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Building the resilience and profitability of cropping and grazing farmers in the high rainfall zone of Southern Australia

Date:
By MFMG Admin

Project code: 4-99UNW35

Project manager: Claire Dennerley, Justine Drew, Felicity Turner

Project duration: September 2018 to June 2022

About the project

This project aims to bring key decision making tools together into one easy to use web based platform to allow farmers to make better decisions, enabling them to be more profitable and resilient to changing conditions – both environmental and market driven.

This project will improve soil condition and the ability of farmers to use big data to make more robust farm decisions. Soils will be enhanced by reducing top and subsoil acidity in a practical and cost effective manner, with efficiencies gained by further developing and adopting emerging technologies to be more precise in where and how often lime is applied and at what rate (precision, variable rate). Farm businesses will become more resilient by further building decision making skills combined with the drawing together of four pieces of real time big data critical to informing strategic and tactical decisions; soil moisture status, pasture availability (groundcover), commodity prices, weather and climate forecasts.

A feature of this proposal is the active involvement of people and organisations along the supply chain, from farmers (individually or in groups), advisors, consultants, service providers and retailers, industry associations (lime producers, fertiliser spreaders), Government Agencies (AgVic, Glenelg Hopkins CMA) and Federation University. In particular, a focus will be on developing the skills and confidence of women and younger people, so they play a more active role in farm business decisions as well as traditional male farmers.

Tangible post farm gate (community) benefits include improvements in the soil resource and active sharing of local weather, drymatter and soil moisture data to emergency services (e.g. fire fighting, floods) and Water Authorities (e.g. model potential runoff into waterways and reservoirs). Increased use of lime has spinoff benefits in local employment (cartage, spreading) and increased risk and decision management will position farm businesses in a better position to ride out extreme commodity and climatic events. The learnings and products created in the use of precision and variable rate technologies, along with the big data platforms, can be easily extended to other industries and regions around Australia.

The project consists of: 

  • soil acidity program
  • farm resilience components

Key Messages

  • Climate, economics and current situation relative to both groundcover/crop stage and soil moisture are often identified as key critical factors that inform decision making.
  • Understanding how important each of these critical factors are relative to each other in impacting on the final outcome/decision is critical in ensuring well informed decisions are made.
  • The relevance or importance of these factors will vary depending on the time of the year, particularly when looking at the interaction between soil moisture and long-term climate forecasts.

Project Activities

Installation of 4 soil moisture probes and 3 weather stations at pasture monitoring sites which were located in late February 2020. Pasture cuts have been started at 2/4 sites, with the remaining 2 sites containing largely perennial pastures. These will be monitored further into the spring/summer period.

In October and November 2019 two groups (20 and 30 people) visited the trial site at Sherwood as part of MacKillop Farm Management Group’s annual field walk program to learn about the project aims and to have a look at the crop performance to date during year one. On both occasions the presentation resulted in group-wide conversations about the local landscape, soils, pH testing and lime rate application on acid soils. This information reinforced what most of the group already knew and reinforced with the advisor cohort present that acid soils are an issue in the region, and equipped them with knowledge to detect and manage the issue. The project was presented at MFMG’s Spring Livestock Field Day in September to a grazing-focussed crowd of 25.

Free soil pH testing was offered at the SE Field Days at Lucindale in March 2019. Each person, couple or school group to bring their sample in for testing engaged in a conversation about their soil, acidification, pH testing and treatment for acid soils. A database of contact details was established; some producers submitted samples for lab analysis with APAL, with results of the onsite, visual test and the follow-up lab test communicated to them, along with advice on soil pH management to inform their on-farm decision-making and practices.

This project is funded by:

nlp2-logo SFS logo

 

This project is delivered in partnership with:

Rural Solutions

Alpah Group Consulting

 

Project resources:

My Farm Dashboard Platform

Commodity Prices

Decision Wizard

Lime Assist

Soil Acidity Case Studies using Precision Agriculture

Video:

Decisions Building Farm Resilience - YouTube

How to interpret the Climate on My Farm Dashboard - YouTube

Remote Sensing Pastures on My Farm Dashboard - YouTube

Soil Moisture Probes on My Farm Dashboard - YouTube

Reading the Odds - YouTube

Building a Decision Matrix - YouTube

Understanding Rules of Thumb - YouTube

The Prosperous Farmer Podcast:

Business innovation and compassion with 2022 AgriFutures SA Rural Woman Robyn Verrall - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Understanding and overcoming constraints in Limestone Coast soils with Melissa Fraser part 2 - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Understanding and overcoming constraints in Limestone Coast soils with Melissa Fraser part 1 - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Diversifying your farm business with Kate Wheal and Felicity Turner - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

The business case for sheep scanning with Charlie Crozier and Forbes Brien - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Productivity on the Plains with Bruce McLean and Melissa Fraser - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Growing Your Farm with Graham Clothier and Felicity Turner - The Prosperous Farmer Podcast

Newsletters:

MFMG Seasonal Newsletter Summer 2020

Building Farm Resilience Newsletters - 2020 Edition & 2021 Edition