About us

President – Celia Leverton

Celia Leverton has farmed most of her working life, including related jobs in rural reporting with the ABC & Tas Country, woolclassing, and rural business management.  Concerns that farming wasn’t sustainable on personal and environmental levels, led her to Permaculture during the 90’s. At the time, Celia was raising 4 children on the family dairy farm. Celia is now a regenerative grazing consult, working on her farm, conducting grazing trials, teaching and consulting permaculture design at farm scale, designing local food systems and building the profile of Regenerative Agriculture in Tasmania. A Churchill Fellowship recently took Celia to England, Scotland, Germany and the US researching how to increase the adoption of regenerative agriculture and the work being done to reduce the barriers to adoption. 

Vice President – Graeme Hand

Graeme Hand has worked as an industrial chemist, international marketer, meat industry consultant as well as farm consultant to many family and corporate farmers. He has a special interest in working with family farms helping to create profitable, sustainable farm businesses which are enjoyable to work in. Graeme trains throughout Australia on regenerating grasslands using planned grazing management. He has also carried out bushfire and drought extension for Victorian DPI, provided Holistic Management® training for CMA’s and universities, consulted for the meat industry on eating quality and marketing. Graeme also manages the Stipa Native Grasses Association.

Treasurer – Justin Clark

Justin Clark is a beef farmer in the north east and long time host of grazing trials.

Public Officer – Alana Betzold

Alana Betzold learned about Regenerative Agriculture at a meeting on climate change in the Huon Valley and has been inspired by its potential ever since. This led to assisting Celia Leverton in organising a public forum on Regenerative Agriculture and the creation of RANT’s forerunner, Huon Farmers for Action on Climate Change. Alana is also a PhD candidate in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She is passionate about supporting communities to develop more sustainable and equitable food systems, both through her research and active participation.

Committee

Janice Miller

Gabriel Paiva Lago moved from Brazil to Australia in 2011 and finally Tasmania in 2017, together with his partner, young son and two dogs. They now live in a small property in Upper Derwent Valley in Tasmania, growing vegetables and raising sheep. The main motivation for this lifestyle was to be back to rural living, part of Gabriel’s upbringing which they wanted their son to also experience.

Gabriel has a Bachelor of Engineering and a Masters Degree in Environmental Research, Modelling and Risk Assessment, though nowadays he teaches school kids how to grow fresh vegetables at three different school gardens.

Gabriel has been interested in Regenerative Agriculture for a while and met the Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania for the first time at one of their farm walks in the Huon Valley area in 2023. He has been involved with the network since then.

Steve Williams runs a few sheep and cattle on his small acreage in the Huon Valley. He has mainly worked as a journalist specialising in sustainability. His agricultural interests include time-managed grazing and agroforestry. He is the co-editor of the collected volume Sustainability and the New Economics (Springer, 2022). He is also an advocate for greater participatory democracy, human rights, and animal welfare.