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Operational and Capital Ecoservice Accounting Standards for Farm Carbon
Summary: Land sovereignty and thoughts for the future of land management and how it relates to society and the changes. Freya is a lawyer and will share insight into things that are changing in agricultural world. In 2024 Freya travelled to the UK, China, India and US as a Churchill Fellow, researching best practice in soil and landscape regulation to implement into Australia's legal and policy frameworks. From this research, she realized that the biggest barrier to protecting soils is the lack of understanding and awareness of the critical role they play in the functioning of our planet.
Speaker Background(s): Freya Mulvey is an author, environmental lawyer and soil advocate. Freya is a 2023 Winston Churchill Trust Fellow and a 2017 recipient of the Australian Lawyers Alliance Civil Justice Award for her work on the Montara Oil Spill Class Action. Freya advocates for soil and landscape regulation and agricultural reform; essential and complementary climate mitigation tools. Freya is a co-author of Ground Breaking: Soil Security and Climate Change, and host of the SOIL podcast. Freya's strength is in being able to explain complex issues in plain and pragmatic terms.
Summary: Philip will share data that shows the main cause of climate fluctuations is the small water cycle. Land has become hydrophobic and repels water, thus moving rain and evaporation out of the local water cycles. This is turn is contributing to regional climate problems such at heat waves, droughts, floods, and increased erratic weather. At the turn of the 20th century, a 3,000km fence was built across the Australian continent to prevent the spread of invasive rabbits into cropland in Western Australia. Decades later, scientists and farmers began to notice an unusual phenomenon: the weather was completely different on either side of the fence. They will highlight points in their book; Ground Breaking Soil Security and Climate Change. It is this story that begins the book Freya Mulvey co-wrote with her soil scientist father Phil Mulvey: Ground Breaking: Soil Security and Climate Change (2021). It tells of how, by degrading soils, modern agriculture has contributed to heat waves, dust and fire across the planet. It also shares the solutions: managing land use, sequestering carbon in soil, reducing bare ground and championing policy and law reform.
Speaker Background(s): Philip Mulvey has 45 years experience in restoring degraded land to productive use. He is the founder of several companies operating in the US and Australia including: an agriculture software company, a regenerative agriculture company, and environmental consulting and contracting companies. Phil has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture majoring in Soil Science from the University of Sydney and a Masters of Hydrogeology from The University of New South Wales. With that background, Phil's skill is being able to assess landscape in terms of production, resilience and hydration. He's passionate about landscape repair and the role of regenerative agriculture to achieve this. His focus in recent years is teaching the techniques to keep water in, on and under the landscape. He has co-authored with his daughter Freya a book on the impact soil degradation through agriculture has on landscape and climate and is currently working on a book for farmers transitioning to regenerative agriculture
See a full list of speakers and topics addressed at the conference: https://www.notill.org/sites/default/files/session_descriptions_2026_1.pdf
See the agenda for the conference: https://www.notill.org/annual-winter-conference/2026-winter-conference-agenda
Soil functionality and farm profitability go hand in hand. Every farm has the potential to enhance its soil. In this workshop, you’ll learn which factors influence landscape and soil hydration, how to improve them, and how to assess ongoing progress. Led by Landscape & Soil Scientist Phil Mulvey, this course aims to give you the skills and knowledge to manage your journey toward increased soil resilience and profitability over time.
Date: 19th January 2026
Time: 8:30–4:00pm
Location: The Wichita Marriot
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