Transcript of First Nations Women in agriculture panel session
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Beth Jones:
Good morning everyone and welcome to another week. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I would like to acknowledge... Firstly, I welcome you all and acknowledge that I'm joining you today from the lands of the Wurundjeri people, and I pay my respects to elders past and present and wish to extend those respects to the traditional owners of the land that you are joining from today as well. Also extend those respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are joining us online for our conversation this morning.
So those of you who don't know me, I'm Beth Jones. I'm the chief executive of Agriculture Victoria, and pleased to be facilitating this conversation for our event this morning. This is the third event in our Agriculture Victoria barpangu yurpangu speaker series, which is a series of events designed to build greater awareness of First Nations culture, community experiences, and thoughts on agriculture and self-determination. This is a part of our barpangu yurpangu strategy, which align to DEECA's Pupangarli Marnmarnepu, is really the document that guides Ag Vic's activities to support self-determination.
So our conversation today, and this particular conversation in the series, really is an opportunity for staff, industry, and community to engage in First Nations thought leadership, but also build our awareness and understanding of First Nations narratives and perspective in agriculture. Hopefully it creates a broader platform also for opportunities to engage in discussion narratives on agriculture and self-determination with First Nations people.
We've got a webpage that we've got for our barpangu yurpangu speaker series, which has got some information on our sessions. Also, some of our sessions are also online so people can view them at their leisure.
As I said, today's event is really focused on First Nations women in agriculture, exploring their experiences, challenges, perspective aspirations, and opportunities. Before I introduce our panelists, I'd like to let you know that at the end of our facilitated discussion at the start of this, we will have the opportunity for a bit of Q and A. So please either capture those in the chat or be ready to take the opportunity to ask some questions of our panelists when we get to that point in the series.
But what I'd like to do now is introduce our three panel members who are all weaving their own path in the agriculture sector, and just so delighted that they've taken the time to share their stories and their perspectives with us this morning.
So, firstly, Elizabeth Mace, who is a Jadawadjali and Jupagulk woman, is an agronomist and the former deputy chair for the Fruit Growers Victoria. She's currently operations manager for the Dalki Garringa Native Nursery, an enterprise of the Barengi Gadjin Land Council. So welcome, Elizabeth.
I'd also like to introduce Jocelyn King. Jocelyn is a Bundjalung woman, executive and founding director and CEO of the innovative organisation First Australians Capital. She's also owner of Djanaba Farm, which is located in New South Wales. So a warm welcome also to you, Jocelyn.
Finally, professor Kerry Arabena is a Meriam woman from the Torres Strait Islands. Kerry is the managing director of Karabena Consulting, Ilan Style, and First 1000 Days Australia. Kerry has a doctorate in environmental science and has held a range of senior positions such as the inaugural co-chair of the National Congress of Australia's First People. Kerry owns land in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria where she's planning a native fruit enterprise. So a warm welcome also to you, Kerry.
Kerry Arabena:
Thank you.
Beth Jones:
So we're just blessed with a wonderful panel of women this morning with a range of diverse experiences and touch points in agriculture. So I'm going to jump straight into some questions for our panelists, and I'll start with you, Kerry, if I could. Kerry, can you tell us a little bit about your touch points with the agriculture sector?
Kerry Arabena:
It's been a long pathway to get to where I am at the moment. I have spent a lot of time running international ecohealth associations. I understand the power of the connection to country and in my 50s made the decision that it's a time now to really activate that for myself and for my family. And so, in terms of agriculture as such, it's been mainly engaged with through Indigenous business opportunities that are created by organisations like Kinaway, the Chamber of Commerce, and for some of the spectacular staff who have worked in those places and spaces and then continued on in the Department of Agriculture.
So I've also been engaging with the Macedon Ranges local council on their living healthy landscapes projects and the like, and done a lot of on-country learning through the region where I live. That has been incredibly powerful to think about regeneration of properties and creating biodiversity as a principle of living in the ranges. That's been really, really exciting.
I haven't pursued the traditional pathways of agriculture, just because the block that I'm on can't sustain the kind of agricultural pursuits that are specific to the region. On my property, I have about 15.5 hectares of old growth forest, which I believe is as important as the open spaces. And so, maintaining the integrity of those places and spaces is going to be very interesting.
The agricultural pursuits that I'm exploring at the moment is very much framed around the research and development opportunities that are there and available. I have to do a lot of soil testing of my land, work out what can grow at the altitude that I currently live, I'm quite high, and just working those kinds of things out.
So I'm really appreciative that the Department of Agriculture (Agriculture Victoria) has put on board Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that we can engage with. For me, that's probably the safest pathway in to exploring what the opportunities are in the region where I live. So thanks for the question, Beth.
Beth Jones:
Thanks so much, Kerry. We look forward to the opportunity to unpack some of that with you, because there's lots of touch points there as we have a conversation this morning. If I could perhaps start with a further question for you, Kerry. Just interested to understand the role that you think First Nations women's participation in agriculture can play in fostering cultural identity, women's business, and connection to country.
Kerry Arabena:
That's really, really powerful because Meriam people in the Torres Strait, we have a really strong philosophy which is basically called teter moki moki, which is that you walk in the footpaths of your ancestors and you work with the principle of enough. So it's not around exploiting, it's around gardening as such. And so, I'm bringing the concept of gardening to my experiences of tending to the land.
I'd also really created ... As you can see here, this little concrete place just here is going to be the site of a large studio where I want to bring people up to country to connect with it, not just physically but also spiritually and culturally. So understanding the rhythms of land to cultivate native plants, to work with seasonal cycles, and to invite people, First Nations people from this place to come and also participate in caring for country initiatives.
I'd love for people to come and do cultural burns, to work with environmentalists. My daughter is one. We're going to do bird netting up there on the property perhaps before and after cultural burns to see what kind of biodiversity in the avian sense is there and available for us.
So really working with different places practice sovereignty to have our own food, to nurture us, to restore relationships between people who've been dislocated from country, bringing them back in, and also then to law.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women's knowledge systems is really fundamental to the native botanics. That is all women's business in my view. And so, women should be able to develop and be supported in their entrepreneurial ideas in this space. It's not so much agricultural as regeneration, both as a physical manifestation but also as a spiritual and connected one.
Beth Jones:
Thanks so much, Kerry. It certainly looks like such a special place with the little glimpses you've got of it in your background there. Kerry, it just really strikes me just the importance of some of that conversation right now in terms of some of the pressure that land and people are feeling with changing climate, dry. It just seems such a great opportunity to be having conversations around balance and sustainable use of land. So thank you so much, Kerry.
Kerry Arabena:
Thank you.
Beth Jones:
If I could just go over first ... Liz, if I could jump over to you now. Certainly, you're currently working within a Traditional Owner enterprise, and I've had the absolute joy of visiting you out on site and hearing from you a little bit more about that work and what it means. You have a long history of engagement in the wider agriculture sector. Can you tell us a little bit about your diversity of experience? Just on mute-
Kerry Arabena:
You might have to unmute yourself, though.
Elizabeth Mace:
Yeah, I was just letting the guys know that I'm about to talk, so they need to push.
Beth Jones:
Oh. Sorry, Liz.
Elizabeth Mace:
No, no, you're fine. You're fine. Yeah, so I do have a long background in horticulture and agronomy. I've been in the horticulture sector within the Goulburn Valley for 25 years, so it's been quite vast. I've been really lucky to be able to roam freely in Victoria and to learn ... And some parts of New South Wales, and to really live in that landscape for lengths of time and understand and learn about the seasons and learn about everything and let country speak to me in that time.
So I didn't come to agronomy through a university or through the normal avenues and channels. I came in through curiosity, real First Nations curiosity. How does this work and how does that work? Then being a child of the earth, it was like, well, how can we help and stop this pain that's happening to the earth? Because, for me, it was really speaking to me.
So I came through as an apprentice and went as an apprentice in botanical horticulture and really learn about plants. My focus was on medicinal herbs and plants, being a plant woman through my grandmother's and mother's and mother's lines. Then I was able to go and work with the Department of Agriculture (Agriculture Victoria) with the curiosity that I brought to it in plant pathology, because I had an understanding of how plants work. And so, I came to agronomy through that.
Then after that, I was able to do a lot of extension work and work with a lot of farmers. I had 27 clients at one stage. I worked for the private sector, my focus starting with apples and pears and then moving out to everything that grew in that landscape. In that, I was able to really learn a lot of things and bring, I feel, my knowledges to it, my traditional knowledges. Even though we were calling it integrated pest and disease management at the time, it was really a traditional knowledge that I was able to bring to the space.
One of the things that was very important was when we talk about right plant for Country, and the right plant in the right place. I was finding that a lot of farmers were choosing to access a market that was just not conducive to growth for that area. So they were chasing a cherry in the Goulburn Valley where it's hot, dry, and nasty and trying to compete against a cherry the size of a 50 cent coin that was coming out of Silvan, where the conditions were really conducive to that.
And so, for the work that I'm doing now, I am really hoping to educate people as well as focusing on the suitability of our plants for our landscape, because we see way too much people amending the landscape or manipulating the landscape or adjusting that landscape to suit the crop they want to grow, rather than us listening to that landscape or them listening to that landscape and growing the crop that suits that landscape. It's really, really important. It's just a waste of resources. Our resources are becoming very finite. And so, that was one of them.
Then the other thing that I was working on, so my portfolios when I was deputy chair for Fruit Growers Victoria, were the young growers group. So engagement with the young ones moving forward and facilitating and supporting these new young ones to come through. During my time of having the young growers group, it was the first to actually allow women through the door. And so, that was a big thing.
Then the other thing was making space and making way for the next generation of female agronomists to come through. So when I was starting, I was the only horticultural agronomist. There was a livestock agronomist and there was a grains agronomist and that was it. There was the three token females.
When I had left and came back onto country, there were eight female agronomists coming through and that were making a name of their own. I was just so proud of them. And so, it was like lifting little sisters up and letting them know that they belong here.
One of the things that wasn't as forefront and spoken about, but I really hope that there will be change is female Indigenous agronomists because food and fibre, it's women's work. I think women agronomists and Indigenous women agronomists, we walk gently on the earth, and our language that we use, rather than use words like exploit, we like to use words like enhance or enable. So it's just a different level of language.
I do think that the market or the industry may, in some places, really be ready for change. So I'm excited to see what happens next. Did I answer your question?
Kerry Arabena:
So well.
Beth Jones:
You certainly did, Liz. It's just an inspiring perspective that you bring and your incredible experience. Just a really tangible difference that you've made in your career is always very inspiring to me, and we've been blessed to be in conversation a few times. So absolutely answered my question. Just had a bit of a sticky audio button there, Liz. So apologies.
If I could just follow on from that. Liz, I'm interested to understand your thoughts. You touched on this a little bit just in an agricultural context, but what does self-determination mean to you and what are some of the systemic shifts that you think are needed to enable that?
Elizabeth Mace:
Thanks for that question, because I've got an answer to that. So, in my opinion, self-determination for First Nations businesses and enterprises means that we have the opportunity to be our own consultants and to be our own agronomists and to choose how we'd like to blend our traditional knowledges with current farming practises.
We, I feel ... There's not enough of us on the ground that are able to talk to the landscape and talk to the plants and also talk to each other in an understanding way and in a way that we don't have to colour it in or fill in the subtext as First Nations peoples. There's a lot of unspoken stuff that we all just get inherently. There's times when we want to stop and have a breath because things will hurt.
And so, I think that for me self-determination is definitely being our own advisors and being our own consultants and being our own decision-makers when it comes to what avenues we choose to explore.
Beth Jones:
Thank you so much, Liz. Just such a simple way to describe that and so powerful. So thank you so much, Liz. Jocelyn, if I could go to you now as well, can you tell us a little bit about your farm ownership journey, how that interacted with your background in accessible finance?
Jocelyn King:
Yeah, thanks, Beth. So I'm located on beautiful Worimi Country. So the background behind me is actually a view of my farm. It's a long story.
I think my desire to have my own space ... And I don't think of myself as a farmer very much. I definitely feel like an unfarmer. The word farming definitely doesn't fit with what we're trying to do here. But it really stemmed from wanting to buy back country. As a Bundjalung woman who grew up in inner Sydney, like I was born and raised in Woolloomooloo in Western Sydney and moved to the Hunter Valley with my mum as a teenager.
I loved the space and the connection to country living up here gave me as a young woman particularly. Then as a young mum wanting to be able to feed my children the foods from country was really important to me. And so, I started out thinking, well, how can I buy back our land? How do I do that? That was my first interaction with finance.
So my training isn't in finance at all. I'm actually a social ecologist by training. So very much at the intersection between environmental advocacy, organisational change, and community development. And so, my first foray into the banking world was trying to buy a property for myself and going into a bank and very quickly realising that you actually can't buy farmland unless you have a 40% deposit. I was like, "That is wild."
As an Aboriginal woman in New South Wales, which is the earliest colonised place, how on earth am I going to get 40% deposit for $2 or $3 million? That's impossible. It's not going to happen.
So I put that dream on hold as a young woman and just began working and was able to buy a block of land that had some ... Just a residential block that had some rates going on it in a really out of the way, little country town to build the first home that my children and I could live in, and was able then to build and sell and build and sell from there until I could afford to buy this property here on Worimi country. Again, moving far away from friends and family because that was the most affordable entryway into the market was how I got here.
But what I do like to share with people in these kind of thought leadership opportunities is a lot of people don't understand about the history of finance. Finance itself is the tool of colonisation. So in Australia in 1816, Governor Macquarie established the Bank of New South Wales. Banking, for those of you in agriculture who don't understand finance, banking works by if you have money deposited in accounts, so everyone's savings or wages, payments go into accounts, banks are then able to lend at multiples of whatever's deposited.
And so, in Australia's case, the Bank of New South Wales, the early payments into the Bank of New South Wales were actually payments made to soldiers for the massacre of Darug and Dharawal people, so that the governor could award land to settlers to farm. So all that balance sheet of the banks was built on genocide.
And so, then those settlers were able to borrow against their farms because they didn't owe any money on it. So they were then able to go to the banks and say, "I've got this farmland. Can you lend me money on it to start farms?" Then those farms introduced animals and introduced pests into the landscape, which has really undermined the beautiful plants and animals that we have, that we know we've stewarded for such a long time.
And so, I'm so passionate about changing the finance system because it doesn't fit a sustainable ecological economy. It doesn't fit a nature-positive future. As I sit here on country today, there's a severe weather warning where I can't leave the property because we're expecting 300 millimetres of rain in the next three days, and our annual rainfall is 950 millimetres.
So how does country actually respond when so much has been done? The reality is that none of this happens without finance. So for me, I'm really passionate about changing the finance system.
Beth Jones:
Thanks, Jocelyn. There's so much in what you've just said there. Getting to the heart of issues and building understanding is so critical and so central to what we're hoping for in these conversations. So thank you so much for that perspective. We wish you well over the next 24, 48 hours. It's the reverse challenge of what we're having in Victoria in terms of a lack of the stuff falling from the sky, but just another sense of some of the patterns of weather that are challenging everybody in different ways, and going back to that sense of balance that you've all talked about.
Jocelyn King:
Yeah.
Beth Jones:
Jocelyn, with those experiences, what are the key challenges for First Nations women to own agriculture and food and fibre enterprises? What do you think are some of the potential entry point or solutions to what you've described? There are some big, hairy challenging problems institutionally, let alone just in terms of culturally and just in terms of people's knowledge of what we're dealing with here. So where do you start if you're thinking about how we pave the way forward on some of those access to finance?
Jocelyn King:
Yeah, great question. Look, I really do think that institutional change is critical to this, but there are existing mechanisms that we could actually mobilise, things like institutional capital. There's $4 trillion worth of superannuation looking for investments just from Australian super. And so, if we could set up a First Nations agriculture fund that would then provide equity for First Nations women to be able to start to care for country, reintroduce some of the native species that we know thrive in these environments, even in a changing climate, I think that's a really positive way to go.
What we do need to do, though, is move the conversation from institutional investors seeing First Nations people as risks rather than opportunities. I think we need to start to really change that, because that risk-based view of First Nations people generally is a really racist view.
I've heard from institutional investors that when they look at investments where First Nations people are involved, particularly around land, they're like, "Oh, look, we wouldn't want to be able to take the land again." If First Nations people have been able to get access to land, whether it'd be through the ILSC or through other mechanisms, the investors, their automatic thought is, "Oh my God, if this goes wrong, we don't want to be taking the land off Aboriginal people again."
But that's a deficit mindset. There are four and a half thousand known Aboriginal plants, food and fibre, and medicine as well, and only 11 of them have ever been commercialised. That is an untapped opportunity for the broader Australian economy, let alone the First Nations economy. So I think for me, changing that institutional mindset and really challenging some of the way that we mobilise capital is a solution to this problem.
Beth Jones:
Great, Jocelyn. There's really tangible, great suggestions in what you've said there. Maybe if I could probably widen that thought thread out to the rest of the panel at this point, just in terms of other reflections, Liz and Kerry, on how you personally navigated access to whether it's land, resources, enterprise, and what some of those broader enablers might be in terms of how we can help First Nations women to enter and thrive in the food and fibre sector.
Kerry Arabena:
Oh, Beth, I'm unmuted, so I might go first if that's okay.
Beth Jones:
Go for it.
Kerry Arabena:
Look, it took years of personal effort, financial risk, and strategic investment. I still have to leave my property on a day-by-day basis in order to pay for it. So I still maintain my consulting company, and I'm really proud of that as a business.
But that's taken eight years to grow. That has been a really, really difficult thing for me, because it takes vision and it's heartbreaking to be told no so many times. Lucky I'm adversity-driven, because as soon as someone says no to me, I just smile and make it happen anyway.
The other thing that's really powerful about women who are interested in buying back land is that we basically refuse to inherit those limits that other people want to put on us. "Oh no, you're in your late 50s now. You couldn't possibly pay this off." Those kinds of things were really difficult.
The other thing that was particularly challenging for me was the permit systems that operate within local councils. It took me four years to secure one in order to live on the country that I wanted. I think there were about 81 pages of complaints about this particular block that I ended up purchasing. All of it had nothing to do with me, but I ended up having to navigate through a whole wide range of different issues just around neighbours in those instances. I live in paradise, but I've got a number of highly obnoxious people who live around me and who cannot make space for this new.
They've been there for six generations. I said, well, I haven't been here for even one yet. But there are some really deeply entrenched ideas around space-making that people felt really uncomfortable to do. Unfortunately, I think councils lean into recidivist complainants, basically. So if someone complains, that will trigger a response more so than a permit application from a First Nations person that's being reviewed by panels of councillors and governors who do not have Indigenous knowledge, who do not have relationships with traditional owners, who do not understand what an Indigenous vision for country in place can look like.
So for me, it wasn't only financial. I had to put the land boundaries back where they needed to be because someone had encroached on my place, and thankfully I won that. I had to pay quite a bit to make that happen, but I won that the day before Mabo Day, which for me is a really, really important day. Yeah, no, you can't take my land without ... I'm going to pay it off you, and I don't mind paying for it. I'm in a position to do so. But for a great many decades of my life, I wasn't.
And so, this is a long-term aspiration and dream. I think it's got incredible opportunities to thrive and flourish for a whole wide range of reasons. But I would love to come to the day where I do not have to leave my property in order to afford it. That's going to be a fantastic day.
Jocelyn King:
I would 100% agree with that. I do the same thing. It's just really tough to have to go and hold down a full-time job to pay a mortgage on a property that you're trying to develop income from.
Kerry Arabena:
Yeah.
Jocelyn King:
Really tough. Well done, Kerry.
Kerry Arabena:
We do not have the intergenerational experience or expertise of privately owned land. We've got experience and expertise in traditional owner groups, native title landholders in a whole range of land councils and the like, but they too have to employ people to do the work.
At this point, I can employ people to do consulting work. I can't employ them to do agricultural work, because the time it takes to establish these industries, once you've done the research and development, once you've worked out the production pipeline, once you've worked out how to do extraction, once you've actually identified the markets that you can on-sell into, all of those things take time. But as women, we've got a lot of other responsibilities, as have many other women who live on country and on their own properties around Australia.
So there is something really important about the shared women's experience. I think that we bring a different lens to what it is that we have the aspirations of country for, and that's to take care of it so it can take care of us.
But just on the water issue, I've put half a million litres storage capability on the property because I know what's coming. And so, it's also around the investments in the kind of infrastructure on country. Fencing costs a lot. It costs a lot.
So all of those sorts of things, like I'm just paying out like this at the moment, which is fair enough, I don't mind doing it. But, gee, I'm blessed I'm in a position where I can, and that's because I've got an entrepreneurial background. I own a business that helps me generate the profits that can go into something else. That's taken a lot to work out what kind of legal structures need to underpin that profit distribution and the like. So I, too, am not a financier, but, gee, I've learnt a lot in the last little while, let me tell you.
Beth Jones:
Just incredible stories, just hearing you all talk about what you've worked through and just the passion that's coming out of hearing you all speak and the tenacity to work through so many things. But, no, there's still so much to work through, but how do we empower that, as you say, that collective female leadership around working through the next bit?
But, Liz, can I bring you in now just in terms of your perspective? I know Jocelyn mentioned the 11 plants and the untapped opportunity there. I know that's near and dear. Some of your vision and experience might bring you in, Liz, at this point.
Elizabeth Mace:
Yeah, thank you. All good points that everybody's making, of course. I would like to come back a bit to what Kerry was saying about that handover, that generational handover, and the opportunities that are out there for bush foods and people going around and spruiking these great bush foods and these abilities to step into it.
While I was at a workshop, one person said, "Oh, it was great. I just started with the 20 hectares my dad left me in an old Fergie." I was like, "Awesome. I've got kidney problems and I'm deaf. That was my inheritance."
So it was interesting that completely the western coming in and going, "I've got 20 hectares and I've got a tractor. I'm sure I can make it happen," and as women going, "Well, I've been kept off my country and I don't have freedom to roam. I'm probably caring not only for myself, but my mother and my cousin and my sister and my brother. So there's a lot more that goes into this cultural conversation that needs to be said.
Then also, I mean, bringing ourselves back to our locations. I think it's 13 that's on the list of the good to grow, well-marketed, and very well-understood food and fibre plants. Out of those, only three of those actually grow within Victoria without having to throw all the resources at it.
There's also no recognition. Now this is what's near and dear to my heart. There's no recognition on whose country that comes from in the first place. So we have the Kakadu plum, and that goes back to the Kakadu Plum Alliance. They can very much tell you exactly whose country those Kakadu plums come from. Whereas the things like the finger limes and Davidson plum have been so commercialised now that there's no respect given on whose country and whose food that is. And so, we're losing that acknowledgment, those acknowledgments as such.
I really feel in my drive is I want to acknowledge whose country this food comes from. I know we've lost it and ... Oh, sorry, when I say we, the IP and the PBR licencing and stuff like that, because they never really come back to the people of that landscape. But we can at least acknowledge that this comes from these people here.
Then bringing ourselves back to Victoria, which has been massively terraformed and cleared and all sorts of stuff. Victorian foods and fruits are not very sexy. You can't pick it with your hand. It's not something you can just go, "Oh, yum," and pick it off a tree. It needs to be processed. It needs to be cared for.
We have a lot of great berries, but because Victoria was such a country for grass and for sheep and for livestock, it was overgrazed. And so, sadly, we're on a real mission, and I call it ... I play a game out there. I say, "Will it kill me?" I go out and I eat pretty much everything I can find. I figure ... I spoke to Gerry Turpin, who's a wonderful ethnobotanist from up the north end there, and he said, "Ooh," and I said, "Don't worry." He said, "Yeah, no, you won't die so quick." I was like, "Yeah, okay," because there are some plants out there that can really kill you. But Victoria seems to be a quite gentle, kind place.
But the thing is that there's so much more that goes into that. Then, yes, we can't grow the lemon myrtle. Just a quick example is that grows in temperate zone 6.5. We're in a temperate zone 5.5 here. So for me, for us to, honestly with my heart, grow lemon myrtle, it goes against what I believe in. If I don't believe in it, I can't rightly do it.
From an agricultural sense, people are like, "Oh, but you're shooting yourself in the foot." It's like, yeah, but then I'm breaking my own rules, aren't I? You're asking me to do something that I don't believe in. Hence, leaving the private sector.
So for me, moving forward, for us, land is an issue, having access to land, whether you're working for a traditional owner group or as a person. The land in Victoria here is just so broken. It needs a lot of healing before it can be used for other things. It's been completely ... The pH has been altered, the friability is all gone. There's a lot to it.
But more importantly, I feel, from an industry level, we really need to have Indigenous voices. We really need to have Indigenous voices in a bush food conversation, because being a practical agronomist, there's been no discussions about pest and disease. There's been no discussion about suitable fertilisers. There's been no ... I mean there's a whole other area of R&D and also policies and procedures as well.
Movement of some of these foods is very restricted. I'm on the South Australian-Victorian border here. There's a lot of foods that just can't move from here because they're in the Myrtaceae family, and we're dealing with myrtle rust. There's not as much ... There's a lot more that we can do, but from an industry level, it's very hard to advise on anything because there's not the information there.
So we have a really great opportunity to be on the front foot here as Indigenous women, as Indigenous people, as Indigenous consultants and agronomists, because these are our foods that we're talking to, and I think that we really have a space here to lead the way.
Beth Jones:
Thanks, Liz.
Elizabeth Mace:
I went all around there.
Beth Jones:
Yeah, yeah. No, that was great, Liz. I mean I think you made ... There's so much opportunity, but there's so many layers to this is certainly the bit that I'm hearing just in terms of what you all bring to it personally. But the cultural dimensions, the institutional dimensions, the understanding dimensions, there's just so much in it.
Probably just on that thread, and before I perhaps just warm up those who are listening online, to let you know that I'm going to ask one or two more questions to the panel and then open it up to questions that might come in the chat. So a bit of a cue to our audience to jump in with the things that you want to pick up on any of the themes that you're hearing from Liz, Kerry, and Jocelyn.
But just building on from that next thing about what are some of the things, perhaps ... And I'm happy for any of you to jump in here. In terms of the importance of women's leadership in this space, what are some of the things ... If you could do ... One or two things that you could wave the wand around things that really enable a voice for First Nations women in agriculture, what are the things that you think would really support that leadership to flourish and jump out?
Kerry Arabena:
You go ahead, Jocelyn. You go.
Jocelyn King:
Right.
Jocelyn King:
I'm jumping on that one. I think that's great.
Beth Jones:
Oddly contested.
Jocelyn King:
I mean obviously platforms like this are so important. Firstly, nothing about us without us. Hearing the knowledge just on this call alone is huge. You've got women who've got really highly qualified in a western sense backgrounds, but on top of that there's such an intergenerational amount of knowledge on this call alone. So providing opportunity for voices is critical, and for the practises that we are all undertaking and platforming those practises.
I'm currently leading a programme with Farmers for Climate Action, and it's the First Nations voices in solutions for the climate change problem that we have. Liz, you've touched on it. We should be growing things in the right place, where they come from, with the knowledge of those Traditional Owners around it. In France where you see things like providence really playing a big role. You can't call champagne from Australia champagne for a reason, and that should be similar here.
And so, I am really pleased to be able to lead some of these voices to other international fora like Bonn Climate talks and COP30 in Brazil. So I think that's really key.
So the work in terms of platforming voices is really, really important, but also finance our solutions. Australia is not part of the loss and damage fund in climate change because we were part of a developed world economy, but our economy is built on the climate of the last 200 years, not the next 500 years. And so, we need to finance these solutions that amazing First Nations women already have.
Kerry Arabena:
Yeah. Hmm, Yep.
Beth Jones:
Kerry, do you want to jump in? Yeah, sorry. I don't want to wreck the flow. You guys just riff.
Kerry Arabena:
No, I think it also comes down to First Nations women actually defining what prosperity actually looks like for us. It's actually beyond profit margins for me. It really is. It's about being able to find a space on that country and just to bloody breathe for two seconds. Those sorts of things are really, really powerful.
But if we could have multi-generational mortgages, for example, so that my kids could benefit from being on the same place that I've been able to help establish for them, if we could have some land tenure reform around what that could look like. There are a number of people that want to do this. Maybe they don't want to own the land. I can understand why at the moment. But in terms of that, share farming, different ways of cropping for farmers in regions to give over part of land for the purposes of growing bush tucker that's meant to be there, and I'm sharing that with the traditional owners.
Policy leverage that really does privilege long-term care over short-term yield I think will be really powerful. And just co-investment, not co-ownership, but co-investment. Those kinds of things are going to be really powerful.
So we've got a number of women who are doing native botanics work. They've bought their own ... Because we've got houses, so we've mortgaged them. But they've bought their own food processing plants. To have the ability to do the extractions piece on country at the same place where you're growing things to reduce that ecological footprint is going to be incredibly powerful, and also then to help create some of those pathways for finding clients and customers.
I get worried about that. I will only ever stay boutique because I do not want to have to grow food to sustain this rapacious way of living lives and that kind of thing when we've got so much food security issues around the world and so much food waste. Really keeping it small and boutique is where I'm going to land because I want for people to value what it is that we're growing. I will only do botanics. I can't do food. I can't do things with hooves, and that makes me sad. But, anyway, I'm sure a lot of people can do it very easily.
I was quite surprised, one of the teachers of the Healthy Landscapes course up at the Macedon Ranges, I said to him, "What about this?" He says, "Oh, Kerry, I've killed cows so many different ways just by accident, just by learning, just by doing those sorts of things." We all stood around and had a laugh, but that's the cost of learning a lesson. There's costs to learning lessons. The biggest lesson I need to know at the moment is how to do feral animal control when none of your neighbours want to, and how to get rid of bloody blackberry. Oh my God, that stuff. So those sorts of things.
So I've got to actually do the repair work first before I can get into regeneration. It takes a lot. The physicality of the labour is actually pretty ... It's really hard. Sometimes you just want to lay around in bed and not get up and have to do something, but the physicality of it is ... It's tough. So there's a lot of different things that I'm learning along the way, and I'm literally staggering around at the dark. I'm having a good time while I'm doing it, but, gee, I'd like to do it better.
Beth Jones:
Yeah. Thanks, Kerry. Liz?
Elizabeth Mace:
Yeah. For me, it's the practical opportunities. I think that will be a solution to aiding more ... Again, if we're talking about advisors, consultants. We learn best by doing. So we're in the process of building a three-hectare wattle seed production area, which is great. Within that, we've made very strong, wonderful trade line partnerships, but also knowledge-sharing partnerships with our immediate surrounding orgs being Jajoo Warrngara and First People of Millewa Mallee, Wadawurrung, Eastern Maar. And so, we're reopening those trade lines. By having these practical orchard, or seed orchard, we were able to bring our western knowledges to this landscape, as well as our traditional knowledges. So I want to answer a quick question, because I know we've only got nine minutes, but it's very important.
Beth Jones:
Go for it.
Elizabeth Mace:
So Tony asked about any work that's been done to protect IP and PBR. This is a really interesting and very poignant and topical conversation to have because there's a lot of layers to it. There's been a heck of a lot of work and, rightly so, concerns about sharing any IP, any intellectual property. But really we're at a stage now if we don't claim it and show that we know it and record that we know it, that they are going to use it anyway. So we really need to claim this and have this down saying this is our knowledges and we know this for this reason.
It's really difficult. And so, IP, I have a lot of conversations about IP. I have a lot of conversations about how do we protect these knowledges. We have native title where we are. We also have a recognition settlement agreement, which means we have Indigenous land use agreement going. But within that, we really need to build those blocks towards IP.
PBR is a different thing to talk about. Again, that's called plant breeders' rights. The way that you claim PBR is to show that you actually, you the grower or the developer, whoever you are, has altered that plant from its original state. So it means you can't take a plant out there from the wild and say, "This plant is mine." We have connection to it. We have an eDNA to it. This is true. But for us to get any sort of breeding licence upon that, we need to show that we've actually altered it in any way, shape, or form.
Because we haven't had freedom to roam and because our plants have been taken off and fed to sheep, and because we haven't had the facilities to facilitate this or to be able to help this, or we have had these knowledge holders that love plants, not saying they don't love plants, but they love plants in a western sense. And so, they are looking at how can we commercialise on this plant? How can we build on this plant?
So we are talking about it, Troy, and we're definitely looking at ways that we can give that point of difference to our wonderful plants, especially plants that have gone through the trade lines. That brings us back to that acknowledgement, like I was saying. Acknowledging the landscape these plants come from gives us a step towards IP and a beautiful step towards being able to implement a PBR.
Beth Jones:
Thank you, Liz. Liz, just picking up one other question that I might throw to you in the first instance in the chat around just perspectives on whether Victoria can play a role in the growing and processing of grains for food.
Elizabeth Mace:
Yeah. Well, it can. It really, really can. Victoria is an open ... Where it's not beautiful mountainous, it's open woodland, which means that it's meant to be grasses. It's meant to be grass and savanna. That was what made it so desirable. The Felix Australia is what made it so desirable to being colonised that way.
Getting the grains and getting the grasses back into the landscape, it's vital. Without that, we can't have our little birds, we can't have our little lizards, we can't have our little marsupial mice and all those wonderful things. So processing, building, and growing grains is ... It's really moving forward.
I'm not sure if anybody is familiar with Jacob Birch, who's in ancient grains. Yup, he's the guy. Then there's Black Duck Foods as well, which are down in Mallacoota. And so, they're really moving forward with grains and grasses. But, again, I put myself in this box because I'm like, "It must be provincial." So I can't and I just won't and will not talk to anyone else's landscape, I'm sorry, but I can say that growing grains is great.
Beth Jones:
Thanks so much, Liz. Maybe just conscious of time, if I can probably just get ... I'll go around the panel just as a closing sentiment, maybe. Just in terms of the wisdom of your experiences and your life ... Your life experiences, your professional, your business, your farming experiences, and your cultural heritage and everything that you bring, what would be the advice you'd give to women who want to build in the business in agriculture or food and fibre? What would be your best advice? That elevator pitch to the woman standing in front of you, if you could give her a sentence or two, what would you say? Maybe if I could start with you, Jocelyn. Go just clockwise on my screen.
Jocelyn King:
Yeah, thanks, Beth. I'd say be prepared to roll up your sleeves. People don't know how to do what you do. It's really hard to hire and help, as Kerry has said. So, yeah, be prepared to work really hard, but keep going. It's tough, but it's so worth it.
Kerry Arabena:
By owning bits of land, we're re-grabbing the Indigenous estate. We lost the Indigenous estate through the process of colonisation, and I reckon every house, every unit, every flat, every farm, everything that we own is buying it back, so please do it. It is tough, but everyone who was born in a particular generation has got a really important task that they have to do. Previous generations have done fights for our rights. They've fought for our ability to go into university. And ours, I think, is economic independence.
Importantly, as both Liz and Jocelyn have said, financing is so powerfully important. But we were all entrepreneurs before we were employees. And so, reactivating those trade routes is something that is absolutely really powerful because women were matriarchs in their own lines with economic independence. We weren't relying on anyone. We weren't called goods and chattels that belonged to someone else. And so, reactivating that is actually stepping into our most divine feminine energy that we can bring into the world, and, quite frankly, the world needs it. Just saying.
Beth Jones:
Thanks, Kerry. Liz?
Elizabeth Mace:
I'd say, "How can I help? What can I do? How can I help you get through this? Definitely I'm here for you." I think it's so important that we are able to talk with each other who have been through it and share our knowledges. We don't learn these things by ourselves. We learn them by walking in the footsteps of our aunties and our grandmothers and our mothers.
But I would also say don't let the bastards get you down, I said. Tell them they could keep that big brother energy all to themselves. I would say, and this one works really good for me, when you're really, really busy, send the fellas off to light a fire.
Beth Jones:
Awesome, awesome.
Elizabeth Mace:
And you can do this.
Beth Jones:
Love it, Liz, Jocelyn, Kerry. Just so practical. So acknowledging the incredible journeys you've walked and all the tools and the toughness you've got to have to live that. But just also that support and we're all in it together, and sharing that energy and support and enthusiasm and being there as a shoulder as well as a pioneer and a trailblazer of some of the tools and the institutional parts. It's just so much in what you've just said.
It's just been such a depth of conversation today across so many aspects of seeing women enter, prosper, thrive in food and fibre. I think we could really have a speaker series devoted to about 10 or 12 themes that I think you guys spoke about today. I think, Kerry, to your point, having the conversation is such an important starting point, but let's take them forward and let's deepen them and let's spread them out. Let's find ways to, I guess, really champion the courage, the inspiration, everything you've all brought to pretty incredible journeys.
I just want to thank you all for giving your valuable time and sharing your insights and experiences and journeys with us today. It really has been incredibly inspiring, and I feel very privileged to have been sitting here virtually with you all this morning and unpacking that.
Not surprised by the many dimensions to it, but just reminded of the importance of continuing to be curious and learn and question, as well as just be pretty gritty about how we go forward. It's going to take a lot of patience, it's going to take a lot of energy and inspiration, but it's going to just take a lot of sheer will to just get the show on the road. I think that's what I've heard from all of you today, but in such a personal way.
So can I thank you all for the short but powerful time that we've spent this morning? To everyone on the line, hopefully this has given you a bit of learning, a bit of curiosity, a bit of inspiration, a bit of something that you could take away today and convert that into something that we do differently to take the conversation out of this cyberspace and into the world.
So we look forward to seeing and, Kerry, Liz, and Jocelyn, connecting with you in different ways and how we can keep that alive. But can I just thank you all very much for very generously giving your time to us this morning and congratulate each of you in your own right on the incredible successes in the journeys that you've had? Wish you very much all the best. You've all described such achievement in what you've done, but I think you've described such mountains still to climb.
I wish you all the best absolutely in the next steps of your journeys and knowing that we're all heading collectively to, hopefully, a more prosperous place so we share that together. Thank you all and thank you everyone online for listening today. See you again.
Jocelyn King:
Thank you.