Garry Kadwell, 4th Generation on the Land
Garry’s agricultural lineage stretches back to Federation, when his great-grandfather planted an orchard and a small market garden in Crookwell, NSW, in 1901. Both his grandfather and father furthered the family farming legacy, nurturing the orchard and market garden, while also starting the cultivation of 4-5 hectares of potatoes.
As Garry joined his father in farm work, he recognised the dwindling viability of the orchard, given its inability to compete with larger farms. Making a strategic move, while his father was on holiday, he replaced the historic orchard by expanding the family’s potato crop. After the initial shock of his son’s impetuous move, Garry’s dad acknowledged the necessity of the decision and expressed gratitude for Garry’s decisive action.
Inheriting 147 hectares from his father, in time, the Kadwell farm burgeoned in both scale and scope. Garry’s astute acquisitions and land management strategies swelled the operation to over 800 hectares. Today, aside from gourmet potatoes, the farm’s mainstays include growing seed stock potatoes for some of the nation’s foremost agricultural producers, lucerne and hay fodder production, as well as fat lamb breeding.
Embracing a holistic approach to land stewardship, influenced by native tree planting on the farm with his grandfather as a boy, Garry has dedicated more than 1/3 of his property to environmental conservation. Through trial and error, he has learned how conservation initiatives can fortify operational resilience, enhance farm productivity and bolster profitability. By focusing on areas unsuitable for farming, Garry maximises his environmental impact, while minimising potential conflict with farming operations.
Indeed, Garry uses his property’s topography to his advantage. For example, he now surrounds cultivation zones for farm animals with fencing to protect remnant native vegetation, such as eucalyptus trees, native grasses, orchids, acacia shrubs and bracken ferns. Fenced-off areas of bush near cultivated zones foster thriving populations of beneficial insects — including pollinators and predatory species — which play a crucial role in crop fertilisation and pest control, respectively. In addition, he plants clumps of local trees around remnant bush to provide safe passage for native wildlife, as well as establishing tree corridors on traditionally unproductive land to provide shelter for lambing ewes, improve pasture growth and bolster resilience during dry spells.
Garry has also created 19 hectares of wetlands to improve biodiversity and slow water flow. Leaky weirs of natural materials, like rocks and logs, decelerate floodwaters, allowing better soil replenishment. He has built a ‘chain of ponds’ along a slow-moving creek to foster natural regeneration, keeping nutrients and sediment on the property. Since implementing these hydrological changes, Garry has noticed a remarkable increase in the land’s ability to withstand droughts and support diverse wildlife — notably, endangered bird species.
These conservation practices are straightforward, yet impactful, yielding compounding benefits across all aspects of the Kadwell farm’s operations. Today, Garry is often called upon to educate fellow farmers on the intrinsic value and substantial advantages of integrating revegetation practices into their own agricultural landscapes. Looking forward, he sees the merging of conservation and agriculture as not only beneficial for soil and land health, but also increasingly financially viable, noting that banks are increasingly valuing revegetated and protected land.
