East South Australia Grain & Graze 2

March 2013

For Rachel Neumann a participant in one of the Grain & Graze Adaptive Management Groups, one of the clear benefits for her farming family has been the encouragement to focus at working ON the business rather than IN it.
Read more about Rachel's experiences 

Know your soil’s water holding capacity and maybe make the most of summer crop opportunities

Recent Mid North SA High Rainfall Zone trials indicate that gross margins of opportunistic summer cropping combined with those of a following wheat crop may exceed those of a wheat crop alone grown after a chemical fallow expected to store water. It also reinforced that storing of out of season rainfall does not work for all soils as evaporation losses can be extremely high.
Further reading

February 2013

Don’t rule out burning as an effective management tool, particularly with windrow burning rather than whole paddock burning. It is a great opportunity for farmers and current thinking is that you’re unlikely to be struck down by a bolt from above just because you burn occasionally!
A Burning Question - Is Never Say Never Appropriate?

November 2012

Nuffield Scholar Jennifer Hawkins recently addressed participants in a Grain & Graze 2 webinar on aspects of her study of Carbon Farming.
Read more of Jennifer's thoughts on carbon farming and making it "user friendly"

You’ve filled the feed gap – now what?

Grain and Graze 2 would like to thank Mick Faulkner of Agrilink Agricultural Consultants Pty Ltd
and Bill Long of Ag Consulting Co for information used in this publication. July 2012.
It wasn’t too many weeks ago that Grain & Graze 2 encouraged farmers experiencing a feed gap for their livestock, who also had appropriate early weed free crop resources, to begin grazing those crops. For those who were able to take advantage of that opportunity, we hope it’s made it a bit easier for the sheep to get a good feed and for you to get a good night’s sleep.

Complete report
Report as included in 2010 MFMG Trial Results book
Growing Biomass

Three Heads are better than one!

SA Agronomist works with Farmer grooups to combine soil moisture probe data with information from two computer based yield prediciton models to assist decision making in crop, and, eventually pasture management.

Complete report with information provided by Tony Craddock, Rural Solutions

There’s a sign on the fridge that Upper North farmer Trevor Gum’s kids put up that reads, “Live as though you will die tomorrow but farm as though you will live forever!”read more about Trevor’s changes and findings.....