FROM ‘NO HOPE IN HECK’ TO
REGENERATIVE NO-TILLING In the drylands of Southwestern Australia Ian and Dianne Haggerty are using the concepts of “Natural Intelligence Farming” to build a regenerative enterprise focused on zero tillage, livestock integration and biologically sourced inputs that boost their soil resources and profitability. Ian and Dianne Haggerty are using the concepts of “Natural Intelligence Farming” to build a regenerative enterprise focused on zero tillage, livestock integration and biologically sourced inputs that boost their soil resources and profitability. Written by John Dobberstein, No-Till Farmer Magazine, USA
Married and both raised in farming families, Ian and Dianne Haggerty were shocked when they sought advice from a farm advisor on managing their fledgling operation in the drylands of southwestern Australia. After looking at their farm size and financial capital, the advisor told them they should get out of farming because they didn’t have “a hope in heck” of surviving. “Fortunately, Ian and I are both pretty stubborn customers and we just took that as a bit of a challenge,” Dianne says, lamenting that her father was a successful conventional farmer. “We didn’t have any room for error, so we had to start to look at things in a different
way. At that point in time, using better and different types of machinery wasn’t going to be the answer.” Rather than internalizing the advisor’s stinging advice, Ian and Dianne researched biological farming methods and have pushed through early challenges to grow their operation and take excess costs and waste out of the system. The Haggertys now no-till cereal grains and multispecies hay or fodder crops and raise specially bred sheep for wool and premium-grade fat lambs. Over time, their 1,600-acre operation has grown to nearly 65,000 acres as they’ve patched together leases and shares and some purchases later on.
They’ve actually covered close to 185,000 acres in the country’s central wheatbelt, many parcels having different terrains, soils and rainfall zones. They describe their approach to notilling as “Natural Intelligence Farming” — which means harnessing dynamic, natural relationships that exist between all the organisms in the ecosystem and the environment itself — particularly the soil. “Really, it’s minimizing our interference as humans,” Dianne told attendees of the No-till on the Plains Winter Conference in early 2020. “We don’t have to actually have an answer all the time. We trust the natural processes and just do our best to enable them to occur.”
Starting from Nothing Their two main farming bases are at Mollerin and at Wyalkatchem, where the original farm is located. Precipitation is fleeting: During the 1990s, Dianne says, it wasn’t unusual to see 12-13 inches of rain annually, but lately precipitation has been 20-30% lower, equating to 8-9 inches of rain per annum, and at times as low as 5-6 inches.
Ian and Dianne
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The Haggertys started farming in 1994 although they didn’t inherit any land, which is unusual in western Australia. They didn’t have any money for machinery at that point, but were able to buy about 300 breeding ewes and a piece of land. They borrowed machinery from Dianne’s parents in exchange for Ian doing some seasonal work. ISSUE 14 | JULY 2021
