Meet The SAB | Dr. Richard Eckard
Three questions with SAB member Dr. Richard Eckard
Meet Dr. Richard Eckard
Dr. Eckard is a Professor of Carbon Farming at the University of Melbourne and a Science Leader at the Zero Net Emissions Agriculture Cooperative Research Centre
When and how did you become interested in sustainability?
My interest in getting involved in agricultural and livestock production was based on sustainability. I was quite impacted by one of my early professors who gave a tongue in cheek talk about how, “the best, most profitable strategy is to overgraze your pastures because on year one, you make a lot of money and on year 100 you’ve got a desert.” It really made an impact on me. Unless you get the sustainable stocking rate right, you have nothing to hand on to the next generation.
What are some of the unique challenges of livestock sustainability in Australia?
Australia is quite diverse. If you’re down south, you have fairly intensive production. In northern Australia, more than half of the beef herd won’t see a human until they are being loaded up for market. These are farms measured in hundreds of square kilometers – farms that are almost the size of countries. The unique challenge for improving emissions on these farms is, how do you feed a dietary supplement to cattle that don’t see humans? How do we reduce methane from these herds? How do you translate some of these mitigation options to these extensive production systems?
What are you most excited about in the sustainability space?
Carbon is just one component of the whole cycle. I think the future is balancing these various criteria against each other. If you’re a livestock producer in an extensive ranching situation, you may not know how many animals are on the farm in some cases in Australia, but you have a massive amount of biodiversity that you manage on behalf of the community. I look forward to a future where all of these are kept in some form of balance with each other. When we get to that point, we’ll make more sustainable choices in terms of what we value from that farm.
