An East Gippsland farming family has taken on a bold new vision for their high production dairy farm. The Calvert family is applying ecological principles to their farm production, fencing out areas and planting trees and lower-storey vegetation.
In all, 1.7km of fencing will be completed to protect revegetated areas.
The project has garnered interest from a range of environmental groups — including Landcare and organisations with interests in insect and bird biodiversity.
Craig and Celeste Calvert, their children, and Craig’s father Patch, are the current guardians of the Calvert farm, with its 200-year family history. Craig knows the land well, although he, Celeste and Patch have only recently taken on ownership.
They have been keen to take control of the farm to turn around some of the past management practices.
The farm is 121 hectares of flat river country with small undulations, and 65 ha of hill country.
“The topsoil is clay loam and, on average across the farm, is 2.8 metres deep,” Craig said.
“Bedrock is 14.5 to 100 metres below the surface across the farm. Old river courses cross the property.”
Craig and Celeste feel responsible for the heritage they will leave. It’s not only about creating a future for themselves and their children, but their effect on the environment. They are conscious of the Calvert family’s responsibility of the past couple of centuries as well as their own family’s longer, more traditional, connection to country.
“Craig has taken more of an approach to work with the land than against it,” Celeste said.
“At the end of the day, it’s a core value of our culture to look after the land. That’s instilled in us for generations. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, we all have a responsibility to look after our land.”
“Knowledge comes in different forms, and we all learn things differently to each other, but everything is taught to us if we want to learn,” Craig said.
“We can all adopt a few more practices to improve our soil health naturally and make nutrients accessible to the grass.”
For Craig and Celeste, putting aside land to grow an ecological mix of trees, shrubs and grasses is a small compromise for building a healthy landscape.
“Nitrogen is already there in the atmosphere, so we’re using vegetation to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, to help build healthy topsoil,” he said.
“Encouraging more vegetation lifts leaf and other organic matter which increases stored carbon in the soil.”
And although it’s a long-term investment to realise financial gains, they also believe trees will improve herd health and productivity.
“We want to show our high production farm can also be environmentally responsible,” Craig said.
He runs one cow/0.4ha, in a herd of 300-330 cows.
“I work out our income at cost of return/day/acre,” Craig said.
“We lose a lot of production because we have paddocks where there is little shade. We need to manage the cows and their grazing rotation so they don’t get overheated, and that creates stress on the animals and us. Cold nights and wet weather also affect cow health and production.
“We also need to protect pastures and crops from wind, and slow floodwaters to reduce erosion.
“We want a sustainable business, existing within a healthy ecology and demonstrating environmental balance,” Craig said.
That’s a lot of goals to tick off.
When Craig took over the farm only a few years ago he included an animal nutritionist in his workforce. He focused on lifting the genetic potential of the herd, using top-line Friesian and Holstein semen in the higher-production cows. He also bought in replacement cows-in-calf with production figures that mirrored what he was aiming for.
He implemented cell grazing and redesigned paddocks to allow a 28-day grazing rotation.
Crops, including lucerne, are grown in larger paddocks.
Bores were sunk in 2018, and troughs, pumps and two-inch pipe were installed across the farm. The reticulated system replaced the farm’s reliance on town water, and its consequent cost — $8000 per quarter in the dairy. The herd’s production increased by 1200 litres of milk after the first day they started drinking bore water.
Craig has reduced the spray regime from its historic levels to once a year.
“The farm historically had a spraying regime that cost $18,000 per year. We’ve reduced that to $3500 per year,” Patch Calvert said.
“Spraying at the right time and with the right product you can really reduce overhead costs, workload and the impact you have on the environment,” Craig said.
He applies lime to improve the soil and plant health, at a rate of one tonne/0.4ha every year.
Craig and Patch are using swales and planting a mix of quick growing and slow growing trees to encourage groundwater table levels to rise across the landscape.
“Trees will help us to manage pastures properly,” Craig said. “Using swales to raise water table levels will help trees, bushes, pastures and crops to access that water through their taproots.
“On 40 degree Celsius days, cows need to be able to stand under trees. We can affect our outputs by looking after the welfare of our cows by providing them with natural shade.
“Natural shade improves their health, improves their production, and improves the health of our farm by reducing salinity.
“We won’t see the benefits for many years, but we’re trying to risk mitigate with these actions.”
The focus for Craig, Celeste and Patch is squarely on supporting change for the next generation; Craig and Celeste have four children — Kayla, Leah, Hannah and Graice — with another on the way.
Vegetation selection has been based on ecological classes that grew on the country before 1750. A few hundred water reeds, lilies and sedges will be planted in the old watercourse. A mix of 22,000 other species for dry valley forest/swamp scrub/warm temperate rainforest mosaic, lowland forest, plains grassy forest, floodplain reedbed and billabong wetland aggregate, will include acacias (wattle), blackwood, bursarias, leptospermum varieties, melaleucas, lomandra, phragmites, cassinia, eucalyptus varieties — box, red gum and manna gum — tree violet, daisy bush, bitterbush, hop bush, Prickly currant-bush and swamp paperbark.
According to East Gippsland Landcare facilitator Phil Vaughan, benefits will start to be realised quite rapidly.
“The first section has been fenced and in March this year we’ll begin planting,” Phil said. “We’ll plant in stages, to minimise washout from floods.
“We’ll start seeing ecological differences within five years. We’ll see more and greater diversity of birds and insects, and we’ll see more beneficial insects.”