Eco-Gen Farms Pty Ltd

15/10/2023

When livestock are included in the system you are managing, their movements must be planned. If left in any one place too long, or if returned to it too soon, they will overgraze plants and compact and pulverize soils. Managed correctly, though your livestock can be used as a positive tool to improve environmental health.

www.ecogenfarms.com

14/10/2023

Shifting baseline syndrome: How we forget nature.

Benny, what the hell are you talking about? How can we forget about nature?!?

Quick example.

There used to be 30 000 000 bison in North America. Roaming over 22 ecosystems and 9.4 mill km2.

Today,there is approximately 2% of them ledt, restricted to only 1% of their historical range.

Now, if you could go to North American National Parks and see some bison, you would think: "Awesome, so much nature & wildlife".

However, this is only a fraction of the abundance there use to be. This phenomenon is called Shifting baseline syndrome.

💡Basically, when people get used to things getting worse without realizing it because they compare to what they've seen recently instead of how things used to be.

So we simply forget about nature and how abundant it used to be.

🤨 Why is tackling shifting baseline syndrome crucial?

1. We settle for mediocre restoration goals because we got used to the wrong standards.
2. Grazing species like bison can help us tackle climate change (restoring only a fraction of bison would add 595 MtCO2 annually to prairie ecosystem storage)
3. Due to the low standard of intact nature and biodiversity, we risk losing more and more until none is left.

💪 1 Action you can take:

When you reflect, read, rewild, study, restore, etc., always figure out what the baseline of the animal population, ecosystem etc. used to be before we humans messed it up.

Afterward, figure out how to get closer to that rather than a number from the last decade.

Let us not forget nature & tackle the shifting baseline syndrome!

P.S. Have you heard of the shifting baseline syndrome before? I have also heard it called “the recipe for frog soup”. Put a frog in cold water and slowly boil it you get frog soup, put a frog in boiling water and it gets out.

www.ecogenfarms.com

12/10/2023

Grazing lands being the headline. Do not take more animals off the land, they are vital for soil and land development. Properly managed, animals can reverse degradation and green the pastures again.

Clean Water 🚰 – Grazing lands act as natural filters, ensuring that our water sources remain clean and pure. By safeguarding our water quality, they contribute to healthier communities.

12/10/2023

Fantastic to see so many people with so many different techniques yet all striving to achieve the same goal. It’s not opinions that change the land, it’s action. Doesn’t matter how just start something, keep an open mind and don’t stop improving just because a mate of a mate said it wouldnt work.

11/10/2023

You know that saying ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’? Well…now it does, and it can help to scale regeneration worldwide through the various carbon markets.

However, there are two main challenges I’ve found in scaling it at speed, particularly using regenerative agriculture methods worldwide:

1. Defining regenerative agriculture - what is it and what are its specific outcomes?
2. Monetising it globally to ensure it’s longevity and sustainability.

In industry, the definition of regenerative agriculture is this:

‘To regenerate and revive all systems to full health - environment, social and financial’

In amongst regen ag ‘advocates’, the definition is broad and unspecific, with claims that defining it will limit what is done on the land.

This isn’t true, everything needs a scope, a definition so it’s clear and we all know what we are striving to achieve. This is how the human mind works, without rules we tend to become lost.

Furthermore, without proper outcomes stated or definitions, the greenwashing risk becomes significantly higher.

Currently, there are many graziers claiming they are regenerative when in fact they may not be, due to having a differing definition to someone else who may not think it actually is.

If you aren’t focusing on reforesting land as well as soil health, for example, you are not necessarily truly regenerative.

The second challenge we face is around monetisation of the regenerative ag industry.

Nothing is fully regenerative without proper robust financial systems in place, it is likely with more frequent and extreme climate induced weather patterns, even the best regenerative farmers will fail without alternative income sources like carbon credits.

In Australia, regenerative ag is currently being scaled due to the scientifically robust carbon credit and biodiversity frameworks in place, that allow landowners to be paid in order to implement more regenerative farming practises.

Sometimes I find that people think our economic systems have failed us, whereas as in fact they haven’t.

They work and have worked for centuries…they have just primarily been based on the degeneration or extraction of nature, instead of regeneration. Meaning that money was made from the extraction of mining materials and cutting down of forests, which has allowed us to build and our communities into what they are now.

However, to scale regeneration worldwide, you must flip the financial system that has worked for us for so long on its head.

You can do this by placing a value on carbon and biodiversity like you would gold or oil. You can then trade it in much the same way.

Our perspectives need to be flipped into a new paradigm of thinking…a new way of being, using our EXISTING systems, instead of creating new ones.

This is the only way we can scale the revival of nature and our social and economic systems at the speed in which we need to counteract the rapid climate shifts.

www.ecogenfarms.com

11/10/2023

Insetting may not be any better than offsetting, says carbon credit integrity expert

Many companies are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and support climate action. Carbon credits may be categorized whether they are generated from projects inside or outside the company's value chain.

Insetting means that the company invests in emission reduction or removal projects that are directly linked to its own activities, such as suppliers, customers, or operations.

Offsetting means that the company invests in projects that are unrelated to its value chain, such as renewable energy or forest conservation.

Some of the pros and cons are:

- Insetting can help companies align their sustainability goals with their core business strategy, engage their stakeholders, improve their reputation, and create value along their value chain. However, insetting can also be more complex, costly, and risky than offsetting, as it requires more involvement and coordination from the company and its partners. In addition, insetting may not always lead to additional emission reductions or removals, as some projects may have happened anyway without the company's intervention.

- Offsetting can help companies achieve their emission reduction or removal targets faster, cheaper, and easier than insetting, as they can choose from a wide range of available and verified projects around the world. However, offsetting can also be seen as a way of avoiding responsibility or greenwashing, as it does not address the root causes of the company's emissions. Moreover, offsetting may not always deliver the expected environmental and social benefits, as some projects may face leakage, reversal, or double-counting issues.

Companies should follow best practices such as:
- Setting science-based emission reduction targets and prioritizing direct action to reduce their own emissions before investing in carbon credits.
- Choosing high-quality carbon credits that are certified by reputable standards and registries, and that demonstrate additionality, permanence, verifiability, and co-benefits.
- Reporting transparently on their carbon credit purchases and retirements, and avoiding double claiming or double counting of emission reductions or removals.
- Engaging with their stakeholders and communicating clearly on their carbon credit strategy and impact.

In conclusion, insetting is not inherently better than offsetting, and both approaches require rigorous standards and safeguards to ensure their environmental integrity and effectiveness. Companies should not rely on insetting alone to achieve their climate goals but rather use it as one of the many tools available to reduce their emissions and support sustainable development.

Reference article titled "Insetting may not be any better than offsetting, says carbon credit integrity expert"
Published July 7, 2023 at Carbon Pulse
By Ben Garside

Visit www.Ecogenfarms.com

17/08/2023

Very excited to have MarsHydro, world class indoor hydroponics equipment join teams with Eco-Gen Farms. At Eco-Gen farms we are here to help with any MarsHydro kit. We will have supplies of grow tents, LED lights with teamed with Samsung, fans, filters, air vents, drying racks and much more.

Remember, all sales profits go back into our nursery so we can produce more products for our rural friends. Thanks to MarsHydro we hope to use the sales to expand into a larger property. Have a look at our website and hopefully we will have products getting added daily.
Www.Ecogenfarms.com

31/07/2023

A million years ago with only stone age technology we could not manage our environment any more than other tool-using animals. Then we learned to use fire & our technology advanced to today’s marvels of chemicals, machines, computers, smart phones and space exploration.

With language, organization, spear & fire our ancestors learned that as omnivorous scavengers we could became predators. A new type of predator Nature had never seen that could kill whole herds of animals easier than any predator which had to isolate an animal. So early people whether Native American, Aborigines or any other cultures of our species killed off over 80% of the genera of large animals that had co-evolved with us, plants & soil life over entire continents.

Today we praise early people such as Native Americans, Aborigines and others for their skilled use of fire to manage the landscape although they were creating the great man-made deserts of antiquity across most of the world – Australia, North & South America the whole of North Africa, biblical world and across into India and up into China - having seasonal and often low rainfall (not in humid environments such as the UK).

We scientists, including all Nobel Laureates, have replaced early illiterate humans but still 60,000 years later have only technology and fire, or resting the environment to recover - that leads to oxidation, desertification and larger fires.

And now in 2023 with mega-fires (burning at altitudes and latitudes that did not burn before) we are using the euphemistic word scientifically “prescribed” burning rather than simply admit these are the same practices of pre-science illiterate people.
This was the subject of the infamous Oxford debate about a couple of weeks ago in which GM refused to discuss this point and answer the question all scientists must answer if all economies, businesses, smart phones and entertainment amusing the world in city-based civilization is to survive. How can humans reverse global biodiversity loss desertification over about 2/3 of our Earth’s land using technology?

11/07/2023

It’s sad that even today governments still think that nature, climate change, biodiversity loss is just how it is. Look around the world, it happens every year but the results are getting worse. The flooding is getting worse, the fires are larger and hotter. 2023 is the hottest year ever recorded. I thought there was policies in place along time ago that should have already started to show some improvement. I’m tired of reading all these news articles and science articles, do something about it, we don’t need more study, we don’t need more scare mongary. Let’s just get out there and start gardening and greening Australia, be the last into drought and first out of it.

Government suppression of good science is hampering the fight to address the biodiversity crisis gripping the planet, an Australian expert says.