Regenerative Agriculture is a vast and complex topic. Our passionate farmers have curated a collection of their favorite books, podcasts, videos, and more that have inspired and helped them the most. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to dive deep into your favorite topic, our database is designed to support you on your regenerative journey.
Do you have a favourite that’s missing? We are always trying to build the database, so send us through your suggestion! Email suggestions to [email protected]
A video course and accompanying booklet was created to teach the essential principles for making high quality compost for your farm or commercial business. Marney Jane Blair, a Northern California expert with 30+ years of experience in small and large scale composting systems, offers strategies for both beginners and advanced composters. Marney’s deep passion and understanding of biology, regenerative systems, and the interconnectedness of life will both teach and inspire you to turn farm wastes into life-sustaining compost.
Demonstrating 3 different Johnson-Su Bioreactor designs
Manual of the best practices for creating a Johnson-Su Composting Bioreactor by the New Mexico State University
Watch this video to learn how foliar applications can increase crop and soil health over time. AEA founder John Kempf will describe how to develop synergistic product stacks for heightened crop impact, how to manage water quality, and what qualities of solutions are important to measure, such as pH, EC, and point of deliquescence
Summary of results found in our 2019/2020 cover crop trials
A list of the significant guest speakers hosted by CVRF over the past few years and their websites.
April 6th 2021 from Green Cover Seed
Dr. Christine Jones turns our perception of phosphorus upside down with this presentation on available phosphorus in our soils.
“This is exceptional, one of my favorite talks by Dr. Jones. Her facts about climate is so important. Too much of the "regenerative" ag talk these days uses eroneous notions of humans altering climates from greenhouse gas emission and miss the bedrock of fundamental issues that Dr. Jones so eloquently outlines here regarding the holobiome, microbes, plant diversity and nutrient cycling”
In this first video of the series, Declan McDonald explores the key principles that form the basis of Regenerative Agriculture. These principles will be unwrapped in more depth in the upcoming videos.
Australia is an ancient landscape with fragile ecosystems. Prior to European settlement Aboriginal people had learned to care for country over thousands of years in a range of different environments managing them sustainably. They used fire for a range of purposes, but the result was a mosaic pattern of vegetation, principally of grassland and open woodland. Explorers like Thomas Mitchell frequently commented on the richness of the grass and its luxuriant growth where, amongst others, Kangaroo grass was waist high. Since European settlement the Australian environment has been irrevocably altered. As settlers moved from the coast towards the interior with their large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, the land was overgrazed. With their European perceptions, settlers did not understand the value of, nor how to manage native grasslands. So robust perennial grasslands were replaced with introduced pasture grasses or annual cropping systems. Sheep, cattle, horses, camels, goats and rabbits were introduced into many regions and soils and plants that were adapted to soft footed animals were trampled causing increased run-off and erosion. Native grasslands were subject to intensive grazing. The result was a substantial loss of biodiversity, soil fertility and depth. Today, only remnants of native grassland vegetation remain and the loss continues.
No nonsense information on grazing techniques, forage growth, soil fertility, nutritional quality, hay and silage. It’s a systemative outline of the skills of Management Intensive Grazing.
It is the story of how mid-20th-century agriculture failed, wit the adoption of industrial agricultural practices and high rates of use of fertiliser and pesticides inflicting severe ecological damage on the land. The decline threatened to spiral the farm and the family into financial ruin. Out of the ashes came ‘pasture cropping’, a unique method of growing crops that also restored native grasslands, as well as farm and soil ecosystems, and brought financial profit.
Microscopic cells called “mycelium” - the fruit of which are mushrooms -recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil
With a lifetime’s experience of working the land, Peter Andrew’s has seen the landscape change. He has watched and experimented with the movement of water. He has observed the importance of biodiversity- weeds included. And he’s concluded that to save Australia we need to return the landscape to its original systems.
Award-winning author Temple Grandin is famous for her groundbreaking approach to decoding animal behavior. Now she extends her expert guidance to small-scale farming operations. Grandin s fascinating explanations of how herd animals think describing their senses, fears, instincts, and memories and how to analyze their behavior, will help you handle your livestock more safely and effectively. You ll learn to become a skilled observer of animal movement and behavior, and detailed illustrations will help you set up simple and efficient facilities for managing a small herd of 3 to 25 cattle or pigs, or 5 to 100 goats or sheep.
Temple Grandin, one of the most influential advocate of humane livestock treatment, has spent her life developing stress-free facility designs and standards of humane management. In an environment of growing concern regarding large factory farming practices, Grandin is a voice of reason explaining the benefits of keeping animals calm through every phase of their lives - benefits that include safer working conditions, higher yields of marketable meat, better-quality meat, and, of course, more humane conditions for the animal
Have you ever desired, deep within your soul, to make a comfortable full-time living from a farming enterprise? Too often people dare not even vocalize this desire because it seems absurd. It's like thinking the unthinkable.
After all, the farm population is dwindling. It takes too much capital to start. The pay is too low. The working conditions are dusty, smelly and noisy: not the place to raise a family. This is all true, and more, for most farmers.
But for farm entrepreneurs, the opportunities for a farm family business have never been greater. The aging farm population is creating cavernous niches begging to be filled by creative visionaries who will go in dynamic new directions. As the industrial agriculture complex crumbles and our culture clambers for clean food, the countryside beckons anew with profitable farming opportunities.
While this book can be helpful to all farmers, it targets the wannabes, the folks who actually entertain notions of living, loving and learning on a piece of land. Anyone willing to dance with such a dream should be able to assess its assets and liabilities; its fantasies and realities. "Is it really possible for me?" is the burning question this book addresses.
One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture.
Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown—in an effort to simply survive—began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.
This Soil Health Guide for North Central Victoria is a easy-to-read, practical guide to understanding soil types in north central Victoria.
The 15 chapters focus on different species that Rowan grows on his Bambra Agroforestry Farm. These include the local Australian Blackwood and Mountain Ash, low rainfall native timber species like Red Ironbark and Spotted Gum, sub-tropical natives such as Sydney Blue Gum, Silky Oak, River Sheoak and Australian Red Cedar, and exotics including Coast Redwood, Black Walnut, English Oak and Poplar.
Rowan uses these species to explore the fundamentals of tree growing and timber production making the book relevant to farmers, foresters and conservationists around the world. Examples from Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Europe, North America and SE Asia demonstrate how growing and cutting a tree for timber can be an act of conservation.
Naturally, the book covers the technical aspects of tree planting, pruning and thinning, harvesting and timber processing and the science behind tree growth and wood quality. But, Rowan also reflects on the what it means to be a tree grower and how governments, industry and farmer groups can encourage landholders to plant and manage trees for both conservation and profit.
A 1950 scientific paper describing the lost art of contour or curved fencing, which has great potential to work with, and hydrate, the natural landscape.
“Contour fencing has proved both satisfactory and practical. This fact will change many landscapes to appear as the one illustrated here since livestock control on contoured farms has been a major problem. This contoured and fenced hillside is located on the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed at Coshocton, Ohio.”
A planting guide for European honeybees and Australian native pollinators.
The Australian honeybee industry provides essential benefits to agricultural, horticultural and urban environments through managed and incidental pollination services.
Planting bee forage for honeybee nutrition offers major benefits to the industry and society. This planting guide for bee forage describes planting choices from the backyard to the bush, right across the nation, and will assist with increasing available bee food. Individuals, gardeners, municipalities, government land management authorities and farmers can make a difference.
Partnerships and innovation in urban environments and broad-scale vegetation management will effect a positive difference. Perennial pastures for semi-arid lands, biofuel plantations, carbon farming, biodiverse planting and revisiting existing plantation development can all deliver significant regional benefits.
This guide gives ideas and choices of species to bring about improved outcomes for honeybees and the Australian pollen- and nectar- using fauna, including mammals, insects and birds.
One woman’s journey from ecological despair to finding hope in the soil beneath her feet.
Film director and actress Rachel Ward is not the first person you’d expect to join a farming revolution. In this triumphant film, Rachel voyages from wilful ignorance about the ecological impacts of conventional agriculture on her own rural property, to embracing a movement to restore the health of Australia’s farmland, food and climate.
Learn a roadmap to healthy soil and revitalised food systems to powerfully address these times of challenge. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm/ranch profits. Learn how to: - Triage soil health and act to fast-track soil and plant health-Build healthy resilient soil systems-Develop a deeper understanding of microbial and mineral synergies-Read what weeds and diseases are communicating about soil and plant health-Create healthy, productive and profitable landscapes.Globally recognised soil advocate and agroecologist Nicole Masters delivers the solution to rewind the clock on this increasingly critical soil crisis in her first book, For the Love of Soil. She argues we can no longer treat soil like dirt. Instead, we must take a soil-first approach to regenerate landscapes, restore natural cycles, and bring vitality back to ecosystems.
What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves.
Soil is the unlikely story of our most maligned resource as swashbuckling hero. A saga of bombs, ice ages and civilisations falling. Of ancient hunger, modern sicknesses and gastronomic delight. It features poison gas, climate collapse and a mind-blowing explanation of how rain is formed.
For too long, we've not only neglected the land beneath us, we've squandered and debased it, by over-clearing, over-grazing and over-ploughing. But if we want our food to nourish us, and to ensure our planet's long-term health, we need to understand how soil works - how it's made, how it's lost, and how it can be repaired.
In this ode to the thin veneer of Earth that gifts us life, commentator and farmer Matthew Evans shows us that what we do in our backyards, on our farms, and what we put on our dinner tables really matters, and can be a source of hope.
Isn't it time we stopped treating the ground beneath our feet like dirt?
Call of the Reed Warbler will change the way we farm, eat and think about food. In this groundbreaking book Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.
Using his personal farming experience as a touchstone, he tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. He shows how innovative farmers are finding a new way, regenerating their land and witnessing astounding transformations. Evocatively, he captures what it truly means to live in connection with the land.
For farmer, backyard gardener, food buyer, health worker, policy maker and public leader alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a clear vision of a sustainable future for our food supply, our landscape, our health and our Earth. It offers hope and a powerful affirmation of our potential for change. Now is the time for a grassroots revolution.
Making biochar together with the Central Victorian Regenerative Farmers group at one of their members properties. Here a pine plantation that had been ravaged by the 2016 bush fires was utilized to make over a tonne of Biochar.
Mt Bolton & Bung Bong Nov 2020
CCMA in 2020 to showcase some local farms who had trialing regenerative techniques. More specifically cover crops and holistic grazing
The Working Cows podcast gives you something to think about as you seek to maximize the effectiveness of your cattle operation and the joy your family receives from this lifestyle.
Jesse Frost is one-half of the farm team at Rough Draft Farmstead with his wife Hannah Crabtree in Central Kentucky. Jesse hosts The No-Till Market Garden Podcast and a video series on YouTube about no-till market gardening. His background is in cooking, off-grid farming, and journalism, contributing to The Atlantic, Modern Farmer, Civil Eats, as well as maintaining the Marketing Column for Hobby Farms for many years.
This is a must-listen for food producers keen on boosting the quality of their produce. Our episodes are packed with strategies to help increase your farm's profits, productivity, sustainability - a win all around. The Nutrition Farming Podcast will help you rediscover the joy in farming, one of the most important professions. Join Graeme Sait and dive into the ins and outs of producing healthier, tastier food that benefits everyone.
Richard Perkins runs Europe's leading Regenerative Agriculture farm and training center, which is also one of the northernmost examples, (59N in Sweden); proving that if we can do this up here, you can surely do this anywhere. We are excited about facilitating the next generation of entrepreneurial young farmers. Our foremost responsibility is regenerating our landscape, ecosystem processes and soils through resilient, replicable, scalable and profitable farm enterprises. Our secondary function is to educate and empower people into action through regenerative design, enterprise and holistic decision-making that stimulates local community and economy whilst building soil.
Image Credit: Jeppe Blomgren
If you want to make a living on land and grow healthy food, this channel is for you. Check out the 290 plus videos detailing how to be successful on your own farm.
Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision. In Nourishment Provenza presents his thesis of the wisdom body, a wisdom that links flavor-feedback relationships at a cellular level with biochemically rich foods to meet the body's nutritional and medicinal needs. Provenza explores the fascinating complexity of these relationships as he raises and answers thought-provoking questions about what we can learn from animals about nutritional wisdom.
What in the world is a weed? The dictionary will tell you it is a plant out of place. In The Wonderous World of Weeds you will discover that the perceived weeds that grow around us hold special significance and wonderful medicinal values. We have plants growing all around us that have so much culinary and holistic potential and can be used as teas, decoctions, poultices, compresses, ointments, creams along with syrups and lozenges. Their medicinal uses can help relieve itches, get rid of cold sores, or help with coughs and colds, etc. Not many people realise that are plants growing all around us that we don’t realise have so much potential.Weeds also have culinary uses and there are recipes included. They are also good companions in the garden for vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers, and can tell you about the quality of your soil. For example, weeds are good indicators of an acid soil; soil lacking in humus or high in nitrogen; etc. The book will feature 100 common world-wide week, and each plant will include: A full description and identification together with a photograph; distribution, ie where they typically grow; a list of their common names; what uses they have and much more.
Professor King provides intriguing glimpses of Japan, China, Manchuria, and Korea, with information about the customs of the common people; utilization of waste; methods of irrigation, reforestation, and land reclamation; and the cultivation of rice, silk, and tea. An invaluable, profusely illustrated resource for organic gardeners, farmers, and conservationists. 249 illustrations.
The 4th edition is a completely revised, expanded, and updated version of what has become an underground classic bestseller. The author draws from 40 years of research, experience, and travel, to expand and clarify your knowledge and understanding of... your poop!
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings-asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass-offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.
The 'Regrarians Handbook' is a succinct & sequential outline of over 300 integrated methodologies and techniques that have been proven over many years of universal application to work towards regenerating human, plant and animals' lives along with production landscapes.
Regenerative Agriculture offers a clear and pragmatic approach to designing, installing and managing profitable small farms, and is built around Richard Perkins's tireless work to restore the dignity to rural stewardship through intelligent human-scale farming.
This book updates Savory's paradigm-changing vision for reversing desertification, stemming the loss of biodiversity, eliminating fundamental causes 'of' human impoverishment throughout the world, and climate change. Reorganised chapters make it easier for readers to understand the framework for Holistic Management and the four key insights that underlie it.
It is the story of how mid-20th-century agriculture failed, wit the adoption of industrial agricultural practices and high rates of use of fertiliser and pesticides inflicting severe ecological damage on the land. The decline threatened to spiral the farm and the family into financial ruin. Out of the ashes came ‘pasture cropping’, a unique method of growing crops that also restored native grasslands, as well as farm and soil ecosystems, and brought financial profit.
Mt Bolton & Bung Bong Nov 2020
CCMA in 2020 to showcase some local farms who had trialing regenerative techniques. More specifically cover crops and holistic grazing
It is the story of how mid-20th-century agriculture failed, wit the adoption of industrial agricultural practices and high rates of use of fertiliser and pesticides inflicting severe ecological damage on the land. The decline threatened to spiral the farm and the family into financial ruin. Out of the ashes came ‘pasture cropping’, a unique method of growing crops that also restored native grasslands, as well as farm and soil ecosystems, and brought financial profit.
Mt Bolton & Bung Bong Nov 2020
CCMA in 2020 to showcase some local farms who had trialing regenerative techniques. More specifically cover crops and holistic grazing
