Landcare Farming
What is Landcare Farming?
Landcare Farming is about taking a holistic approach to land management. It involves adoption of sustainable farming practices for the good of the land and land managers.
Landcare Farming can improve profitability, maintain the productive capacity of a farm's natural resource base, and improve a farm's capacity to cope with adversity all while maintaining or enhancing the natural resource base.
There has been significant progress in developing landcare farming systems across
Click here to find out more about the Elders Landcare Farming Partnership
There is an urgent need for a national effort to further develop sustainable Landcare farming systems if we are to see major landscape improvements over the next 50 years.
Farmers, land managers and agricultural industries are increasingly realising that environmentally sound production offers benefits in terms of business liability and profit, while having benefits for the environment.
Landcare farmers
There are more than 4000 landcare groups in
Benefits
At the industry-wide scale, landcare farming promises to provide industries with better control over natural resource management issues, better market access such as for the emerging ‘clean and green’ market, and reductions in farm costs.
At the regional scale, landcare farming can contribute to setting and achieving catchment natural resource targets, and to maintaining the viability of local and regional communities.
At the farm scale, landcare farming can improve the farm's capacity to cope with adversity and maintain productivity whilst conserving important landscape features.
For example Landcare farming practices can:
- reduce fertiliser costs through soiling testing
- improve stock health through the use of shelter belts
- improve pastures by implementing rotational grazing techniques
In 2003, Landcare
The report was commissioned by Landcare
Find out more - Issues and Resources:
While farmers face many environmental degradation issues, there is loads of information and success stories available to assist them in learning more about sustainable farming practices and accessing support when it comes to undertaking on ground works.
To find out more about issues, and what you can do to help, visit the issues section of LandcareOnline.
Topics include:
Case Studies:
To read about success stories in landcare farming, take a look at some of the below case studies:
Or why not check out some of the available resources and links, or suggest your own!
Pasture cropping brings up profit by 25 per cent
Colin Seis - Gulgong - NSW
Colin Seis has increased profitability by an incredible 25% on his mixed farm in the NSW central tablelands. He stopped fertilising, allowed native pasture to regenerate, introduced pulse grazing to rest pastures, and sowed winter crops directly into summer-growing pastures. The water table has dropped, biodiversity has skyrocketed and profitability has increased because of reduced inputs. The Department of Agriculture uses his farm as a model of sustainable and profitable low-input farming.
Collecting a year's irrigation water in one rainfall event
Ron & Sue Watkins - Frankland - Western Australia
Considered by some to be too small to survive, Ron Watkins’ farm in the WA woolbelt is a thriving certified organic enterprise. Ron took careful stock of his geography and rainfall. He calculated the amount of water he could sustainably harvest, and built a massive dam. Neighbours laughed – until a single rainfall event filled it with enough water to irrigate crops for a year. He produces a diverse range of outputs, including vegetables and aquaculture, and sells to niche organic markets.
EMS helps increase crop yields
Sharni & Shane Radford - Moriaty - Tasmania
Shane and Sharni Radford, who are in Tasmania’s top ten onion growers, adopted an environmental management and auditing system to allow them to sell onions for export to the UK. Using a whole farm plan they adopted sustainable farming practices that improved health, safety, environment and productivity. Onion yields have increased from 69 to 91 tonnes per hectare and this year they enjoyed a bumper season for their other crops in spite of drought, the result of years of good farming practices.
Carrying capacity quadrupled due to inputs
Peter Vanrenen - Logan, Victoria
Peter Vanrenen and his family have increased their stock carrying capacity at least fourfold on their mixed farm in central Victoria. Since the 1950s they have tackled erosion, cultivated improved pastures including deep-rooted perennials, built soil health with fertiliser and trace elements and carried out major earthworks including contour cultivation and constructing dams to use all available rainfall. The carrying capacity has quadrupled, wool is of better quality and topsoil has increased.
Bare polished ground transformed
Dick, Ann & Steven Cadzow - Alice Springs - Northern Territory
The Cadzow family have transformed parts of their grazing property near Alice Springs from bare, polished ground to a diverse ecosystem that can support stock. Ripping rabbit warrens, removing feral animals, building ponding banks and pitting large bare areas have all helped native grasses to flourish. They have increased carrying capacity from almost nil to four cows per square kilometre. The increased production is well on the way to paying for the cost of rehabilitation.
Farming and the Greenhouse effect
Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory estimates that on-farm activities (excluding energy use) produce around 18 per cent of overall national emissions.
This is more than all of Australia’s transport-based emissions, making the agriculture sector the second largest source of greenhouse gases after electricity production.
Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture represent the loss of valuable resources from farming systems. For example, it is estimated that equivalent to 10-15 per cent of the
feed energy digested by sheep and cattle is lost as methane, making it unavailable for animal production.
Improving feed conversion efficiency can therefore reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while improving farm productivity and profitability.
Similarly, 25-75pc of nitrogen added as fertilizer in Australian agriculture escapes without being channelled into plant systems. While the nitrous oxide component of these losses is relatively small (around 1.25pc of nitrogen applied), this is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. This means that the emission of even a small amount of nitrous oxide has a large impact on the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
Further, nitrous oxide emissions are often associated with conditions that result in large losses of nitrogen through other processes. Taking action to improve the efficiency of
nitrogen use therefore presents opportunities for greenhouse, production and environmental benefits.
For more information on greenhouse emissions monitoring, visit
www.greenhouse.gov.au/science_emissions or download Landcare Australia: Meeting the Greenhouse Challenge.
Masters of the Climate Revisted
In 1999 the Climate Variability in Agriculture Research and Development Program (CVAP) ran a project called Masters of the Climate. More than 80 landholders from around the country provided information to the project team about how they were using climate tools to better manage their land resources and farm businesses.
The original 23 case studies from this project are on the web at http://www.cvap.gov.au/mastersoftheclimate/.
CVAP has now been replaced by the Managing Climate Variability R&D Program, still administered and supported by Land & Water Australia, which funded Masters of the Climate Revisted.
The aim was to find out how farmers who were already working out ways to deal with climate variability managed in a drought of the magnitude of that experienced in 2002. Check out the case studies below.
Foreword
Overview by Jesse Blackadder
Science behind the case studies by Dr Barry White
Bill, Anne and Andrew Yates, Garah, NSW
Bill, Betty and Paul Atkinson, Proserpine, Qld
Brett and Fran Francis, Kimba, Eyre Peninsula, SA
Chris and Sarah Roche, Gulargambone, NSW
Doug and Antonietta Lee, Proserpine, Qld
Erl and Roslyn Happ, Dunsborough and Karridale, WA
Ian and Warwick McClelland, Birchip, Victoria
James and Libby Gardiner, Cobar, NSW
Jeff, Larraine and Oliver Hoffman, Lockhart, NSW
John Hamparsum, Breeza, NSW
John, Robyn, Steven and Carolynn Ive, Dicks Creek, NSW
Mark O'Brien, Weston Cereal Industries, Tamworth, NSW
Tom and Margaret Porter, Hay, NSW
Tony Boyd, Outback SA
Glossary of Terms
