Finding a Soil-ution: An Interview with Rachel Ward

Photo: Madman Entertainment

It's hard not to get caught up sometimes in worldly concerns. Natural disasters seem to be hitting harder and more frequently. And it feels like you can't turn on the news or read the paper without discovering we've hit an unwanted meteorological record. Sure, most of us strive to be environmentally conscious, but there is an inherent despair in knowing we may be resigned to a potentially irreparable fate. Then the question becomes: what will be of the future generations who have to deal with the fallout of our mistakes?

That question has weighed heavily on the mind of famed actor and director Rachel Ward. The Against All Odds star has owned a rural property for years, and her anxieties made her ponder what she could do to curb the climate catastrophe. Those thoughts led her to venture away from traditional agriculture and embrace the growing movement of regenerative farming. And she has chronicled her farm's transition in her latest film, Rachel's Farm. The documentary probes the viability of forgoing standard practices like overgrazing and chemical usage. And it also shows an entirely new side to Ward, stripping back the prestige and glamour often associated with her to instead show someone who has channelled their fear into something hopeful.

Before she embarked on a Q&A tour across half the country, I spoke with Ward about making her first documentary, being the face of a film once again, and the realisation she had when she became a grandmother. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CONNOR DALTON: Transitioning your property from conventional to regenerative farming is a massive undertaking. What made you decide to make a documentary about your journey on top of that?

RACHEL WARD: The main thing was I had big climate anxiety. I felt very impotent to deal with the enormity of it. And I thought that carbon in the atmosphere was all about burning fossil fuels. I didn't realise how much agriculture played a part. And agriculture plays a part because we have been tilling our land and blowing away our soil for a very long time. We have reduced the amount of carbon in the soil. When we colonised Australia, I think we had about eight to nine percent of carbon in the soil — we now have like one and a half. So we've really blown it away. And not only is carbon important to be in the soil so we don't get too much degrees in the air, but it also acts as a sponge.

So the more carbon you have in your soil, the more water you can hold. When you get wetter soil, you're basically holding the soil. So when you get droughts — and we are increasingly getting more and more intense droughts — you can hold the water in your soil for longer. That was one of the reasons I decided to do the documentary because I felt not only could I turn my farm around, I could film it, and I could talk about it. 

DALTON: I believe this is your first documentary. As someone who had only directed fiction up until this point, how did you find the experience of making this type of film?

WARD: Well, much harder because it's terrifying starting something without a full script. I didn't know how this was going to end. I barely knew how it was going to begin. But I very much wanted to do a documentary about the farmers who had adopted regenerative farming or holistic management. And I felt, as a consumer, I could be much more conscious about the food I was buying and asking questions. 

DALTON: For any art form tackling the climate crisis, understandably, most of the time, the tone can be quite morose. Your film certainly illustrates the gravity of our situation, but it has a very buoyant energy to it. Was that done intentionally, or did it just come naturally?

WARD: I think a bit of both. I suppose my intention was not to polarise. I think we are always going to have monoculture farms. We're always going to have huge-scale farms. And God knows there are retailers that will supply very cheap food. And there's some people who absolutely cannot afford to eat anything different. But I think we need to demand better practices on farms and what retailers provide because there's a lot of people whose health is very vulnerable and who have climate anxiety and want to weigh in.

So I did set out to try not to polarise, to try not to hit too hard, but it is a very enjoyable thing. I love being on the farm, and I love farming with nature, not against nature. I don't want to be wielding great sprays of chemicals everywhere. I don't want to be dressing up in gear that is completely covering me because there's so many chemicals going onto the land. If people have to dress up head to toe in those white outfits when they're driving a spray of those pesticides and herb sprays, it doesn't just die in the soil — it gets into the root system. 

Roots are absorbent. They absorb nutrients; they absorb minerals; they absorb water. They are absorbing those pesticides and herbicides, and that is going into our food. I think we forget that. We get used to seeing that small little part in the supermarket which says organic, and we forget what its true meaning is: you can eat without being poisoned. 

But essentially, [farming] is fun. It's hard work at the beginning because you've got a new system in place. But actually, a lot of these farmers call themselves lazy farmers because, in the end, when you get the natural cycles working for you, essentially all you've got to do is open a gate to let the cattle through into another pasture. The whole point of it is you're not set grazing. You're not keeping the cattle in one paddock, and you're also not having to do the work of growing all these other pastures and killing grasses and spraying endless super phosphate and urea and all the other things which then race off the land, race into the rivers, and do all of their damage there. So there is a very exciting new way of approaching growing food, and I'm just throwing a little lighthearted light on it. 

DALTON: With so much of your recent work being behind the camera, it's been a minute since audiences have seen you on the big screen. Obviously, this occasion is a little different since you're not playing a character, but how does it feel to be the face of a project again? 

WARD: Well, I resisted it greatly (laughs). I resisted it because I didn't want it to be about me because I'm such a newbie to this whole area. I wanted to talk to all the farmers that had been doing this for a very long time, but Kiss The Ground had already done that really well. I don't know if you saw that, but that's a very good American documentary that's the sort of nuts and bolts of regenerative farming. So that had been done, and in the end, my producer convinced me that the story had to be about my transition as much as my land's transition since I was starting off in despair, really. 

I had a new grandson, and he was looking at the world with such wonder, and I felt like I was holding this terrible secret. I was going to have to tell him one day that all was not as it seemed, and he needed to brace himself for all the basic challenges of climate change that we are all beginning to see. And it doesn't seem to be getting that much better. So I guess I was prepared to throw myself into the ring and do this. And hey, if it didn't work, it didn't work. But it's an emotional journey, and that's what films are about. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. 

DALTON: Many of the other prominent faces on screen are your family members. Some of the moments you captured of them are so touching and vulnerable. One that struck me was from your daughter early on when she was talking about you. She stated that while this venture would be a mammoth effort, it was something you had to do because you hadn't been happy in a while. When you shot that interview, what did you think of that statement?

WARD: Well, I actually didn't shoot that interview. I didn't see that statement until we were quite deep into the edit. With one's mental health, you obviously get concerned if it affects your kids, but I am very concerned about climate change. I'm very concerned we're not doing enough, and I'm very concerned that it can become something we can't reign in. And I feel an enormous responsibility, having been a boomer myself, that we haven't done enough. 

Having my first grandchild illuminated, for me, it was bad enough now what was happening, particularly with the fires and the droughts and the incredible floods. They're serious events, and I take them very seriously. I think many people do and are frustrated by the slowness in which we are tackling these issues and the opportunity to weigh in on these issues. And as I said, when I realised that farming was part of it, it was great because it made me go, 'Fantastic! I can do something on my little bit of land; I can turn that around. As a filmmaker, I can illuminate this story.'

DALTON: At the time of this interview, you're a few days away from starting a massive multi-state Q&A tour. What are you hoping to gain from these screenings?

WARD: I think I'm bringing the land to the city. We don't see our farmers very often. Our farmers are a big sector of our cultural and food life, and how many stories do we see about farming? How often do we go behind the doors of the farms and see the day-to-day life of a farmer? How they grow, what their challenges are, how they deal with these floods and these droughts. I was interested in that and felt other people may be interested too. I also wanted to film the landscape. All areas of Australia are just so beautiful, so I wanted to take the audience there as well. 

But overall, I just want to bridge that gap of where our food is coming from and to sort of nudge people into thinking about that and to maybe seek out or demand food that is cleaner and not filled with pesticides and herbicides and chemicals. Maybe there's a section of society that cares about that, and it doesn't need to be that much more expensive either. At the moment, the food chain is very set in motion, and it's all about getting prices down and squeezing the farmers so that we get them lower and lower. But there are people who want healthy food who are prepared to pay a little bit more and encourage farmers to do the right thing on their land. And we won't get there unless we start buying it in bigger quantities.

DALTON: At the beginning of Rachel's Farm, you are quick to note that you were in The Thorn Birds. That series celebrated its fortieth anniversary this year —  

WARD: Oh, did it?

DALTON: Yes! It came out in March 1983. And when I was researching for this interview, I discovered a lot of your most celebrated works have either hit or are about to hit that milestone. Sharky's Machine was a couple of years ago, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was last year, and Against All Odds is next year — 

WARD: Stop! Stop! (laughs) Yes, I've been in the industry a long time, but I haven't been acting for a long time. I basically gave acting away when I was about 35 and went behind the camera. 

DALTON: How do you feel when you reflect on those titles and that time of your life? And do you think that woman in the '80s spending her days in Hollywood would ever envision herself as a face of this farming revolution?

WARD: Oh, I don't know about a face for the farming revolution. There's so many better people better placed and better informed to talk about it than me. But I did have an opportunity, and I took that opportunity to find a way to talk about these things.

[With acting] at that time, that's what I was interested in. You know, you grow up, and you become more interested in more grown-up things. In the beginning, I was interested in movies, and I was interested in that sort of excitement and life. It soon wore off, and I soon wanted more control over my storytelling. So I got behind the camera and started writing and directing, which I enjoy much more. 

DALTON: On that note, I will wrap up and say congratulations on this film and thank you for fitting me into your schedule. 

WARD: No, thank you for giving it time. I really appreciate it. 

This article was originally published by SWITCH.