Section 5 - Landcare and sustainable agriculture

Since the 1980s, landcare has explored the idea that conservation must be tied to sustainable production. An old saying of landcare dates back to then: ‘It’s hard to be green when you’re in the red.’

Farmers have been working for at least 20 years now on restoring habitat and biodiversity to create robust, thriving and profitable farm systems that are integrated into their local environments.

When farmers incorporate Landcare practices into their methods of production, their management is more compatible with the climatic constraints and land-use capability of Australian landscapes.

The stories in this section show some of the methods being put into practice to work towards ecological sustainability.

Biodiversity and Production

Proving a link between biodiversity and production

Group: Southern New England Landcare, University of New England
Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW
Formed: 2001
Focus: Quantifying how biodiversity and conservation on farms increase production and profit.

A four-year project on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales has highlighted how effectively a landcare network can facilitate a large-scale, cross-regional collaboration.

Southern New England Landcare was formed in 1991 in response to the community’s desire to coordinate landcare activities among the four groups then in the region.

The organisation has now grown to link more than 25 landcare groups, four local government organisations and numerous schools and individual community members across the region.

The organisation set up the Northern Tablelands Land, Water and Wool Steering Committee to oversee a major project, the Land Water and Wool project, which began in 2002. The project was jointly funded through Australian Wool Innovation and Land & Water Australia.

Project leader Dr Nick Reid, from the University of New England, worked with woolgrowers, Southern New England Landcare and the Centre for Agricultural and Resource Economics.

‘The project was truly innovative, and inclusive of the whole community,’ said Karen Forge of Southern New England Landcare.

^{REGENERATION PROJECT AT Lana station. Photo: Karen Forge.}

‘Project partners—in particular Southern New England Landcare Regional Action Plan, the Northern Rivers and Border Rivers–Gwydir Catchment Management Authority Catchment Action Plans— collaborated on a well thought-out and productive project plan prior to funding approval,’ she said.

An initial survey of 900 woolgrowers on the Northern Tablelands established a community baseline level of awareness and willingness to protect native biodiversity.

Dr Reid documented and publicised the relationship between biodiversity and production on three outstanding case-study farms and eight testimonial farms, and worked with 15 ‘monitor farms’ to record and analyse production and biodiversity outcomes over a two-year period.

‘The project provided the science and economics behind what so many of our leading rural producers were already claiming was happening on their own farms,’ said Karen.

‘It identified specific biophysical and socioeconomic relationships between wool production and biodiversity conservation.

‘In doing so, it enabled a significant step towards Australia’s ability to conserve nature and biodiversity across whole landscapes, and has provided incentive and motivation for others to do the same.’

The project team organised displays at major rural events, visits to case-study farms, and field days. It also produced publications, published articles in wool industry newsletters and established a website.

Numerous print and radio articles attracted attention from most states—as well as city dwellers from Sydney and Melbourne, and even New Zealand.’

’A final survey questionnaire of the same growers in 2006 quantified the changes in attitude and practice that have taken place as a result of this project’, said Karen.

‘The project’s scientific and economic results have raised awareness of the importance of biodiversity for production.

‘They’ve also increased knowledge about biodiversity among producers who are very ’production’ focused and who might not normally consider the importance of biodiversity,’ she said.

‘The project helped shift the public’s focus from one where bushland and biodiversity are managed within isolated areas, such as remnants, parks and reserves, to one where bushland and biodiversity are managed as an integral part of the farmscape and, therefore—due to the large areas of privately owned land—the broader landscape.’

Rangeland management

Watching the grass grow

Group: The Cadzow family
Location: Central Australia, NT
Formed: Bought Mt Riddock in 1986
Focus: Erosion, rabbits, rangeland management

When Northern Territory pastoralists Dick and Ann Cadzow moved their family onto Mt Riddock Station in early 1987, the homestead paddock was a dustbowl. Extensive rabbit warrens had destabilised the land and wind and water erosion had leached any goodness from the soil.

^{The Cadzow family—Rear L-R: Dick, daughter-in-law Rebecca and son Steve. Front L-R: grand-daughter Gabby, Anne and grand-daughter Bridgette. Photo: Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre.}

The Cadzows—including son Steven and daughter Robyn—took a landcare approach to their problems. They began identifying priorities for restoring productivity to degraded areas, and had to make a long-term, comprehensive and expensive commitment to repairing the damage.

‘You’ve got no choice but to look after your land if you want to make money from it,’ said Dick. ‘You’ve got to let the grass have a chance to re-grow without something biting its head off as soon as it pops out of the ground.’

The family employed two bulldozer drivers for 18 months to rip rabbit warrens and undertake extensive land forming to rehabilitate sealed soil surfaces.

They also culled more than 1000 feral horses that were competing with the cattle for food, eradicated the station’s rabbit population, rested the homestead paddock and built ponding banks in severely depleted areas to help trap valuable nutrients and moisture from the rain.

It cost the family more than $330 000 and 4500 bulldozer hours to rid Mt Riddock of its rabbits. This led to a dramatic recovery of pasture and shrub species, which could then sustain a healthy cattle herd.

One paddock that couldn’t support any stock at all is now lush with native grasses and can sustain four cattle per square kilometre in a region where half that is the norm.

Steven Cadzow has started a rotational grazing trial—one of the first of its kind in Central Australia—involving the preparation of sale cattle and using a telemetry system to monitor water points to save time and fossil fuel.

‘Repairing and looking after the land is all part of life at Mt Riddock,’ said daughter Robyn, a rangelands officer in Alice Springs.

‘Dad has brought so much valuable knowledge to the station, and he never stops learning because he’s constantly trying out new ideas to make things even better.

‘He believes it’s his hobby, his job and his life to make the land as healthy, productive and sustainable as possible for future generations.’

^{Steven Cadzow has started a rotational grazing trial involving the preparation of sale cattle.}

Integrated catchment management

Defying the drought

Group: Little River Landcare Group
Location: Central West, NSW
Formed: 1998
Focus: Integrated catchment planning

Losing half the seedlings from their first major planting to drought didn’t deter the Little River Landcare Group from persisting with its vision of creating a healthy and productive environment.

The Little River catchment had 14 landcare groups before they amalgamated in 1998 to develop an integrated catchment plan.

But developing the plan was a bigger job than anyone had imagined. It took five years to complete and consisted of three stages—first, a description of the catchment and its current state; second, the plan itself, with a series of best management options; and third, a socio-economic analysis.

The plan developed 20 best-management options, ranked in order of their cost/benefit ratio, for farmers. The top seven were use of soil ameliorants, such as lime; strategic/ rotational grazing; native vegetation conservation; conservation farming; perennial mixed pastures; strategic tree planting; and buffer strips for riparian zones.

The group estimated it would cost $46 million to apply the options over 10 years in return for benefits valued at $59 million. There would also be environmental benefits downstream of the catchment, including in the Macquarie Marshes.

^{Members of the Little River Landcare Group—undeterred by drought}

The plan started strongly in 2002. Members planted 90 000 seedlings, but when drought wiped out 40 000 of them they used funds from the Envirofund Drought Recovery program to plant another 60 000. Since then members have planted 60 hectares of agro-forestry and established thousands more native plants.

‘We’ve involved many of the 300 landholders in the catchment, and building partnerships has been a high priority,’ said the group’s catchment manager, Fergus Job.

‘We recognise the value of building relationships with all other stakeholders in the catchment. The volunteers are equally important—their time, effort and loyalty have allowed us to establish a reputable organisation.

‘People are a natural resource. Socio-economic factors need to be our highest priority, because the fabric of our catchment community needs to be strengthened. Once that happens, natural resource management can be considered, accomplished and continued.’

^{Landholder Mathew Philpson (left) and agronomist Dave Harbison.}

^{Little River in drought, November 2006.}

Best management practices

Treading lightly

Group: Mulgrave Landcare and Catchment Group
Location: Far North Queensland
Formed: 2000
Focus: Best management practices for sugar cane

Wanting to lighten the sugarcane farming industry’s environmental footprint, a Far North Queensland landcare group, with support from the National Landcare Program, focused on developing five best management practices.

Two of the practices, revegetation and soil conservation, were obvious extensions of the Mulgrave Landcare and Catchment Group’s riparian tree-planting activities over the previous 10 years.

But the other three—variable rate fertiliser application, direct drilling legumes through the cane trash blanket and strategic/ minimum tillage for cane planting—tested the ingenuity of members.

Not only did they want to put their ideas into action, they also wanted to design farm implements that growers could trial and then copy cheaply for themselves.

When sugarcane is harvested green, a blanket of crop residue called trash is left on the ground and new cane crop grows through it. At the end of a five-year crop cycle the ground needs resting (fallow).

At this stage, and with direct drilling, farmers can plant legumes, such as soy beans, directly through the trash to add a break crop into the rotation and to provide protective groundcover over the North Queensland west season. Then, at the end of the wet, they can use strategic tillage to work through the trash and soy residue to prepare ground for cane planting quickly and cheaply.

Variable rate fertiliser application is not yet common in sugarcane farming and most attempts had been complex and expensive. The group wanted a simpler and cheaper mechanism that farmers could fabricate from existing sugar industry components and add to existing fertiliser implements. It worked.

^{Bill Smith, Barron Delta canegrower, trialling Mulgrave Landcare’s strategic tillage implement.}

‘We knew these were good ideas, but reliable and cheap machinery needed to see them adopted simply wasn’t available when we started,’ said group coordinator Bruce Corcoran.

Local farmer Ken Clarke, however, had a knack for building innovative farm implements from spare parts. Ken had already built one prototype implement to direct-drill legumes into sugarcane trash, and another to trial strategic tillage.

‘Clarky could see the environmental spinoffs, like better nutrient management and less soil movement. With his help we designed and built a top quality version of each implement and demonstrated them around the wet tropics region.

‘Now, as per the plan, farmers are making cheaper versions of them for themselves, often utilising components they already have,’ said Bruce

With the help of BSES LTD—the sugar industry research and extension organisation—and a Queensland Department of Primary Industry initiative called ‘Future Cane’, the group has been able to circulate the implements, not only through the Mulgrave catchment, but to sugarcane farmers in the whole Wet Tropics NRM region, free of charge.

‘This project combines profitable farming with good environmental outcomes,’ said Bruce.

‘We’ve shown that landcare is a serious partner in agriculture, and it’s given us a big tick from the farming community.’

^{Soy growing as break crop from sugarcane.}

Rangecare

Going feral

Group: Barrier Area Rangecare Group
Location: Western NSW
Formed: Initially 1980s, re-formed in 2004
Focus: Kangaroo harvesting

Harvesting feral goats and kangaroos for profit and to manage total grazing pressure more flexibly is being explored by the Barrier Area Rangecare Group.

Ten member properties worked together in 2005 to install 21 goat traps and to collect and remove feral goats over a 480 000-hectare area.

‘This has had a substantial, positive impact on vegetation cover and biomass, and continues to help landholders manage total grazing pressure,’ said the group’s chairperson, Louise Turner.

‘After controlling more than 128 000 hectares of invasive native scrub, we successfully applied to control a further 33 000 hectares.’

Members have installed new watering points and relocated existing ones. They’ve also built hinge-joint and standard fencing, which allows them to respond to changes in vegetation cover by turning off waters in areas needing help, or turning them on to encourage stock to rotate around pastures.

^{A training course in land function analysis, Fowlers Gap.}

But it’s not all hard work out on the rangelands, and the group is also socially active in the community.

Established in the 1980s when the landcare movement was gaining momentum, the group slowed down in the late 1990s and was inactive for several years, before re-forming in 2004.

‘Since then we’ve been unstoppable, and 39 properties covering 1.8 million hectares are now members,’ said Louise.

‘Our social structure is strong, our meetings are well attended by husbands and wives, and we provide childcare.’

More than 120 people attended the inaugural western catchment landcare forum at White Cliffs, hosted by the group in 2006.

‘It was so successful we agreed to share the event annually around the western catchment,’ said Louise.

^{Barrier Area Range Group meeting. The group is also active socially in the community.}

Biodiversity

Maximising grazing potential

Group: Heytesbury Beef Pastoral Company, Meat & Livestock Australia, CSIRO, Victorian River District Conservation Association, and others.
Location: Victoria River District, NT
Formed: 2003–07
Focus: Grazing trials and biodiversity

The Pigeon Hole project in the Northern Territory was one of the largest grazing trials ever undertaken in Australia, thanks to Heytesbury Beef pastoral company, which donated a 308-square kilometre block to the project for five years.

The study, which also involved Meat & Livestock Australia, CSIRO and the Victorian River District Conservation Association found that 20–25 per cent utilisation of annual pasture growth was likely to be sustainable. Evenness of use could be maximised by having 30–40-square kilometre paddocks with two watering points.

The study also found that rotational grazing systems that spelled pasture during the wet season were likely to improve pasture condition.

Staff from the NT Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts came on field trips in different seasons to monitor biodiversity. They studied ‘increaser’ species, such as galahs, that flourished in response to grazing, ‘decreaser’ species that were sensitive to grazing, and species that didn’t appear to be affected.

^{Simon Holmes à Court explaining the operations of a mater medication unit linked via remote telemetry to the Pigeon Hole station homestead.}

‘There may be plenty of plants and animals in a paddock, but it’s important to know to which group they belong,’ said Alaric Fisher, the biodiversity project’s leader.

One example of an increaser species is annual sorghum, which replaces the more productive perennial grasses when these are overgrazed. These perennial grasses are important for the health of wildlife, especially that of seed-eating birds.

The study also monitored biodiversity in some large fenced areas where grazing was excluded. After five years, differences in the ground layers’ structure and composition within these exclosures were becoming obvious, with an increase in the palatable perennial grasses that were heavily grazed in the trial paddocks.

The exclosures also contained high densities of decreaser bird species, demonstrating the potential of pastures to recover, if they are spelled.

The project has contributed to the development of a number of best-practice principles for combining pastoral production with biodiversity conservation in northern Australia. They include maintaining native grass cover, controlling weeds and pest animals, spelling pastures, and retaining natural tree cover along with the fallen timber and leaf-litter to provide a variety of habitats.

‘Managing pasturelands well is extremely important for conserving biodiversity in northern Australia,’ said Alaric. ‘These areas are home to many species found nowhere else.’

No-till farming

Easing tensions

Group: South Australian No-Till Farmers Association
Location: South Australia
Formed: 1998
Focus: No-till farming

Urban sprawl has encroached on some of South Australia’s best rural land near Adelaide, bringing farmers into close contact with suburban neighbours. This has caused tensions between traditional farming practices and the needs of new settlers.

Through its Community FarmlinkX project, the South Australian No-Till Farmers Association is using conservation farming techniques to solve some of the problems.

‘The adoption of conservation farming systems is often on a needs basis,’ said the association’s research and development manager, Greg Butler. ‘Unless farmers with light sandy country that can blow away adopt methods like no-till, they won’t have a farm in a few years.

‘But when you get into areas with good soils and reliable rainfall—like the peri-urban areas near Adelaide—adoption of conservation farming techniques slows because what farmers are doing seems to work, and they think, “Why change?”

‘These farmers generally aren’t under the same pressures as those in more challenging regions, but if they continue to rip and burn and let dust and smoke and chemicals drift away, they come under community, legislative and council pressures instead,’ said Greg.

The Community FarmlinkX project encourages peri-urban farmers to adopt conservation farming, but also targets urban communities to improve their understanding of farming practices. ‘The project is about showing peri-urban farmers that they can run a modern conservation farming system at least as profitably as a traditional system,’ said Greg.

‘They might end up making the same amount of profit with a conservation farming system, but one of the big benefits is that they’ll have a lot more time. We have members who’ve started another business, leased more land or been able to spend more time with their families after becoming conservation farmers.

‘In Community FarmlinkX we don’t expect to get 100 per cent conversion. Our aim is to support someone who’s a catalyst. Eventually you get a critical mass, and then the guy who’s doing the ripping and burning becomes the one in the minority.

‘After building a firm base of quality farmers who are taking up these techniques, we then promote them to other farmers in the area,’ he said. ‘The role of conservation farming is firmly in the national interest. We’re promoting it because it has massive social and economic benefits.’

^{Trial inspection group at the DaveystonCommunity FarmlinkX demonstration site, October 2007.}

Using water in the landscape

Taming the floods

Group: Murchison Land Conservation District Committee
Location: Murchison Shire, WA
Formed: 1986
Focus: Managing floodwaters in arid landscapes

Residents of the arid rangelands of Murchison Shire, 740 kilometres north of Perth, are often at the mercy of damaging floods that erode river and creek systems.

The district receives less than 250mm rainfall a year, and much of that rushes away before it can soak into the ground.

Two projects by the Murchison Land Conservation District Committee (LCDC) to restore the Murchison and Roderick Rivers are slowing floodwaters and spreading the benefits of water across the landscape.

Tackling the issues was not easy. First, LCDC members participated in the Ecosystem Management Understanding workshops, which proved critical to their attitudes about the landscape, and managing it.

‘Two Zimbabweans, Ken Tinley and Hugh Pringle, gave us a new outlook on our landscape,’ said LCDC president Mark Halleen.

‘We were looking at the problems in the river beds where the erosion was, and Kim and Hugh came out flying with us.

‘They sent us into the hills where the water was actually coming from. We could see how the water flowed down and affected the country—the problems were all created from the headwaters.

‘This understanding of how water moved through country, particularly at peak flow times, showed members they needed a new approach,’ said Mark.

^{Ponding bank regrowth—helping to slow down the floodwaters.}

‘We got out our maps and put overlays on them showing waters, fencing, breakaways, good country, bad country, where our erosion is, and so on.

‘We’re now changing our fencing systems and building ponding banks to slow the movement of water down the catchment to reduce erosion and improve water infiltration into the soil.

‘We’ve built over 200 banks and fenced the area off. The water running past the homestead is now clear, which means that there’s a lot of sediment being dropped before getting down here.

‘We’ve also re-established native grasses and shrubs on the banks in and around the ponds. The work stopped our homestead from flooding when we had 380mm of rain in just few months in 2006,’ said Mark.

Mark estimates there is now 50 per cent more plant growth in the areas where the ponding banks have been built, and this has dramatically improved productivity. Half a metre of silt has built up in gullies that were previously 1.5 metres deep, and seven native grass species have returned to the banks.

‘Some people were sceptical of the project, but two years down the track, when they came to the field day, they could see what was happening,’ said Mark.

‘When another project called the Wooramal River Project was planned, some of the sceptics were the first to put their hands up to start it.’

^{Scott Brain (left), formerly facilitator for the Carnarvon NRM, and LCDC president Mark Halleen—tackling the issues hasn’t been easy.}

^{Aerial view of ponding banks.}

Higher rainfall farming

Different problems, different solutions

Group: Southern Farming Systems
Location: High rainfall zones in Geelong, Streatham, Hamilton, Gippsland, Tasmania
Formed: 1995
Focus: More profitable farming in higher rainfall zones

When the six founding members of Southern Farming Systems got together in 1995 their aim was to find ways to make farming in the higher rainfall zone more profitable.

As their problems often differed from those faced by farmers in other areas, different solutions would be required, so they set out to help themselves. In so doing, they created an organisation that now has 800 members in five branches across two states. The organisation maintains international affiliations and has a strong link with the Foundation for Arable Research in New Zealand.

In South West Victoria, Southern Farming Systems is undertaking projects to help mixed cropping and grazing farmers to increase profitability and enhance the environment.

A major focus on stubble management as an alternative to stubble burning has seen trials of techniques such as incorporating stubble into the soil, spreading, mulching, baling, microbial digesters, crop selection and sowing techniques.

In certain situations, stubble retention has also proven to be a useful weed-management tool throughout some of these trials.

^{Farmers at the Streatham Branch field day learn about the importance of fungicide use in wheat.}

Stubble grazing can be undertaken for animal production purposes and has also been used to reduce residual dry matter and control pests in subsequent crops. Combinations of direct grazing of stubble trash, harvesting stubble for supplementary fodder during feed shortages and grazing at crop vegetative phases have been trialled.

Some of the initial findings have included decreased and delayed ear emergence, rust reduction and grazing ‘pulling’ of particular crops.

The group runs farmer events to promote its findings and give farmers an insight into how stubble-management practices impact on soil health and related issues.

‘Southern Farming Systems’ farmer-driven approach has been critical to its success,’ said former state industry landcare coordinator Ian Linley.

‘The partnerships between industry, government and natural resource managers, and the scientific rigour of the trials, ensure a balanced outcome for farmer profitability, environmental sustainability of the natural resources and, ultimately, sustainable futures.’

^{Ashley Peach (right) and Mick Shawcross discuss grazing cereals at Mick’s farm in the Barrabool Hills near Geelong.}

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