Building The Connections

In 2006, Christopher Cooke came to Australia to make Regeneration, featuring Walter and HSA’s pioneering regenerative farmers.

In 2009, Walter began a decade-long collaboration with Major General Michael Jeffery, later founder of Soils for Life and Australia’s first National Soil Advocate. Nearly all farmers in the first Soils for Life case studies came from the HSA network.

Phill joined HSA in 2011, marrying his farming experience, field investigation and microscopy with Walter’s science. Together with farmers and practitioners, science, observation and practical experimentation increasingly informed one another.

Cindy Eiritz joined Walter and Phill in 2013, bringing experience connecting people, organisations and knowledge. She built connections across soil, regenerative agriculture and ecosystem restoration networks, helping extend Walter’s work internationally. This included Global Soil Week and the first Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming conference.

There Walter met Didi Pershouse, who later organised US workshops and speaking tours with him. Concurrently, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate brought Walter’s work to wider audiences, including Harvard University in 2018.

Vijay Kumar saw a recording of a 2016 workshop with Walter and Didi and began experimenting with the ideas in Andhra Pradesh. This began a long-term partnership.

Becoming Regenerate Earth

In January 2019, Walter, Phill and Cindy established Regenerate Earth, carrying forward decades of science, practical experience, relationships and learning. The name came from Walter’s “Regenerate Earth” paper for a 2017 UN Food and Agriculture Organization soil conference.

Later that year, Walter and Didi travelled to India to support Vijay and RySS with the science. They also helped develop educational programs for 365-day green cover and pre-monsoon dry sowing. Phill subsequently brought his expertise in microscopy, field investigation and practical teaching.

Ecological filmmaker Stephen Curtain joined Regenerate Earth in 2019. Dr Gundi Rhoades, Katrina Kell and Evelyn Lee Collin joined in subsequent years.

Learning, Action & Evidence At Scale

Andhra Pradesh’s women’s self-help group networks have enabled knowledge and practice to spread at extraordinary scale. Today, over 1.8 million farmers are transitioning to Community Managed Natural Farming, with interest extending to more than 50 countries.

Working with RySS teams, Regenerate Earth has investigated soils, water and local temperatures. Field measurements reached 74°C under chemical farming, compared with 29°C under natural farming. This validates Phill and Walter’s decades of work on living soil biology, biological hydrology and cooling.

We also continue our longstanding work with farmers and practitioners across Australia, while expanding work on green water and biological hydrology internationally. Through research, education and policy, we put decades of knowledge and experience into practice — to regenerate Earth.

Phill Lee

Phill Lee is a microscopic soil analyst and regenerative agriculture consultant with a lifetime of experience in farming and living soils. A former pioneering regenerative farmer, his expertise spans soil microbial ecology, soil-borne disease, bio-fertility and soil regeneration.

Phill began farming young on his family’s wheat, oats and sheep farm and continued for nearly two decades as an adult. His father was practising multi-species cropping in the 1950s, exposing Phill early to approaches decades ahead of their time.

From the mid-1990s, Phill spent nearly a decade in farm mapping and soil testing, mapping more than one million hectares across Western Australia.

In the early 2000s, Phill questioned why conventional soil tests and fertiliser recommendations were not delivering expected results. Convinced the answer was in front of him, he compared farmed soil with healthy soil from an adjoining national park under a microscope. The native soil teemed with biological life; the farmed soil had almost none.

This led him to undertake large-scale mycorrhizal fungi trials and, by 2003, shift completely to live biological analysis and regenerating the soil carbon sponge. He has continued this work for more than two decades.

In 2011, Phill joined Walter Jehne at Healthy Soils Australia, bringing a major step change to its work. His field experience and microscopic imagery provided a practical and visual counterpart to Walter’s science. Together they expanded HSA’s work across Australia.

In 2019, Phill founded Regenerate Earth, continuing his work in Australia and now internationally through Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming in India. There, his pioneering field investigations have provided new evidence of the science behind natural farming. He teaches farmers, agronomists, extension professionals and scientists to observe and understand living systems. Many say that after just days alongside him, they see things they had not learnt through decades of scientific study or practical farming.

Walter Jehne

Walter Jehne is a soil microbiologist and innovation strategist. Over five decades, his work has evolved from soil microbial ecology and soil formation to national innovation strategy, regenerative agriculture and the role of water cycles in climate regulation.

Walter began his scientific career with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, specialising in the role of soil microbes’ symbiotic processes in soil pedogenesis and the regeneration of bio-systems. He later held senior roles in the Australian Federal Government, developing national innovation strategies across industries.

He went on to co-found Healthy Soils Australia in 2005, building networks among pioneering Australian farmers and graziers to advance regenerative agriculture and commercialise leading bio-innovations. For over a decade, he served as Principal Scientific and Industry Adviser to Australia’s first National Soil Advocate, Major General Michael Jeffery, who was also founder of Soils for Life. Walter helped document and share the work of pioneering practitioners, including writing many of the organisation’s first case studies. Growing international interest in his work also led to invitations to speak and tour in the United States.

In 2018, Walter began advising the leadership of Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming in India, providing scientific and strategic advice on soil biology, hydrology, Pre-Monsoon Dry Sowing and year-round green cover. In 2019, he co-founded Regenerate Earth, continuing his work in Australia and extending it internationally.

Determined to advance the practical verification, application and extension of these and other innovations, Walter sees their potential for cities and their supply chains as important to sustaining the current 8 billion and projected 10 billion people by mid-century. This ambition is grounded in two decades of practical work demonstrating biological hydrology in Australia and, more recently, India. Its relevance to water security, climate regulation and natural cooling is gaining wider international recognition, including through emerging green water policy.

Cindy Eiritz

Cindy Eiritz is a strategic adviser and co-founder of Regenerate Earth, working across regenerative agriculture, water, and ecosystem protection and restoration. She specialises in identifying emerging opportunities, synthesising complex information and developing collaborations that connect science, land management, communities and policy.

A strong ethic of service has shaped Cindy’s career, from 18 years as an Australian Army logistics and operations officer to nearly two decades of work for people and planet.

Her Army service included command on United Nations operations in Timor-Leste and within a high-readiness brigade. Throughout her career, she led capability development, experience that continues to inform her strategic approach today.

Since 2008, Cindy has worked across environmental, climate and community initiatives, including systems-mapping, network-building and collective initiative development. She brought this experience to Healthy Soils Australia when she joined Walter and Phill in 2013. There, she built connections across regenerative agriculture and ecosystem restoration that helped extend the work internationally, including through the first Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming conference and Global Soil Week.

In 2015, Cindy was an inaugural Regeneration International delegate at COP21, when soils were brought onto the climate agenda for the first time.

In 2019, she co-founded Regenerate Earth. Much of her work starts with an emerging idea or opportunity: following promising threads, finding and synthesising knowledge, bringing together the right people and creating space for relationships and ideas to develop. Her strength is seeing connections others may miss, developing strategy and supporting the growth of collaborations around them. A major focus is green water and how soils, vegetation and landscape function influence water security and climate resilience.

Didi Pershouse

US based Didi Pershouse is the author of The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities and the Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function facilitator’s manual, which is used in over 100 countries. She teaches participatory workshops both in person and online, helping to show the nested relationships between diverse living landscapes, the soil sponge, water cycles, health of all life, and resiliency to flood, fire, drought and heatwaves.

She is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative and the Center for Sustainable Medicine, and a co-founder (with Walter Jehne) of the "Can we Rehydrate California?"

She is an independent trainer and curriculum developer for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India. You can follow her writing, podcasts, and workshops at The Wisdom Underground on Substack.

Stephen Curtain is an ecological filmmaker dedicated to communicating complex environmental issues through compelling storytelling. His work combines filmmaking with practical, on-ground demonstration.

Films include Liquid Heart: Restoring the Australian Alps, which he wrote and directed, Climate Calming Natural Farming, which he co-produced, and Fire vs Fungi: Our choice to naturally cool the planet in time, which he filmed, directed and produced

Beyond filmmaking, Stephen helps deliver Regenerate Earth’s Fire vs Fungi practical demonstration trials in the Australian Alps. This pioneering work has relevance and potential application to drying forests worldwide. It explores how underground biology can help retain moisture and reduce conditions that contribute to severe fire.

Stephen sees re-applying solutions found in Nature, through immersive and practical learning, as a way to help Nature cool and calm lands, skies and oceans — and us.

Prospective films include Can Whales Cool Antarctica? and Growing Islands Faster than Sea Level Rise. Regenerate Earth is seeking funders and partners to help bring these films and other important stories to life

You can discover more of his films at Help Nature Repair and Stephen Curtain

Christopher Cooke

UK-based Christopher Cooke is a systemic practitioner, mentor and educator making the invisible visible and meaningful across people, land, leadership and change. He holds an MSc in Managing Change and draws on Integral Theory and Practice to reveal root causes underpinning large-scale change. His practice draws on 35 years of leadership, management, mentoring and coaching across organisations, communities and regenerative initiatives.

A Savory Institute Field Professional, Christopher and his wife have led the creation of Savory Network Hubs, known as 3LM, in the UK and Ireland since 2016. He mentors coach trainers internationally within the Erickson Coaching World Game.

Christopher designed and built Bart to enhance ecological literacy around four ecosystem processes: Water Flow, Energy Flow, Community Successional Dynamics and the Mineral Cycle. Bart administers data across 3 million hectares worldwide.

Through 3LM – Land and Livestock Management for Life and its parent, 5 Deep – Thought Leadership & Innovation, he creates an action-research-enquiry space responding to an emergent, integrally oriented paradigm.

Dr Gundula (Gundi) Rhoades

Dr Gundula (Gundi) Rhoades is a mixed animal veterinarian with 35 years of experience. She owns and runs her own veterinary hospital in rural Australia.

She also co-owned and worked a cattle-breeding enterprise for more than two decades, which she helped convert to organic farming principles. She studied and is now practicing animal nutrition, soil biology and human nutrition.

Gundi has been involved in Regenerative Agriculture for over ten years and wrote a book about the connection of soil health, nutrient integrity and human and animal health. She investigated the influence of chemicals used in agriculture, such as Glyphosate, on soil and the consequences of such on environmental and human health. Dr Gundi Rhoades is also part of Carbon8 (Regenerative Agriculture charity). Her book is called The Food Solution, and she hosts a podcast The Regenerative Vet. She is passionate about health and also gives consultations to people as well as giving frequent public presentations

Katrina Kell

Katrina Kell is an artist and educator living in rural Victoria, with a deep interest in nature, sustainable farming and the health of our communities and planet. After earning a Masters Degree in Teaching and a bit of time in the classroom, she values connection, curiosity and creating safe spaces for people to explore new ways of thinking and being.

Katrina’s ceramic practice is inspired by nature, often leaving parts of each piece unglazed to create a literal connection between the person holding it and the earth. Her work reflects her broader interest in what helps people feel connected to the natural world and what inspires meaningful change.

Through Regenerate Earth, Katrina brings an educator’s perspective and a passion for sharing knowledge that can help people understand, question and participate in meaningful change. She is particularly inspired by the science of the soil sponge and its potential role in regenerating our landscapes, communities and climate.

Evelyn (Ev) Lee Collin

Evelyn (Ev) Lee Collin is an ecosystem connector, facilitator and regional development practitioner dedicated to strengthening communities through healthy, regenerative and democratic food systems. Working across Western Australia's agri-food sector, she designs and delivers initiatives that bring together farmers, researchers, government, industry, community organisations, youth and First Nations leaders around shared regional priorities.

Evelyn is recognised for building trusted relationships across sectors, translating research and innovative practice into community-led action, and bringing diverse stakeholders together for collective impact. She brings expertise in systems thinking, collaborative leadership and stakeholder engagement, with a strong focus on creating the conditions for long-term social, environmental and economic regeneration. Her regional perspective, deep community networks and commitment to connecting people, knowledge and place to accelerate regenerative transitions are greatly valued by Regenerate Earth.

ABOUT REGENERATE EARTH

Science, practice and people working together to regenerate living systems.

Regenerate Earth is an Australian-based organisation working nationally and internationally across healthy soils, water cycles, landscapes and climate.

We bring together science, practical experience and people through consultancy, education, research and collaboration.

Our work extends from farms and landscapes to catchments, communities, cities, organisations, governments and policy. It builds on decades of science, observation and practical experience in how soils, water, landscapes and climate function
together.

Our Story

Two Paths Come Together

Regenerate Earth’s story began decades before the organisation was established in 2019.

Its roots lie in two long traditions: scientific inquiry into how living systems function, and generations of practical observation and experimentation on the land.

Walter Jehne’s early research in the 1960s and 1970s explored soil microbial ecology, including mycorrhizal fungi, rangeland ecology and the bacterial nucleation of clouds. His second career took him into national innovation strategy in the Federal Government.

After leaving government in 2004, Walter co-founded Healthy Soils Australia (HSA) in 2005. It brought together a network of pioneering regenerative farmers and graziers, connecting their practical knowledge with science.

At the same time, Walter drew on his earlier CSIRO research and began re-presenting the Earth systems science of the 1972 Stockholm Earth Summit. He sought to widen the climate debate beyond carbon, writing about the connections between soils, plants, water, heat and climate. Over the following decade, WeForest shared these ideas internationally. Walter was also invited to the 2012 Planet Under Pressure conference in London.

Phill Lee came through a different path. Raised working on a farm where multi-species cropping was already practised in the 1950s, he spent decades farming, mapping and testing soils before turning to microscopy. By 2003, his work had shifted entirely to living soil biology and regenerating the soil carbon sponge, through microscopic analysis, consulting and teaching.

Discover The Rest Of The Story

Building The Connections

Becoming Regenerate Earth

Learning, Action and Evidence At Scale

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OUR PEOPLE

Regenerate Earth is a small organisation led by its three co-founders and directors, Walter Jehne, Phill Lee and Cindy Eiritz. Together, they bring decades of experience across science, farming and land management, strategy, networks and practical regeneration.

Our six members bring complementary experience across land management, education, communication, community and other fields. All have their own professional work and contribute to Regenerate Earth where their knowledge, experience and connections are particularly relevant.

We are longstanding friends who share ideas and learning, inspire one another and support each other on the journey