Field day report written by Andrew Lang
Article produced by Lismore Land Protection Group
Event date: 8th July 2023
Location: South-West Victoria
This event was run by Southern Farming Systems, Corangamite CMA and local Landcare groups.
The property in focus is a 2200 ha property with heavy volcanic cracking soils and basalt rock outcrops, growing mainly phalaris-dominant pastures. It had previously been running sheep and is now primarily beef cattle in a rotational grazing system. The owners have recently bought a Soilkee planter that it is using to put annuals and some broadleaf perennials into the phalaris to lift young cattle growth rates and so productivity.
The day consisted of three speakers followed by a demonstration of the Soilkee planter and a visit to a phalaris pasture that had been ‘renovated’ in early Autumn.
Guest Speaker 1 – Grant Sims
The first speaker was Grant Sims, who farms in a family partnership at Pine Grove near Echuca. He is 6th generation on a property established about 145 years ago. Presently they have 8500 acres under crop, with an average 16” (400 mm) rainfall. The property used a standard chemical-heavy approach to crop establishment but was finding that this made input costs too high, and soils were clearly not improving under this regime with shallow rooting depth.
When Grant came back to the property they started to try applying biological dressings as foliar sprays. He became interested in the issue of soil microbial activity. From 2006, they switched to a no-till approach, with applications of gypsum and lime. After 2008 they ceased using MAP due to negative impact on soil mycorrhizal fungi (MF). They also ceased the use of seed dressings, fungicides, and insecticides. The focus switched to crop rotations and to use biological applications – liquid dressings, additions of Molybdenum, and Sulphur.
They had been buying liquid ‘biological’ foliar spray of up to 80,000 litres a year at $4/litre but decided to try producing their own (a fermented product that is the base for adding other trace elements). They made 20,000 litres the first year in shuttles, and when that worked and appeared to be as good, they built a shed for this purpose, and equipped it with 3 x 9000 litre tanks, 7 x 5000 litre tanks and some others. They now make about 300,000 litres/year.
A mineral mix is fermented in a separate tank. This includes Manganese, Phosphorus and more. This is all filtered down to pass through a 50 or 100-mesh filter. Much of the property’s land is Terrick soil podzol and hard to manage, and if uncovered in summer can get to temps of over 50 degrees Celsius at the surface, so the aim is to keep it covered so that microbial activity near surface is able to continue.
In 2015, winter/summer/spring, active dung beetles were released to improve recycling of cow manure from rotational grazing on cover cropped land. All tractor passes are on controlled traffic routes to minimize compaction. Ceasing use of MAP and using biologically active foliar sprays means mycorrhizal fungi activity increases, helping plants access soil Phosphorus (P) and water. Flag leaves are shown to have more sugars and water and don’t shut down in hot conditions. Soil biological activity is such that cereal stubbles will break off at soil surface level, meaning that most sowing has to be done with a disc seeder.
Harvesting is done with a stripper front, so only heads are taken off and whole straw length is left standing. Crops are always sown as a mix, with one species used being tillage radish which has roots that goes down 1.5 m and can push through compaction layers and can bring up soil P from deeper levels. Grant says they now never grow canola on its own as it is ‘a scavenger’, and they always under sow with legumes, which will provide added N. One example quoted was of a trial with a paddock part-sown to just canola producing 2.2 t/ha of seed, and part sown to canola undersown with beans which produced 3t/ha of seed. Wheat is undersown with clover and radish, or vetch and radish.
Urea is now only applied by foliar spray using the boom spray. It is dissolved at 7 t/28,000 litre, or a 1:4 ratio (so 15 kg/60 litres). It is always combined in the spray mix with a humic or fulvic acid as a buffer and to magnify the effect. As a foliar spray it is found to be 6 x more effective, and so they can reduce its use six-fold for the same outcome, when applying as a spray compared to spreading as solid urea. Other inputs can be applied in the urea mix, including lactobacillus to treat leaf fungus.
Seed is sown bare (not pickled with fungicides) though can add worm extract or kelp powder. 2 kg/ha of worm extract is a normal rate and worm castings cost about $500/t. Zinc and manganese are regarded as critical for good seed germination. Issues of crop pests seem to be reduced or insignificant with improved soil microbial activity, multi-species plantings and cessation of the use of insecticides. There are no slug problems as scarab beetles eat slug eggs. Lucerne flea can be controlled by higher brix (leaf sugars) and spray of calcium. Higher brix means less frost damage, and 1% rise in brix gives weight gain of 45 gm/day. Higher brix equals more photosynthesis and more carbon added to soil.
Improved health in soils is shown by an increase in worm numbers and activity. 25 worms per shovel full equals 1 tonne of worms per ha. Worms complement fungal mycelium and plant roots to improve water-holding capacity of soil and greater depth of soil for plant access and water storage. He reports doubling of rooting depth, greatly reduced costs, greater yields, better soil water holding capacity, greater tolerance of crops to hot conditions, reduced slug issues and easier management of leaf fungus, achieving significantly higher BRIX figures.
Grant produces a range of seed for sowing as cover crops, under sowing and for multi-species plantings. Grant Sims accounts@downundercovers.com
Guest Speaker 2 – John Hopkins
The second speaker was John Hopkins from Illabo between Cootamundra and Wagga Wagga. The farm, plus another holding, is 1256 ha (3100 acres) with 520 mm rainfall, and a mix of red, grey and sandy loam of mostly low-lying frost-prone country. With his wife Nicole they run a Simmental stud, plus produce Angus and Angus/Simmental cattle, run 2915 merino ewes of about 18.6 micron, and produce merino/white Suffolk prime lambs. They have cropped up to 1000 acres (400 ha) of canola, barley, wheat and oats.
The impetus for change from a conventional cropping regime was to have crops wiped out by frost on several years and to be totally burned out in 1990 and 2006. The change was added to by a wish to grow sale bulls out faster (reduce from about two years to only 14 months), to improve soil structure, to increase the length of pasture life, and to reduce risks of exposure to seasonal extremes.
The farm is involved in a range of trials and other projects. It has been part of the ANU Sustainable Farming project since its inception in 2000. It is involved in dung beetle trials, the Natural capital project. It has fenced off the main water storage, developed a laneway system, reduced chemical use, stopped burning stubbles, and got into multi-species cropping. They do soil testing now to 20 cm depth, and test for a wider range of information.
They are phasing out cropping except for multi-species (undersown) crops. A big thing is the benefit of integrated pest management (IPM) and they don’t have problems with the insects that neighbouring cropping properties are having to spray for.
The multi-species crops are limited to 5-6 species and the aim is to get more than one year of production out of paddocks from each crop.
The three main options used are:
1. Wheat undersown with cover crop. This is presently wedgetail wheat at 50 kg/h and the cover crop species are purple top turnip at 5kg/ha and tillage radish at 1 kg/ha (cost of seed is about $28.40/ha). 60 kg/ha of MAP is used. This is rotationally grazed and then close to harvest, the cover crop is killed, and the wheat is harvested. Grazing is by ewe weaners, with a stocking rate of 28.5 DSE/ha for 49 days. Harvest is about 4t/ha.
2. Oats undersown with cover crops. This is rotationally grazed and then either
· Cut and made into silage or hay
· The cover crops killed and the oats harvested for on-farm storage
· Grazed entirely
3. Oats undersown sown with covers including ryegrass
Lambing down on undersown crops helps with worm control as there is a clean paddock which results in a high weight gain in lambs.
Guest Speaker 3 – Neils Olssen
Neils Olssen farms beef cattle on quite steep land near Hallora in Western Gippsland at about 1000 mm/yr.
Neils is the developer of the Soilkee multi-species sowing system, which he made to allow him to sow annual high producing species into existing perennial pastures, while improving soil quality and depth and water holding capacity.
Now after about ten years of repeated sowing the soil is deep and appears agglomerated into small balls. His farm is one of the only ones in Australia to sell carbon credits (ACCUs) for soil carbon, using carbon sequestration increases at depth of over 30 cm. An increase of 1432 ACCUs at one site has been measured over 4 years, equaling 143 ACCUs/ha/yr.
The big issue is that root exudates, which encourage soil fungi, only begin to be produced once pastures are operating at photosynthesis efficiency of over 25%. Below this level fungi do not help make available important plant nutrients like phosphates, and the production of nitrogen by mycorrhizal fungi associated with root hairs is minimal.
He has found that the addition of multi-species and multi-family planting has resulted in the following:
Significant increase in soil fungi and general microbial activity and worm populations, helping improve soil structure to greater depth (30 cm plus)
Better water penetration and retention, and almost no surface runoff (which allows planting straight up and down hills)
Significant reduction in slug damage
Couch grass infestation in one paddock disappeared when multi-species planting was started.
Elements in soil become more available to plants
After the talks we had a demo of the Soilkee planter on the back of a John Deere tractor.
After this we all went out to a paddock which had a phalaris dominant pasture that had had a multi-family/species sowing into it in May.
The reality is that the new planting has to have 2-3 months of growth before being grazed, but then can be grazed quite hard for a series of rotations. The ideal, if this approach works as it is supposed to, will be to do this multi-family/species planting in several larger paddocks, that can then be subdivided by temporary fencing and strip grazed.
Written by Andrew Lang
The author has produced this article in their personal capacity. Their views and interpretation of events are their own and do not necessarily represent those of others who attended the event or organisations that the author may or may not be associated with. All information provided in this article is for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representation as to the accuracy or completeness of any information in this article.
