124. Natural Intelligence
Jane Slattery on co-founding the ‘world breakthrough’ concept & practice
Jane Slattery is the co-founder, with Diane and Ian Haggerty, of natural intelligence farming – underpinning what Charles Massy has called their ‘world breakthrough’ operation. And to hear Di an Ian defer to Jane in many ways, had me so looking forward to meeting her. Then, earlier this year, I happened to be near Jane’s neck of the woods in South Australia, hosting one of the Planet Talks at WOMAD. Thankfully, she was up for coming into Adelaide for a chat. And more by fate than design, she follows the episode with the legend Fred Provenza. In some ways, Jane sings off a similar song sheet. But where Fred was led by science to soul, you could say Jane has come at it from soul first - while still utterly grounded in our embodied experience of a wondrous world.
Jane Slattery just before we pressed record on this conversation (pic: Anthony James).
“You can’t just look at one little piece and go, well, let’s just work on that. It’s the whole. It’s like nature, nature is a whole eco-system, isn’t it? So how can we just look at one little piece of nature and go, oh, we’ll just do that, that’s going to fix everything. And anyway, nature can fix itself. It doesn’t need us. If anything, nature will fix itself way quicker than what we can. We need to learn how we can get out of the way, which is what I get natural intelligence is.”
This is a very special and rare conversation. Jane is only now feeling like speaking publicly about her work in media like this. You’ll hear some of why. After running a successful family business around Australia, she gave it all up to follow a compelling sense of what she felt she needed to be doing. And, along with the Haggerty’s, she has gone on to guide and inspire an increasing number of brilliant regenerative outcomes around the country.
This conversation was recorded by the River Torrens in Adelaide, on the land of the Kaurna people, on 15 March 2022.
Find more:
You can meet Jane at the upcoming RCS Australia conference in Brisbane in July.
And if you’d like to hear from Di and Ian Haggerty out on their farm, head to episode 68.
Music:
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden, from the soundtrack of the new film Regenerating Australia, available for community screenings now.