A Pootilla-based business is working to educate and inspire farmers, gardeners and food growers to prioritise soil health.
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Munash Organics founder Ian Munro and garden, education and relationships manager Bryony Bishop will host a Q and A sessions among their flourishing vegetable gardens on Thursday evening.
The event celebrates National Regenerative Agriculture Day, which is recognised throughout Australia on Friday.
"Healthy food comes from healthy soil and makes our people healthy, our water healthy, our animals healthy and our meat healthy, so it is a big happy cycle," Ms Bishop said.
"But unfortunately since agriculture and mechanised farming began, we didn't appreciate the impact we would have on our soil with mass food production and chemicals.
One of the biggest problems we have had is getting people to understand why they need to change.
- Ian Munro, Munash Organics
"We feel a responsibility to help people understand we have been irresponsible with our soils for hundreds of years.
"We are educating on how to grow food organically and source mineral rich remnants to replicate soil before we messed with it."
According to some scientists, at the current rate of soil destruction, there is only 50 years of suitable topsoil left to grow food.
Regenerative agriculture is a growing movement that is gaining momentum in Australia.
Watch the video on regenerative agriculture below.
It is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems that focuses on soil health and improving biodiversity.
The idea is to 'do no harm' to the land, but to also improve it by partnering with nature instead of trying to control it.
Mr Munro pioneered the use of basalt and granite ash blends with a natural plant simulator for re-mineralising crop soils in 1989.
Munash Organics now sells products, including the 'rockdust', with rich mineral elements that aim to replicate the soil as it was before we 'messed with it'.
"When we first came here to Ballarat in 1985 I came to a different soil and discovered things weren't the same and had to learn about farming all over again. I had to sit down and work on how to get things right and realised everything starts from the soil upwards," Mr Munro said.
"What I have learnt since is the only way you can fix soil products is with another soil product. You can't fix it with a chemical. To me that is the most important thing to understand.
"You have got to have minerals in balance, they are the most important element to balancing soils, but also the air, water and microbes have all got to be in balance."
Mr Munro and Ms Bishop said farmers and growers lacked knowledge about how soil functions and how chemicals have changed the soil.
They said understanding this was the first step to knowing how to regenerate soil.
"The black and white fact of it is we now have some time stamps - if nothing changes and we just keep doing what we are doing now we have 50 years left of food growing time left on our earth," Ms Bishop said.
"There just isn't enough nutrients in our soil to grow the plants."
"One of the biggest problems we have had is getting people to understand why they need to change," Mr Munro said.
"But you can see the difference in the plant when you create the right environment."
You can call Munash Organics on 5334 5386 to book a place in the National Regenerative Agriculture event.
It will run from 5.30pm to 7pm on Thursday night at 560 Daylesford-Ballarat Road.
Munash Organics will host more workshops on soil health throughout the year.
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