Welcome. Since 2013, Cumberland has started projects in Spain, South Africa, Australia and the Netherlands to understand how the Four Returns framework can be applied in a real life restoration initiative. Each case presents a unique set of issues. In this video, you will learn more about our approach for landscape restoration in Australia. I want to take you on a journey to the Western Australian Wheat Belt, which is an ancient, immense and dry landscape. Intensive agricultural practices, like monocropping - that is, growing wheat year after year on the same land - and overgrazing have resulted in the clearing of over 80 percent of the native vegetation in the past 200 years. Severe soil degradation has taken place as well. This has resulted in salinity, wind erosion, soil loss and decreased soil fertility. This former biodiversity hotspot has the world's highest rate of mammal and plant extinction. So, both communities and ecosystems are struggling for survival. The Wheat Belt area covers over 15 million hectares with only 75,000 inhabitants. For Australian standards, this is a relatively small area, but it is more than four times the size of the Netherlands with a population that is about 220 times less. Failure to attract investment to the Wheat Belt has resulted in a stagnation of innovation in farming and landscape management; the area is over-cleared, depopulating and the remaining farmers are under significant financial pressure. They are often trapped in a cycle of debt because the land is yielding ever-lower production. This means that land has to yield ever more produce year after year, which forces the farmers to apply an increasing amount of conventional chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides. But as a result of these chemically-led farming practices, the quality of the soil and the production are only decreasing. Commonlands Australian business partner, Wide Open Agriculture, is a company that has identified enough solutions to restore healthy ecosystems in the Wheat Belt landscape and revive its economy by establishing productive farms. These solutions include first, innovative farming and horticulture practices in order to convert economic monocropping zones to organic and regenerative farming systems. Wide Open Agriculture has started with introducing greenhouses. The greenhouse is actually a smart shadehouse with shade and drip irrigation systems that are automated with high tech climatic sensors. The smart shadehouse has been planted with high value premium vegetables, including tomatoes, herbs and a range of bush vegetables. Second, measures to restore the soils and biodiversity. This is done in several ways. Every farm involved dedicates 30 percent of its land to restoration of the natural zone. Together with other restoration partners, Wide Open Agriculture also wants to create biodiversity corridor by connecting two national parks across a distance of 450 kilometers. This can be done by establishing so-called ecological stepping stones to form and connect biodiversity zones in the Wheat Belt. Third, bringing new Australians to the area as employees or business partners with a lot of potential for high quality employment. And fourth, an approach to scale up through listing on the Australian Stock Exchange. Wide Open Agriculture wants to list on the Australian stock market as a first in class regenerative agriculture food and forestry company. This will make it possible to attract equity from retail and institutional investors and scale up from 30,000 to 300,000 hectares under regenerative management in 2025. This scaling up will be done by leasing land to farmers that have proven their ability to apply regenerative farming practices which repair soil health, capture carbon, protect the waterways and create hiding places for critically endangered mammals and plants. Wide Open Agriculture has introduced their own brand on the market called "4 Reasons Inspiring Food." This new brand is being sold in the Perth area. In this way, Wide Open Agriculture is creating a Four Returns company that restores landscapes and revitalizes communities. To learn more about our project in Australia and how this Australian restoration company is expanding and becoming ready to get listed on the Australian stock market, please watch the following clip. Wide Open Agriculture's vision is to offer large scale impact investments that rejuvenate critically endangered ecosystems and revitalize communities in Western Australia. Our purpose is to transform highly degraded landscapes and create productive farms and healthy ecosystems connect with biodiversity and cultural corridors. We apply a three zone approach to regenerate degraded land. The three zones integrate economic, combined and natural zones to create profitable, restored farmland. Wide Open Agriculture's philosophy is based on the Four Returns. The first return, a financial return - making money like anyone else. The second return being a social return, which in terms of the Wheat Belt is bringing people back to the Wheat Belt. The third one is - is the natural return, a return of natural capital. And that brings back biodiversity to a place that was once as biodiverse as a rain forest. And - and doing all these things together brings back, what to me, is the glue that holds it all together, which is a return of hope and inspiration. Our aim is to make meaningful food in healthy ecosystems and positive communities. We've commenced our on-farm diversified activities. We've purchased land in the northern Wheat Belt. We have our 4 Reasons brand established and we've come a long way in 12 months. Wide Open Agriculture has partnered with a group of regenerative farmers in the Wheat Belt. What will be happening is they will be leasing land that we buy and transforming that land into biologically-farmed land. The first of these farms that we're working with are Rob and Caroline Rex. So far at Rob and Caroline's farm in Arthur River, we've laid the pad for the greenhouse and the actual retractable roof system will be installed later this year. We've also employed some amazing staff, including Damien Rigali as our head grower. He has 15 years experience in the vegetable growing industry. Most importantly, he's totally committed to regenerative farming practices that underpin the Wide Open Agriculture philosophy. This is a perfect location for horticulture, as the water quality matches the growing conditions and the soil media. The crops we plan to plant will be in-season vegetables ranging from lettuces to brassicas to tomatoes and cucumbers. So initially we'll be servicing the local community, moving into the Perth market with the restaurants and then hopefully the products will move into the Southeast Asian markets. Water is probably the most critical element in this project. Our approach is to look at capturing this water when it falls from the sky, high in the cachement, before it's salty. We're going to do this using K-line dams and roted cachements. The cost of a kiloliter of water over the life cycle of the dam is around two to ten cents a kiloliter. Now compare that to other water sources. The other one that we'd be using as a backup source would be solar water pumping at around 20 cents a kiloliter compared to water in Perth out of your tap at around a dollar a kiloliter, which is what it costs from reverse osmosis on the coast. What gets interesting is that our competitors on the Swan Coastal Plain are paying $7 a kiloliter. So our cost of water is - is a fraction of - of our competitors. Our network of proven regenerative farmers across the Wheat Belt will be key to our success, particularly in the revitalization of communities. Our populations have been diminishing and we need to find new ways to bring people back out into the Wheat Belt to revitalize their communities. We're losing sporting facilities, schools, all those infrastructures that are important to really make rural communities tick. So farms are going to continue to get bigger, with the broad acre farms that we have, so we need to be inventive and look for new agriculture industries that can really bring a lot of people back into the Wheat Belt and re-energize the Wheat Belt. From a farming perspective, we're looking at increasing our productivity and production base and we require capital to do that. And part of what makes Wide Open Agriculture attractive to us is the recognition that they are looking for sustainable and regenerative agricultural projects and that fits exactly into what we do. The conventional farming is quite recipe-based. And you can - you can doll a recipe, but once you change into the region or you - for better use of a word, farming practices, it's - suddenly you're back, you're looking at your land, you're walking the land and you're actually being a farmer again. A lot of people would think what we do is very different, but it's actually not that different. It's just - have a few principles, have a few guidelines and change of the way you do a few things. And look at things from a different angle. Moving forward, the first step is to acquire more land in the Wheat Belt. We'll look to do that over the coming months and obviously, the years to come as well. Beyond that, in the middle of next year, we're looking to list on the stock exchange. And this is the part that we're really excited about. In the meantime, we'll continue to develop our first intensive horticulture project here in Arthur River and we'll also continue to expand our other projects across the Wheat Belt. We'll bring hope and inspiration to rural communities as well as providing new opportunities for people who have come to this country in search of a better future. To provide further insight on Wide Open Agriculture's listing on the Australian Stock Exchange and the importance of this result, please listen to the following interview with Wide Open Agriculture's Executive Director, Ben Cole. I hope you liked our journey to Australia. And now that you have a flavor of the Cumberland projects in South Africa, Spain and Australia, you will explore the roles, the expertise and the skills needed to make these projects a success. Stay tuned.
