YLAD Living Soils - Future Farms Today Seminar And Field Day A Huge Success

The YLAD Living Soils - Future Farms Today seminar and field day last week was a resounding success, with almost all of the 130 farmers attending remaining to chat after the event had officially ended.

Co-founder and Managing Director of YLAD Living Soils, Rhonda Daly said the feedback was extremely positive.

“Every evaluation here said amazing, wonderful, incredible things,” Ms Daly said.

“We had a fabulous group of speakers and it was all about educating farmers.”

“You can’t show people what’s around the corner until they’ve reached the corner, but we started with the basics of soil and moved to microbiology, the unseen workforce in farming.”

The crowd of farmers learned that they had been farming in a way that didn’t recognise the importance of microbes because, like in people, microbes hugely impact the overall health of our land, water, air - environment.

Ms Daly said that if the biological, chemical and microbiological aspects weren’t all present it really isn’t possible to move forward.

After a full day sitting inside listening to the incredible group of speakers, the group enjoyed a delicious dinner complete with celebratory cake and music before rising early the next morning for a field day to Milgadera, Bill and Rhonda Daly’s farm.

“We are farmers like everyone else,” Ms Daly said.

“We were able to illustrate and demonstrate what we do. They love it out there, seeing what other farmers do.”

The field day included demonstrations of the Horsch Roller Crimper, the Aeromaster Compost Turner and Tea Extraction Unit and the NZ built Tow and Fert spray unit.

Farmers also witnessed soil improvements from multi-species cover-cropping.

Ultimately, farmers learned that building resilience in the soil was vitally important to moving forward in agriculture, but they also learned that it was equally important to build resilience in the farmer.

“We have the highest rate of divorce, the highest rate of depression and the highest rate of suicide,” Ms Daly said.

“Danette Watson spoke on the practice of mindfulness.”

So, if our farmers can build resilience within themselves as well as the soil they farm in, not only will they grow some amazing produce but they will also have a huge impact on the health of our environment.

Ms Daly said this event, the latest in about 40 she has held over the past 20 years, was by far her best.

• Topics:

• Agriculture