What is the difference between ecological economics and regenerative economics?

That is a good question given that they seem to convey the same idea! The only difference it seems is one of time and place, in that ecological economics has been around for some years while regenerative economics has not. In fact, the term regenerative economics had not crossed our path until we listened to a podcast interview between interviewer Nate Hagens and United States economist John Fullerton. In the interview Fullerton places emphasis on the importance of understanding living systems, advocating for financial and monetary systems that align with the patterns of life.

That makes sense but why the need? The podcast explains in some detail why the world is in a mess and what needs to happen to set it upon a more constructive and ecological pathway, or should I say regenerative pathway – steps that humankind has not yet taken as seriously as we need to! The following interview identifies some important reasons why we must start thinking differently. The interview is highly recommended. Note: The podcast dovetails with the series of webinars being offered this year by the IEA. But first to Nate Hagens and John Fullerton:

Interested in learning more about regenerative culture and regenerative agriculture?

Ten webinars on human ecology will be presented by the IEA starting on the 24 June at 5pm. The webinars will be recorded, which will be of interest to people unable to attend the sessions. Comprehensive notes will be delivered via email seven days prior to each session.

A similar series of webinars was run in 2023 and those attending commented as follows:

• “For those who are motivated to change but lack the encouragement, capacity, understanding, knowledge and experience, this course will initiate the first step.”

• “It connected a lot of dots for me from various personal experiences and training I have done on holistic, biodynamic, organic and regenerative agricultural systems.”

• “Agriculture needs a change in mindset. This course provided a broad but clear framework of ideas and techniques that enable participants to engage with, communicate and share a regenerative ecological mindset applicable to agriculture. It went to the core of the problem and provided a broad spectrum of solutions.”

• “I think most concepts in the course are relevant to everyone, not just those involved with agriculture – we all need to be aware of our dependence on the natural world and of the network of relationships in which we are enmeshed, including the relationship of our inner world to the outer one.”

Information about the next series of webinars:

• The 10 webinars will cost $200 for members and $255 for non-members.

• A 15% discount is available for previous course participants to repeat the series.

• The webinars will commence on Tuesday 24 June @ 5pm-6pm. There will be a three week break between Tuesday 12 August and Tuesday 2 September.

• Written material supporting each webinar will be sent seven days prior to a session. (Should you seek a hard copy that will cost $35 including postage. This offer will depend on numbers seeking this arrangement.)

• The webinars cover the personal aspect of regenerative agriculture, which is the essence of regenerative farming. You will learn about learning, thinking, values, systems, holism, emergence, nested contexts, change, as well as farming techniques involving farmers who farm this way.

• The webinars would be of value to those who wish to challenge their thinking. The ideas covered are not necessarily specific to agriculture; they refer to a broader context. The skills and knowledge are life based.

• Each session will be recorded on Zoom.

For further information on the webinar contact Kerry Cochrane on kcochrane@ecoag.org.au or book with Humanatix through the link: https://events.humanitix.com/https-www-ecoag-org-au-events.

Congratulations to Dr Mary Cole and Bernice Hookey

This edition focuses on two women and their significant contribution to the field of regenerative agriculture.

Recognised in March 2025 was Dr Mary Cole who won the Victorian Agri-futures Rural Women’s Award for her pioneering work in biological farming and soil microbiology, ensuring sustainable agricultural practices for future generations.

The Agri-Futures Rural Women’s Award, supported by platinum sponsor Westpac, is Australia’s leading Award in acknowledging and supporting the critical role women play in rural and regional businesses, industries and communities. It is an opportunity to celebrate forward-thinking, courageous leaders who represent some of the vast and most remote areas of Victoria.

Dr Cole received a $15,000 grant from Westpac to further support her project as well as the opportunity to undertake a professional development course of her choosing. She will go on to represent Victoria at the Agri-Futures Rural Women’s Award Gala Dinner and National Announcement in Canberra later in the year, where the National Winner will be awarded an additional $20,000 Westpac grant and the National Runner Up, an additional $15,000.

An internationally recognised expert in mycology, plant pathology and soil microbiology, Dr Cole has dedicated her career to advocating for biological farming practices that regenerate soil health, reduce synthetic chemical use and improve the long-term sustainability of Australian agriculture.

“For more than 45 years, I have been working to promote biological farming methods that not only sustain the land but also ensure farmers remain financially viable for generations to come,” Dr Cole said.

“Through education, research and on-farm application, I have seen first-hand how prioritising soil health can transform agricultural productivity, reduce farmer input costs and protect the environment. This award will allow me to expand my work, reaching more farmers and communities with solutions that are cost-effective and regenerative.”

Last month Dr Cole also received the Institute of Ecological Agriculture Cooperative Ltd honorary accreditation award for her extensive contribution to regenerative agriculture.

Dr Cole’s website – https://agpath.com.au – is worth bookmarking for ideas on regenerative agriculture. Here are two resources that are available at the moment:

• Growing Country – Digging Deeper – Dr. Mary Cole – Part 1: The Soil Food Web

• Smartsoil Ground Cover – Farming the Soil with Dr. Mary Cole – Regenerative agriculture

Our second focus is on Bernice Hookey.

At the IEA’s AGM in November it was decided to create an 11th position on the Board of the Institute that would be earmarked for First Nations people. Bernice is our first representative.

Bernice is a proud Waanyi Jibardi woman, descendant from the Lower Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland. She is the founder of MZB Empowerment, a niche professional service with leading capabilities integral to improve, increase and attract cultural inclusion and leadership responsibility for Indigenous people.

Through this work, she supports businesses leading responsibly to increase Indigenous business growth and serves as a regional practitioner for community engagement, facilitation, and regenerative practice.

Bernice is a finalist in the Women Changing the World Global Summit and is a contender for the First Nations Leadership Award.

Bernice is known for her work with Mother Love. The Mother Love program is aimed to be a transformative initiative dedicated to empowering boys and men to build awareness, take responsibility, and become active allies in preventing further domestic and family violence harm. The mission is to provide education, support, and tools that foster nonviolence, develop emotional intelligence to break cycles of harm and promote equality, safety and respect. The aim is to extend a ripple effect to help other mothers out there that lead through healing, education, and rooted in mutual care and understanding.

We welcome Bernice to the Board of the IEA and the role she will play in representing First Nations people.

Earth Charter

Earth Charter is an organisation that has adopted a series of principles we need to adhere to in order to secure the ecological systems that drive life on the planet. They represent an important vision and one that the Institute embraces. The Earth Charter organisation also has an excellent podcast program and this is what we draw your attention to today.

Season 5 of the Earth Charter Podcast is out! Two new episodes available now! Click the episode title to listen.

• Compassion and Consciousness: Rethinking Reality. In this interview with David Wiebers, the concept of “compassion for all life” is discussed as the pinnacle of human existence.

• Bringing Ecology, Justice, and Ethics into Education. In this conversation, Heather shares her lifelong commitment to environmental ethics and sustainability, inspired by her childhood on Lake Huron and her academic journey.

The podcast homepage gives links to all episodes. The Earth Charter website is well worth a visit.

Prevalence of pesticides in organically managed agricultural soils – Legacy of conventional farming practices

Pesticides are applied in large quantities to agro-ecosystems worldwide. To date, few studies have assessed the occurrence of pesticides in organically managed agricultural soils, and it is unresolved whether these pesticide residues affect soil life.

This study screened 100 fields under organic and conventional management with an analytical method containing 46 pesticides (16 herbicides, 8 herbicide transformation products, 17 fungicides, seven insecticides).

Pesticides were found in all sites, including 40 organic fields. The number of pesticide residues was two times and the concentration nine times higher in conventional compared to organic fields.

Pesticide number and concentrations significantly decreased with the duration of organic management. Even after 20 years of organic agriculture, up to 16 different pesticide residues were present.

Microbial biomass and specifically the abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, a widespread group of beneficial plant symbionts, were significantly negatively linked to the amount of pesticide residues in soil. This indicates that pesticide residues, in addition to abiotic factors such as pH, are a key factor determining microbial soil life in agroecosystems.

This comprehensive study demonstrated that pesticides are a hidden reality in agricultural soils, and the results show that they have harmful effects on beneficial soil life.

Source: J. Riedo, F. E. Wettstein, A. Rösch, C. Herzog, S. Banerjee, L. Büchi, R. Charles, D. Wächter, F. Martin-Laurent, T. D. Bucheli, F. Walder, and M. G. A. van der Heijden (2021). ‘Widespread occurrence of pesticides in organically managed agricultural soils – the ghost of a conventional agricultural past?’ Environmental Science & Technology, 55 (5), 2919-2928.

Kinship: exploring human-nature connections

This item is taken from a series called Kinship: exploring human-nature connections. Each month the Australian Earth Law Alliance (AELA) based in Brisbane organises a discussion with various experts who discuss themes related to nature. The following discussion involves two speakers who address the theme, How deep ecology helps us connect.

Here are the speakers and the link to the discussion is below.

JOHN SEED. John is an Australian environmentalist and director of the Rainforest Information Centre, which campaigned to save the sub-tropical rainforests of New South Wales. He is also a prominent figure in the deep ecology movement and co-creator of the Council of All Beings, and other re-earthing processes. More details about John's work can be found here.

SKYE MANDOZAY. Skye grew up on a farm in South Africa and spent her early years immersed in wildlife conservation and rehabilitation before working as a wilderness guide. She then spent five years living in the Peruvian Amazon jungle where she was immersed in the study of traditional folk medicine (curanderismo) with her indigenous Shipibo teachers of the Mahua-Lopez lineage, and co-facilitated healing retreats with her partner Miraz. She moved to Melbourne five years ago where she first encountered Deep Ecology through the workshops of John Seed and has been a passionate student and co-facilitator of this work ever since. See https://deepearthdreaming.world/about/.

Pesticide makers are corrupting the regenerative agriculture movement

Corporations that sell pesticides are entwined with the regenerative agriculture movement, luring farmers with financial incentives to adopt some regenerative practices, while continuing to use toxic weedkillers and pesticides, according to a report released by Friends of the Earth. This report comes from Carey Gillam and was published on 30 April 2025.

This worrying trend is not unexpected given the power of the dollar. But any trend requiring the use of toxic weedkillers and pesticides is hardly regenerative. This report highlights the importance of standards such as we have in the IEA in relation to our accreditation program. For details on Carey’s report click the link below:

A journal about cosmology and the self

A new and exciting journal has arrived. As editor of the IEA Journal I have experienced the contents of the following journal and can vouch for the authenticity of its editors. Whilst it will not fit neatly into our everyday consciousness about life on the land it does signal the arrival of a level of consciousness about life that we need to consider … seriously. Welcome to Starborne!

Over the past hundred years, science has revealed something astonishing: we are not simply located in the universe – we are the universe, in human form.

This shift in understanding stems from now widely acknowledged truths: that the atoms in our bodies were forged in ancient stars. That the complex tissues of our brains are continuous with the slow self-organisation of matter across billions of years. That consciousness itself is not an exception to the cosmos, but an emergent expression of it.

Starborne exists as a space to explore what it means to live inside this new awareness – not just conceptually, but through felt experience, artistic practice, and creative inquiry. What might it mean to be a local expression of a 13.8-billion-year evolutionary process? What shifts when we begin to sense our lives not as separate from the cosmos, but as one way the cosmos is becoming aware of itself? And how might we leave traces of this dawning awareness in language, image, and form?

To help frame this daring experiment, Brian Thomas Swimme and Carolyn Cooke have introduced the term autocosmology. The word points to a shift – from telling stories about the universe, to telling stories as the universe, in its localised human form.

At the same time, we should emphasise that there is no single, orthodox definition of autocosmology. This is not a genre with preset boundaries, but a living question we must explore together. Still, to offer some waypoints, here are five possible definitions – each one partial and open to further evolution:

• Autocosmology is creative expression that asks: What is it like to be the evolving universe in one specific human form?

• Autocosmology is the genre of writing and art-making that arises when cosmic evolution is not just an abstract idea but the very ground of experience.

• Autocosmology is art that reflects and enacts time-developmental consciousness – a mode of awareness that sees everything, including the self, in light of cosmic evolution.

• Autocosmology is what happens when autobiography breaks orbit from the isolated self and begins to track its entanglement with planetary and cosmic forces.

• Autocosmology is the voice the universe finds when it begins to speak from within your particular nervous system, with all its unique memories, longings, and creative impulses.

Ultimately, our hope is that Starborne becomes more than a journal – that it grows into a site of shared experimentation for those who feel compelled to give voice to the radical intimacy between self and cosmos.

If something in these pages resonates with your own wild endeavours – if you are creating from that edge where story meets stardust – we hope you’ll reach out. This is an open conversation. We’d love to be in it with you.

With gratitude, wonder, and delight –
Ari Makridakis & Ezekiel Fugate
Editors-in-Chief
https://starborne.substack.com/
Issue 1: Spring 2025.

Sharing the good oil!

The IEA Newsletter needs to circulate. It provides a different and emerging worldview on agriculture. Do help the organisation to grow by circulating it to anyone you believe might be interested, and even to those who haven’t commenced the journey as yet, but should do so!

If you would like to receive the free newsletter go to our website (www.ecoag.org.au) and click on Resources and then newsletter and fill out the email address.

If you would like to join the organisation go to the following link: https://www.ecoag.org.au/membership.

Editor: Kerry Cochrane
Design & presentation: Tony McKenzie