A cultivation calculator, believed to be an Australian first, has been developed to help farmers assess how much cultivation work they need to make better pastures.
The calculator has emerged as one of the positive outcomes from the Increasing Soil Carbon and Climate Resilient Farms projects, coordinated by Heytesbury District Landcare Network in south-west Victoria.
The projects also found that multi-species pastures can have a huge benefit in late spring and summer.
The projects have included trials based on regenerative agriculture practices to demonstrate how increasing soil biology and adopting minimum or appropriate tillage methods and changing from monoculture pasture species to multi-species can improve soil, animal, pasture and human health.
The cultivation calculator was developed by project team members Healthy Farming Systems cover crop adviser Jade Killoran and regenerative farming adviser and partner in Camperdown Compost, Tony Evans.
Jade said the calculator came about as a response to sowing trials across 20 farms in the project, particularly after noticing spring minimal tillage machines and direct drilling producing unsuccessful results compared to more aggressive cultivation.
The calculator has four categories — time of sowing, previous paddock preparation, previous pastures or crops within the past six months, and soil type.
Farmers can score each of the categories and their total score suggests a cultivation method to increase the likelihood of success for future sowings.
Jade said it aimed to make decisions easier for farmers and to make sowing more successful for multi-species crops or any sowing operation.
“It’s an easy-to-use tool and the categories are quite broad but it helps farmers to place their paddock in a scenario and make it easier to plan whether to do light, medium or heavy cultivation,” she said.
“It takes some of the guesswork out of sowing a multi-species or any type of crop or pasture.”
Jade said the Increasing Soil Carbon and Climate Resilient Farms projects showed that farms in the Western District had winter-dominant rainfall and could grow autumn and winter pastures into spring very successfully, but the pasture becomes dormant in late spring and summer.
“We found that’s where the multi-species had a fantastic impact with producing feed later in the season and the dual benefit of keeping the ground covered and protected for soil health.
“From a production viewpoint, sowing multi-species in spring to boost late spring and summer production was where it was really successful.”
Jade said the trials produced very high-quality feed.
“Because of the mix, the animal has the ability to self-regulate their diet and the mix gives energy, protein and fibre at various times of the season.”
Jade said there was a huge upsurge in interest in multi-species pastures and she expected it would be taken up by more farmers in the next five to 10 years.
“It’s a space worth watching,” she said.
Heytesbury District Landcare Network coordinator Geoff Rollinson said the trials had assessed the impact of different additives and cultivation methods on multi-species pastures.
“Jade and Tony noticed great variation in the condition and history of paddocks to establish those trials so they came up with a spreadsheet-based calculator looking at the variables to help farmers to decide what level of tillage is required to prepare a paddock for a crop or pasture,” Geoff said.
“It will give farmers a guide to the best possible chance of success with establishing a pasture.
“It might take two or three years to establish a successful multi-species pasture unless you take account of the variability of the paddocks you’re working with.
“They tested the calculator against actual observations and it stood up to those assessments.”
The calculator is available for free from the HDLN website: https://www.heytesburylandcare.org.au/