Shire town residents are increasingly using nearby minor rural roads for exercise and nature observation, it means a new era of vehicle speed restrictions is required to protect public safety.
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Historically soil health mostly meant how much organic matter is in soil. But organic matter changes slowly. Microbes change fast.
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This FAO report provides an important scientific account of the role of soil biota in the soil food web and carbon flow between the atmosphere, plants and soil.
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Changing grazing and land management practices to bolster ecosystem functions is positive for the environment but may not necessarily lead into trading soil carbon.
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The Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s draft Road Management Plan takes no account of increasing numbers of pedestrians on some minor rural roads and increased wildlife population on roadside verges and surrounding farm and public land. It provides no data on vehicle road maintenance diesel use and their greenhouse gas emissions trends.
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Anecdotal examples of increasing soil carbon stocks by changing livestock grazing and pasture management are common, but long term statistically significant trial data demonstrates making a significant change is likely to be difficult especially in perennial pasture paddocks where the existing carbon level in above 3%
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Patrick Francis provides feedback to the Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s draft Roadside Conservation Management Plan.
Read MoreVictoria’s state government departments responsible for maximum speed limits on minor rural roads and safety and welfare of wildlife do not recognize vehicles travelling to fast to avoid collisions with wildlife on minor rural roads, are the cause of an increasing number of wildlife road kills and injuries.
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Trees age. And at some point, they die. When that happens, decay begins, sending carbon back into the atmosphere as CO2. Other smaller trees will then take over, thereby leaving a fairly stable CO2 stock in the forest.
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The Australian sheep meat industry has already achieved a status of green house gas stabilisation.
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This research contends global warming is likely to increase soil carbon losses particularly in regions with high carbon stocks.
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Applying artificial climate treatments to pasture species without including different grazing regimes is absurd, it makes the research conclusions around pasture species resilience in face of climate change irrelevant.
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This research is suggesting that the carbon sequestered in the soil can be released faster than previously thought [and play a role in] future climate change,”
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Soil health (regenerative agriculture) initiatives must credibly delineate grain yield, grain quality and across farm ecosystem functions outcomes from what is currently being achieved with science based conservation agriculture.
Read More2020 rainfall has been consistently close to or above average each month ensuring optimum pasture growth and ewe fertility ensuring a record high lamb marking and weaning percentage.
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“A Twentieth Century Shepherd – The letters of E.H.B. Lefroy” demonstrate the activities and passion of a remarkable Australian who devoted his life to helping others in a science based quest for a more productive and profitable pastoral Merino wool industry.
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Livestock farmers are being given mixed messages around minimum pasture levels that preserve pasture plant resilience and ecosystem functions.
Read MoreThe European Commission is about to settle on a new policy on methane which could have profound implications for ruminant livestock agriculture.
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Some native grass species will respond to increased plant available phosphorus, but best practice grazing management is critical to ensure their persistence when fertiliser is applied.
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Too many journalists fail to ask their on-air guests questions about generalisations made, in this case about different types of meat production in Australia versus overseas.
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Summer/autumn 2020 received the highest rainfall for the period since 2012. The consequences for biodiversity and pastures were enormous.
Read MoreRoad kills of native animals are avoidable on minor rural roads in the Macedon Ranges and adjacent shires. To achieve this traffic speeds on these roads must be legally limited to a maximum of 40 km/hr.
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In part two of a three article series on regenerative agriculture Patrick Francis examines why the concept is creating unnecessary divisions amongst Australia’s broadacre farmers.
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Regen Ag has emerged over the last five years under the misapprehension of providing a more holistic methodology for profitable farming while improving ecosystem functions compared to conventional or agricultural science based farming.
Read MoreThe excerpts from Neil Black’s diary relate to Western Victoria’s landscapes, pastures, wildlife, livestock, animal husbandry, labour, wages, living conditions and bushfires in 1840.
Read MoreFind out what Victoria’s pastoral landscapes, vegetation and wildlife were like before pastoralism. James Bonwick provides an insight in 1857
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Ruminant livestock industries are under pressure to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and strategies exist to help do this.
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The challenge for agricultural science surrounding increasing or maintaining soil organic carbon level, is to provide farmers with knowledge that gives them confidence that the practice changes being recommended will achieve the desired outcomes under their individual soil type, climate, enterprise and business circumstances.
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Our phase two pasture renovation program currently in place is producing pastures which are providing us with significantly improved pasture quantity and quality year round, lower ruminant greenhouse gas emissions, higher lamb meat eating quality, and outstanding biodiversity habitat, under a trend for lower spring and autumn rainfall over the last 20 years.
Read MoreLet’s work together to understand how and where regenerative agriculture works, identify possible problems, and work out the economic benefits.
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Learning about the biology of the long-haired rat is the key to this book’s intrigue, because the long-haired rat took decades to scientifically identify as the unique Australian rodent, Mus villosissius.
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Soils from restored prairie ecosystems, with many different plant species, had many more pores of the right size for stable carbon storage than did a pure stand of switchgrass.
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David Pollock contends there is an argument in some pastoral areas such as where Wooleen station is, for using dingoes as a means to reduce uncontrolled grazing pressure of kangaroos and feral goats because the station livestock carrying capacities are so low due to land degradation that the pastoral businesses cannot afford to contribute to the costs of dog control.
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Pollock’s insights into the connections between ecosystem functions, pastures and grazing management, put him into a rare group of outstanding farm/station ecosystem managers, observers, and influencers in the industry.
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According to 2019 Farrer Medalist, Professor Tim Reeves, agricultural sustainability successes have resulted from the combined efforts of scientists and farmers working together to identify, develop and adapt new technologies and systems to both address continuing challenges to productivity and profitability, and to also seize the new opportunities that continually arise.
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Kangaroos do the most damage to the environment during extended dry periods when perennial grasses are forced to go into dormancy. Australia would probably be better off financially and environmentally if properties were fenced to protect them from kangaroos. Alan Lauder explains why.
Read MoreLive export participants who treat sheep as widgets that must endure a level of suffering and deaths on voyages undermine community trust in the trade. The community won’t accept avoidable sheep deaths on boats as a cost of doing business, its members know that these unavoidable outcomes will end once the sheep live trade from Australia ends.
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The people that we trust adhere to rules and standards and act with integrity. How people have acted in the past also becomes part of our judgement about whether to trust them.
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All mixed species perennial pasture paddocks on Moffitts Farm carry a high load of pasture dry matter which when combined with high soil organic carbon (4 – 5% soil organic carbon) means all rainfall (except in extreme rainfall events – over 50mm in 24 hours) is absorbed by the soil sponge. When enough rainfall is absorbed it takes days or weeks to move by sub-surface drainage to replenish the creek ponds (springs).
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