Dungog farmers John Monoghan and Alan Smith received carbon credits for regenerative farming

Deciding to work together to create a regenerative farm in 2020, landholder John Monoghan and his business partner Alan Smith have been working on creating a long-term sustainable model of farming.

Mr Smith said that the idea came after he began reading about different farming practises and asking Mr Monoghan about his practises and the potential to change them.

"It started with challenging conversations around me learning about regenerative farming practices and questioning John as a lifetime conventional farmer and asking him questions about how he does things," Mr Smith said.

"I think John then got intrigued by some of the practises and how they might work. So we both ended up reading similar books for a couple of years basically."

Before deciding to transform their farm into a regenerative one, Mr Monoghan used conventional methods of improvements such as fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.

However, during this time Mr Monoghan struggled to make much money, leading him to give Mr Smith's new methods a try.

"I just thought there's got to be a better way. Talking to Alan and him challenging some of those paradigms we decided that it probably is a better way and hopefully will lead to more sustainable growth," Mr Monoghan said.

"My definition of sustainability is about better for the soil, better for the animals and better for the thing to make a profit."

To create a regenerative farm, Mr Smith and Mr Monoghan began introducing holistic farm management practises specifically around cattle movement.

This involves rotating paddocks that cattle are on more quickly than normal in order to give the soil and vegetation a chance to recover. This is known as cell grazing.

The concept of cell grazing is a very old one. Mr Smith said that what they are doing is adapting this older concept to the world of modern farming and agriculture.

"All of this regenerative farming isn't new, it's not reinventing the wheel," he said.

"It's been around for hundreds of years. It's just about adapting post-war farming practises back to trying to use some of those practices that we used to use, along with a little bit more technology and understanding of soil biology.

"It's basically restoring the soils natural systems rather than relying upon intervention to maintain simplified chemical levels."

As well as this, the pair have diversified what animals they keep on their farm and cycle which paddocks they are in as well.

So far they have 90 breeding Angus cows, 30 Australian White Ewes and Lambs and 120 birds in a mobile coop. Previously, Mr Monoghan had only cattle.

However, all of this hasn't been an easy process. The process of regenerative farming in Mr Smith and Monoghan's case is a long-term process with the duo planning up to 20 years ahead.

This has meant that following recent wet seasons and the current dry season their farm has been struggling a little bit.

"At the moment our production is down a bit, especially after the wet season a lot of our soils are heavily compacted and that's been an issue," Mr Monoghan said.

"After the heavy rain we know our soils are deficient in sulphur and nitrogen. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to throw a lot of fertiliser on but we don't want to do that. We're taking the regenerative approach to that and therefore we haven't got the levels of profit we've had in the past."

The duo wanted to highlight that they weren't implementing these changes in order to receive carbon credits, rather it's part of the journey.

"It's something we see as being very positive. It's not something that's leading our farm. We're not doing it to make money," Mr Smith said.

"It's part of the journey rather than being the main focus. It's a good indicator, we get lots of valuable information and data."

For other farmers that are interested in exploring the regenerative farming space, Mr Smith said that they should read books, talk to like-minded people and don't be scared.

"Read lots of books, speak to Local Land Services, speak to other people in your community and don't be scared of getting it wrong," Mr Smith said.

"We've gotten it wrong more than a few times."