Sustainable agriculture in a changing climate

Allen Dorsey: 

Hi, I'm your host, Allen Dorsey, and I work at Nous in our Melbourne office, and I got to tell you, I love chatting with my really interesting colleagues about all the things they're passionate about. And today I got to talk to Sally about sustainable agriculture. We go all the way from owning a farm to talking about shaping policy, and Sally shares a lot of insights from both sides of the conversation and really got me thinking about the full picture and also imagining a more sustainable future. So grab your coffee and let's jump in. Well, welcome to the podcast, Sally. This is so exciting to have you here. You are a Director at Nous Group working in government, private sector. You also own a cattle and crop farm with your partner and you are a Nuffield scholarship recipient, which for those that are not in the know, is a scholarship awarded to emerging leaders in agriculture.

So you, I think, are the perfect person to talk today about sustainable agriculture, which I mean, I don't know. It sounds like a big topic. I wonder, can you explain it in 60 seconds, Sally?

Sally Higgins:

Hey, Allen, and thanks so much for having me along. I'm really excited to talk about this. It's one of my favourite topics, so excited to have you captive for the next couple of minutes to go through this. When I think about sustainable agriculture, I like to think about agriculture as our food and fibre system. I think sometimes when we think ag, we just think production on farm, which is a really important part of agriculture. But agriculture is a key part of our whole food system, which sustains us as human beings, that depends on the natural environment from which production is built. And I suppose that's broadly connected all the way through regional communities, supply chains and industries. So when I think about sustainable agriculture, I'm often thinking about sustainability in the context of the whole food system. So do we feed people well?

Do we nourish the environment on which production depends, are we supporting resilient communities and I suppose a farming workforce of people that are healthy and happy? And that's the way that I think about sustainability in an agricultural context.

Allen Dorsey: 

Gosh, well, I was not wrong. It is huge and there's a lot of different things to think about, I would imagine. But the thing that I think is really interesting as well is you have such a personal story, so I'm wondering how did you first really become involved in sustainable agriculture and what really drew you personally to that work?

Sally Higgins:

Yeah. So Allen, my connection to ag goes all the way back to growing up in regional Queensland. So I'm from a small town called Allora, which is about two hours west of Brisbane and it's a really small farming town of about a thousand people. It's in a really beautiful part of the world. So we're just on the western side of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland and it's this really special place where there's this diversity of nature that I'm convinced it's one of the rarest places in the world. We can drive 30Ks east and you're in a rainforest, or you can drive west and then you're in this beautiful broadacre cropping country. And growing up there I suppose gave me a really grounded appreciation for nature right from the get-go. But the other part of growing up in a farming community is that I suppose I grew up in the rhythms of food production.

The town thrives when farming's going well and the town hurts when it's dry and when we're in drought. So agriculture has always been a really big part of who I am, how I think about my community and what's shaped my childhood. But I suppose what's really brought me to this conversation today is that I got a lot more directly involved in agriculture in about 2021. There's a bit of a backstory that I think is important context, but my partner and I, we'd finished school, but we both went to school in Allora and at the time of us finishing school, it was in a really hard time of drought for our community. In fact, in the years just after finishing school, there were day zero countdowns where our community was actually running out of water. So it was quite an extreme drought. And in that time, my parents had really encouraged me that the best career path is if you don't stay here and focus on agriculture, but you leave and you go get an education and think about a job outside of agriculture and outside of the country.

And so I went to Brisbane with Gus, my partner, and I suppose we both tried to droughtproof ourselves with jobs or skills that would mean that we weren't dependent on farming. But at the same time of finishing study and getting set up with our careers, there was this other big life thing happening called COVID. And I suppose it just really challenged a lot of the assumptions we'd had about what life looked like and what things were important to us. And I think COVID really brought to light for a lot of young people this craving for connection and for community and this craving to, I suppose, have something tangible that you can be really proud of. And so for us in the midst of COVID, I think other people did lots of crazy stuff. And for us it was this one day I remember talking to Gus and I said to him, "If things get that bad, we could go home and try and farm."

And I sort of thought he would just laugh it off, but he just was like, "Yeah, why wouldn't we do that?" And so he quit his job and we both moved back to the farm and that was really when we thought we better actually give this a go because we had a very special opportunity. My grandparents have a farm block that they'd never farmed, they'd always leased out to someone else. And off the back of that drought I mentioned before, they hadn't continued with the lease. And so it had just become available by chance.

I think we just realised we had this super rare opportunity where we could have a go at starting our own business and starting to farm and learning to farm. And we've spent the last five years then on that learning journey, getting lots of stuff wrong, but I suppose surviving and being a better team as a result of all of the learning. And yeah, now we're still running the farm on the same block and it's a mixed beef cattle and cropping enterprise. So we background steers, which basically means in simple terms, we keep young male cows on our grazing country and let them graze for a period of time. And then we also do cereal cropping and grain cropping. So we have this beautiful, rich black volcanic clay soil that means that we can grow beautiful sorghum crops and wheat and barley crops and then that's harvested and used a lot for animal feed around our area.

Allen Dorsey: 

Wow. So you've got this incredible background, obviously from this town, going to school, coming back, two kind of different worlds that you're bridging together now in the work that you're doing. And I just imagine how did and does this experience shape your current perspective?

Sally Higgins: 

Yeah, I think I sometimes think when I drive over the Great Dividing Range, it is like driving into a different world for me when I go home to the farm from being in Brisbane and in the city. But I suppose it's really meant that I see myself as more of a translator now. So someone who can be on the ground and with communities and understanding that lived experience of living alongside nature. But I suppose also a translator in the sense that my day-to-day work is not with people who are on the farm. And so I suppose I am able to communicate with people who bring a different perspective and a different value set. And so that's really shaped, I suppose, my appreciation for being able to go between a couple of worlds and see life from different perspectives.

Allen Dorsey:

Yeah. And I imagine that obviously, like you were saying, there's so many different positions on these really complex systems, obviously from a system level, from a policy level, and then a community level. So how do you bring these people together? What does that look like?

Sally Higgins:

Yeah, I think it's one of those really tricky human challenges, but it's exactly the sort of work that I love to do. And I think part of what's been a bit of a journey for me personally over the last five years is to come to this realisation that having a regional background and being on the farm, it's not necessarily something that's detracting from the way I show up at work, but more it's giving me a different perspective on how I come to those conversations where we're trying to overcome differences in either policy perspectives or I suppose differences in values across groups. And when I think about those types of engagements and bringing people together, I suppose one of the things that's really important to me is about valuing each person's lived experience and perspectives. I think in an agricultural context in particular, I suppose a lot of the times when we disagree, it's through quite a political framing or there's, I suppose, a lot of political history that comes to a lot of the challenges that sustainable agriculture is grappling with.

And how I like to think about this is that I've got lots of friends that are in regional Australia and that are on farms that hold a really different perspective on what agriculture and food production in Australia can look like. And a lot of that's grounded on the fact they bring generational experience tending for the land and they've had to be resilient in supply chain shocks and in climate change. I suppose I have another group of friends because of how I live this dual life of being in the country but working in a corporate environment. And my other friends would, I'd say, have more of that urban experience and I suppose aren't as connected to the food supply chain. And I suppose a lot of my own friends I'd reflect also have, when they think about sustainable agriculture, are really passionate about how we can think about decarbonising our agricultural system and how can we think about conservation alongside food production.

And I think when we have the best conversations about hard things with groups that hold different values, it's when we don't push those different values to extremes, but we create a space that can hold the tension of people to have different views, but while respecting those different views, lived experiences and values. So I think that's where the best ideas actually come from. It's where you get people with different lived experiences and perspectives. And when you're able to hold those perspectives together in a way that pushes the conversation to what could actually work in practice for both perspectives and experiences.

Allen Dorsey: 

Yeah. I love that idea of holding the tension. That's really, really cool. It's something to think about, a good kind of takeaway, I think, for a lot of people about a lot of different conversations that you have that might be difficult. And when we're bringing people together, that's so important. I think also when I'm thinking about sustainable agriculture as well, there's so much in the news obviously about climate change and about the future and what's coming next. And I would imagine it'd be really easy to feel really defeated or full of dread. And I'm imagining that your perspective, getting to talk to so many different communities, maybe there's something else going on here. What kind of piece of optimism are you holding onto when you think about the future of sustainable agriculture?

Sally Higgins: 

Yeah, Allen, it's something I grapple with a lot because when you're a farmer, you are living at the front of climate change. So heat stress in our animals and in our plants is directly affecting our ability to produce food and also our ability to have viable businesses. So it's easy to sometimes feel a bit hard about a climate-changed future and how agriculture will exist in that. But I have come to hold a more optimistic view because I spent the last two years travelling around the world as part of a Nuffield farming scholarship and that experience has given me a different appreciation, a renewed appreciation for Australian agriculture, because what I've come to learn is that we are farming on the driest inhabited continent. We are farming on some of the most nutrient-poor soils in the entire world. And I think I've come to feel this immense sense of pride in our industry and in our food system because of the way that we've been able to overcome these challenges.

The other thing that I learned though across the last two years is that when I spoke with other farmers around the world, I came to see that they look at Australia's farming context and they're absolutely amazed at what we can produce in the conditions that we operate in. But I think they're also a bit fearful for their own future because for a lot of countries around the world, like heat stress, increased unpredictability, reduced predictability of rain, like drying seasonal conditions, that's the future that they're grappling with, but it's actually the reality that we already operate in. And so I think other countries are actually looking to places like Australia for some leadership on how do you produce in a climate-changed world and how do you build a resilient food system when the future is not the landscape that we farmed in before. So I feel optimism in the sense that we have a leadership responsibility now to think about, we've built this endurance and this resilience from farming in difficult conditions, but how can we now think about our global community and our global food system and how we can bring others along in this climate-changed future?

So we've got a head start, but I think the hard work is still facing us and the rest of the world and that gives me a sense of optimism that we can do it.

Allen Dorsey: 

This entire conversation has me thinking a lot about where I am and obviously I'm quite far away from a farm. As much as I'd like to be closer, what can I do? What could a person do to be involved in this kind of sustainable agriculture conversation?

Sally Higgins: 

You and most Australians, by the way, are far from a farm gate. So I think it's a really important question because as a sector, we probably do need to be thinking more about how we're involving other people outside of the industry in these conversations about sustainable food production, environmental use and those sorts of things. But if I think a bit about what people like you could do, maybe the cynic in me immediately thinks that more than 70% of our agricultural production in Australia is exported. So in terms of, I suppose, the relative level of influence that our domestic consumers have on the demand for agricultural products, I'd say that it's probably not our strongest boat to push. But I do think though what we have a challenge in Australia is that for a country that actually produces more food than what we can consume, we still struggle with some aspects of food insecurity, and particularly our remote and First Nations communities have parts of Australia that face what people call fresh food deserts.

So they can't get fresh fruit and vegetables. And this is having really serious flow-on effects for the health and wellbeing of those communities, but for the pressures that our health system is facing and for vulnerabilities of whole regions. So I think for an export country, we probably have to also confront some of the challenges that we're facing on our home shores and think about how we're supporting food security for our own vulnerable communities. I suppose the other thing I think of is that there's a lot of, I suppose, broader pressures facing the agriculture system at the moment that are driven by sustainability targets and decarbonisation targets. And a lot of that comes from downstream supply chain partners that are setting targets for farmers or for food producers to meet in order to comply with their supply chain requirements. And so I suppose I just put a challenge out there to consumers to really think about, when you're at the grocery store, the food decisions that you're making.

When I say food decisions, I don't just mean, are you buying Australian-produced food or are you buying food produced by our international partners, but I mean more like the actual food that you're choosing to eat for that meal. So are you choosing fresh fruit and vegetables that will sustain you with the nutrition that you need? Are you making a choice to purchase a much more refined, processed product that's had to go through a much more complicated supply chain and that ultimately has had more water inputs, like emissions, a more complicated supply chain to get to that end choice for you to consume. So I suppose that's the challenge that we can do now, is think about making good healthy food choices as individuals and advocating for those in our society that are more vulnerable and don't have the same access to those choices.

I'd love to, I suppose, put a challenge out there to other listeners who might not be on the farm like yourself. And I suppose just to raise that the other challenge that we find as a sector is that actually a quarter of the food that we produce globally, it never actually gets eaten. And so a lot of that is wasted either in the processing of food products or in damages through transport, but also importantly, it's wasted in households where we don't actually eat food in time or our food is a bit spoiled. So I suppose I'd put a challenge out there as well, that we have an obligation to think as consumers about how can we be most respectful of the process and the natural environment that's produced this fresh food for us, and how do we avoid wasting that as well?

Allen Dorsey: 

Yes, that is such a good thing to think about and something I will definitely consider as I'm looking at my fridge tonight. We are lucky to have leaders like you already in the space thinking about these things and thinking globally as well. So, so good. Thank you so much, Sally, for coming in. Before we go, of course I have to ask a question. I'm trying to read a lot of books this year. Do you have a book recommendation? We know a lot of Nousers are bookworms. What are you recommending, do you think?

Sally Higgins: 

I've been thinking hard about what book to give you. And I reckon separately, Allen, I can give you a list of books that are agriculturally focused reads, but I wanted to take this suggestion a different angle. There's this author who's from Brisbane called Trent Dalton, and I don't know if you've come across his work. He had a Netflix series out, Boy Swallows Universe, but he wrote this book during COVID called Love Stories and it's a compilation of individuals' love stories or just life stories that he captured from just sitting down outside the Brisbane City Hall. And I think that book is such a powerful read because it reminds me that each person brings their own story and their own perspective to, I suppose, everyday life. And I think there's such value in taking the time to hear people's perspectives and learn their story before making judgements about them and their views.

So that's a great book that I think is a bit of an emotional read, so you have to space it out over a few weeks perhaps, but it's a really special one.

Allen Dorsey: 

Good, good, good. Yes. I'll set aside some time. I'll get the Kleenex ready and I'll be ready to just cry and connect with my fellow man. That is absolutely amazing. Well, thank you so much again, Sally, for your time and for chatting with us today. I mean, it's really got me thinking about how I can bring people together and also thinking about where my food comes from, which is so important. So thank you so much.

Sally Higgins:

Thanks, Allen. It's been great chatting with you. Really appreciate it.

Allen Dorsey: 

Awesome. And thanks so much for tuning in everyone. We will see you next time.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode. Next week we chat with Carlos, ESG expert, former rugby player and part-time DJ, for why ESG suddenly matters to so many businesses. We'll catch you then.

Nous Group is an international management consultancy and for the past 25 years, we've helped public, private, and not-for-profit clients deliver better outcomes for their customers, communities, and society. You can explore more of what we do on our website at www.nousgroup.com or follow us on socials.