Stress Testing Regenerative Agricultural Practices

Project Manager: Kate Morris, Project Officer, MFMG

Project duration: Jun 2025 to June 2030

 

About the project

This project represents the first comprehensive, region-wide evaluation of novel regenerative agricultural practices in Australia's southern grain-growing areas. 

Climate change and increasingly variable rainfall demand systems that can thrive under dry conditions. This project will help farmers and researchers understand how regenerative practices can improve soil health, drought resilience, and long-term farm viability. 

 

Project Objectives

The Project aims to rigorously study regenerative cropping and pasture management to boost drought resilience in dryland farming systems in southern Australia.

Local farmers, through established farming groups such as MacKillop Farm Management Group, will lead the project with support from CSIRO on scientific design, soil health and resilience analysis, and economic modelling. Five long-term trials across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales across representative eco-climatic zones will be set up, managed and analysed along with four additional large scale demonstration trials. Their results will be modelled to enable prediction and visualisation of management scenarios across the landscape. These will help us understand how these new practices impact soil resilience and support sustainable, productive agriculture in the region's dry climate. 

Six Long Term Trial (LTT) treatments will be tested to improve drought resilience. These varied approaches will help identify the most effective practices for dryland farming systems. 

The 6 are

1. High Production - maximising profitability and production via conventional means, maintaining high fertility with emerging N bank approaches & following hyper-yielding crops research.
2. Pasture inclusion, with reduced inputs - Conventional with reduced inputs, driven by C buildup & legumes within a multi-season pasture phase, improving soil resilience and function.
3. Diverse within rotations - Focusing on intercropping diversity within rotations, exploring overyielding effects for efficient water & nutrient use.
4. Diverse between rotations - Focusing on diversity between rotations, driven by legume N supply to reduce input costs & build soil resilience.
5. Cover focus - Retaining living cover longer, testing long season varieties, opportunistic summer cover & perennial options.
6. Amendment driven - Fertilisation driven by organic amendments, increasing soil C & addressing soil constraints. 

A Long Term Trial (LTT) will be established in our region. A range of treatments will be undertaken on the chosen Trial Site, correlated to local practice and suitability. 

This Project is funded by: