The Agroforestry in Australia

a French perspective of growing and using trees on farms in Australia
We are two french at AgroParisTech, the life science branch of ParisTech, which is a consortium of ten of the foremost French Graduate Institutes in Science and Engineering.
We travelled during 6 month around the East coast of Australia searching for new system of agroforestry. We met those farmers who try to integrate trees on their farm and interviewed them to share their experience and understand the benefice for them of trees.
After 6 month, 4 states (Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) a lot of farmer and researcher from the CSIRO or PFT, we produced with the participation of SmarTimbers Cooperative, Australian Forest Growers, Farm Forest Growers Victoria and Private Forest Tasmania (PFT).
This video is our movie. We would like to show to Australian or French farmers what is agroforestry? What are the benefices of the agroforestry? The goal of our project is to use farmer’s experience to promote agroforestry.
During all our trip, we published for each farm an article on our website : agroforesterieaust.wixsite.com...

[@emmanuelsebastiao3176]

Thank you so much for sharing

[@deeaay282]

great video. Thankyou for sharing.

[@matthewharris3898]

Great video, thank you. It shows how working with nature, rather than trying to impose our will upon nature, helps everybody. I am a fan of Natural Sequence Farming where the hydration of the land is the most important thing. This is where ALL plants, not just trees, work to create the right environment for productivity.

[@T.R.A.I.N.I.N.G.]

Have you studied tropical agroforestry?

[@GranadillaFilms]

I know that Eucalyptus is native to Australia but it exists as an exotic invasive species in plantations in many parts of the world. Because of its huge water uptake (90 litres per tree per day in summer months) it causes real problems in water stressed areas. It is also allelopathic and prevents other species from growing, resulting in ecologically dead forests. Walk through an indigenous natural forest and listen to the sounds of life, then walk through a Eucalyptus plantation and listen to the silence of a dead forest. I'm not sure this is the answer to our problems with climate change...

[@matthewharris3898]

Peter Andrews (Natural Sequence Farming (and the grumpiest ol bugger in the world)) says that the eucalypt is a weed in Australia. Now, he likes weeds...except eucalypts!

[@davedrewett2196]

Granadilla Films and yet Ernst Goetsch uses them as part of his Syntropic agroforestry system as a bulk biomass producer in Brazil. It’s a lot to do with how they are used on whether they are positive or negative.

[@GranadillaFilms]

@@davedrewett2196 Okay fair enough if they are used as part of a permaculture agroforestry system then maybe they have their place. I have to read up more about his work in Brazil. My main issue is where thousands of hectares of Eucalyptus is planted as one vast mono-crop replacing pristine tropical rain forest as is the case where I live. This has caused major problems in a vital rainfall catchment area. Eucalyptus plantations have no understory and do not hold rainwater like a natural forest.

[@davedrewett2196]

Granadilla Films sure, no mono crop is good. As far as ground cover goes it depends on the species how allelopathic they are but also here in Australia we have species in their natural range that are adapted to grow with the eucalyptus. I could show you wet Sclerophyll forest that has highly diverse layers of vegetation. Oh course if you put them in a place monocropped without those other species you end up with a biological desert. It works with Syntropic ag because it’s used as successional plant and the branches get chipped and added to the forest floor. And some is dug in and the soil fungi break it down and that forms the basis of the soil fertility. At the end of the day it’s the biological breakdown of carbon in soil via fungi and microorganism that create plant food. The other thing that can be done is to convert it into biochar which is what I do ( I have 40 hectares of naturally occurring spotted gum and iron bark ) I just use the branches that the trees throw off naturally so I don’t even need to harvest the trees to do that and if I didn’t do it a bush fire would burn it anyway. So then you have permanently sequestered carbon which for growing food in the wet tropics or subtropics holds your nutrients. I think where eucalyptus comes into its own is on extremely poor soil because you can build biomass very quickly with zero fertiliser inputs. If you already have fertile soil then I think there are much better species of trees to grow.

[@GranadillaFilms]

@@davedrewett2196 thanks for the positive explanations Dave 👌