If your entire understanding of how cattle properties are managed came from conservation groups, it would be easy to form the impression that Australian cattle producers enjoy nothing more than tearing down virgin forest and destroying threatened species.

But travel to cattle production areas and speak first hand to the people who conservationists criticise from afar, and a very different story emerges.

Earlier this month about 40 people including senior government figures, Meat & Livestock Australia board members and scientists and policy officials made such a trip.

“Ultimately for us it is about telling our story, because if we’re not, someone else is telling it for us,” said David Hill from Clarkwood, Clarke Creek in Central Queensland, one of three organisers of the day along with Ian McCamley, Lowesby, Rolleston and Peter Quinn, on whose property Essex at Middlemount the gathering was hosted.

“You can’t blame people for feeling the way that they do if they don’t have the alternative put in front of them,” David said.

“We believe we have a positive story to tell, and we need to be telling it, otherwise you’re going to see the billboards, ‘eating red meat kills koalas’ and all that sort of thing, (but) there’s evidence to say that koalas can actually thrive under cohabiting with grazing animals.”

In fact some koala experts are “more excited about what we do than we are”, Mr Hill said (See related article)

Groundcover: The true indicator of health

One of the nuances of the ongoing debate about “deforestation” is that the focus is limited to trees and trees alone.

Yet landholders, speaking from decades of experience working as closely with the landscape as it is possible to work, say the focus needs to be on ground cover as well.

Ian McCamley, Lowesby, Rolleston.

“Grazing grass is unique,” Ian McCamley told the gathering.

“You’re managing two dynamics – live grass and live animals.

“It’s very difficult to explain and learn from a book.

“But who do Governments and policy makers go to for advice on land, veg and grazing?

“People with a degree, researchers, academics and environmentalists, often loaded with confirmation bias, have all the say.

“The people who actually manage the land and vegetation, who have been researching for decades all self-funded with our own money on the line, rarely get consulted – we just get told what we can and can’t do.”

“Lock it up” is no answer

The frustration only grew when landholders were told to simply to “lock it up”, he said.

“One absolute key thing I have learned is that true long term environmental sustainability always goes hand in hand with long term productive and profitable grazing management.

“It simply can’t work any other way.

“The evidence is everywhere that lock it up and leave it has very poor environmental outcomes, as does poorly managed grazing. The grazing must be managed.”

David Hill from Clarkwood said the whole idea that previously cleared land and regrowth will go back to being remnant was “a falsehood”.

“A lot of times it will go back to a monoculture that is not ecologically sustainable, it is not environmentally sustainable, and it is certainly not productive.”

Pictures shared from his property illustrate the issue:

Above pictures: Bare ground under brigalow regrowth in a good grass growing season.

Commenting on the above images Mr Hill said: “Those with a radical ideology believe that’s what I should let my brigalow country go back to. And I’m afraid, I don’t think there’s much future for my children in the beef industry if that’s the case. This is what we’re dealing with.”

Above: Dense groundcover interspersed with trees on Clarkwood.

Remnant vegetation protected by legislation in Queensland

54 percent of Clarkwood is remnant vegetation which is protected by legislation in Queensland meaning it cannot be touched –  negating conservation group claims that landholders are illegally clearing large areas of virgin forest.

David Hill on Clarkwood.

The Hills manage regrowth on the balance of their property, and leave many more trees in those paddocks than legislation would enable them to remove.

David Hill said deep rooted trees which grew lots of grass underneath were “very safe” on Clarkwood.

“I don’t like to see bare ground,” he said.  “If a tree has grass under it I tend to leave it.”

Soil testing on Clarkwood has shown that the pasture country has 4 percent organic soil carbon, which was as good as the remnant tree country on the property, he said.

Grounded views

Mr McCamley said as he drives around his property he looks mainly at the ground, rather than his cattle.

Why?

“Healthy abundant ground cover is the key indicator to truly “successful land and environmental management,” he said.

“If someone just wants to focus on trees, and especially if they talk about trees as if all tree species have the same function in the environment, then clearly they don’t understand what is critical.

“The focus must be on ground cover and pulling the levers that maintain and improve ground cover.

“When someone talks trees, ask what sort of trees, how many, and most importantly, what will be their effect over time on ground cover.

“If they are deep rooted trees, not too thick, with a positive allelopathic effect, ground cover will be improved – Good for the environment and productivity.

“If they are shallow rooted trees with a negative allelopathic effect, or they are deep rooted trees that are thick enough to stop enough light getting to the ground, they will reduce ground cover – Bad for the environment and productivity.

“I believe we can all agree that land management that improves ground cover is a desirable thing in all situations.

“A healthy, productive, profitable grazing system focused on healthy, thriving ground cover can only have a positive environmental outcome.”

‘It is important we manage our trees properly’

On Essex, Peter Quinn leaves shade belts covering 10-12 percent of grazing paddocks while about 35-40pc of the property is forest country.

He has been doing that now for more than 30 years.

“It is important that we manage our trees properly,” he said. “Having them too thick and not doing anything at all with trees is not the way to manage forestry at all.”

By planting deep tap-rooted legumes into buffel pastures he has also seen significant improvements in groundcover, water infiltration into the ground and water quality in dams and water courses.

Early results from Flux Tower monitoring on the property show it is adding more carbon to the soil in periods of drawdown and losing less carbon in drier times.

“From what I’m seeing of that early data is that we’re actually losing less carbon, we’re not losing much carbon at all (in dry years) and then with our management change as far as livestock goes, we sequester carbon, but then we only level off, and I think that is probably some of the secret about the way we manage our country.

“Yes, we are going to have problems in really, really dry years, but if we can keep it to the stage where we don’t lose much, it is like walking up a staircase,

“If you keep stepping up, but you don’t step back, you just stop, and then you keep stepping up, you get to the top a lot quicker than you will if you get back two or three steps.”

‘It is all about the health of our soils’

David Hill said his cattle operation is entirely “soil driven” now.

“When we first started it was all about the quality of the cattle, then it was about the pasture, now we’re at the point where we should have started, it is all about the health of our soils, because everything comes from that.”

Cattle on Clarkwood

Likewise Ian McCamley said the focus on his property is on doing everything in their power to get every single drop of rainfall stored in the soil.

“It is not that critical how much rain you get, what’s absolutely critical is how much you can store in the soil.

“We really focus on that and having our pastures in the most healthy state possible, which means that under the ground is healthy.

“The roots are deep, the micro-organisms are all working under there, we’re adding legumes, like Desmanthus Progardes, because they’re deep tap-rooted legumes, and they’re not only adding nitrogen but they’re bringing fertility up from down really deep and they’re allowing moisture to infiltrate down deep in the soil.”