Peter Andrews

March 15, 2022 Global Earth Repair

Natural Sequence Land Restoration – Australia

Peter Andrews is the creator of “natural sequence land restoration,” a holistic land management process. He founded the Watershed Organization Trust, which focuses on the effect of dry land restoration and water cycle.He has applied these insights in restoring his and other properties to fertility levels that he says existed upon European arrival in this country. In 2011, Peter Andrews was awarded Australia’s highest public award – the Order of Australia Medal. He is a Consultant on the Advisory Board of Rain for Climate, an international organisation formed by pre-eminent climate, soil and water scientists from around the world.

Over 30 years ago, Peter bought a run-down 2000 acre grazing property called Tarwyn Park, near Bylong in the Upper Hunter Valley. He then quietly set about testing the theories that he had been developing virtually ever since he was a child growing up on a station near Broken Hill. By 1976, Peter Andrews claimed that the model he had set up on Tarwyn Park was an example of a sustainable agricultural system. Peter had recognized that the incised nature of most streams in Australia was in fact accelerating the fertility decline of agricultural landscapes:

Natural Sequence Farming is a universal landscape technique that concentrates on water and nutrient movement from the hilltops to the lowest floodplain points, from forests to aquaculture. NSF attempts to restore, rehydrate, and ultimately rehabilitate the landscape through natural processes. Stream incision meant that the increasing erosive energy of water was leading to accelerated soil and nutrient loss, lowered capacity for the floodplain to hold water and a loss of wetland habitat within that valley. Stream incision had in fact lead to a total disruption of the natural fertility cycle, leading to a chronic decline in the overall health of the landscape. He also observed that, under natural conditions, the interaction between fluvial and biological processes would combine to maximise the efficiency of nutrient and water use as well as carbon cycling. He argued that this would actually lead to a growth of that landscape as sedimentation would far exceed erosion and carbon sequestration would far exceed carbon loss.

For over forty five years, I have sought the best examples, assessed by the most rigorous science, demonstrating how the ancient Australian landscape reveals a climate change solution for the planet. We can create an agriculturally managed oasis by restoring water and growing plants. Those who choose to ignore the evidence are guilty of criminal negligence. Those who grow a plant are contributing to a truly solar-powered climate renewal.