Humans of Purpose 419 Bruce Maynard: Regenerative Agriculture and No-Kill Cropping
My guest this week is Bruce Maynard — a leading voice in regenerative agriculture and landscape restoration in Australia, known for pushing beyond “doing less harm” and into farming systems that actively rebuild nature while still producing food.
Bruce shares how his journey into regenerative practice wasn’t just an idealistic shift, it was forged through pressure. In the late 1980s, severe economic hardship and changing seasonal reliability made one thing clear: conventional farming often drives further displacement of natural systems, and it’s farmers (and communities) who carry the cost.
Best known for his work on regenerative grazing, animal behaviour, and the controversial innovation of no-kill cropping producing broadacre grains in grassland without external chemical inputs, Bruce makes the case that the future of agriculture depends on creative, practical pathways that deliver results across a triple bottom line: social, environmental, and business outcomes.
In this episode of Humans of Purpose, we explore:
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what “regenerative” really means (and how it’s evolved from conservation and sustainability)
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why progress can’t be measured by economics alone
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how animal distribution shapes landscape health and what happens when animals choose where they spend time
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the human side of farming: wellbeing, leadership, and staying connected to country
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why no-kill cropping challenges everything we think we know about growing grain
- and what a “desirable and plentiful” future could look like if we stop treating nature and productivity as an either/or.
🔗 Explore more from Bruce’s work here:
https://soilsforlife.org.au/no-kill-cropping-restoring-grasslands/
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CREDITS
Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion. Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.