PA Yeomans' Yobarnie on 730 report, from 2009

back home climate changes just another challenge for Australian farmers they've long been technological innovators right back to colonial times when John MacArthur developed the first strains of merino sheep for Australian conditions but with each innovation came new challenges as ever increasing land clearing led to new problems such as extended droughts erosion salinity and soil degradation one often overlooked pioneer in fighting those problems was New South Wales farmer PA Yeomans who in the 50s at two farms in North Richmond outside Sydney developed a sustainable irrigation system designed both to nourish and to protect the soil while his key line system now influences the organic farming movement around the world one of PA Yeomans experimental sites is facing redevelopment into a housing estate tracy Bowden reports on a forgotten hero of Australian agriculture on his property near Camden southwest of Sydney organic farmer Peter clinch is reaping the benefits of a land management technique designed more than half a century ago by a pioneer of Australian agriculture we hadn't bought hay for the cows here for about 27 years usually when it gets a little bit dry and we run short of feed we start the irrigation up could use some pastures for them the method is called the keyline plan working with the land and making the most of the water which falls on it after mapping the ridge contours or key lines where maximum rainfall gathers a dam is built with a system of channels to spread the water around the property was working from the the natural shape of the land and how the water flowed and getting that water the surplus water that flows off the land how to redistribute that into the land to build soil to build organic matter build fertility as a basis for sustainable farming so you've got the right attitude and the right fairly for land it sort of tells you'd sequence kaylynn was the brainstorm of engineer and farmer the late Percival Yeomans or PA almost thirty years ago he explained key line to the ABCs nationwide program it cuts across the Orthodox in how to handle water and water is the principle plan in maybe water comes before Rose who fed system everything to get the water right and the roads are right to plant the trees in the right place and no one does that it took farmers decades to realize how much damage they done to the land by large-scale tree clearing suddenly they were confronted with huge problems of soil erosion and salinity PA was one of the first to come up with an answer that's such a good example of the appreciation of landscape design and the father had you can see PA Yeomans developed key line on his property you Barney in Richmond north of Sydney he began with a rundown piece of land with very little topsoil and transformed it piays son Ken Yeomans remembers the weekend tours of the property in the 1950s and 60s they would always be farm walks done on a Sunday afternoon to take people around around the property and then occasionally they would have a field day that would go on for several days teaching and there were thousands of people that would have bus loads bus loads of people would just arrive on the problem to make the most of the nutrients in the subsoil PA Yeomans also developed his own version of the chisel plow which won the Prince Philip Design Award in 1974 it's still manufactured by his son Alan ovens there wasn't an implement that would do that job prior to that farming was always turning this oil used a mobile bored player or a disk type plow and you turned the soil so this concept of just opening the soil up and ripping it and splitting it and letting the air and moisture in was quite different when I look back on on Australia's contributions to science and engineering and so forth if anybody should receive a Nobel Prize it would have been PA Yeomans Stuart Hill is professor of social ecology at the University of Western Sydney he says PA Yeomans ideas ran counter to the farming approaches of the time the reason it wasn't accepted at that time was that it was exactly the time tragically when chemical fertilizers were really getting going and in Australia that was particularly the use of super phosphate so it was much easier for the government Extension agents to say to farmers all you need to do is buy this bag and distribute it over your fields and that's will be fine although Yeomans wasn't organic his ideas strongly influenced the development of broadacre organics in Australia David Holmgren drew on the principles of keyline when he co-founded the permaculture concept in the 1970s and includes the system in his lectures on land use the contribution of keyline to the big debates of our day of water in the landscape and carbon and how we deal with the carbon problem of with climate change the keyline system was and is still critically relevant to those issues and is influencing work in north america in in many other countries so this is this is Australian heritage but this farm and its living heritage is about to be redeveloped the family sold the property in 1964 it continued to be used for dairy farming but now the bulldozers are about to come through the land has been sold to property developer buildeth which is set to expand Sydney's suburbs into these pastures when I Drive along the road that's out here I saw that there was a bitumen road leading right to the base of the biggest most efficient water storage on the entire property I had died shaped ears at the time when I saw the way the landscape the way the landscape was being planned and developed in a the are wet PA Yeomans died in 1984 but his sons are both still passionate about sustainable farming younger son can Yeomans is a consultant helping design sustainable farm layouts around the world today ken Yeomans is back in Richmond to find out more about the proposed development local residents have formed an action group to oppose the development they were hoping the historic nature of the property might save it there's a whole range of issues that none of the government agencies and even the developer hasn't addressed I do agree that Yeomans should be recognized and I think that this was an important site heritage expert Steven Davies was asked by Bill dev to assist the Heritage value of you Bonnie he says while PA Yeomans keyline work is important the property has deteriorated over the years it's no longer a good working example of it it's there's some remnants of it then particularly in the dam systems and in the landscape but not as an operating system and so the costs involved of restoring it actually putting it back to the way Yeomans had it in the 1950s is is now considered prohibitive for the return that one might get out of that land however bill dev has agreed to retain some of the elements of keyline in its development there is a very strong commitment and now an agreement in a sense with the Department of Planning and the Heritage others that they will do that this is critical Australian heritage that should be conserved and I am quite scathing about our heritage system that doesn't have the capacity to acknowledge some of these things that they don't fit into the right boxes have been heritage if the developers make good on their promise and incorporate a recognition of PA Yeomans and keyline into the project it will not only please his family and admirers but no doubt the men himself what do you want to be remembered for all well click on yeah okay on it's the greatest thing I've done and will ever do and I think it's pretty great Tracy burden with that

Channel: Luca Zoid

Views: 14,878

Rating: 4.9583335 out of 5

Keywords: yeomans, pa yeomans, keyline, heritage, yobarnie, 730 report

Id: cc18o6j9fGQ

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2014