Most dry paddocks don’t just need more rain — they need to hold the rain they already get.
In this paddock discussion, Phil and Stuart explain why damaged soil sheds water, loses resilience, and stops supporting healthy plant growth.
Filmed in Victoria, this conversation looks at what happens when hard-setting soil, low organic matter, poor aggregation, overgrazing, bare ground and broken water cycles combine. The discussion moves from runoff and infiltration to soil carbon, fungi, plant cover, small water cycles, paddock recovery and the simple signs farmers can read in their own landscapes.
This video is useful for farmers, graziers, land managers and anyone interested in regenerative agriculture, paddock renovation, soil health, drought resilience and practical land restoration.
Healthy soil, water infiltration, organic matter, soil aggregation, plant available water, pasture recovery, regenerative grazing, small water cycle, ground cover, fungi, carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, paddock renovation and drought resilience are all part of the same system. When the soil starts functioning again, rainfall becomes more effective.
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Watch related videos on pasture recovery, soil biology, grazing management and water in the landscape.
If this helps explain a paddock you know, share it with someone working on land recovery.
Location: Victoria, Australia
Featured guests: Phil and Stuart
Topics: soil health, paddock renovation, water infiltration, regenerative grazing, small water cycle
Across Australia the water cycle is broken. Extreme events, hot days, floods, droughts have increased. The pattern and nature of rainfall has changed. Particularly of the winter rain. What has caused this change?
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In this HydroTerra webinar, Phil Mulvey presents the argument that to better manage floods, we must focus on the upper catchment to reduce rainfall intensity and increase infiltration; prioritising water retention, slowing river flow, and recharging alluvium.
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In Australia and around the world, estimating carbon in soil is difficult and expensive. Measurement is considered too variable and costly and modelling is often found to be difficult to calibrate and has a large variance. Philip Mulvey joins HydroTerra's Richard Campbell to discuss soil carbon farming and the associated current challenges and progress.
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