A crowd of more than 560 people attended the GROW Festival of Regenerative Food and Farming at Kyneton Racecourse last month.
The inaugural one-day conference and field day was a community project by Macedon Ranges Regenerative Farmers, part of the not-for-profit Macedon Ranges Sustainability Group.
The organisers aim was to bring people together to achieve a brighter, healthier, climate-adaptive and more profitable future.
The keynote speaker was US documentary filmmaker Peter Byck of Carbon Cowboys. Byck spoke to festival goers about his new doco series Roots So Deep.
Other speakers included Canadian soil scientist Joel Williams, social researcher in agriculture Professor Ruth Nettle, forester among farmers Rowan Reid, Nuffield scholar and carbon-neutral wool producer Colette Glazik, pasture agronomist Jade Killoran and many more.
Mount Alexander Sustainability Group representative Deane Belfield was among those to attend and told the Express it exceeded expectations.
He was delighted to do a presentation about the Mt Alexander Regenerative Agriculture Group project.
“MASG, MARAG and my small business Regenerative Australian Farmers also had a stall and we hosted a number soil test demonstrations and talks on various topics which were well received.”
Deane is an advocate of including regenerative agriculture as a key strategy for any community seeking to achieve Zero Net Emissions through soil carbon sequestration.
“MARAG was initiated in May 2019 and has grown from 20 landholders to more than 70, covering over 16,000 hectares.”
