First Nations farming supports Country

Joshua Gilbert

Charles Sturt University, a Worimi man

One of the great affirmations in Australia over the past two decades has been the acknowledgement that Indigenous agricultural systems existed prior to colonisation. Despite the concept of Indigenous farming being researched and explored in 2008, it took almost six years and new attempts to finally spark a national conversation on the matter. Even then, until recently this discussion failed to bring yarns of Indigenous agriculture past the times when the big ships came. So Indigenous farmers were still represented as a pre-colonial race incapable of change.

But, as ideas of agriculture, farming practices and even culture in these Australian lands have changed, so Indigenous knowledge is starting to be looked at in similar terms to Western agriculture. Such concepts as trial and error, the romanticised histories of the land, and moving with the latest technologies are now transferable to the yarns of Indigenous agriculture in Australia. Instead of agriculture being part of colonial activities to erase Aboriginal pasts, this nuanced definition rewrites Indigenous stories back into the narrative and includes their agricultural perspectives in our combined future.

So how should Indigenous agriculture be defined? What does it look like in today’s society? Put simply, it should be any form of agriculture – traditional bush food production, cropping non-native species like wheat, or livestock farming – that is undertaken by an Indigenous person. This simplified, broader definition provides an opportunity to finally reflect on the actual experiences of First Nations farmers and land managers. It also enables creation of localised approaches to farming, reflecting the more than 200 Indigenous nations across Australia and the nuanced land practices that each nation took to farm and sustain their populations for tens of thousands of years.

This creates a hyper-local approach to farming, in line with the language groups across landscapes and the origin stories that inform each place. First Nations agriculture considers the ecosystem beyond the boundary fences of each individual farm and acknowledges the role that people play in the broader aspects of Country. It also encourages broader conversations than current agriculture affords, where First Nations people are no more simply those poor people on the other side of the fence. Instead, the discussion is more about a model of how we can work together across the whole community to support all of Country.

We need to move to a place where diversity in agriculture speaks to more than just farming a particular commodity or the new concept of diverse or multi species cropping. Instead, we need to embrace diversity in all forms, particularly the people who own the farms and those that are informing the practices on the ground.

But this process is not easy. Current rates of Indigenous involvement in agriculture remain remarkably low. Just 2.1% of the agricultural workforce identify as Indigenous, less than the Indigenous representation in the national population of 3.8%. There is a lack of Indigenous students who are interested in and study and graduate from university in agriculture. In fact, there are fewer than five university graduates across every university in Australia. And lastly, there are no specific schemes that support First Nations farmers to buy land to practice agriculture, leaving them reliant upon traditional banking structures of 40 - 50% deposits despite the lack of opportunity to build intergenerational wealth.

Even in the face of these challenges, the emergence of Indigenous farmers is slowly providing hope. Those in the bush food space, for example, are bucking the data of less than 1% of native foods revenue going to First Nations businesses. They are challenging the trends and demonstrating an inherent cultural right to continue farming traditional foods. Others have adopted Western commodities, with a growing number of cattle farmers and wheat growers challenging conventional views of farming.

It is these inklings that provide us with hope, and aspirations of reviving the important role of Indigenous people in agricultural systems that was seen across the nation right up until the equal wages decisions of the 1960s and 70s. Of building narratives that include romanticism of Indigenous agriculture and challenges the stereotype of white farmer, white horse, white hat to construct something much more ingrained in our societal psyche.

What this new narrative encourages is a rebranding of Australian agriculture, weaving the oldest continued agricultural practices in the world into a sector that desperately needs these concepts. It provides the opportunity for our international brand to reflect this rich and diverse history, and builds on the notion that in Australia we have been perfecting agriculture for eternity. And if we get this right, we may just produce a truly Australian agricultural yarn.

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[1] Gerritsen, R (2008) Australia and the origins of agriculture. Oxford: Archaeopress

[2] Pascoe, B (2014) Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?. Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books

[3] Gilbert, J, et al. (2024) Indigenous employment in Australian agriculture. International Journal of Regional, Rural and Remote Law and Policy 10 (1]: 1-9.

[4] Pratley, J.E. (2019) Indigenous students do not choose agriculture at University. Proceedings of 19th Australian Agronomy Conference, Wagga Wagga. https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/indigenous-students-do-not-choose-agriculture-at-university

[5] Mitchell, R and Becker, J (2019) Bush food industry booms, but only 1 per cent is produced by Indigenous people. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-01-19/low-indigenous-representation-in-bush-food-industry/10701986

[6] Banner image by Joshua Gilbert