Grazing for the Future
Grazing for the Future
Grazing, Cropping and Diversity on farms
Making a Difference -
LLCI001-004
The issue
Within the Central Tablelands Landcare membership and committee there has been a long-term desire to test what local interest we would have to establish a grazing group - a small group of landholders that would come together to learn and share experiences about management of grazing systems including soils and groundcovers in their farming systems.
Our successful application for funding under the National Landcare Program's 25th Anniversary Landcare grants allowed us to develop our first grazing group running from May 2015 to June 2016.
The solution
The Grazing for the Future program invited landholders in the Central Tablelands Landcare district to participate in a series of workshops and farm visits. These workshops were be run by the qualified grazing and pasture cropping experts - Graeme Hand and Col Seis. The core participants were required to attend all workshops and farm visits which enabled them to build on their knowledge over the life of the project. Through the course of the project members of the 'grazing group' were be able to report back to each workshop with their experiences and questions, to facilitate the group learning.
The aim of the program was to encourage sustainable grazing practises, explore pasture cropping, and promote biodiversity on farms in the Central Tablelands. The workshop topics included; pasture identification and monitoring, principles of grazing management, pasture cropping and the establishment of trial monitoring plots. At the end of the workshop series all participants presented the findings of their trials back to the group for discussion.
The impact
This project engaged 28 individual farmers with 14 core participants that attended all 3 grazing days and an additional 14 who attended the pasture cropping day. All of these individuals are farmers, and all of these individuals attended the field days on a voluntary basis. Four individuals hosted field days and were involved in the delivery of the project activities. The 14 core participants who attended all three grazing days indicated in their survey responses that they have implemented practice change as a result of our project activities. They have been actively monitoring their livestock, pastures, ground cover and biological landscape function during the lifetime of the project, and have indicated that they will continue this practice into the future.
Similarly, with the pasture cropping, 3 participants have implemented these techniques on their farms as a direct result of attending our workshop.
Each of the core participants was required to report back to the group on their findings most of them did presentations showing before and after shots of their trial area and spoke of their grazing management changes over the project.
Key facts
- 17 farming entities adopting sustainable practice change
- Farming area covered 5,017ha
- All core participants implemented practice change