as part of a holistic farming system to restore hydrological connectivity between the stream and floodplain. Degradation from past management practices, compounded by natural climatic extremes, has caused the drainage and incision of streams and severed the hydrological exchange.
NSF restores the balance and resilience in the landscape by a very simple process. ‘Natural Sequences’ describe the way in which degraded stream systems can be better managed by utilising driving processes to enhance progressive changes via natural succession that restore ecological function. The NSF approach aims to effect long-term improvement in stream health and floodplain sustainability by the rehabilitation of a pool-riffle or chain-of-ponds type aquatic habitat together with inundated floodplain wetlands. The re-creation of a distributary flow system is achieved through the use of in-stream flow-control structures and secondary floodplain channels, combined with the effect of riparian vegetation changes, which provide morphological complexity in a degraded stream. Re-instating the hydrological balance increases groundwater storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater re-charge and hence reducing saline groundwater discharge. This promotes the growth of pasture plants on the floodplain and riparian vegetation along stream banks.’ (Keene 2005.)
KEY NSF SEQUENCES
NSF seqences
1. create landforms that mimic the chain-of-ponds and swampy meadows by installing leaky weirs at choke points in the stream. This slows and de-energises the flow and facilitates lateral floodplain recharge from the shallow ponds along with
2.creating braided steams or flow lines above the leaky weirs to distribute water from ‘freshes’ to the break of slope.
3.return the natural water management function to the clay areas
4.the leaky weirs and braided streams send water out and over the floodplain creating a FRESHWATER LENS at the root zone. This freshwater lens sits atop the saline ground water and decreases SALINITY incursions.
5.this raised freshwater lens, or water table, sitting in the landscape has a ‘cooling effect’, like dew and encourages “short” water cycling
6.spreads fertility over the floodplain which can be harvested and spread to the uplands
7.increases plant and animal biodiversity
NSF has the potential to transform agricultural production in degraded landscapes, which virtually are ALL riparian systems on the Eastern and Western areas of the country.
“ The way we think influences what we see” Stephen Stirling (2004)
Peter Andrews’ methods are so at odds with conventional scientific wisdom, that for 30 years he has been dismissed and ridiculed. He has had to have the resilience of personality to focus on restoring the natural resilience of the Australian landscape.
PRESENT ACTIVITIES.
Currently, Peter Andrews is drawing the nation’s attention to NSF as a mainstream option of natural resource management. His present activities include engaging with the private sector in setting up a line of supply of produce from sustainable, NSF farming communities to the public.
He is also assisting urban developers and Local Government Councils in restoring degraded, eroded and incised creeks and developing sustainable landscape features. As well, he is in discussion with coal miners in the Hunter Valley to promote and restore degraded land on mining leases.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS SHOWN COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP IN ETHICAL LAND STEWARDSHIP AT LOCAL, REGIONAL, STATE AND NATIONAL LEVEL.
Peter Andrews came to national attention in June of this year when the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ was shown over two consecutive weeks. At the program's conclusion it received the greatest response to any story in the program’s decade long history.
The showing of that program was timely, as the drought had been prolonged and devastating. The producer’s were able to show to the vast audience Peter Andrews’ insights into how the Australian landscape dealt with drought. His property at “Tarwyn Park” was still cutting lucerne-hay four years into drought, without artificial irrigation, whilst all those properties around him were dry and barren.
In 2002, the then Deputy Prime Minister, The Honourable John Anderson, visited “Tarwyn Park” and was absolutely astounded at what he saw. When he got back to Canberra he immediately commissioned the CSIRO to gather a panel of interdisciplinary experts to report on NSF at “Tarwyn Park”. Dr John Williams from CSIRO’s Land and Water Division, headed up the team that produced the Expert Panel Report in July 2002 entitled The “Natural Farming Sequence. (Now known as Natural Sequence Farming, NSF.)
Both the Report and the ABC’s story showed that Peter Andrew’s had displayed Community Leadership in ethical land stewardship. The Panel said NSF is a successful and sustainable farming system, which has led to substantial agronomic and economic improvements.
At a local level, “Tarwyn Park” at Bylong has promoted NSF as a natural resource management technique. At a regional level Barramul Stud in the Widden Valley, which is owned by Mr Gerry Harvey, has also engaged Peter Andrews to manage and install his NSF principles. And currently, the Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority is looking very closely at the Widden Brook to analyse the effects so that they might be able to apply them more widely through the Hunter Region.
Peter has also shown leadership with the uptake of his NSF principles in the Southern Rivers region of NSW. Its Catchment Management Authority is taking a lead in supporting a trial/demonstration project using NSF techniques at Bungendore.
The opportunity exists at Gumlu near Townsville, to develop an existing registered water storage facility so that it takes many of the characteristics of an oxbow lake. Peter Andrews, has advised the owner on various options for landscape hydrology management. The food industry, supermarket and leading takeaway chains are taking an increasing interest in the cost-effective sustainable techniques which are being developed here on a large scale using NSF techniques.
At a State level the South Australian Government is showing increasing interest in NSF and the South Australian Farmer’s Federation invited Perter Andrews to a crisis meeting on South Australian agriculture.
In NSW, a presentation of NSF has been made to all the Catchment Management Authority Chairs at the NSW Parliament House.
At a national level, presentations were made to Australian Government’s Regional and State Natural Resource Management Facilitators planning conference in Melbourne recently. In coming weeks Peter Andrews will be presenting an outline of NSF to Senators at Parliament House, Canberra.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS DEVELOPED AND IMPLEMENTED HIGHLY EFFECTIVE AND INNOVATIVE EDUCATIONAL AND PROMOTIONAL PROGRAMS.
FIELD DAYS
Peter Andrews has conducted regular field days at both “Tarwyn Park” and “Baramul Stud”. Peter personally gives these to anyone who wants to see first hand his NSF principles at work and they are free to all comers.
Recently, I attended one such field day along with 70 others mostly from rural and farming backgrounds and Peter generously gave of his time and knowledge to everyone present.
POWER POINT PRESENTATION
NSF has helped develop a very powerful and informative educational and promotional tool with a 30Mb power point presentation. For the last 4 months this presentation has been given to hundreds of individuals, private sector opinion leaders and to many State and Commonwealth departments on request following the increased awareness arising from “Australian Story”.
TELEVISION: AUSTRALIAN STORY
By far the greatest and most highly effective and innovative educational and promotional programs was the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ which was aired over TWO weeks, on the 6th and 13th June 2005. The program was entitled “Of Droughts and Flooding Rains- Part1 and 2”.
To see information regarding Part 1 go to: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1383562.htm
To see information regarding Part 2 go to: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1388590.htm
This program will be repeated by popular accolade and there are further initiatives with DVD instructional techniques planned.
WEB SITE
Peter Andrews and NSF have developed a very informative web site, which has been a highly effective promotional and educational tool.
Web addresses are www.nsfarming.com – www.naturalsequencefarming.com -
NEW ABC BOOK
The ABC has released a major book about NSF and Peter Andrews in October 2006. To date over 50,000 copies have been SOLD.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS UNDERTAKEN OR PROMOTED RESEARCH OR THE APPLICATION OF RESEARCH FINDINGS THAT HAVE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE ABOVE CRITERIA.
The CSIRO-led Expert Panel produced their report in 2002 and determined that the implementation of NSF at “Tarwyn Park” addressed the following major environmental and agricultural issues:
„ low floodplain productivity;
„ elevated salt export;
„ salt intrusion into the root zone of floodplain soils;
„ channel erosion;
„ hillslope erosion;
„ low functional diversity of species;
„ poor nutrient retention in plant-soil system;and
„ altered surface-groundwater hydrology
The Panel recommended that a major scientific study of NSF be undertaken at “Baramul Stud” in the Upper Hunter. The outcome of this was a $1.5m Australian Research Council study commenced on “Baramul Stud” in 2004.
The consortium includes leading scientists from:
- Southern Cross University
- Australian National University
- Newcastle University
- NSW Department of Natural Resources in collaboration with the Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority.
Amongst some of the published papers on Peter Andrews NSF are:
· Anderson, P, Milne-Home, W A and Knight, M J, 1997, 'Hydrogeological evaluation of the natural farming sequence applied in the Bylong Valley at 'Tarwyn Park' and' Homeleigh' properties', Sydney, UTS, 130pp
· 2002 CSIRO Expert Panel “The Natural Farming Sequence”
· 2005 Keene, A., Bush, R., White, I., Erskine, W., “ A farmer’s approach to stream and floodplain management using ‘natural sequences’ “ see Attachments”
The above authors, Keene et al, state, “the NSF approach is a practical method for achieving stream health and floodplain sustainability…..This rural community-initiated stream and floodplain management method for sustainable landscapes has potentially significant social, economic and environmental value”.
McKell Medal FULL NOMINATION
"It is absolutely essential to change the way we think. All other attempts at change will fail if we do not transform our thinking… A proper understanding of the way the world works requires people to think systemically, holistically, integratively and in a futures mode.”Lester Milbrath (1996) “ Envisioning a Sustainable Society’
INTRODUCTION
Peter Andrews is a systemic thinker, environmentalist, a farmer and thoroughbred horse breeder from “Baramul Stud”, Widden Valley in the Upper Hunter. He is a man who many believe is way ahead of his time. Peter has spent a lifetime on the land and his Natural Sequence Farming principles have been derived from a holistic understanding of the unique processes laid down in the Australian landscape. Peter has gained fundamental insights into the natural functioning of the land that leave him almost without peer. He has applied these insights in restoring his and other landholdings, to fertility levels that he says existed upon European arrival in this country. His unique NSF methods have been thought out integratively by looking at the properties of whole systems that emerge from the interaction of individual parts. This interdisciplinary, holistic approach is then applied with adaptive management practices to create a sustainable system of farming at individual sites.
On ‘Australian Story’ recently, Peter Andrews, backed by Dr John Williams¹, asserted that NSF methods were the SOLUTION to restoring the health of the Murray Darling. This potentially has the capacity to restore to present and future generations an enduring legacy.
Currently, Peter Andrews is engaged in overseeing the implementation of NSF techniques at “Baramul Stud” in the Widden Valley. He is also acting as a consultant to private and public sector parties interested in installing NSF in other parts of the country.
BACKGROUND.
Peter Andrews was born on a property outside Broken Hill and did not attend formal school until he was 13 years old. All the men were away at war and Peter grew up with the aboriginal stockmen who taught him how to ‘read’ the landscape, like the indigenous people would and to interpret it’s meaning. Later, he moved to Adelaide and then to Gawler in South Australia, to a small, degraded, salt-laden farm. It was here he began to explore the embryonic beginnings of NSF. Thirty years ago, Peter bought a larger, run-down 2000-acre grazing property called “Tarwyn Park”, near Bylong in the Upper Hunter Valley. He then set about testing his theories on a larger scale. With remarkable success, he converted a degraded, salt-ravaged landscape into a fertile, drought-resistant property. Peter Andrews has done what no person ever thought to do – he has reconnected the natural functions of streams and wetlands by “jump-starting” the Australian landscapes unique processes of managing drought, flooding and salinity.
The startling results of his ‘natural sequence farming’ have been achieved very cheaply, simply and quickly. Peter has recognised how important the chain-of-ponds system is to many landscapes but prior-farming techniques had basically destroyed the connection of many streams and rivers from the floodplains and aquifers. Peter’s NSF could ‘jump-start’ this system quickly and inexpensively. By 1976 Peter Andrews claimed that the model he had set up on “Tarwyn Park” was an example of a sustainable agricultural system subsequently verified by a CSIRO-led Expert Panel in 2002.
CONTEXT
Since the arrival of colonial settlers in 1788 we have changed the nature of our rivers and streams profoundly. The balance and resilience that existed in the Australian landscape has been depleting since that time. Our river systems did not always have a strongly defined channel or gully in them, what scientists now call INCISED. In fact, they were dominated by slightly convex flood plains and chains-of-ponds. The explorer, Edward John Eyre, as he was exploring through South Australia in 1841, complained of discontinuous water, or chain-of-ponds separated by massive reed beds.
‘NSF describes an environmental management system or EMS, applied in agricultural landscapes, which is based on an understanding of landscape and ecological processes and implementing practices to achieve sustainability. This unique and affordable rural community-initiated method incorporates environmental management as part of a holistic farming system to restore hydrological connectivity between the stream and floodplain. Degradation from past management practices, compounded by natural climatic extremes, has caused the drainage and incision of streams and severed the hydrological exchange.
NSF restores the balance and resilience in the landscape by a very simple process. ‘Natural Sequences’ describe the way in which degraded stream systems can be better managed by utilising driving processes to enhance progressive changes via natural succession that restore ecological function. The NSF approach aims to effect long-term improvement in stream health and floodplain sustainability by the rehabilitation of a pool-riffle or chain-of-ponds type aquatic habitat together with inundated floodplain wetlands. The re-creation of a distributary flow system is achieved through the use of in-stream flow-control structures and secondary floodplain channels, combined with the effect of riparian vegetation changes, which provide morphological complexity in a degraded stream. Re-instating the hydrological balance increases groundwater storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater re-charge and hence reducing saline groundwater discharge. This promotes the growth of pasture plants on the floodplain and riparian vegetation along stream banks.’ (Keene 2005.)
KEY NSF SEQUENCES
NSF seqences
1. create landforms that mimic the chain-of-ponds and swampy meadows by installing leaky weirs at choke points in the stream. This slows and de-energises the flow and facilitates lateral floodplain recharge from the shallow ponds along with
2.creating braided steams or flow lines above the leaky weirs to distribute water from ‘freshes’ to the break of slope.
3.return the natural water management function to the clay areas
4.the leaky weirs and braided streams send water out and over the floodplain creating a FRESHWATER LENS at the root zone. This freshwater lens sits atop the saline ground water and decreases SALINITY incursions.
5.this raised freshwater lens, or water table, sitting in the landscape has a ‘cooling effect’, like dew and encourages “short” water cycling
6.spreads fertility over the floodplain which can be harvested and spread to the uplands
7.increases plant and animal biodiversity
NSF has the potential to transform agricultural production in degraded landscapes, which virtually are ALL riparian systems on the Eastern and Western areas of the country.
“ The way we think influences what we see” Stephen Stirling (2004)
Peter Andrews’ methods are so at odds with conventional scientific wisdom, that for 30 years he has been dismissed and ridiculed. He has had to have the resilience of personality to focus on restoring the natural resilience of the Australian landscape.
PRESENT ACTIVITIES.
Currently, Peter Andrews is drawing the nation’s attention to NSF as a mainstream option of natural resource management. His present activities include engaging with the private sector in setting up a line of supply of produce from sustainable, NSF farming communities to the public.
He is also assisting urban developers and Local Government Councils in restoring degraded, eroded and incised creeks and developing sustainable landscape features. As well, he is in discussion with coal miners in the Hunter Valley to promote and restore degraded land on mining leases.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS SHOWN COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP IN ETHICAL LAND STEWARDSHIP AT LOCAL, REGIONAL, STATE AND NATIONAL LEVEL.
Peter Andrews came to national attention in June of this year when the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ was shown over two consecutive weeks. At the program's conclusion it received the greatest response to any story in the program’s decade long history.
The showing of that program was timely, as the drought had been prolonged and devastating. The producer’s were able to show to the vast audience Peter Andrews’ insights into how the Australian landscape dealt with drought. His property at “Tarwyn Park” was still cutting lucerne-hay four years into drought, without artificial irrigation, whilst all those properties around him were dry and barren.
In 2002, the then Deputy Prime Minister, The Honourable John Anderson, visited “Tarwyn Park” and was absolutely astounded at what he saw. When he got back to Canberra he immediately commissioned the CSIRO to gather a panel of interdisciplinary experts to report on NSF at “Tarwyn Park”. Dr John Williams from CSIRO’s Land and Water Division, headed up the team that produced the Expert Panel Report in July 2002 entitled The “Natural Farming Sequence. (Now known as Natural Sequence Farming, NSF.)
Both the Report and the ABC’s story showed that Peter Andrew’s had displayed Community Leadership in ethical land stewardship. The Panel said NSF is a successful and sustainable farming system, which has led to substantial agronomic and economic improvements.
At a local level, “Tarwyn Park” at Bylong has promoted NSF as a natural resource management technique. At a regional level Barramul Stud in the Widden Valley, which is owned by Mr Gerry Harvey, has also engaged Peter Andrews to manage and install his NSF principles. And currently, the Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority is looking very closely at the Widden Brook to analyse the effects so that they might be able to apply them more widely through the Hunter Region.
Peter has also shown leadership with the uptake of his NSF principles in the Southern Rivers region of NSW. Its Catchment Management Authority is taking a lead in supporting a trial/demonstration project using NSF techniques at Bungendore.
The opportunity exists at Gumlu near Townsville, to develop an existing registered water storage facility so that it takes many of the characteristics of an oxbow lake. Peter Andrews, has advised the owner on various options for landscape hydrology management. The food industry, supermarket and leading takeaway chains are taking an increasing interest in the cost-effective sustainable techniques which are being developed here on a large scale using NSF techniques.
At a State level the South Australian Government is showing increasing interest in NSF and the South Australian Farmer’s Federation invited Perter Andrews to a crisis meeting on South Australian agriculture.
In NSW, a presentation of NSF has been made to all the Catchment Management Authority Chairs at the NSW Parliament House.
At a national level, presentations were made to Australian Government’s Regional and State Natural Resource Management Facilitators planning conference in Melbourne recently. In coming weeks Peter Andrews will be presenting an outline of NSF to Senators at Parliament House, Canberra.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS DEVELOPED AND IMPLEMENTED HIGHLY EFFECTIVE AND INNOVATIVE EDUCATIONAL AND PROMOTIONAL PROGRAMS.
FIELD DAYS
Peter Andrews has conducted regular field days at both “Tarwyn Park” and “Baramul Stud”. Peter personally gives these to anyone who wants to see first hand his NSF principles at work and they are free to all comers.
Recently, I attended one such field day along with 70 others mostly from rural and farming backgrounds and Peter generously gave of his time and knowledge to everyone present.
POWER POINT PRESENTATION
NSF has helped develop a very powerful and informative educational and promotional tool with a 30Mb power point presentation. For the last 4 months this presentation has been given to hundreds of individuals, private sector opinion leaders and to many State and Commonwealth departments on request following the increased awareness arising from “Australian Story”.
TELEVISION: AUSTRALIAN STORY
By far the greatest and most highly effective and innovative educational and promotional programs was the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ which was aired over TWO weeks, on the 6th and 13th June 2005. The program was entitled “Of Droughts and Flooding Rains- Part1 and 2”.
To see information regarding Part 1 go to: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1383562.htm
To see information regarding Part 2 go to: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1388590.htm
This program will be repeated by popular accolade and there are further initiatives with DVD instructional techniques planned.
WEB SITE
Peter Andrews and NSF have developed a very informative web site, which has been a highly effective promotional and educational tool.
Web addresses are www.nsfarming.com – www.naturalsequencefarming.com -
NEW ABC BOOK
The ABC has released a major book about NSF and Peter Andrews in October 2006. To date over 50,000 copies have been SOLD.
DEMONSTRATE HOW PETER ANDREWS HAS UNDERTAKEN OR PROMOTED RESEARCH OR THE APPLICATION OF RESEARCH FINDINGS THAT HAVE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE ABOVE CRITERIA.
The CSIRO-led Expert Panel produced their report in 2002 and determined that the implementation of NSF at “Tarwyn Park” addressed the following major environmental and agricultural issues:
„ low floodplain productivity;
„ elevated salt export;
„ salt intrusion into the root zone of floodplain soils;
„ channel erosion;
„ hillslope erosion;
„ low functional diversity of species;
„ poor nutrient retention in plant-soil system;and
„ altered surface-groundwater hydrology
The Panel recommended that a major scientific study of NSF be undertaken at “Baramul Stud” in the Upper Hunter. The outcome of this was a $1.5m Australian Research Council study commenced on “Baramul Stud” in 2004.
The consortium includes leading scientists from:
- Southern Cross University
- Australian National University
- Newcastle University
- NSW Department of Natural Resources in collaboration with the Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority.
Amongst some of the published papers on Peter Andrews NSF are:
· Anderson, P, Milne-Home, W A and Knight, M J, 1997, 'Hydrogeological evaluation of the natural farming sequence applied in the Bylong Valley at 'Tarwyn Park' and' Homeleigh' properties', Sydney, UTS, 130pp
· 2002 CSIRO Expert Panel “The Natural Farming Sequence”
· 2005 Keene, A., Bush, R., White, I., Erskine, W., “ A farmer’s approach to stream and floodplain management using ‘natural sequences’ “ see Attachments”
The above authors, Keene et al, state, “the NSF approach is a practical method for achieving stream health and floodplain sustainability…..This rural community-initiated stream and floodplain management method for sustainable landscapes has potentially significant social, economic and environmental value”.
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF)Overview by Dr John Williams
NSW Natural Resources Commissioner.
Introduction
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) is an agricultural system based on understanding landscape and ecological processes and implementing vegetation, land and water management practices compatible with these processes to achieve sustainability (CSIRO 2002). It was developed by farmer Mr Peter Andrews, on the property “Tarwyn Park”, in the Upper Bylong Valley in the headwaters of the Hunter River catchment, New South Wales.
Principles
There are 4 fundamental principles that underlie the NSF system, as advocated by Peter Andrews.
1. Restoring fertility held by nutrients and organic matter improves the biological function of soils.
2. Reinstating hydrological balance increases groundwater storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater recharge and hence reducing saline groundwater discharge.
3. Re-establishing natural vegetation succession through pioneer species promotes the healthy growth of native plant communities.
4. Understanding the hydrological and biogeochemical processes that drive the natural landscape system allows their management to restore ecological function.
Setting
Over modern time (<1,000 years), development of the landscape (drainage network and hillslope morphology, discharge of water and sediment) is contingent upon the factors of climate, vegetation, geology, relief, runoff and sediment yield. The most significant and widespread historical change to either the flow or sediment regimes of upland rivers is an increase in sediment inputs, through increased erosion (Young et al. 2001). Discontinuous streams or gullies, such as the ‘chain of ponds’ and ‘valley fill’ types, were once widespread prior to European settlement. Under natural conditions, vegetation changes diverted flows into perched palaeo (pre-European) distributary flow paths, or from one distributary to another. Flow regimes have changed in historical times with increased run-off, and small headwater streams have become more defined, incised and faster flowing. The drainage or incision of streams has occurred following degradation resulting from past management practices. Flow regimes have also changed during this time because of climate variations, resulting in long periods of flows above and below the longer-term average. What were once swampy meadows with chain of ponds have become well-connected and continuous drainage networks (Eyles 1977). This has lead to significant impacts on sediment load, base flows, salinity, groundwater recharge and riparian vegetation.
Benefits
The NSF approach can achieve stream health and floodplain sustainability by the rehabilitation of a pool-riffle or chain of ponds type aquatic habitat and inundated floodplain wetlands. This enables the recreation of a distributary flow system through the use of secondary floodplain channels and in-stream diversion structures, combined with the effect of riparian vegetation changes, providing morphological complexity. The perched nature of the distributary flow system can allow the hydrostatic pressure of fresh water to prevent saline intrusion.
The outcomes are raised bed levels, arrested bed and bank erosion, increased surface and shallow ground water levels, and creation of waterholes and backwaters in a pool-riffle or chain of ponds sequence.
According to the CSIRO Expert Panel Report (CSIRO 2002), the following major environmental and agricultural issues are addressed by the implementation of NSF:
• low floodplain productivity;
• elevated salt export;
• salt intrusion into the root zone of floodplain soils;
• channel erosion;
• hillslope erosion;
• low functional diversity of pastures;
• poor nutrient retention in plant-soil system; and
• altered surface-groundwater hydrology.
As a result, the benefits of implementing NSF can be described as:
• decreased salt fluxes;
• increased sedimentation;
• increased shallow aquifer recharge;
• decreased water velocities;
• maintained high water tables;
• effective subsurface irrigation;
• increased pasture productivity;
• increased soil organic carbon levels;
• increased residence time of nutrients;
• minimised soil erosion and compaction; and
• maintained soil structure.
Features
The implementation of NSF is evident as a combination of structural and non-structural management measures that have altered the water, salt and nutrient balances, and that have increased farm productivity (CSIRO 2002). The structural measures of NSF include:
• grade-control structures in the stream line;
• contour banks on the floodplain and at the hillslope-floodplain break of slope; and
• contour channels diverting water away from the stream line.
These structural measures provide increased residence time of water by diverting floodwaters from the stream to the floodplain, and hence increasing shallow aquifer recharge, and by decreasing water velocities in the channel and on the floodplain (CSIRO 2002). The management of the hydrologic regime allows substantial recharge, limits deep drainage, and allows maintenance of high water tables across the floodplain.
The non-structural measures include:
• avoidance of surface (spray) irrigation;
• avoidance of herbicide use;
• minimal use of chemical fertilisers;
• avoidance of ploughing on hillslopes;
• avoidance of storing water in dams on saline areas;
• minimisation of cultivation on the floodplain;
• redistribution of nutrients onto hillslopes and to the head of the floodplain; and
• grazing regime managed to promote a succession of pasture species from a dominance of less palatable annual broad-leaf species to a dominance of more palatable perennial grasses.
These non-structural measures provide increased pasture productivity, increased soil organic carbon levels, and increased residence time of nutrients (CSIRO 2002). The improved ground cover and minimal cultivation helps to minimise soil erosion, avoids soil compaction and maintains soil structure.
References
CSIRO (2002) 'The natural farming sequence.' CSIRO, Expert Panel Review, Canberra.
Eyles RJ (1977) Changes in drainage networks since 1820. Australian Geographer 13, 377-387.
Young WJ, Schiller CB, Harris JH, Roberts J, Hillman TJ (2001) River flow, processes, habitats and river life. In 'Rivers as ecological systems: the Murray-Darling Basin'. (Ed. WJ Young) pp. 45-99. (Murray-Darling Basin Commission: Canberra)
NSW Natural Resources Commissioner.
Introduction
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) is an agricultural system based on understanding landscape and ecological processes and implementing vegetation, land and water management practices compatible with these processes to achieve sustainability (CSIRO 2002). It was developed by farmer Mr Peter Andrews, on the property “Tarwyn Park”, in the Upper Bylong Valley in the headwaters of the Hunter River catchment, New South Wales.
Principles
There are 4 fundamental principles that underlie the NSF system, as advocated by Peter Andrews.
1. Restoring fertility held by nutrients and organic matter improves the biological function of soils.
2. Reinstating hydrological balance increases groundwater storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater recharge and hence reducing saline groundwater discharge.
3. Re-establishing natural vegetation succession through pioneer species promotes the healthy growth of native plant communities.
4. Understanding the hydrological and biogeochemical processes that drive the natural landscape system allows their management to restore ecological function.
Setting
Over modern time (<1,000 years), development of the landscape (drainage network and hillslope morphology, discharge of water and sediment) is contingent upon the factors of climate, vegetation, geology, relief, runoff and sediment yield. The most significant and widespread historical change to either the flow or sediment regimes of upland rivers is an increase in sediment inputs, through increased erosion (Young et al. 2001). Discontinuous streams or gullies, such as the ‘chain of ponds’ and ‘valley fill’ types, were once widespread prior to European settlement. Under natural conditions, vegetation changes diverted flows into perched palaeo (pre-European) distributary flow paths, or from one distributary to another. Flow regimes have changed in historical times with increased run-off, and small headwater streams have become more defined, incised and faster flowing. The drainage or incision of streams has occurred following degradation resulting from past management practices. Flow regimes have also changed during this time because of climate variations, resulting in long periods of flows above and below the longer-term average. What were once swampy meadows with chain of ponds have become well-connected and continuous drainage networks (Eyles 1977). This has lead to significant impacts on sediment load, base flows, salinity, groundwater recharge and riparian vegetation.
Benefits
The NSF approach can achieve stream health and floodplain sustainability by the rehabilitation of a pool-riffle or chain of ponds type aquatic habitat and inundated floodplain wetlands. This enables the recreation of a distributary flow system through the use of secondary floodplain channels and in-stream diversion structures, combined with the effect of riparian vegetation changes, providing morphological complexity. The perched nature of the distributary flow system can allow the hydrostatic pressure of fresh water to prevent saline intrusion.
The outcomes are raised bed levels, arrested bed and bank erosion, increased surface and shallow ground water levels, and creation of waterholes and backwaters in a pool-riffle or chain of ponds sequence.
According to the CSIRO Expert Panel Report (CSIRO 2002), the following major environmental and agricultural issues are addressed by the implementation of NSF:
• low floodplain productivity;
• elevated salt export;
• salt intrusion into the root zone of floodplain soils;
• channel erosion;
• hillslope erosion;
• low functional diversity of pastures;
• poor nutrient retention in plant-soil system; and
• altered surface-groundwater hydrology.
As a result, the benefits of implementing NSF can be described as:
• decreased salt fluxes;
• increased sedimentation;
• increased shallow aquifer recharge;
• decreased water velocities;
• maintained high water tables;
• effective subsurface irrigation;
• increased pasture productivity;
• increased soil organic carbon levels;
• increased residence time of nutrients;
• minimised soil erosion and compaction; and
• maintained soil structure.
Features
The implementation of NSF is evident as a combination of structural and non-structural management measures that have altered the water, salt and nutrient balances, and that have increased farm productivity (CSIRO 2002). The structural measures of NSF include:
• grade-control structures in the stream line;
• contour banks on the floodplain and at the hillslope-floodplain break of slope; and
• contour channels diverting water away from the stream line.
These structural measures provide increased residence time of water by diverting floodwaters from the stream to the floodplain, and hence increasing shallow aquifer recharge, and by decreasing water velocities in the channel and on the floodplain (CSIRO 2002). The management of the hydrologic regime allows substantial recharge, limits deep drainage, and allows maintenance of high water tables across the floodplain.
The non-structural measures include:
• avoidance of surface (spray) irrigation;
• avoidance of herbicide use;
• minimal use of chemical fertilisers;
• avoidance of ploughing on hillslopes;
• avoidance of storing water in dams on saline areas;
• minimisation of cultivation on the floodplain;
• redistribution of nutrients onto hillslopes and to the head of the floodplain; and
• grazing regime managed to promote a succession of pasture species from a dominance of less palatable annual broad-leaf species to a dominance of more palatable perennial grasses.
These non-structural measures provide increased pasture productivity, increased soil organic carbon levels, and increased residence time of nutrients (CSIRO 2002). The improved ground cover and minimal cultivation helps to minimise soil erosion, avoids soil compaction and maintains soil structure.
References
CSIRO (2002) 'The natural farming sequence.' CSIRO, Expert Panel Review, Canberra.
Eyles RJ (1977) Changes in drainage networks since 1820. Australian Geographer 13, 377-387.
Young WJ, Schiller CB, Harris JH, Roberts J, Hillman TJ (2001) River flow, processes, habitats and river life. In 'Rivers as ecological systems: the Murray-Darling Basin'. (Ed. WJ Young) pp. 45-99. (Murray-Darling Basin Commission: Canberra)
More NSF readings can be found at http://www.naturalsequencefarming.com/nsflinks.htm
More scientific support for NSF and Peter Andrews:
by Professor David Mitchell
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING
A Practical Approach to Sustainable Rural Development and Effective Drought Management
Summary
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) is a rural landscape management technique based on ecological principles, low input requirements and natural cycling of water and nutrients. NSF offers a low-cost, widely-applicable method of reducing drought severity and boosting productivity on Australia's farms and landscapes. There is now an opportunity with modest government support for the development and deployment of this emerging land management tool. It promises to deliver huge dividends to Australia's vast farming lands, consistent with the widely-acknowledged need for long-term ecological sustainability and profitability in the rural sector.
The Context
The challenge to provide Australia's ongoing water requirements, without undermining the ecological resilience of the Australian environment, looms large. The structure and function of natural ecosystems and landscapes have not been sufficiently well understood for effective error-free management. Attempts to modify the former to suit human purposes have caused as many problems as they have solved. The drainage of wetlands, extensive clearing of natural vegetation, cultivation of unsuitable soils, storage of water in surface reservoirs and the use of intermittent streams and rivers as continuous water supply channels, all for apparently sensible reasons, have nevertheless had unexpected adverse consequences. There is an imperative need to develop procedures based on natural processes that have evolved over the millennia to allow plants and animals to flourish, in spite of the rigours imposed by the unpredictable variability of the Australian climate. The procedures must also be compatible with the need for Australians to benefit and thrive from the production of food and fibre for their requirements and for export.
The Process
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) procedures meet these criteria and their value was dramatically confirmed during the dry conditions recently experienced in Australia. In essence, relatively simple earthworks restore the connection between rivers and their floodplains and promote the retention of water in natural storage systems. This has the additional beneficial effects of decreasing the leakage of salt into waterways and the generation of considerable amounts of organic matter on the flood plains. The latter is then available as stock food and for distribution to areas that are lacking organic matter. The process has been well-researched and conforms to current understanding of Australian natural resources, though hitherto it has only been demonstrated at relatively few sites.
The Beneficial Impacts
In addition to the direct environmental benefits outlined above, NSF improves water quality, restores stability to the banks of waterways, enhances the quality of natural habitats, promotes biodiversity and strengthens natural resilience within the landscape, thereby ensuring continuing sustainability of the constituent ecosystems. These benefits arise from implementing NSF procedures on the basis of a clear understanding of connections between the different ecological units within landscapes and of the natural processes that govern the evolution of landscapes dominated by natural forests to landscapes modified for various forms of agriculture.
The introduction of NSF practices will also make Australian agriculture more combatable with natural ecological processes in the landscape. This will promote the potential to increase cost-effectiveness of farming in Australia, for example, by decreasing reliance on expensive procedures to improve pastures and increase organic matter content of soils.
Professor David Mitchell
Chair, Natural Sequence Farming Steering Committee.
May 2004
by Professor David Mitchell
NATURAL SEQUENCE FARMING
A Practical Approach to Sustainable Rural Development and Effective Drought Management
Summary
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) is a rural landscape management technique based on ecological principles, low input requirements and natural cycling of water and nutrients. NSF offers a low-cost, widely-applicable method of reducing drought severity and boosting productivity on Australia's farms and landscapes. There is now an opportunity with modest government support for the development and deployment of this emerging land management tool. It promises to deliver huge dividends to Australia's vast farming lands, consistent with the widely-acknowledged need for long-term ecological sustainability and profitability in the rural sector.
The Context
The challenge to provide Australia's ongoing water requirements, without undermining the ecological resilience of the Australian environment, looms large. The structure and function of natural ecosystems and landscapes have not been sufficiently well understood for effective error-free management. Attempts to modify the former to suit human purposes have caused as many problems as they have solved. The drainage of wetlands, extensive clearing of natural vegetation, cultivation of unsuitable soils, storage of water in surface reservoirs and the use of intermittent streams and rivers as continuous water supply channels, all for apparently sensible reasons, have nevertheless had unexpected adverse consequences. There is an imperative need to develop procedures based on natural processes that have evolved over the millennia to allow plants and animals to flourish, in spite of the rigours imposed by the unpredictable variability of the Australian climate. The procedures must also be compatible with the need for Australians to benefit and thrive from the production of food and fibre for their requirements and for export.
The Process
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) procedures meet these criteria and their value was dramatically confirmed during the dry conditions recently experienced in Australia. In essence, relatively simple earthworks restore the connection between rivers and their floodplains and promote the retention of water in natural storage systems. This has the additional beneficial effects of decreasing the leakage of salt into waterways and the generation of considerable amounts of organic matter on the flood plains. The latter is then available as stock food and for distribution to areas that are lacking organic matter. The process has been well-researched and conforms to current understanding of Australian natural resources, though hitherto it has only been demonstrated at relatively few sites.
The Beneficial Impacts
In addition to the direct environmental benefits outlined above, NSF improves water quality, restores stability to the banks of waterways, enhances the quality of natural habitats, promotes biodiversity and strengthens natural resilience within the landscape, thereby ensuring continuing sustainability of the constituent ecosystems. These benefits arise from implementing NSF procedures on the basis of a clear understanding of connections between the different ecological units within landscapes and of the natural processes that govern the evolution of landscapes dominated by natural forests to landscapes modified for various forms of agriculture.
The introduction of NSF practices will also make Australian agriculture more combatable with natural ecological processes in the landscape. This will promote the potential to increase cost-effectiveness of farming in Australia, for example, by decreasing reliance on expensive procedures to improve pastures and increase organic matter content of soils.
Professor David Mitchell
Chair, Natural Sequence Farming Steering Committee.
May 2004
'NSF is so simple....It only took me 10yrs to understand it'.
These words were spoken on 'Australian Story' by Prof David Goldney back in 2005. I wonder how many people out there share the same sentiment.
What is NSF REALLY all about??
Jerry Brunetti from AcresUSA defined it pretty well when he said "It's so damn obvious how it works, if experts could realize that the solutions are both simple, yet holistic, which is what the "complexity" is all about".
This Australian landscape is so OLD....parts of it are estimated to be >600 million years old. It is the driest, flattest continent on Earth and if it did not have a MECHANISM that allowed it to REBIRTH itself after every major upheaval in its geological history....it should have after all this time vanished into the SEA.
This is the simple part....according to Peter Andrews:
There are only THREE things that allowed this rebirthing to occur-
1) PLANTS and GREEN SURFACE AREA
2) THE HYROLOGY that connected these BIODIVERSE PLANTS
3) THE DAILY WATER CYCLE
Remember the plants had to come first!! They provided the energy, delivered from the Sun, which allowed for the animals to follow.
Today we have removed 95% of the original biodiversity that stood here before 1788. How do you expect to get the 3 simple things back that gave this place sustainability for millions of years when we BURN, POISON and CUT DOWN the very things that could sustain us.
We are fools. We have introduced more than 200 exotic animals into this country including ourselves, removed 95% of the biodiversity, and we want to kill EVERY living thing that is NOT NATIVE or does not produce a product we can sell.
When are we ever going to see the fact that our country is headed for CATASTROPHE because we cannot keep the 3 simple basic rules going.
PLANTS, PLANTS......... ANY PLANTS acting as a GREEN SURFACE AREA has to be BETTER than a ploughed, fallowed desert baking in the SUN with all its minerals and OM oxidising and leaching away.
A landscape devoid of a green surface area....NO matter what comprises that greenery has the ability to cool the landscape and use the daily water cycle to attract more precipitation and grow more plants.
Deserts beget deserts......
We need to accept very quickly that ANY plants wanting to grow are adapted to grow in that environment...degraded or otherwise. Nature has a process at work to restore fertility with its pioneer plants and most of these pioneer herbs we call weeds.
Why is it that after a major drought, like the one we are having/ or had depending on where you are, when the rains come the first thing to grow profusely is HERBS (weeds). They are the pioneers trying to recover the whole system. They take over covering everything.....we dont say "Oh look we have a rule No1 working for us....a green surface area". NO....we say where's the poison to kill these weeds!!!!
There is a whole MINDSET and INDUSTRY built around the paradigm that weeds are the BIG enemy and its worth billions of dollars. But in simple terms what's it really doing.....IT'S KILLING THE VERY THINGS THAT CAN SAVE US AND ITS DESTROYING US AND OUR FUTURE.
Think about it....but we dont have 10 years like Prof Goldney did.
These words were spoken on 'Australian Story' by Prof David Goldney back in 2005. I wonder how many people out there share the same sentiment.
What is NSF REALLY all about??
Jerry Brunetti from AcresUSA defined it pretty well when he said "It's so damn obvious how it works, if experts could realize that the solutions are both simple, yet holistic, which is what the "complexity" is all about".
This Australian landscape is so OLD....parts of it are estimated to be >600 million years old. It is the driest, flattest continent on Earth and if it did not have a MECHANISM that allowed it to REBIRTH itself after every major upheaval in its geological history....it should have after all this time vanished into the SEA.
This is the simple part....according to Peter Andrews:
There are only THREE things that allowed this rebirthing to occur-
1) PLANTS and GREEN SURFACE AREA
2) THE HYROLOGY that connected these BIODIVERSE PLANTS
3) THE DAILY WATER CYCLE
Remember the plants had to come first!! They provided the energy, delivered from the Sun, which allowed for the animals to follow.
Today we have removed 95% of the original biodiversity that stood here before 1788. How do you expect to get the 3 simple things back that gave this place sustainability for millions of years when we BURN, POISON and CUT DOWN the very things that could sustain us.
We are fools. We have introduced more than 200 exotic animals into this country including ourselves, removed 95% of the biodiversity, and we want to kill EVERY living thing that is NOT NATIVE or does not produce a product we can sell.
When are we ever going to see the fact that our country is headed for CATASTROPHE because we cannot keep the 3 simple basic rules going.
PLANTS, PLANTS......... ANY PLANTS acting as a GREEN SURFACE AREA has to be BETTER than a ploughed, fallowed desert baking in the SUN with all its minerals and OM oxidising and leaching away.
A landscape devoid of a green surface area....NO matter what comprises that greenery has the ability to cool the landscape and use the daily water cycle to attract more precipitation and grow more plants.
Deserts beget deserts......
We need to accept very quickly that ANY plants wanting to grow are adapted to grow in that environment...degraded or otherwise. Nature has a process at work to restore fertility with its pioneer plants and most of these pioneer herbs we call weeds.
Why is it that after a major drought, like the one we are having/ or had depending on where you are, when the rains come the first thing to grow profusely is HERBS (weeds). They are the pioneers trying to recover the whole system. They take over covering everything.....we dont say "Oh look we have a rule No1 working for us....a green surface area". NO....we say where's the poison to kill these weeds!!!!
There is a whole MINDSET and INDUSTRY built around the paradigm that weeds are the BIG enemy and its worth billions of dollars. But in simple terms what's it really doing.....IT'S KILLING THE VERY THINGS THAT CAN SAVE US AND ITS DESTROYING US AND OUR FUTURE.
Think about it....but we dont have 10 years like Prof Goldney did.
Hi Shirley
I don't think I really answered your question above in relation to the natural barriers or 'weirs' as you call them.
I have just returned from Falls Retreat at Johns River on the NSW mid coast.
The property is owned by Dr Mary White, the noted paleobotanist and author. Her book 'Running Down: Water in an Ancient Land' scientifically supports the evidence that Australia's unique rivers and waterways did not/do not function as our eurocentric forebears thought.
Dr White lives inside the rim of an old Gondwanian volcanic rim. The vegetation just prior to settlement was all rainforest. Clearing for dairy saw most of the lowland in the valley cleared and logged but remnants of Gondwanian rainforet still exists.
The creek revealed lots of 'secrets'. The creek was not pristine but the evidence was there. The where pool/riffles sequences OR chains of ponds. The creek bed was broken up by the island riffles where huge buttresses were growing into the creek capturing volcanic rocks and sediments which had huge clumps of Lomandra hysterix (rush) choking the stream. There had been a flood five weeks earlier and you could see where the lomandra had bent over in the higher flow only to bounce back after the water receeded.
It was obvious that these rain forest creeks were choked by rain forest vegetation NOT by reeds, phragmites.
Before we got there Peter described exactly what we would find without ever having been there previously....you have to take my word for it but everything he described we found. It was an enlightening experience for me Shirley.
I don't think I really answered your question above in relation to the natural barriers or 'weirs' as you call them.
I have just returned from Falls Retreat at Johns River on the NSW mid coast.
The property is owned by Dr Mary White, the noted paleobotanist and author. Her book 'Running Down: Water in an Ancient Land' scientifically supports the evidence that Australia's unique rivers and waterways did not/do not function as our eurocentric forebears thought.
Dr White lives inside the rim of an old Gondwanian volcanic rim. The vegetation just prior to settlement was all rainforest. Clearing for dairy saw most of the lowland in the valley cleared and logged but remnants of Gondwanian rainforet still exists.
The creek revealed lots of 'secrets'. The creek was not pristine but the evidence was there. The where pool/riffles sequences OR chains of ponds. The creek bed was broken up by the island riffles where huge buttresses were growing into the creek capturing volcanic rocks and sediments which had huge clumps of Lomandra hysterix (rush) choking the stream. There had been a flood five weeks earlier and you could see where the lomandra had bent over in the higher flow only to bounce back after the water receeded.
It was obvious that these rain forest creeks were choked by rain forest vegetation NOT by reeds, phragmites.
Before we got there Peter described exactly what we would find without ever having been there previously....you have to take my word for it but everything he described we found. It was an enlightening experience for me Shirley.
Reproduced by kind permission of Prof Haikai Tane
see http://watershed.net.nz/fpeandwm.htm
Bylong Creek Case Study
The Tarwyn Park R&D project investigated the nature, flows and storage capacities of floodplain aquifers and their recharge cycles trough natural sequences of flooding. Hydrogeological investigations were linked through ortho image based GIS to soil and vegetation surveys, catchment habitat mapping and land use systems.
In the 1970’s, soil erosion, salinity and serious gullying characterized Bylong Valley at Tarwyn Park. Bylong Creek was deeply entrenched, ephemeral and prone to damaging floods and debris. Farming became unprofitable and Tarwyn Park, an historic thoroughbred horse stud, went into liquidation. Before the introduction of environmental engineering programs that dismantled flood control works and reestablished landscape ecostructure, the Tarwyn Park floodplain was in a serious state of degradation.
The discrete roles and functions of the catchment habitats and landscape ecosystems on the floodplain were restored through adaptive strategies that simulated natural seasonal flooding, notably stalling and storing floodwaters through induced recharge. Suites of seepage weirs and infusion swales discouraged accelerated runoff and flood drainage. The floodplain at Tarwyn Park was restored from a water drainage dominated system with a low water table and annual water deficit, to a floodwater storage system with high water tables and annual water surplus.
In addition, upward and lateral aquifer pressure at discharge sites, generally located above natural headlands on the floodplain, helped ensure positive movement of groundwaters and near surface aquifers, maintaining their freshness while preventing water logging problems normally associated with stagnant waters. The performance of the dryland pastures under these conditions is similar to bog-flush meadows, rich in species and productive throughout the dry summer season.
Given that Tarwyn Park is in a low rainfall zone prone to soil and water degradation, it came as a surprise to those involved in the project, that the restoration of the floodplain habitats and landscape ecosystems corrected the land degradation problems and converted Bylong Creek into a perennial stream. Essentially the restoration strategy was based on reestablishing floodplain habitats and landscape ecosystems, and letting natural processes rebuild landscape ecostructures.
see http://watershed.net.nz/fpeandwm.htm
Bylong Creek Case Study
The Tarwyn Park R&D project investigated the nature, flows and storage capacities of floodplain aquifers and their recharge cycles trough natural sequences of flooding. Hydrogeological investigations were linked through ortho image based GIS to soil and vegetation surveys, catchment habitat mapping and land use systems.
In the 1970’s, soil erosion, salinity and serious gullying characterized Bylong Valley at Tarwyn Park. Bylong Creek was deeply entrenched, ephemeral and prone to damaging floods and debris. Farming became unprofitable and Tarwyn Park, an historic thoroughbred horse stud, went into liquidation. Before the introduction of environmental engineering programs that dismantled flood control works and reestablished landscape ecostructure, the Tarwyn Park floodplain was in a serious state of degradation.
The discrete roles and functions of the catchment habitats and landscape ecosystems on the floodplain were restored through adaptive strategies that simulated natural seasonal flooding, notably stalling and storing floodwaters through induced recharge. Suites of seepage weirs and infusion swales discouraged accelerated runoff and flood drainage. The floodplain at Tarwyn Park was restored from a water drainage dominated system with a low water table and annual water deficit, to a floodwater storage system with high water tables and annual water surplus.
In addition, upward and lateral aquifer pressure at discharge sites, generally located above natural headlands on the floodplain, helped ensure positive movement of groundwaters and near surface aquifers, maintaining their freshness while preventing water logging problems normally associated with stagnant waters. The performance of the dryland pastures under these conditions is similar to bog-flush meadows, rich in species and productive throughout the dry summer season.
Given that Tarwyn Park is in a low rainfall zone prone to soil and water degradation, it came as a surprise to those involved in the project, that the restoration of the floodplain habitats and landscape ecosystems corrected the land degradation problems and converted Bylong Creek into a perennial stream. Essentially the restoration strategy was based on reestablishing floodplain habitats and landscape ecosystems, and letting natural processes rebuild landscape ecostructures.
Kyeamba Valley Landcare Newsletter. Courtesy of http://www.murrumbidgee.cma.nsw.gov.au/ ... uly_07.PDF
Field Day at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms—Matthew Dickinson, Catchment Project Officer
There was a Field Day at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms near Bungendore on Saturday 5th May. I attended the event as a Murrumbidgee
CMA representative to learn what all the fuss is about. Many CMA staff have been fielding questions from landholders about
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) and Peter Andrews’ theories as publicised by the “Australian Story” on the ABC last year. Since
that time he has published a book : Andrews, P. 2006, Back from the Brink, ABC Books, Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Sydney. There were over 200 people at the field day including representatives from Lachlan and Southern Rivers CMAs
A chapter of the new NSF Foundation was formed late last year in the upper Shoalhaven Catchment and the organisation seems to
be gathering momentum across Australia.
Mulloon Creek Natural Farm is approx 5000acres on the Eastern side of the Great Dividing Range east of Bungendore. The site was
selected as a study site for NSF and receives support from Southern Rivers CMA. The landholders have run their farm as an organic
and biodynamic farm for many years. The farm is situated on both sides of Mulloon creek which runs through a broad valley. There
are alluvial river-flats on both sides of the stream although the most productive are on the western side of the stream. It is a grazing
enterprise with some cropping done for winter fodder crops. At the site, Mulloon Creek is a 3rd order gravel bed stream that suffers
from channel widening and bank erosion. There are numerous exotic species in the riparian corridor including extensive crack willows
and blackberries.
The NSF trial has included the construction of several “leaky weirs” at strategic locations along Mulloon Ck. These weirs are between
500mm and 1500mm high and have resulted in the creation of a limited chain of ponds. There are obvious benefits to the biodiversity
of the stream through creation of several habitat types including pools and riffles (see photos below). The trials include
extensive use of aquatic macrophytes including Typha and Crasula spp. The willows are seen as beneficial and their growth is encouraged.
Native trees and shrubs have been planted in riparian areas.
Monitoring includes regular depth indicators that are manually measured and three dataloggers that collect flow data, upstream, at
site and downstream. There are also several piezometers installed across the floodplain.
In a “nutshell”, the aim of the trial is to raise the level of water underlying the floodplain and re-hydrate the landscape, limiting the
export of nutrients and sediments downstream. This is seen as the best way to improve overall fertility on the farm and increase water
availability to plants growing on the floodplain.
Professor Haikai Tane on (Riparian) Biodiversity and Peter Andrews
Research on riparian biota indicates there are probably greater grounds for concern about the phytotoxicity of Australian red gums
than Willows! Please be aware that the international convention on biodiversity specifically embraces all biota. Since the 1968
UNESCO international conference on "Use and Conservation of the Biosphere" in France, the UN position has remained unchanged:
"there is no fundamental difference between natural, wild or modified, semi-natural or developed, domesticated or purely artifial
vegetations. The laws governing these ecosystems are identical"
When UN Agenda 21 was adopted by member states at Rio in 1992 - and subsequently became international law - the biodiversity
concept was excluded from the key list of 27 principles defining sustainable development and environmental protection. Biodiversity
is still only a convention because biologists have been unable to demonstrate that there is a functional relationship between the
Linnaen classification of species and environmental performance. It may come as a surprise to some that the Australian concept of
native biodiversity is inconsistent with the international biodiversity convention. It is more about personal beliefs and conservation
funding programs than the ecological integrity of watersheds and their environmental performance.
Peter Andrews has demonstrated clearly that the UNESCO position on vegetation, ecosystems and environmental performance is the
safe and sound one. Arguably, willows are the world's premier riparian plants - they are used in every continent except Antarctica for
riparian and stream restoration works. I have noted from my work in the River Murray, Billabong, Murrumbidgee and Shoalhaven
watersheds that Australia willow communities are excellent nurse crops encouraging the natural regeneration of Casuarina as well as
providing prime habitat for water dragons, marsupial water rates and platypus; and from beneath the water perspective, willow root
plates are veritable supermarkets of macroinvertebrates, yabbies and fish.
Nature does nothing uselessly noted Socrates. Mother Nature is an equal opportunity employer - she does not discriminate on the basis
of race, genera or species. That is a human failing. A few years ago, I was advised by the leaders of a German Parliamentary Delegation
on Conservation and the Environment visiting New Zealand - while here they investigated "native biodiversity programs" -
that in Germany they call native biodiversity "ecofascim" because it is based on the same nativist principles that underpinned Hitler's
Fascism.
Now that Peter Andrews has shown Australians that exotics are indeed necessary for rehabilating Australian rivers and streams, as
well as sustainable farming and ecoforestry, perhaps the Natural Sequence Farming movement can take the lead and expose the
"exotics are pests" mentality as a sadly misinformed ecocolonial myth doing more damage than good. It is far, far better to teach your
community to observe and enjoy the exciting dance of ecosynthesis uniting native and exotic biota in new and improved riparian ecosystems.
Professor Haikai Tane
Director Watershed Systems
PO Box 108 Twizel Aotearoa NZ 7944
PH 64 3 4353 228 FX 64 3 4353 227
email: taneh@watershed.net.nz
websites www.cyberport.net.nz
Field Day at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms—Matthew Dickinson, Catchment Project Officer
There was a Field Day at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms near Bungendore on Saturday 5th May. I attended the event as a Murrumbidgee
CMA representative to learn what all the fuss is about. Many CMA staff have been fielding questions from landholders about
Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) and Peter Andrews’ theories as publicised by the “Australian Story” on the ABC last year. Since
that time he has published a book : Andrews, P. 2006, Back from the Brink, ABC Books, Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Sydney. There were over 200 people at the field day including representatives from Lachlan and Southern Rivers CMAs
A chapter of the new NSF Foundation was formed late last year in the upper Shoalhaven Catchment and the organisation seems to
be gathering momentum across Australia.
Mulloon Creek Natural Farm is approx 5000acres on the Eastern side of the Great Dividing Range east of Bungendore. The site was
selected as a study site for NSF and receives support from Southern Rivers CMA. The landholders have run their farm as an organic
and biodynamic farm for many years. The farm is situated on both sides of Mulloon creek which runs through a broad valley. There
are alluvial river-flats on both sides of the stream although the most productive are on the western side of the stream. It is a grazing
enterprise with some cropping done for winter fodder crops. At the site, Mulloon Creek is a 3rd order gravel bed stream that suffers
from channel widening and bank erosion. There are numerous exotic species in the riparian corridor including extensive crack willows
and blackberries.
The NSF trial has included the construction of several “leaky weirs” at strategic locations along Mulloon Ck. These weirs are between
500mm and 1500mm high and have resulted in the creation of a limited chain of ponds. There are obvious benefits to the biodiversity
of the stream through creation of several habitat types including pools and riffles (see photos below). The trials include
extensive use of aquatic macrophytes including Typha and Crasula spp. The willows are seen as beneficial and their growth is encouraged.
Native trees and shrubs have been planted in riparian areas.
Monitoring includes regular depth indicators that are manually measured and three dataloggers that collect flow data, upstream, at
site and downstream. There are also several piezometers installed across the floodplain.
In a “nutshell”, the aim of the trial is to raise the level of water underlying the floodplain and re-hydrate the landscape, limiting the
export of nutrients and sediments downstream. This is seen as the best way to improve overall fertility on the farm and increase water
availability to plants growing on the floodplain.
Professor Haikai Tane on (Riparian) Biodiversity and Peter Andrews
Research on riparian biota indicates there are probably greater grounds for concern about the phytotoxicity of Australian red gums
than Willows! Please be aware that the international convention on biodiversity specifically embraces all biota. Since the 1968
UNESCO international conference on "Use and Conservation of the Biosphere" in France, the UN position has remained unchanged:
"there is no fundamental difference between natural, wild or modified, semi-natural or developed, domesticated or purely artifial
vegetations. The laws governing these ecosystems are identical"
When UN Agenda 21 was adopted by member states at Rio in 1992 - and subsequently became international law - the biodiversity
concept was excluded from the key list of 27 principles defining sustainable development and environmental protection. Biodiversity
is still only a convention because biologists have been unable to demonstrate that there is a functional relationship between the
Linnaen classification of species and environmental performance. It may come as a surprise to some that the Australian concept of
native biodiversity is inconsistent with the international biodiversity convention. It is more about personal beliefs and conservation
funding programs than the ecological integrity of watersheds and their environmental performance.
Peter Andrews has demonstrated clearly that the UNESCO position on vegetation, ecosystems and environmental performance is the
safe and sound one. Arguably, willows are the world's premier riparian plants - they are used in every continent except Antarctica for
riparian and stream restoration works. I have noted from my work in the River Murray, Billabong, Murrumbidgee and Shoalhaven
watersheds that Australia willow communities are excellent nurse crops encouraging the natural regeneration of Casuarina as well as
providing prime habitat for water dragons, marsupial water rates and platypus; and from beneath the water perspective, willow root
plates are veritable supermarkets of macroinvertebrates, yabbies and fish.
Nature does nothing uselessly noted Socrates. Mother Nature is an equal opportunity employer - she does not discriminate on the basis
of race, genera or species. That is a human failing. A few years ago, I was advised by the leaders of a German Parliamentary Delegation
on Conservation and the Environment visiting New Zealand - while here they investigated "native biodiversity programs" -
that in Germany they call native biodiversity "ecofascim" because it is based on the same nativist principles that underpinned Hitler's
Fascism.
Now that Peter Andrews has shown Australians that exotics are indeed necessary for rehabilating Australian rivers and streams, as
well as sustainable farming and ecoforestry, perhaps the Natural Sequence Farming movement can take the lead and expose the
"exotics are pests" mentality as a sadly misinformed ecocolonial myth doing more damage than good. It is far, far better to teach your
community to observe and enjoy the exciting dance of ecosynthesis uniting native and exotic biota in new and improved riparian ecosystems.
Professor Haikai Tane
Director Watershed Systems
PO Box 108 Twizel Aotearoa NZ 7944
PH 64 3 4353 228 FX 64 3 4353 227
email: taneh@watershed.net.nz
websites www.cyberport.net.nz
Article taken recently from http://goondiwindi.yourguide.com.au/new ... 60429.aspx
A vision splendid
SHANA THATCHER
27/09/2006 8:28:45 AM
Is Australia really a land of climatic extremes? Perhaps it is when seen through European eyes.
As Peter Andrews suggests, we need to start looking at the Australian landscape in a different way. When we try to picture an "ideal" landscape, we have a European model in our mind and generations of Australians have tried to recreate this picture of "home".
We fear Australia's "droughts and flooding rains" and we have treated the landscape as something to be flattened, dammed and exploited to the last inch, but we can learn and we can change. As Peter said, we need to step back from the brink.
We need to stop treating our environment as our enemy and start treating it with understanding.
A crowd of more than 50 people were at the Goondiwindi Community Centre to hear the message from the man who has revolutionised the way many people regard conservation in Australia.
People did not always listen to Peter Andrews, but they're listening now.
Peter will be familiar to viewers of Australian Story, who voted his episode the most popular ever.
He was ignored and ridiculed for more than 30 years, forced into bankruptcy and suffered a family breakdown, but through it all maintained a determination to demonstrate the effectiveness of his methods.
Retailer Gerry Harvey was convinced and worked with Peter to establish a showcase on his horse stud in the Hunter Valley. Other leading businesspeople, scientists and politicians, including former deputy Prime Minister John Anderson support Peter's approach.
Peter developed "Natural Sequence Farming", a system hailed as a cheap, simple and effective way to return profitability and sustainability to Australian landscapes.
Not your stereotypical environmentalist, Peter is friendly and approachable but this is a man prepared to suffer and fight for his beliefs and the glint of steel is there in his eyes.
He explained the initial reluctance of the scientific community to listen to his ideas, saying, "Scientists spend a lot of time researching products to sell to farmers to overcome these very problems instead of researching ways to make our farms more profitable and sustainable."
Scientists have tended to treat the symptoms rather than the disease, possibly believing the problem is just too big.
Peter told his audience the first thing Australians need to do is to stop thinking like Europeans.
"Australia had an extremely efficient landscape before the arrival of Europeans and we can restore it.
"People always say Australia's such an arid continent, that there's no water," he said. "But look at the way the landscape used to be – once there were water holes and swampy marshes – the land wasn't barren and bare and our valleys were fertile."
"We're caught up in a cycle of drought and flood," he said, "and we farm around these two events, but it doesn't need to be that extreme."
Peter is not of the "lock it up and leave it" mentality. "Of course people have to make a living and the best way to secure your future is to farm in a sustainable way."
"We've changed the Australian landscape through our practices and we need to start doing things differently before it's too late.
Australians think of the country as being a 'land of drought and flooding rains' but he said that while there will always be extreme weather events, his system can help restore balance to the environment.
"Hunter Valley properties where the system had been applied were still green five years into a drought," he said and showed his audiences the pictures to prove it.
He criticised many soil conservation projects as expensive band-aid solutions, which are not effective in the long term. As Gerry Harvey said, "Good news – we're all going to go broke a lot slower."
Peter described the elements of a ‘resilient landscape", including water quality and availability and vegetation cover. Without a balance of these elements the results can be what we all see around us – salinity, poor fertility, erosion and poor returns.
Basically his system involves the establishment of what he calls "grass-covered dams".
"It means letting about a third of your property go permanently out of production, but this still leaves about a third for grazing and a third under cultivation.
"If we flatten the land and drain everything, yes, we can use every inch of land, but it will be less productive, profitable and sustainable than using the principles of NSF.
"It's all about slowing down the flow of water. If you have a dry, bare creek bed, a flood will sweep through at a great pace, taking more soil and vegetation with it, leaving it in an even worse condition.
"We need to slow down the flow of water and imitate the original landscape," he said.
"This means establishing "leaky weirs", restoring the curves in water channels so the water pools and by re-establishing vegetation in and along watercourses."
Peter said any vegetation is good vegetation and described how he mows weeds down and allows them to form mulch. "As it decomposes, vegetation returns fertility to the soil. It also reduces water evaporation. The more plants you have, the more salt will be removed from the water table and the more carbon will be replaced."
He described an environment that consisted of chains of ponds and swampy meadows. Instead of allowing water to rush away, water stays, soaks into the soil and sustains vegetation which in turn feeds the soil.
"Our farm animals – horses, sheep and cattle – can destroy these ponds. Their hooves are one problem and the other is they destroy the vegetation. A bare pond will not slow down water. It will trap some in a big rain event, but the water will quickly evaporate. We need the soil to become saturated, and then the excess will seep out into the ground alongside."
Peter does not advocate acting without seeking advice and approval from local catchment management authorities. More information is available at www. nsfarming.com
"Do what you can," he said
"Follow these principals and you will be improving the environment and your farm will still be fertile in a hundred years."
A vision splendid
SHANA THATCHER
27/09/2006 8:28:45 AM
Is Australia really a land of climatic extremes? Perhaps it is when seen through European eyes.
As Peter Andrews suggests, we need to start looking at the Australian landscape in a different way. When we try to picture an "ideal" landscape, we have a European model in our mind and generations of Australians have tried to recreate this picture of "home".
We fear Australia's "droughts and flooding rains" and we have treated the landscape as something to be flattened, dammed and exploited to the last inch, but we can learn and we can change. As Peter said, we need to step back from the brink.
We need to stop treating our environment as our enemy and start treating it with understanding.
A crowd of more than 50 people were at the Goondiwindi Community Centre to hear the message from the man who has revolutionised the way many people regard conservation in Australia.
People did not always listen to Peter Andrews, but they're listening now.
Peter will be familiar to viewers of Australian Story, who voted his episode the most popular ever.
He was ignored and ridiculed for more than 30 years, forced into bankruptcy and suffered a family breakdown, but through it all maintained a determination to demonstrate the effectiveness of his methods.
Retailer Gerry Harvey was convinced and worked with Peter to establish a showcase on his horse stud in the Hunter Valley. Other leading businesspeople, scientists and politicians, including former deputy Prime Minister John Anderson support Peter's approach.
Peter developed "Natural Sequence Farming", a system hailed as a cheap, simple and effective way to return profitability and sustainability to Australian landscapes.
Not your stereotypical environmentalist, Peter is friendly and approachable but this is a man prepared to suffer and fight for his beliefs and the glint of steel is there in his eyes.
He explained the initial reluctance of the scientific community to listen to his ideas, saying, "Scientists spend a lot of time researching products to sell to farmers to overcome these very problems instead of researching ways to make our farms more profitable and sustainable."
Scientists have tended to treat the symptoms rather than the disease, possibly believing the problem is just too big.
Peter told his audience the first thing Australians need to do is to stop thinking like Europeans.
"Australia had an extremely efficient landscape before the arrival of Europeans and we can restore it.
"People always say Australia's such an arid continent, that there's no water," he said. "But look at the way the landscape used to be – once there were water holes and swampy marshes – the land wasn't barren and bare and our valleys were fertile."
"We're caught up in a cycle of drought and flood," he said, "and we farm around these two events, but it doesn't need to be that extreme."
Peter is not of the "lock it up and leave it" mentality. "Of course people have to make a living and the best way to secure your future is to farm in a sustainable way."
"We've changed the Australian landscape through our practices and we need to start doing things differently before it's too late.
Australians think of the country as being a 'land of drought and flooding rains' but he said that while there will always be extreme weather events, his system can help restore balance to the environment.
"Hunter Valley properties where the system had been applied were still green five years into a drought," he said and showed his audiences the pictures to prove it.
He criticised many soil conservation projects as expensive band-aid solutions, which are not effective in the long term. As Gerry Harvey said, "Good news – we're all going to go broke a lot slower."
Peter described the elements of a ‘resilient landscape", including water quality and availability and vegetation cover. Without a balance of these elements the results can be what we all see around us – salinity, poor fertility, erosion and poor returns.
Basically his system involves the establishment of what he calls "grass-covered dams".
"It means letting about a third of your property go permanently out of production, but this still leaves about a third for grazing and a third under cultivation.
"If we flatten the land and drain everything, yes, we can use every inch of land, but it will be less productive, profitable and sustainable than using the principles of NSF.
"It's all about slowing down the flow of water. If you have a dry, bare creek bed, a flood will sweep through at a great pace, taking more soil and vegetation with it, leaving it in an even worse condition.
"We need to slow down the flow of water and imitate the original landscape," he said.
"This means establishing "leaky weirs", restoring the curves in water channels so the water pools and by re-establishing vegetation in and along watercourses."
Peter said any vegetation is good vegetation and described how he mows weeds down and allows them to form mulch. "As it decomposes, vegetation returns fertility to the soil. It also reduces water evaporation. The more plants you have, the more salt will be removed from the water table and the more carbon will be replaced."
He described an environment that consisted of chains of ponds and swampy meadows. Instead of allowing water to rush away, water stays, soaks into the soil and sustains vegetation which in turn feeds the soil.
"Our farm animals – horses, sheep and cattle – can destroy these ponds. Their hooves are one problem and the other is they destroy the vegetation. A bare pond will not slow down water. It will trap some in a big rain event, but the water will quickly evaporate. We need the soil to become saturated, and then the excess will seep out into the ground alongside."
Peter does not advocate acting without seeking advice and approval from local catchment management authorities. More information is available at www. nsfarming.com
"Do what you can," he said
"Follow these principals and you will be improving the environment and your farm will still be fertile in a hundred years."
Here is a link to NSF supported by Vic Water. Click on http://www.vicwater.org.au/uploads/Down ... tation.pdf