Day's Walk farm direct to restaurant farming model

The farm, situated across green wedge classified land of mixed crops delivers their produce direct to Melbourne based restaurants and cafes.

Day's Walk Farm founder Paul Miragliotta diverted from his previous career as a radiologist into farming and leases the land from a couple who value organic practices.

Mr Miragliotta said they deliver direct to their clients around Melbourne, with his team making up to 50 deliveries per week.

"Being so close to Melbourne we can get our own deliveries done in about four hours," he said.

As Day's Walk Farm is a certified organic production, they utilise regenerative practices, which Mr Miragliotta said was how he learnt to farm, it also aligned with his values and meant he was able to continue the previous land holders work.

"For me, I can see the potential of managing land organically, and regeneratively, and I want to discover what that can do." he said.

One of their more recent focuses has been a reduction in tillage on the land they work, as they continued to also reduce water usage as well.

"It's been a transition, it's taken years to figure it out, use the right tools and approach it territory to territory," Mr Miragliotta said.

"The transition to that kind of practice is an investment, it can't be done all at once, you do it bit by bit and each thing is an iteration."

The summer crops they are currently growing include a mixed variety of heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkin, eggplant and peppers.

With a team about six workers the team is kept busy and a close knit team, who are able to live in the city and still maintain a career on the land.

Along with their regenerative practices they use ten or more species for cover cropping, which was inspired by the Australian soil scientist Dr Christine Jones, who Mr Miragliotta said has uncovered some incredible discoveries.

With most of the team a mix of young people, Mr Miragliotta held a passion for helping young people transition into farming, as he himself found it difficult to break into agriculture from his past career in radiography.

He co-founded Farmer Incubator in 2013 to help other young people navigate the boundaries they faced trying to move into agriculture.

"We ran events, talks around town in community halls, film nights about aspects of agriculture, and we did a pop up garlic farmer course because we could run that and get it going without external investment," Mr Miragliotta said.

Over 150 people have now come through their pop-up garlic course, with garlic chosen as it's a high value return for a smaller yield than many crops, making it an ideal starting point for small scale farmers.

"For a new entrant farmer, land access is the primary of a bunch of barriers, and that capital cost of the land, you want secure tenure, and to make an investment for a number of years to own it,"

"However, in France, their model is to put that land into a trust and that entity will purchase agricultural land, and the trust will dictate if it's for new entrants into agriculture.

"It's not a part of the real estate housing market, it's taken out of that market,"

Despite the research and the young farmers Farmer Incubator had supported to enter into the industry, as a result of lack of funding in their area the organisation has now made the decision to close, without the right funding they're not able to keep a general manager one.

"But we've got the intellectual property, we have the whole book to run that course, so another organisation could adopt it,"

"For every workshop we have the schedule and a budget, it can be run profitably."

They hope that in a few years the model may be able to be picked back up and continue its work to support young farmers.