At the turn of the 20th century, a 3,000km fence was built across the Australian continent to prevent the spread of invasive rabbits into cropland in Western Australia. Decades later, scientists and farmers began to notice an unusual phenomenon: the weather was completely different on either side of the fence.

The ‘Bunny Fence Experiment’ was the world’s largest study of two contrasting land uses in the same vast region, showing strong evidence that clearing and cropping was the reason why rainfall over the Western Australian Wheat Belt had dropped 20%.

It is this story that begins the book Freya Mulvey co-wrote with her soil scientist father Phil Mulvey: Ground Breaking: Soil Security and Climate Change which was released in 2021. It tells of how, by degrading soils, modern agriculture has contributed to heat waves, dust and fire across the planet. It also shares the solutions: managing land use, sequestering carbon in soil, reducing bare ground and championing policy and law reform.

SOIL - the podcast - brings this important story to a wider audience, through the voices of climate scientists, biologists, farmers and agriculture experts who are rebuilding and protecting soil around the world.