NEWS
Media Release
The farmers, researchers, and grass-roots groups driving food systems change across Australia
“As a farmer contributing to the Grounded Minds Consortium, it’s rewarding to see practical experience helping shape research into the connections between soil, food and human health. Collaboration across disciplines is essential to driving meaningful change.”
These are the words from fourth-generation farmer and chair of RegenWA, Stuart McAlpine, who has contributed to The Grounded Minds Consortium, a transdisciplinary collaboration between Deakin University, Flinders University, and key research and industry partners.
The Consortium aims to develop innovative, evidence-based solutions that enhance food systems, reduce ecosystem degradation, and improve mental and brain health.
McAlpine contributed the ‘Statement of Hope’, highlighting the need to build trust, curiosity and reconnection into the way we engage with the world around us. “By doing so we can restore health to our soils, improve the nourishment of our food, and strengthen the wellbeing of our communities” says McAlpine.
Members of the consortium include Felice Jacka (OAM), Deakin Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry, founder and director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University, and founder and immediate-past president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, Dr Jake Robinson, interdisciplinary researcher and author, and Dr Craig Liddicoat, a microbiome and One Health researcher at Flinders University,as well as others featured here.
The Consortium has published a position paper to capture the growing sentiment from farmers, community, researchers, and others working in soils, agriculture, nutrition and human health that healthy soils, healthy food and healthy people are intimately linked.
“Our food, and the way it is produced, can ultimately be considered a form of preventative medicine” says Dr Craig Liddicoat.
Dr Liddicoat was one of the 32 speakers at RegenWA and Perth NRM’s 2025 Regenerative Food Systems Conference in Perth, Western Australia.
The Consortium’s work echoes many themes of the conference, which aimed to connect soil health, human wellbeing and food security. A summary of Liddicoat’s conference presentation can be viewed here.
Executive Director of Bionutrient Food Association & The Bionutrient Institute, Dan Kittredge, added his own food systems expertise at the same conference, revealing how farmers, consumers, and communities can unlock extraordinary gains in food quality, ecosystem function, and human health by embracing the principles of nutrient density. Kittredge’s conference presentation can be viewed here.
Both presentations affirmed that healthy soil, thriving ecosystems and nutritious food are inseparable.
The timely position paper by the Grounded Minds Consortium adds to a growing wave of recent scrutiny into Australia’s food system, as much of its infrastructure is revealed to be more fragile than superficial measures of outputs and productivity would suggest.
The need to urgently transform our food system has become utterly undeniable, and a future that enables equitable access to nutritious food, resilient landscapes, and support to transition to practices that drive this must be created now.
To address this, RegenWA is currently delivering a suite of projects that aim to equip growers with the connections, skills, knowledge, and financial assistance required to produce food in a way that values natural capital and improves quality. Through the Accelerating Regenerative Agriculture Adoption project, RegenWA is providing farm businesses with ‘give it a go’ grants to trail a regenerative approach on their farm, offering subsidies for online management courses, facilitating producers’ access to independent consultants, and continuing to deliver valuable workshops and field days for valuable peer-to-peer learning opportunities.
The value of materially supporting a regenerative transition in this way is underscored by the results of Sustain’s recent Food Security Pulse Check Survey, wherein responsdents identified this as the number one priority action for the new Feeding Australia strategy.
From the Grounded Minds Consortium’s research to RegenWA’s conference and on-ground work, the message is consistent: soil health, food quality and human wellbeing are deeply connected, and Western Australian farmers and researchers are already putting that understanding into practice.
This project is funded through the Western Australian Government’s State NRM Program, with support from Commonland, in collaboration with Perth NRM.
