Original air date - A Question of Balance :: 7:30pm 29th Aug 2017

Growth Industry: Nick Radford, Director of Ecoliving Design, digs into regenerative agriculture. Agriculture is defined here as deliberate growing of human food and covers any sized growing space, including farms, market gardens, community gardens, home gardens and urban terraces. Never underestimate the importance of all of the above EXCEPT farms. In many poor areas of the world, farms are set up as export businesses by foreigners, with little financial or nutritional benefit to local people. In Australia, farming is a high risk business with tight economic margins in marginal climate and soils. Supermarket contracts demand high crop yields at low prices, encouraging short-term profit over long-term viability. A simple and all too common solution is to clear more land, the major cause of biodiversity loss and general environmental degradation. Wherever you live, if you are getting good nutrition produced ethically and sustainably, it has probably not come from a farm. Nick advocates the backyard hammock as an important 'tool' in developing easily maintained, regenerative agriculture in spaces as small as a decent kitchen garden. It seems that brains rather than brawn are often the key element to getting more out of nature and ecoservices than slogging away with unproductive mowing and mattocking.