Muster Dogs

How an Australian farming family chose regenerative practices over bare dirt and bull dust.

When the Spencer family farm looked to be on the brink of collapse, graziers Renee Spencer and her sister Melissa decided the time was right to take radical steps. They had become aware of such terms as 'cell grazing', 'sustainable' and 'holistic' and wondered if it was time to incorporate these concepts into their practice. Very soon they saw results - but only on a local level. What was required was a total rethink that included a dramatic shift in every aspect of their farming, including the study of soil, roots systems, microbes, and - counterintuitively - the contributions that stock make to the land.

Now with more than five years of regenerative practice under the belts, Renee and Melissa are keen to share their insights and so that agriculturalists - in the bush or the suburban garden - can work with their land, not against it, and change the way we farm, eat and think about our land.