This savvy woman - who has degrees in nuclear medicine and accounting - is the co-founder of ProAgni, an ag biotech company developing nutrition products that contribute to ethical and sustainable animal production.

Fiona was one of three vibrant speakers at the inaugural The Next Vintage event celebrating the diverse and dynamic role women play in modern agriculture.

More than 160 people gathered at The Albury Club on February 7 to hear presentations from Jo Palmer, Katie Collins and Fiona Soulsby with communications consultant Lyndsey Douglas performing MC duties for the night.

Fiona, originally from Warren, originally studied nuclear medicine and headed off to "clean, green" Tasmania to work in her field.

It was there Fiona was first exposed to alternative medicine and a realisation that we are so much more than just our body and organs.

More on that later.

She was to meet and marry her husband Nathan and the pair set up a life at Warren - supported by a close-knit community and both sets of parents.

Fiona found it challenging to continue her work in nuclear medicine remotely.

She had three babies in four years and studied to become an accountant by distance education instead!

Somewhere along the way Nathan and Fiona decided to become farmers.

They began by share-farming with friends.

"They had the machinery, we had budgeting skills and while we didn't break even we gained a lot of experience," Fiona said.

After that the couple bought a "paddock" at Warren and leased a couple of thousand acres where they grew crops and raised cattle.

"We started with 10 calves and cows and traded our way up," she said.

Fiona said they weaned calves young and "did a lot of nutrition", trialling new management strategies for enhancing livestock.

"We had to try to increase our productivity because we were leasing and that comes with far more costs than if you owned the land," she began.

"We tried to generate as much revenue as we could through challenging seasons (you're lucky to have one good year in 10)."

The couple had just built their dream home on the river and cleaned up all their lease country.

They were contemplating the future "over one glass of red wine too many" and the prospect of boarding school for their children when they made a relatively instant decision to pack up and move.

Nathan secured a job as an agronomist at AGnVET Henty and they started a new life at Table Top about five years ago.

Meanwhile Fiona did some contract accounting with various firms and about that time started up Pro-Agni with Lachlan Campbell and Robert Bell.

They are working at the cutting edge of agricultural-biotechnology to enable farmers to better meet the growing world demand for red meat with antibiotic-free feed supplements.

A lot of the motivation driving her work in this field came about after she watched her daughter Violet "fall in a heap" and lose all her hair at the age of 7.

She was diagnosed with auto-immune alopecia.

"(At the time) we were told a stressful event would have been the trigger and there had been a trauma in the family," Fiona said.

Refusing to just accept from paediatricians and dermatologists there wasn't much they could do and that there was a 50/50 chance Violet's hair might grow back, Fiona changed tack.

Violet was put on high doses of steroids and after six weeks she told her mum the medication was making her sick and she didn't want to do it anymore.

"I was relieved in a way," Fiona said.

"We went down the pathway of alternative medicine - we looked at diet, exposure to chemicals, energies and made our house chemical free and also went gluten and dairy free."

Violet "amazed us all" with her resilience and ever so slowly some of her hair has grown back and her energy levels have returned after three years of patience.

In "cleaning up our life", Fiona says the ever growing realisation that we are what we eat - and indeed what they eat - is driven home.

And while Australia lags behind Europe and the US, consumer and even corporate awareness is growing in relation to the high level of antibiotics used in intensive production, she said.

"Anti-microbal resistance is a major world health crisis," she said.

"Seventy per cent of the antibiotics that go down the animals' throats to improve feed efficiency ... come out the back end of animals - onto our roads, into our soils; it's all adding to this social and environmental issue.

"It's about the whole ecosystem and it's also about economic benefits for farmers - being part of a business that is environmentally and socially responsible. We need to create a shared value so everyone wins."