Australian Holistic Management Cooperative

The Australian Holistic Management Co-op (AHMC) is one of 50 hubs in the global network of Savory Global. AHMC promotes the Holistic Management approach to enable thriving lives and landscapes by supporting farmers with their farming practices that improve landscape function with grazing animals. AHMC does this by:

Education and support

AHMC provides education and support to its members about managing holistically. This focuses on making management decisions that consider the people involved, the land and the productivity/ profitability. As a result, through management decisions, farmers can use practices that work with nature, improve their land, reduce input costs, increase productivity and engage the people involved. By managing holistically, farmers can be nimble and seek the best possible outcome. 

Ecological monitoring

Since 2018, a core service of AHMC has been to provide land managers with annual ecological outcome monitoring. Monitoring includes both short and long-term monitoring. Short-term sites are revisited annually. Long-term monitoring sites are revisited every five years to capture data on lagging indicators of soil health. 

In 2023/24, AHMC will monitor 603,000 Hectares. Land managers sign up to do annual ecological monitoring, the first monitoring is a baseline and a baseline report is provided. The next annual monitoring  will determine whether landscape function has improved, or not, and the data is captured in the Ecological Outcome Monitoring report.  If improvements, such as an increasing Ecological Health Index (EHI), are reported the landholder will then obtain Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV).  The EOV claim is that the land being managed is improving. It can not connect the product to that land that is improving. 

AHMC supports farmers to adapt management practices so their landscape and productivity can improve. Monitoring is valuable for farmers for improving their landscape function such as water retention in soil, capturing sunlight with green plants to energise the soil, creating conditions for soil carbon to build and biodiversity to move in, with grazing animals as a critical tool. 

Access to Global brand partners

When farmers obtain their Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), they can apply to either access the Land to Market (L2M) seal for their product or be part of the L2M supply chain, a global initiative working with brand partners who want to source product from land that is proved to be improving.

L2M has established a chain of custody so the claim that ‘the food and fibre is coming from land that is improving’, can be backed up with the EOV report and product volume moving through the supply chain.

AHMC as an Assurance Partner

AHMC provides assurance for regenerative producers listed the Discover Regenerative Portal if they have met the following criteria:

Current member of AHMC 

and;

Has obtained Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) 

This means that the producer has carried out annual ecological outcome monitoring on the same area of land multiple times and  the landscape function is reported to have improved.

or

Holds the Land to Market ‘Seal’

This credential means that the producer has obtained EOV and  has completed the Land to Market (L2M) chain of custody process that connects the food or fibre with the landscape that is improving.  So the products being sold are from the land that has obtained EOV.

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