Manuka businessman warns Hunter Gas Pipeline would wreck soil on Liverpool Plains

Chaff and hay company Manuka, near Quirindi, has been following biological farming principles and building up organic matter and carbon levels in the ground.

But, the property lies on the corridor for the controversial Hunter Gas Pipeline route, designed to connect Queensland and Newcastle via the Narrabri Gas Project and Liverpool Plains. Mr Wallis fears the project would upend decades of work.

"Building up all that organic matter in soil is a long, slow, tedious process but we've been doing it for 25 years and it's all going to be upended in that corridor, so we're not looking forward to that at all," he said.

Mr Wallis found out about the project several years ago, but it's reared its head again since energy giant Santos took it over last year.

"Now Santos has got permission to invert all our soils and do what they like, so we've got to start again with all that work," Mr Wallis said.

"It's a long, slow process, if you don't start you don't finish, and you just have to get on with it and do the job.

"It's in Australia's interests that we have respect for our soils and we improve them all the time."

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The physical digging of the trench to lay the pipeline is enough to churn and invert the soil.

"We don't want to transfer it out of our farm onto someone else's farm, so the only answer is to stop it and source alternative sources of energy, because it's something we could do without totally," he said.

Mr Wallis' property lies on prime agricultural land, and he said nurturing the soil was important into the future.

He said in the last 200 years, the main agricultural sources in Australia have been on a slight deterioration and the harder they are farmed, the more it impacts the natural environment.

"It's important that our generation reverse that, and we start to build up organic matter and nutrients in the soil and wean ourselves off acid-based and chemical-based fertiliser," he said.

"That's a long, slow track but we've started on that track and it's quite annoying now to just have that disregarded totally, and just the soil will be wrecked through that corridor area.

"Agricultural soils are a very, very important asset to all of Australia, and if Australia wants food security so that we produce and rely on Australian farmers to feed the nation, we have to respect and look after our soils."

He said there were new technologies and exciting changes to adapt to and improve soils. He's also studying a university course in regenerative farming.

Santos has said previously it will work with landholders.

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