You can’t have a healthy planet without healthy plants…
At Yallamundi, we feel a deep responsibility to care for this place we call home. Our family has been farming here for three generations, and the kids of generation four are growing up (fast!) on this land too. We want to do everything we can to ensure that the health of the soil, the level of biodiversity and even the yield of our crops are getting better every year – so we leave the next generation a brighter, better future.
To understand how important soil health is, it’s important to understand how our planet works. It’s essentially a vast living system, made up of countless fragile interconnections and interdependencies. Our changing climate is one of the most important examples of this, and scientists are extremely concerned about how a changing climate will affect plant health. They’re so worried, in fact, that the United Nations declared 2020 to be the International Year of Plant Health, in recognition of the important role that plants play across the globe. Whether as the ‘lungs of the earth’ – cleaning the air we breathe – or as providers of food, plants have the power to end world hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and boost economic development. Plants literally feed our planet, and plant health is crucial to life.
To keep raising awareness of the issue, the UN has now designated May 12 as International Day of Plant Health. For all of us at Yallamundi Farm, this is a great reminder of why we do things the way we do. It’s a chance to reflect on the important role plants play on our farm – feeding our animals, enriching the soil and filtering carbon from the air we breathe.
Here at the farm, we know how important soil health is if we want to build a brighter future. That’s why we’ve set aside 30% of our land for biodiversity and wildlife corridors. That’s why we rotate our grazing sheep regularly, and return as much manure to the soil as we can. And that’s why we’re going to plant thousands of native trees throughout this beautiful space. If we can leave the land better than when we found it, we can know we’ve made a small step towards solving a global issue, right here on our farm.