Wellstead farmers claim national Landcare award and vow to ‘speak out’ about regenerative agriculture

Wellstead farmer Sylvia Leighton says winning a national award has emboldened her and her partner Peter McKenzie to “speak out” more about regenerative farming practices. The pair beat out finalists from each State and Territory to claim the Australian Government Landcare Farming Award last week. Ms Leighton said the other seven finalists were “fantastic nominations” and it was a huge honour to gain the national recognition. “I think it’s going to encourage Peter and I to speak out a bit more,” she said “We are not trying to criticise other farming styles, we are trying to encourage people to think about how we are going to move forward because we’ve got declining environmental health. “Farmers and graziers are the biggest land managers in Australia, managing 60 per cent of the land mass, so how are we going to change some of our land management programs and systems on farms to try and pull back on that degradation?” The pair have spent the past eight years regenerating their property, Wilyun Pools Farm, backed by a philosophy of promoting “live soils”. They have revegetated 10 per cent of it as wildlife corridors. Ms Leighton said she believed a lot of farmers and landholders wanted to explore different ways of working with the land, but “they just don’t know how to or they just don’t feel they can”. “If they felt more supported by different programs, and more like-minded people, that might help them to think that they can change a bit,” she said. “We seem to have a culture — I don’t know if it’s Australia-wide or just WA — where we take suggestions of doing something different as an attack rather than an opportunity. “It’s an interesting part of our farming culture that we need to look at.” The award was handed out as part of the National Landcare Conference, attended by more than 1000 people from all over Australia. Ms Leighton said she met a lot of like-minded people at the conference which had been “really inspiring”. “Just to be among people speaking the same language as you for just a little while is fun, it re-energises us and makes us think we can go back to the south coast region of WA with a movement behind us,” she said. “There’s been a lot of great talk about guiding and helping younger people to re-engage with environment as well which is really positive. “The whole conference has given us lots of tools to go forward with, things we probably wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.”