Helping improve farm productivity
A collection of workshops and field days were held to help share information to improve productivity, resilience and health of local farms.
Capacity building - LEP23-033_03
The issue
A changing climate, rising costs, threats of disease are all contributing to the increasing difficulty in farming productively. Nambucca Valley Landcare sourced funding from several sources to host workshops, field days and pasture trials to help provide information and learning opportunities that would connect farmers with each other. Local connections and building farm resilience is particularly important given the numerous extreme weather events experienced in the Nambucca Valley over the past 6 years. These workshops brought experienced presenters to showcase additional farm management methods that can help build robust farming techniques, that are more able to withstand extreme weather and other external pressures.
The solution
Nambucca Valley Landcare partnered the NSW Government and with SCU and the SQNNSW Innovation Hub to undertake workshops, multi-species pasture trials and associated field days. Nambucca Valley Landcare’s strength to collaborate with different funding bodies to deliver a series of events meant that a significant number of landholders were able to attend, make connections (or re-connect with old friends) and learn about a wide range of topics.
Workshops covered different topics, including multi-species pastures – from seed choice through to management techniques; river restoration permit requirements; dung beetles; soil health and structure and on-ground multi-species trials.
The impact
An average of 35 landholders attended each of the 5 events over 13 months and three properties were involved in on-ground trials of multi-species pastures. These events connected new farmers with those more experienced, reunited old acquaintances and provided numerous learning opportunities which helped to provide additional farm management options. Riverbank restoration and the associated permits is a key knowledge requirement for many Nambucca Valley farmers and greatly impacts on-farm decisions. The use of improved multi-species pastures will help to reduce synthetic fertiliser use, improve soil health, increase biodiversity, improve water retention and drainage, help cattle health and provide a buffer against issues like pasture dieback. We discovered that there was no significant benefit using a direct seeder compared with using cattle impact to sow the seed. This makes sowing multi-species seeds to your pasture a cost efficient option to improving pasture. The trial paddocks provided the best opportunity for hands-on learning, and being supported by passionate experts in the field gives everyone a better learning experience.
Key facts
- Multi-species pastures:
- improve biodiversity
- helps to withstand the effects of pasture dieback
- improve water retention
- improve drainage
- improve soil health
- reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers
- can be cost effective
- can be sown with or without machinery