From soil to solutions: the Tumpinyeri Growers research partnership

Valerie:
I'm Valerie Little. I manage the Aboriginal Landholder Information Service in Agriculture Victoria.

So, the ALIS is a dedicated, responsive service for First Nations Victorians who own or manageland or are engaged in some sort of agricultural practice.

Josh:
Josh Williams is my name. Tumpinyeri growers is my business here at Jonai farm. So I'm a market gardener with vegetables. I'm a share farmer, and I'm an active member of the food sovereignty movement in Australia.

So, the ethos of Tumpinyeri growers is basically in the name. So Tumpinyeri is Ngarrindjeri for belonging to life. And that's how we see ourselves as growers is building in that diversity into our systems. Adding more complexity and enjoying the fruits of our labour through that process.

Valerie:
Josh came to us with something that he was looking to learn more about and a few questions. And so, we were able to tap him into experts from both within our organization, but also externally, to put together this little research project to help answer some of those questions.

Helen:
Agriculture Victoria contacted me to say, you know, we're supporting, an Aboriginal man in his market garden business, and he's really interested in soil biology.

So, we would like you to come and look at the soil biology on the farm and see if what he's doing is improving it, because he has ideas about soil biology, and we would love to support him in his work.

Helen:
So, my name is Helen Hayden and I'm a lecturer in environmental science at RMIT. And my research area is soil biology.

So as a soil biologist, what I'm really interested in is the diversity of organisms that live in the soil, but also, how management affects it.

Helen:
So, whether it's a wheat paddock or whether it's the market garden, all the changes that happen to the soil change the organisms that are there and what they're doing.

The collaboration aspect of this project was really interesting because Josh is coming from a place of interest in regenerative agriculture and agroecology and agroecology is something that I'm quite interested in learning more about.

So, it was great to be able to exchange ideas but also test our ideas with data to see if what we thought was happening, is, what is actually happening in the soil.

Josh:
The collaboration with Doctor Helen from RMIT has been amazing for me to learn more about the the deep research that she does and analyzing these new technologies to to see what's going on in the soil and to encourage us to see that we're doing the right thing and the improvements over the different selective blocks that we've tested.

Josh:
It's been amazing, and I've learned so much today and throughout the whole process with her. And I'm very grateful for her knowledge and for sharing that with us.

Valerie:
Well, this little project has been funded through the Future Drought Fund farm business resilience program, which works with, farming communities, through building skills and knowledge to help them better manage their enterprises in a changing climate.

Josh:
The more I learn about soils the more it makes sense to me that that's the missing link in agriculture these days. So I think soil health means healthy soils made healthy plants, which makes healthy people.

Josh:
You can add on top of that, healthy communities and healthy local economies as well. So, there's, there's lots of benefits that come from that healthy soil beginning.