Strong family values drive an innate approach to sustainability

Richard Gardner has an innate desire to conserve the natural values of his property, “Annandale” near Tunbridge in the Midlands of Tasmania, an ethos passed down to his daughter, Molly, who is exploring options to help improve the environmental sustainability of their entire farming operations.

“If you are curious and think about what is going on around you, it is not difficult to understand that we should be proactive around the environment, where we can,” Richard explains.

Richard, his wife Emily, and their three children approach their farming business like a three-legged stool, whereby the social, economic and environmental aspects of their operation need to be in balance. This has seen their son, Fenn, drive the business side, daughter Esther focus on the people, and Molly increasingly involved in environmental and sustainability initiatives.

“We have made a commitment as a family to try and do as much as we can to reduce our impact,” Molly says.

These shared values have led to documented business goals focusing on “environmentally sound and sustainable production” while also ensuring “long-term profitability and business growth” of their predominately dairy enterprise. Milking 1300 cows, the family also runs 4500 merino ewes and an irrigated cropping program producing grain and fodder for livestock.

“We have needed to balance the higher productivity areas of the farm with areas managed for conservation,” Richard says.
 

This saw Richard, shortly after purchasing “Annandale” in 1995, establish a conservation area that has grown from an initial 300 hectares to 650 hectares under conservation management.

“The first thing we did was shut the gates on the bush. It was something we intrinsically wanted to do”, Richard says.

With 13 per cent of their 2700-hectare farming operation under a conservation covenant in perpetuity, and another 12 per cent under conservation management, a quarter of their land is protected. Richard says his belief then, and now, is that “conservation is important.”

“I believe the landscape should be preserved,” he says. This has seen researchers come onto the property to identify and measure the habitat and species, including rare and threatened species like the native daisy, which are documented in the business’ biodiversity register.

“We have had a few people do research, and we try and be as open as possible to researchers if anyone wants to have a look at what we are doing,” Richard says.
 

Seeing climate change as “the biggest existential threat,” Richard has long been motivated to “help do something about it”. Ignited by a 2003 presentation during his Nuffield Scholarship study that highlighted the science behind climate change, Richard says he has been waiting for a technical solution to the “enteric fermentation problem”.

“For us, methane emissions are the number one thing where we can have an impact,” he says.

Molly echoes this sentiment, who, upon returning home in 2020, led the initial research phase to understand the carbon output from their dairy and explore options for abatement.

“I have always been interested in the impact of climate change and the output of carbon emissions from the dairy, so I wanted to look at our options,” Molly says.

With Molly’s work identifying asparagopsis as “the most likely candidate for reducing methane emissions in our business,” Richard then approached Fonterra after hearing they were leading a collaboration with Sea Forest to trial the seaweed extract in dairy cows.

This led to the Gardners hosting an on-farm dairy trial to demonstrate farm methane reduction strategies in conjunction with Fonterra and Sea Forest, the commercial producer of the asparagopsis seaweed from Tasmania’s east coast.

Now in their fourth year, Richard says, “we know from industry research that at a trial level, we should be able to get around 25 to 30 per cent reduction in emissions, but it could potentially be anything up to 60, 70 or 80 per cent if we were able to get the rumen environment right.”

Having a technical role in developing the on-farm feeding systems for the trial, Richard says they are hoping to get a 10 to 12 per cent improvement in feed efficiency.

“Whether that means less feed to produce the same amount of product or the same amount of feed to produce more product, either way we are hoping for higher productivity.”

Still in its trial phase, Molly says the challenge for wider implementation will be how it is funded through the supply chain, as she considers “some farmers may not be quite as ready as Dad in wanting to spend money to help the environment.”

“If it was a zero-sum game, we would be into it, in a heartbeat,” Richard adds, acknowledging the potential financial barriers. “And we would probably potentially take a negative cash impact if it wasn’t too significant.”