Despite record-breaking rainfall and floods this year, eastern Australian landscapes are facing hydration issues. Slowing the flow of water on farms can help.
The condition of our farmlands affects our lives in the most primal ways, from the water we drink, to our ability to cope with flood, fire and drought.
Professor Stephen Dovers, chair of the science advisory committee at the Mulloon Institute, an organisation that develops and shares regenerative farming techniques, believes the state of farmland depends heavily on one issue: how well the land holds onto water.
“Rain is an income,” Dovers says. And too often, rather than banking that resource, we leave it to “flow out the drain”.