Researchers seek opinions from Australia’s grain growers on regenerative agriculture

The anonymous survey is open until 15 August and seeks the views of grain growers on definitions and practices of different farming systems. These include traditional, conventional, conventional-innovative, regenerative, organic and biodynamic farming.

The survey is part of a research project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) that also seeks feedback on grain growers’ top ten economic, social and environmental indicator themes for their farms.

Project lead Professor Terry Rose said the survey results were critical to understanding how grain growers perceive regenerative cropping and what they feel defines regenerative management practices.

“We need to hear from farmers because they are the ones who are implementing and seeing the effects of different kinds of practices on their farms.

“There is some debate about what constitutes regenerative agriculture and the potential benefits and drawbacks of various suggested regenerative practices.

“What we want to create is an agreed working definition of what regenerative agriculture means, together with the economic, social and environmental indicators that align with that.

“It has the potential to affect not only our research focus, but policy, practice and the future of what we think of as regenerative agriculture in grain growing.”

The project team is working with five grain grower hubs across Australia.

If you are a grain grower located in Australia, you can undertake the survey here.

This survey is part of the "Regenerative agriculture: understanding the intent, practices, the benefits and disbenefits" project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

This study adheres to the Guidelines of the ethical review process of Southern Cross University and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. Whilst you are free to discuss your participation in this study with the researcher contactable at jacqueline.williams@scu.edu.au if you would like to speak to an officer of the University not involved in the study you may contact the Ethics Officer on 02 6620 3611 or email human.ethics@scu.edu.au All information is confidential and will be handled as soon as possible.

This research has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at Southern Cross University, approval number is 2024/027.