Look after the land & it looks after you min read

As fourth generation QLD cattle producers, James & Kylie Henderson, believe that cattle are simply a representation of the health of your landscape so if you want healthy cattle and happy cows, you got to have a very healthy landscape.

So the Henderson family work with nature and look after the land and resources in their care, making sure that their activities farm result in positive outcomes for nature.

Last decade’s millennial drought was a major turning point whereby they had to rethink the management of their grazing cattle and start prioritising the retention of trees and a healthy landscape.

This brought about two key areas of change to rotational grazing and carbon farming.

Rotational grazing

Rotational grazing describes the practice of rotating livestock through a series of paddocks.

By the time the last paddock in the series has been grazed, the first has been rested allowing sufficient pasture growth for the paddock grazing sequence to commence again.

Rotational grazing involves a higher number of animals per paddock (AKA stocking rate) than traditional stocking rates.

It focuses on grazing plants intensively when they are at their most nutritious stage in their growth cycle while providing adequate rest time between grazing events to allow the palatable species to continue to thrive.

Carbon farming

Put simply, carbon farming is implementing farm management practices that lead to increased carbon storage in soil and vegetation (also known as carbon sequestration) and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon farming has many benefits, including:

• improvements in soil health, nutrient cycling and water holding capacity, resulting in enhanced pasture productivity
• decreased input costs through improved efficiencies in energy and fuel usage
• improved livestock productivity, health and welfare
• increased resilience of the farming system to climatic changes
• improvements in biodiversity
• opportunities for income diversification, market access or price premiums.

Carbon farming can help increase the resilience of farming systems to climate change as well as reduce the contribution of agriculture to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Management practices that align with carbon farming come with other benefits that can also improve farm performance. For example, maximising ground cover throughout the year not only optimises feed for livestock but also contributes to healthier soils and potentially increased carbon storage.

The Henderson family started carbon farming from about 2011 as they thought is was just the right things to do. There are currently two projects being run across their properties:

• Human induced regeneration - where they're regrowing native vegetation
• Avoided clearing - where they're not clearing certain native vegetation.

Biodiversity