Nicole Masters on what it takes to be an effective agricultural consultant

Oliver

3 years ago

Click here to be matched with an expert consultant or mentor for your regenerative farm journey!

Today I’m excited to announce a completely new thread to this podcast. I’ve teamed up with Climate Farmers, the company that I’ve been working with for over a year now, that is working to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe by assisting farmers in their transition toward regenerative management of their land and businesses.

At the beginning of this year our whole team invested a lot of time in reaching out to the people in our network all around Europe in order to learn about what their goals are, what they’re struggling with, and how we can co create solutions together. One of the primary things we found is that many of us are searching for specific connections in order to have dedicated support as challenges inevitably come up.

As a result, we’ve begun building a consultant matching service for farmers who are looking for knowledgeable and experienced consultants, coaches, or experts. Luckily, we have a growing list of people around the continent who fit that description and are available to offer assistance.

Since we also know that it can be tough to choose between so many experts, we offer help in this area by selecting from the criteria and experience that’s important to you and is relevant to your context.

In order to showcase the astounding knowledge and expertise of some of the people in our network, I’m starting off this first episode of this new thread on Climate Farming to highlight some of the best regenerative agriculture consultants from around the world in order to get a better understanding of the process of transitioning a farm to regenerative management.

In the coming months we’ll explore the steps that our experts advise to guide growers through the essential journey of mindset change, observation, learning, experimentation, monitoring, and evolution of ideas in order for farmers to transform their relationship with the land.

Along the way, if you, or anyone you know, would like to reach out directly to the people that we interview, or are looking to be connected with a regenerative agriculture expert in your area, you can get in touch with us directly by clicking the link I’ve put up on the show notes for this episode on the Regenerative Skills website. The same goes if you’re a regenerative agriculture coach or consultant who would like to be featured on our roster of experts. You can find that easily at regenerativeskills.com or through our linktree on Instagram

With all of that said, I wanted to get this series started off with a deep dive about what it means to be an effective assistant to farmers and land managers in transition.

Whether you call yourself an educator, consultant, coach, mentor, or something else, everyone has a different approach and has a different process. That’s why I reached out to Nicole Masters, who’s now launching a program to train highly effective coaches and consultants called CREATE.

Nicole is an agroecologist, educator and systems thinker with nearly 20 years’ of extensive practical and theoretical experience in regenerative land practices.

She has been communicating these methods throughout Australasia since 2003 and North America since 2013; helping to inspire and guide producers into new and innovative ways to produce food.

Nicole has a deep commitment to finding win-win solutions for both the wellbeing of landscapes and land managers. As a seasoned soils coach, she has a proven record in supporting producers in meeting their goals.

With over 1.2 million acres under her programs, Nicole excels at identifying and solving challenges through proactive management. Her passion for fostering the growth of these farming practices calls upon diverse skills in facilitation, conflict resolution, an understanding of behavioral change and science communication.

With soil as a major driver for ecosystem health, Nicole has worked closely with diverse production sectors from; dairy, sheep & beef, viticulture, compost, nurseries, market gardens, racing studs, lifestyle blocks to large scale cropping. Working with such diverse clients has fostered a broad knowledge and understanding of the challenges facing different production

systems. Nicole has devised and delivered educational programs for a wide range of organizations; consultants, businesses, landcare and extension services.

In this kickoff of the Climate Farming series Nicole and I explore some of the most important skills and knowledge to be an effective coach or consultant. We talk about the experiences that are useful to inform your work as well as some of the softer skills that are often overlooked, but which can make all the difference when building relationships of trust with clients.

We even look at the equation from the land managers perspective and consider some of the criteria that you may want to look for when choosing a professional to work with and some of the warning signs that they might not be working from a mindset of regeneration.

This interview covers a lot of ground and a lot of different considerations including the management of a consulting service as a business, the essential data to collect when evaluating a piece of land and much more. Nicole is really one of the leaders in this emerging field and her stories and experiences are immense, so you may want to get a notebook for this one.

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