Focus Farms

Focus Farms Locally owned solutions for profitable, productive & sustainable farms.

A project by the Upper Barwon Focus Farm Project

Landcare Network

What’s it all about....

In 2010 and 2011, the Upper Barwon Landcare Network with support from the Federal Government, ran a series of tours and discussions with groups of local farmers in the Eastern Otway region of Victoria Australia.

These sessions were based around sustainable farm practices and innovations and largely focused on improving soil health as a means of making farms more resilient towards climate variability.

This booklet gives an overview of the process, thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the farmers involved, and background information on the topics covered and activities and trials conducted.

Disclaimer—This publication may be of assistance to you but the Upper Barwon Landcare Network and staff do not guarantee that this publication is without flaw of any kind or is wholly appropriate for your particular purposes and therefore disclaims all liability for any error, loss or other consequence which may arise from you relying on any information in this publication.

The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Upper Barwon Landcare Network and staff.

This project is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry under the Farm Ready Program, part of Australia’s Farming Future.

The Upper Barwon Landcare Network 57 Main Street Birregurra 3242 5236 2041 www.ubln.org.au Focus Farm Project

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From the President

‐ Peter Greig

Because they manage so much of the Australian landscape (about 75 per cent in the Upper Barwon), farmers are the key to making land both productive and ecologically sustainable – in the long term. Building on their already well‐developed skills in adaptive management, the Focus Farms Program has successfully demonstrated that the resilience of farmers – and hence of the landscape – has been enhanced, thus increasing their ability to withstand changes in all the many and complex factors affecting their livelihood, including climate variability.

It’s not easy to dictate voluntary change from central government, so the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is to be both thanked and congratulated for investing in and trusting the Upper Barwon Landcare Network to create an effective program for engaging local farmers whose livelihoods depend on their farm businesses remaining financially viable, amid the complex array of variables facing them every day (like future seasonal conditions, and commodity prices). Most farming decisions entail foresight and risks far greater than most businesses or individuals ever face.

The Focus Farm program thus wisely began with the farmers themselves, who had runs on the board through experience. They in turn must be congratulated on seeing value in making precious time available to engage with and learn from peers and technical experts. Not surprisingly, soil biology was collectively identified by the 14 volunteers as being a useful vehicle for discovering, developing, and sharing new knowledge, partly because the subject already had some momentum.

A diverse mix of farmers from different commodity groups and local landscapes was brought together in farm visits, where successes – and failures – of farm trials were shared and discussed between peers and experts. In the new and difficult field of soil biology, innovation adds to the already heavy risk burden, and the sharing of experiences is one way of managing that risk. The evidence that the participating farmers have become more resilient is apparent in their testimonials.

Much of this booklet consists of verbatim transcripts of interviews with participating farmers (largely unedited, to preserve authenticity). The skills of Mandy Baker, Neil McInnes and Terry Makin in this and most other aspects of the program are to be congratulated.

One aspect often over‐looked in capacity‐building exercises like this is the value of networking between peers and neighbours and experts. Having someone trustworthy to call on in times of need is a hugely important outcome, sometimes referred to as social capital, which could and should be maintained by future such exercises.

Finally, on the matter of climate change and variability, the focus on soil health was indirectly helpful, through its carbon exchange dimensions. That said, it must be acknowledged that participating farmers held a range of views on current climate science every bit as wide as that of the Australian population.

On the matter of climate variability, however, all were agreed on the necessity for adaptive management – and learning how to manage soil biology better was seen as a critical part of this.

Focus Farm Project

Peter Greig, President of the Upper Barwon Landcare Network

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Focus Farms—Background Forming the Groups

Farmers in the Upper Barwon area were invited to participate in this project, and those who were interested were formed into two geographical groups. The South Group consisted of landholders in the Deans Marsh, Birregurra, Murroon area.

In the North were those from Winchelsea, Murdeduke and Irrewarra.

After an initial session outlining the Focus Farm Process, each group met and participated in a strategic planning session. This explored what the group Adrian Kennelly ‐ Associate Partner RM members considered to be the issues that they will face in the next decade, Consulting Group where they want to position their businesses, and what as a group they would (RMCG) like to address in this project. The South Group met in an informal brainstorming B.Ag.Sci. (Hons), session, whereas the North Group were presented with a session on decision M.Ag.Sci, CPAg making and risk management facilitated by Adrian Kennelly from RMCG Adrian has specific skills Consulting. The issues of Soil Health were identified as a major interest by both and experience in groups, and as many members were already trialing alternative methods to strategic planning, traditional fertilizer and soil preparation, it was decided to explore these business analysis, methods further. facilitation and training and education in rural Australia. Since joining RMCG, he has utilised these skills and

experience to contribute “The purpose and focus of the program was to provide a variety of experiences significantly to the to the group as well as facilitating cross learning and connections between the success of individual members. We included guest speakers to stimulate discussion and provide business operators, information, tours, to include the hands on approach to innovation and farmer groups, training & education learning, and trials of different biological processes and treatments that organisations, disability different farmers were experimenting with. We wanted to approach climate service providers, factors in a holistic way rather than just by single issue” ‐ Neil McInnes, agricultural industry Coordinator bodies, and local and

state government

authorities.

A Holistic Approach ‘Whilst we need to analyse biodiversity, waterways, soil types and other components separately it is important to remember that there is much interaction and connection with these elements and that the landscape needs to be viewed in the context of a holistic system that should be highly integrated.

We need to consider how farms are connected to each other and promote the concept of sub‐catchment and catchment planning.

Landcare is about thinking outside ones patch (or thinking outside the circle) and to consider the externalities of ones actions.’ —from the Upper Barwon Landcare Network 2011—2016 Action plan Focus Farm Project

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Participants Responses

What are your biggest issues/interests?

Cockchafers & insect pests & Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Marketing Soil Health Capitalizing on existing nutrients Sustainable soils & tillage practices (Yeomans plough, direct seeding etc.)

Fertilizers ‐ options/ organic/conventional, cost/benefit Soil minerals Soil biology New machinery technologies Animal health from pastures (healthy soils/healthy animals) Grazing practices ‐ pastures , crops Animal Genetics Water security Changed management – freedom Becoming debt free, reducing debt Deciding the future – farming/management/profitable Succession planning Lifestyle choices Expanding – increasing productivity Increased business management – less driving Increased profit (2 families) increased management efficiency Profitable off farm investment

What will the future look like in 2020?

The project was modelled on a Focus Farm Group project initiated by WestVic Dairy in South West Victoria.

This involves identifying exemplar farms in the area, that can be used as a focus for discussion by the group.

As for recruiting participants in the groups, a small number of 'local mayors' or leading farmers are identified.

These farmers in turn identify some peers who they think will benefit from this learning model and, equally importantly, will contribute to the groups.

In effect the groups self select their own membership.

Carbon tax Climate variability – raised beds Competitive international markets – niche markets Increased government taxes Increased costs, energy inputs, fire services Overseas investors – increased land prices Urban sprawl, peri urban, hobby Water supply issues Increased lobby groups – customer driven Nutrient loss accreditation Focus Farm Project

The Focus Farm Model

This is not done to exclude anyone but so the participants could interact and contribute more effectively.

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Map showing the Upper Barwon Landcare Groups and Network area

The Upper Barwon Landcare Network area consists of over 153,000 hectares in the mid and upper Barwon River catchments upstream of Inverleigh to the northern foothills of the Otway Ranges in South West Victoria. The area also includes parts of the Surf Coast and Colac Otway Shires. There is a wide range of topography, soil types and vegetation with a diversity of rural activities and lifestyles. Enterprises include dairying, beef & sheep grazing, broad acre cropping, intensive pig & poultry farming, as well as potato and pasture seed production. Agroforestry is well integrated on many properties providing biological infrastructure for resilience and sustainability. There is some large scale commercial forestry.

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Locally owned solutions for profitable, productive & sustainable farms.

Case studies from the participants

The following pages relate the personal knowledge, opinions, thoughts and responses of many of the participants of the Focus Farm Program.

We are grateful for the willingness they showed to share their stories and provide feedback on the Program, and appreciate the time and effort they gave to produce these case studies.

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Brewing the Microbes—Peter Gannon Yeoman Plough—Nathan Bennett Meliotus trial at ‘Myamba’‐ Gavin Brien Sub soil Manuring—Peter Billings Value of Guest Speakers—Stewart Green Evergraze—Tony Noble & Brent Harwood Looking Underground—Scott Seebeck Grain and Graze—Scott Dennis Livestock Farm Monitor Project– Colin Cannard Climate Change– Wayne Johns Healthy Scepticism—Peter Mercer Long Term View—Stuart Brien The Challenges of Change—Will Hanson @RISK Program analysis—Peter Dooley

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Brewing the Microbes Peter Gannon ’Cloverleigh’ Murroon Prime Lamb, seed production, beef cattle The concept of the Farm Focus Group is great. Terry Makin, the group facilitator was a great leader. The first meeting was here at our property. On that first day every one gave a summary of what they were doing, then I gave a brief rundown of our operation here, and a summary of our biological process that we had started a few years before. I took them over to the shed, it frightens a lot of people … it still does , but on a side issue, I was talking to a farmer in Gippsland last night and lo and behold he’s started on it, and I didn’t even know, so it gave me great hope for the future. The whole idea was not to not try to convert everybody to biological farming, but to show them the reasons why we did it, and I accepted questions on that, and still do. It now turns out that up to 70% of the Focus Farm Group is doing some biological farming, rather than conventional fertilizers, so that’s been quite good.

Through that meeting, we went on to design a trial at Nathan Bennett’s place, which took a bit of organizing on different mechanisms relating to it. There we used direct drilling, deep ripping and we sowed with the biological liquid fertilizer to compare with the conventional fertilizer. We went back 18 months later to look at it, and it’s possible to be judgemental of the results … its quite interesting. Like all discussion groups, it’s the questions that are asked of you on the day, and the questions you ask when you visit other farms that give you the benefits of the group input.

Terry Makin (facilitator) was really good. He was very sceptical at the start.

‘I loved being challenged I suppose we went headlong into the biological thing, and it may have been all a on the day, and I bit too much at first. If we had have meetings elsewhere first than here, it accepted that, I certainly may’ve been different. But in the end it didn’t matter and the meeting worked wasn’t offended and it quite well. was fantastic because it The advantage of having the Focus Farm Group was that people trying made me rush home and something different fertilizer wise, were all doing it differently. For example, read more documents some went the liquid fertilizer approach, some went the compost approach, and ask more questions.’ some went a combination of both, and I was the only one who was brewing the microbes. That final approach put some people off. That’s only because its time consuming. It’s like the cream on the cake … that’s my argument for it.

We weren't all 100% (travelling in the same direction). It was a discussion group on how to grow a better quality grass, and more production from the grass wherever you are. It flowed on from there into different forms. It was good to get onto other peoples farms, and you’d have other farmers asking questions. At one stage one farmer threw some doubt into me that I was heading in the wrong direction, which made me do a lot more of my own private research, and after Focus Farm Project

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numerous phone calls we did agree that I was nearly right, and his theory was right, but it was in different forms. It was in regards to lime and mixing compost together. (You can’t mix burnt lime and compost together, but you can mix ground lime and compost). I loved being challenged on the day, and I accepted that, I certainly wasn’t offended and it was fantastic because it made me rush home and read more documents and ask more questions. I actually hired a private consultant, and had him going backwards too checking. Being questioned by a neighbour was great. If I was questioned by “Department” person say, I would’ve been more hesitant, but because it was in a discussion group, and he To see a youtube clip of (the other farmer) had the “runs on the board” and explained it quite well as to Peter Gannon showing why I shouldn’t be doing it, it was useful—he nearly convinced me. his brewing operation go I didn’t want to be seen pushing the biological farming side. The group needs to to the Focus Farm flow with ideas and I didn’t want to be the one who had done something website different and wanted to convert the whole group. And I still hold to that, even www.focusfarms. org though I still have great discussions. The great thing is that when I see fellow Focus group members, instead of talking about farming in general, we now discuss soil health and biological farming. So we talk about fine tuning things. In the 4 years I’ve been doing it (biological farming process trials), I’ve been fine tuning constantly.

It was about growing grass, healthier grass, and that’s what we as farmers are about. Like any trials you conduct, for example the Woady Yaloak trials, Cam Nicholson had given results on a ten year program. What I’d like to do is to revisit the trials we sowed in Nathan Bennett’s in say 12 months or so to see how they’re going. We believe deep ripping is good the first year, but how long does it last. Is there any difference, even though we know he has used traditional fertilizer on the top, but is there any difference in the clover, the rye grass. That’s what the Focus Farm group was all about, communication between farmers. Of the group speakers, Declan Macdonald was a department person willing to look at change. Cam Nicholson was a breath of fresh air; he seemed to have no preconceived ideas and would try anything. He has trials occurring that don’t actually hook with this Farm Focus group but he can point to the pros and cons of each one. He’s a real asset. I’d love to put him on the payroll!

The benefit of the Farm Focus group was that the majority of the speakers that we had were lateral thinkers, it doesn’t mean that they would necessarily agree with my or others ideas but they would listen.

The first meeting of the South Group was a visit to Peter Gannon’s farm where the group inspected Peter’s complex mixing system for his folia sprays, his Seeding equipment with spraying tank, pasture paddock and soils, and an Intitec/ Pivot trial into Nitrogen efficiency. This trial was looking closely at losses to the atmosphere from Nitrogen fertilizers. Exposure to this trial assisted farmers in the project that were looking at changing their fertilizer regimes. It also gave the researchers better insight into the farmers experiences plus current and potential future requirements.

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Yeoman ploughing Nathan Bennett Pennyroyal Dairy Farmer Overall, Focus Farm was an alternative way for the local farmers to look at other farming options, like biological options that I wouldn’t necessarily be in step with.

Being a dairy farmer we are used to the traditional way of looking after the land which is probably grazing the hell out of it and then fertilizing it in the simplest way. So the Focus Farm Program gave me a different way of looking at things. This meant for me personally, more looking under the soil rather than what’s growing on top of it. Its all about growth and bulk for us, not necessarily about the finer points of say root health or the bacteria and bugs in the soil.

Attending the sessions with different kinds of farmers, not just dairy was beneficial. Obviously, say compared with beef farmers we dairy farmers have an ongoing cash flow, so we can factor in the option of just throwing fertilizer onto our soil, its quick and effective to grow more grass for our needs. The thing I quickly realized is that not all farmers have that cash flow and therefore have to look at things more long term. Whereas we just want the quick solution that will The concept of the put milk into the vat. If you’re a cropping or beef farmer say, you’re possibly Yeoman's Plough and looking at least six months ahead of the end result. vertical tillage is a significant aspect of Prior to the establishment of the Focus Farm Group, we’d already bought a sustainable Yeoman’s plough, whereas traditionally we were using a mouldboard plough. agriculture. A 2009 study Yeoman’s design is for better root health, trying to break the pan, better soil by the California Energy drainage, better distribution of nutrients into the deep rooted soil structure. So I Commission concluded suppose in part we were always looking at that alternative. The Focus Farm that the use of Keyline Group gave a little more confidence in thinking that I’m doing the right thing. ploughs created the It’s always nice to see what other people are doing, and it gives you practical lowest carbon emissions ideas seeing them put into practice. It is nice to think that you’re not on your from the subsoil and the own. Sometimes you get stuck in your own little world. To realize that that what addition of compost to you’re doing isn’t necessarily the only way is great and to even see other grazing lands enhanced carbon sequestration. people’s experiments and different approaches financially even.

Carbon sequestration is The guest speakers were very good and very knowledgeable. Their level of one of the methods to knowledge was great, but we can’t always put it into practice. It’s very easy to reduce carbon footprints analyse something down to its finest detail, but to actually take that and and also a long‐term implement it into your own farming practices can be very very hard. Sometimes solution to combat the from a financial point of view, its simply a matter of time availability – it might accumulation of take you 10 years to get where you want to be. greenhouse gasses and global warming.

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It’s more realistic sometimes to see what neighbouring farmers are doing locally, because when you see something in practice its better than just being told about it. It’s a bit like reading a text book. The book may give you all the answers, but often you still have to work out how to get to that answer.

‘At the end of the day I like the idea of the once a month format of the Focus Farm Group, and I appreciated the idea of the guest speakers. I also like the idea of travelling we’re here to make around to other people’s farms, because it combines the different available money, we’re not options and methods. here to feed the My opinion is that if something looks good in a paddock then it probably is. worms.’

Farmers are constantly “looking over the fence” at their neighbours land, asking “why are the pastures better say or whatever”. At the end of the day we’re here to make money, we’re not here to feed the worms. Realistically we need to survive, and being environmental about it really important. There has to be the correct balance between financial viability and environmental best practice.

Trial Plot Map Details at Nathan Bennet’s showing alternate treatments on rows with and without deep ripping

by Yeoman Plough before sowing.

The south group inspected this site but it did not show any obvious difference between the treatments.

Main thing observed was the effect of established trees from a boundary plantation where there was significantly more production from shelter which is a good lesson in itself .

At Nathan Bennett’s farm there was discussion in the group to reflect on knowledge gained in attending UBLN workshops with input by Tim Johnston DPI soils EO. There was then an inspection of group trial of various treatments of ryegrass seeding including yeoman ploughing of Nathan’s paddock Focus Farm Project

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Meliotus trial at ‘Myamba’ Gavin Brien ’Myamba’, Murroon Mixed Enterprise When the Focus Farm Group visited us, we had guest speaker, Cathy Harvey from South Australia, who spoke about biological farming and its processes. The Group then went for a walk on our farm to a trial site that we had sown. It is in one of our saltier, brackish areas. This is an area where we had sown a bit of wheat grass & meliotus and a bit of strawberry clover underneath it. This was something we had already started and did separate from the Focus Farm Group.

It ended up as an interesting trial that other farmers wanted to see. We got the idea because we had tried wheat grass elsewhere on the property, someone had mentioned meliotus, so we thought we’d try it to see if it would improve production from those saline type of areas, ‐ as a side note, the meliotus failed Meliotus, after the first year. It’s a perennial but it didn’t last the distance, yet the wheat known as Melilot or grass is great now, great coverage, fair bit of production off it, even though it’s a Sweet‐clover, is a genus in the Fabaceae. poorer type of grass. It’s a saline spot; we didn’t need to test it because you can see the scars in the paddock so it’s very obvious. Still, we had soil tests done Members are known as common grassland after receiving a small grant from the DPI to test part of it. We then went on and plants and as weeds of doubled the trial site size ourselves and tried a different approach. We decided cultivated ground. to trial the biological type fertilizers because the DPI grant was utilizing the more Originally from Europe traditional process of superphosphate etc. Ultimately there really wasn’t that and Asia, it is now found much difference. As far as the trial went it didn’t work that well as we had very worldwide. poor weather, wet and cold when it was sown, but that’s all cyclical, that’s Meliotus is often used as reality. It wasn’t a proper trial; more an observational one for ourselves, and the a green manure and grant wasn’t specifically for trials, but to see if we could improve these saline turned into the soil to increase its nitrogen and type areas.

We’re always playing around. That was just one little experiment, we keep trying organic matter content.

It is especially valuable different things. We don’t want to jump in holus bolus. I think it was 5 hectares in heavy soils because of we sowed that time for example, and it’s only a very small section of a paddock its deep rooting. which we actually fenced off separately. The conclusion is that we won’t worry However, it may fail if about planting meliotis, we’ll just put in normal wheat grass and maybe a bit of the soil is too acidic. It rye or something similar, just to mix it up. should be turned into the So our procedure is to do an experimental thing first, not get too carried away. If soil when 8 to 10 inches successful we build it as part of our longer term goal of constantly improving the tall. Unscarified seed is farm. best sown in spring when the ground is not It was very worthwhile to see the different sites on neighbours farms, particularly at Peter Billing’s where he conducted the subsoil manuring trial – too dry; scarified seed is better sown in late the results of that were outstanding – that is if you can afford to put it in for autumn or even later, so cropping. It certainly gives you ideas and shows you what the potential is. It’ll be interesting to see how that patch performs over the next few years, and whether it will germinate before competing weeds the that area can be discerned from others in say 3 – 4 years time. See whether you following spring. only get a standout result the first time.

We probably wouldn’t do it here. Our situation is primarily pasture, I think you need cropping to make it viable to put in, see the results at least in the first year and know that it’s worthwhile; whereas in a grazing situation we’d be affected by a time lag, and it’s a lot of money to put up front. I suppose potentially we could do it, but you’d have to be keen.

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This Focus Farm Group was made up of some of the better farmers in the district, which resulted in good, intelligent discussions, and tackled topics that were worthwhile. You get a bit from the presenters of course, no doubt about that, but you get more, or at least just as much from talking to your neighbour, who you may actually not see all that often.

A good example is when we all went over to Nathan Bennett’s, and he said he uses a speed disk cultivator instead of a mouldboard plough. We’re still using the mouldboard plough , but now we are seriously thinking that in the next 12 months we will get hold of a speed disk, give it a go, and see if it works here. Looking at how we cultivate here, it might be a good time and money saver. That’s just coming from talking to your neighbours and sharing ideas.

That was another thing about the Focus Farm group. Nathan is a dairy farmer, ‐ a lot of these information gathering and sharing type groups are specifically, say, for lamb, beef, dairy, industry based farmers, so you’re talking to like minds. Whereas with this group we crossed over borders a bit, so that was great. So you siphon off what might work for you.

So yeah, we got to know our neighbours a little bit better as well. It was good to find out about peoples businesses, without too much say, financial detail, but more on the practical side of information. It’s talking to others and seeing firsthand what they do. You do learn from the presenters of course, but often they’re just a jumping off place. They open the discussion and off it goes.

That’s why it’s called Focus Farm I suppose.

‘This Focus Farm Group was made up of some of the better farmers in the district, which resulted in good, intelligent discussions, and tackled topics that were worthwhile’

Meliotus Trial

• Year 1 ‐ used humates with crop seed and some rock phosphate.

• Year 2 ‐ guano granules for P (expensive) soft rock PO4 & humates with folia sprays • Year 3 ‐Folia and super and humates ‐ VAM dressings with seeding.

This was a Department of Primary Industry grant for pasture trial using meliotus on 2ha saline site cf meliotus with Tim Watt’s biological recommendations ( Calpac ‐ 7 kg wheat grass, 3.5kg Meliotus.)

Site sowed 10/5 and 18/5 ‐ then turned very wet.

Observations ‐ patchy establishment with some good plant establishment ‐ may re sow some.

Perhaps a spring sowing is better for meliotus (like lucerne).

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Sub soil Manuring Peter Billings ‘Wagoona’ Winchelsea South Mixed Enterprise The Focus Farm Group was a very enjoyable experience. I knew some of the farmers in the group but I got to meet a range of new people who under normal circumstances it is unlikely that I would be able to catch up with.

They all had a similar interest and background, which was the realization that the practices that we have been doing can’t continue. You know, like putting commercial fertilizer on, certainly screws around with the soil. A few of them had been playing around with foliate spraying, humates, all that sort of stuff. The idea was to have a few different trials trying to replicate things in that system, and then the next trial would be trying to do something different. Then we could go along and see different farm practices, different ways of doing something.

On the day of the trial it was a freezing cold, blowy day. When the manure finally arrived it was sloppy and hot having just come out of the chook shed.

Because it was so wet it just bound it all up so we had to take the implement apart and modify it, we actually ended up dropping it down the chutes manually with a series of blokes lined up with a bucket ready, and someone walking behind the tractor sort of pouring it in. It was quite comical. If you were watching it from the road, it would have been quite an astounding sight. Finally ‘The Focus Farm we got that in, and sowed wheat over the top of it. group ...all had a When the normal plants were probably 4 – 5 cms tall, the one with the chook similar interest and manure were already 5 – 7 cms and they had a different colour. You actually see background, which a deeper green through it, then as they grew they were always so far ahead of was the realization the others and actually later seeded. I suppose the normal had already been that the practices that through their growth cycle. When the chook manures finally seeded they were a we have been doing can’t continue.’ good 30 cms taller, the seed heads were probably another third longer, the seeds were bigger. It was quite astounding to see it. Now that’s only the first year, and its supposed to continue few at least a couple of years. I haven’t as yet received the results on the difference between the trial plots as far as protein and yield etc., but just before we harvested it, we were looking at it and were just astounded. I have heard since that someone up North has a six scarified deep ripper that actually dumps copious amounts and they’re doing a 10 – 20 hectare commercial trial. Doing a whole paddock would see if it could pay for itself or not. We have already sown this year. We have planted rye grass in there this year which hopefully will be going to the dairy farmers as silage. It’s a paddock under renovation I suppose. It’s the third year of having something To see a youtube clip of seeded through it. The previous year was wheat, and oats the year before.

Peter Billings describing The property was a sheep farm before it was purchased by the family about 22 his methods and years ago. We actually lease it as a business. We started the pasture renovation showcasing his farm go to process about 8 years ago. We’ve had some pretty good results, and some the Focus Farm website www.focusfarms. org spectacular failures too.

That’s been a big learning curve for me, because I wasn’t always a farmer. I’m not sort of tied to the past having come in from a number of different occupations. I did a year sabbatical at a TAFE college north of Melbourne which has its own farm which is where I learned a heap of stuff.

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I also used to come here on weekends and whenever I could. The college had a couple of really good lecturers who were already advocating a more modern approach to farming, by going back to basics, and asking questions like “Why do you do that?” Someone said to me that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet still expecting a different result. That’s what was happening here. It was a set regime. The 2nd November we do the shearing, we drench the sheep 3 times a year on these particular days. Different farming practices for different times.

A lady lectured us on soil and microbiology, all the things that actually live in the soil. The plants don’t actually take nutrients from the soil, Group inspecting the they take it from the dead bugs etc. So that sort of opened my eyes. I probably different growth rates in crammed 2 years of study in the 1 year and managed to learn a heap. When we moved out here, my father‐in‐law and I did a Grazing For Profit course where we learnt different grazing methods which we utilize here now, it’s a lot more sustainable. For example they used to graze sheep here until there was not a blade of grass in the paddock, take out the sheep, and when the paddock had some more grass, move the sheep back in. It was a dust bowl in summer, and in ‘Someone said to me that winter there was no substantial root growth to allow water penetration. It the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing worked for a while but … over and over again, yet The Focus Farm Group was part of my way of doing things which is to learn new still expecting a different ways. I’ve done a lot of courses now, both long and short, and being open to result.’ new ideas. I’ve got a couple of mates around here who also look for different things and we talk about what we’re doing etc.

Just recently we did a deep ripping where we grew a summer crop, I grazed it once and then let it regrow which we then deep ripped it into the soil. It was a sort natural source of manure down into the soil. The next year we sowed oats over it and ended up getting an extraordinary amount of silage. Even the grass that we have sown in there this year has jumped ahead.

At Peter Billing’s there The first year of three is completed now. The idea is to see the chook manure was a presentation of results over a couple of years, so that we can then go to a farmer and say, we results of Grain & Graze know its going to cost you x amount but the yield in the first, second and third trial of biological year will pay for that, and then receive the benefit of any further increases in fertilisers by Cam production. Cam Nicholson is going to analyse the samples to see if the soil had Nicholson of Nicon actually changed.

Some of guys are keen to give it a go, but you’ve got to have the equipment. The Consulting. Poultry and machinery which we use was originally designed to put down Lucerne pellets pig manure gave significant results with which are dry and of course had to be modified.

We have a bit of sandy country as well so what we have been doing is putting most of the biological down a metre an acre of chook manure the last 2 years, and I don’t really expect fertilisers insignificant at to see any results for say 4 – 5 years. It’s a slow process at times. The process we this stage. have been trialling probably wouldn’t be cost effective for pasture. If you put in a The group inspected high yielding expensive crop like Lucerne, you’d probably get the results worth Peter’s millet paddock having but with rye grass, it only grows to a limited size before it starts to die which had a anyway. The real benefit will be in crops full of big leaves and full of nutrients. compaction/infiltration Still, we don’t know yet. problem. This led to a When we’ll see the rye grass which we’ve sown over the trial site this year we’ll plan to carry out a subsoil manuring trial ascertain some answers to all these questions. using the Renick sub‐soiling machine.

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Subsoil Manuring Project A Project supported by the Regional Landcare Facilitator

Peter and Rosie Billings 3099 Cape Otway Road Winchelsea South 4 May 2011

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Focus Farm Project

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Ripped on 4 May 2011

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Product: Chook manure

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Trial design: Randomised block

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Replicates: 5

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Treatments: +/ - chook manure ( 1 rate only )

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Rate: 19.6 t /ha

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Ripper width: 1.7 m

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2 passes per plot

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Plot dimensions: 4 m x 20 m ( 80 m2 )

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Effective ripped area: 3.4 m x 20 m = 68 m2

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Ripping speed: approx 1 km/hr

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Mucking with Manure The April meeting of Birregurra / Murroon group inspected one of Peter Billings paddocks suffering from poor penetration of plant roots. The plant roots were unable to penetrate much more than 75 mm thus severely restricting water holding capacity and nutrient availability. The previous Millet crop had very long roots but they were mostly growing horizontally.

Following discussions with Professor Peter Sale and Dr Renick Peries, Neil McInnes and Cam Nicholson put together the basis for a scientific trial.

Soil showing the compacted area

Soil compacted area; below75mm deep

Marking out the trial site area Focus Farm Project

The May meeting commenced the trial in one of Peter’s paddocks . Corangamite Catchment Management Authority has agreed to funding this collaborative trial through the Regional Landcare Facilitator. Upper Barwon Landcare Network is collaborating with Southern Farming Systems, Department of Primary Industries and Nicon Farming services.

Subsoil manuring is only seen as applicable on duplex soils ie. soil with an impermeable clay sub soil with poor structure. This subsoil is turned into top soil by drastically increasing its organic matter content, opening the pores and stimulating biological activity. Nutrient availability and water retention is vastly improved.

Previous trials have shown 2-5 t/ha increase in grain yields.

The trial is based on 10 plots - 5 replicates of subsoil manuring and 5 control plots with no treatment.

Peter is sowing winter wheat in the paddock this year and will sow across the trial. Plots will be harvested using a Southern Farming Systems small plot header which measures yield .

Peter intends to have this paddock under crop for several years

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Mucking with Manure The subsoiling event took place with a degree of angst as to whether the manure would arrive in time. It did ...just, but calibrating the machine proved that the manure was too damp to run.

Calibrating the machine

More contemplation took place about whether Peter Gannon’s pig manure / lime mix might be the go.

It was decided against this as the lime was considered an extra treatment that wouldn't normally be needed.

Solution to problem - remove cover plates from the machine and modify in workshop with an angle grinder so a chain gang of stinking group members could feed manure directly down the ripper pipes with buckets. (!)

More calculations were made as to how many buckets per 20m to get a 20t per ha rate.

Despite these complications, there was success at last with the chain gang keeping up the supply of manure in buckets to the chute feeders.

Rippers 450 mm in the ground

Notes:

Ripping machine unable to handle chook • manure (too wet) • Product was applied down rip line by hand (buckets) • 10 buckets were used per 20 m plot length (ie. 5 buckets per ripper tyne) • 2 passes were made in each plot

• Therefore a total of 20 buckets were used per 80 m plot area

Feeding the sh** down the hole

Focus Farm Project

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Site Map—Trial Design Trial design

20 m

4 m

4 m

Nil

Manure

20 m Manure

Nil

20 m

Nil

Manure

20 m

Nil

Manure

N

Random bucket weight for calibration 20 m Manure

Bucket + sam‐ ple 1 2 3 4 5 Ave wgt

Nil

20 m

wgt (kg) 7.57 7.72 7.10 7.23 7.21 7.37

Nett weight per bucket Buckets per plot Plot area Amount applied

Bucket weight: 0.70 kg

6.67 20 68 19.6

kg

m2 t/ha

Soil sample sent for analysis on 4/5/2011

Focus Farm Project

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Value of Guest Speakers Stewart Green Farmer Murroon

We had some very good speakers and perhaps that was the highlight of a lot of Cam Nicholson is a partner in Nicon Rural the meetings. These were Services, a consulting people we wouldn’t run into business near Geelong normally who provided a lot working with the grazing of insight into farming and cropping industries practices and fertilizers and and in natural resource things in general. Some were management. local blokes and one was a Cam is the regional scientist. co‐ordinator for the Grain Visiting other people’s farms and Graze program in and meeting each other on site was interesting as well. There were a number of Southern Victoria and is different techniques and methods of doing things. I think everyone enjoyed the project manager for the Woady Yaloak Landcare experience, and I certainly learned a lot from the experience.

The idea of creating a group was definitely better that having one on one Catchment Project near Ballarat. He provides sessions, no two ways about it. If, however, you had specific questions relating consultancy advice to to yourself the presenters would direct their answers straight to your face and about 10 farmers and most farmers got something from other people’s questions as well. So the group lectures on animal and idea is much better I think, that is unless you get right down to the real “nitty pasture systems to gritties” of, for example, fine tuning a soil sample for special job on your students at Marcus property. The general is good enough until you need to go to that next step.

Oldham College. Cam There was a lot of good advice. Cam Nicholson was excellent; I’m very impressed was involved in the with him. Declan McDonald had heaps of knowledge and you could tell he had delivery of Prograze and the design and delivery of been in the game a long time.

BeefCheque and I haven’t changed any my farming practices yet, its all very well to have all these Lambcheque. theories, but every farm is different. I had already changed fertilizers from the Cam has a Bachelor of traditional acidic sort to a more compost based one some time before the Focus Agricultural Science and a Farm Group started but I wanted some additional information, whether we were Masters in Applied going the right way. Because every year is different its not always easy to tell Science (Agriculture and whether the farms improving or not at times. In the end we reached a point Rural Development). He where we were a bit saturated with information. We heard them all, it would be and his wife run a 320 ha good to get back together in 2 – 3 years when everybody can report, and even sheep and beef farm on the speakers may’ve developed their theories. That would be really interesting the Bellarine Peninsula, now that we’ve done this initial stage. We’ll be able to see if people have taken turning off steers for the long fed Japanese market, up many of the suggestions. It doesn’t happen overnight. prime lambs and fine It was very worthwhile, no two ways about it. It was very well organized, and wool. didn’t take you away from the farm for too long. There weren’t any ‘flops’, I

don’t remember any sessions that I went away and thought later, “gee that was a waste of time”. No it was all very good.

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Other trials relevant to the groups

Many group members have been involved in additional trials. Some of these were visited as part of the Focus Farm program.

BioAg trial BioAg are trialling 3 alternative fertilizers against traditional fertilizer and control plots. This trial was set up independently of the group at Gavin Brien’s property. The Group inspected the site with Cam Nicholson .This is a recent trial in its initial stages and there are no results yet.

Historic Lime Trials This work is funded by the Regional Landcare Facilitator program and is a significant piece of work The historic lime trial re‐testing came out of a group meeting. Original trials were done in 1999 / 2000 by Cam Nicholson on five properties, three of which are Focus Farm participants. It was well set up and is providing valuable data. Re‐testing is very important to get data over a long period All sites have been sampled and laboratory work completed. Cam is now collecting fertilizer and lime history from the farmers and will interpret results.

A field day and information session is planned in the near future. University students will be doing on site work to measure changes to soil characteristics.

On Farm GOSIP (Garden Organics Soil Improvement Plan) The Garden Organics Soil Improvement Program is a trial being conducted by Barwon Regional Waste Management Group in partnership with the Geelong City Council and Sustainability Victoria. Its aim is to convert green waste to a source of composted soil improver for farms. After delivery to the farm, the material is thoroughly wetted and then inoculated to enhance the composting process. A cover keeps the moisture in the heap. Some of the Focus Farm Participants are also participating in this trial. The group suggested trialling some of the On Farm GOSIP soil improver in a sub‐soil manuring trial similar to the one at Peter Billings, and Regional Landcare Facilitator funding has been gained to run a small trial.

The Woady Yaloak Trial

The Woady Yaloak Catchment Group evaluated a range of alternative nutrient sources and biological products for their effect on crop and pasture production and soil conditions. Eight replicated trials were conducted from 2009 to 2011 on pasture, lucerne and winter crops. Funding for the trials was received from the Caring for our Country program and the Woady Yaloak Catchment Group.

The south group in particular are focussed on biological farming using a variety of products. This scientific research will assist to validate the benefits or otherwise of these products. Results were presented to both Focus Farm groups.

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Evergraze Tony Noble

‘Antara’ Warncoort

Brent Harwood Irrewarra

Sheep and Beef Farmer

Beef Farmer

Tony: The Focus Farm Group was a group of farmers who got together to see what they do and they see what you do, what’s going to work or not work. We don’t know if all these new fangled ideas are going to work or not, so in 5 years time I’m not sure where we’ll be. I’m not totally convinced that biological farming is the way to go.

Brent: The Focus Farm Group helps to prove or disprove some approaches used by the biological methods, especially by using the trials set up and the speakers like Cam Nicholson. It’s good to see that others are getting similar results to some of the things we are doing on this farm and good to see trials performed; for example the chook manure at Peter Billing’s. We’ve been using it ourselves, we think it works and others (that Cam Nicholson mentioned) agree. It seems to be one of the new types of fertilizer that farmers can use and get good results, whereas a number of the other biological methods that are bandied about, there’s simply not a lot of information and hard facts on just how good they really are, and they are yet to show whether there’s any significant difference between using them and not using them.

Tony: There are a lot of people out there selling products. So the Focus Farm Group is very different to someone coming to your farm and attempting to sell a product and a bunch of local farmers talking.

Brent: At least with the Group we aren’t getting one sided information. There’s some things like the TM21 that Cam Nicholson spoke about, a sort of biological product, they seem to think that works alright.

As for the chook manure we’re just spreading it on top, and this is just on pasture, not cropping.

Tony: Its rye grass, and with a bit of artificial fertilizer it seems to do the job really well. Sometimes there are so many trials, you have to have healthy scepticism, there’s a certain degree of snake oil about some of them.

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In some cases you have to wait 5 years to see the result and by that time you just might be broke. So having people doing trials and looking over the fence is a good part of the group. No risk.

Brent: Its always interesting to see what other farmers are using and whether its working, that’s the main thing … and when you’ve got a group it’s a more unbiased opinion, which is what we’re looking for.

As for the speakers, Declan McDonald was an absolutely outstanding presenter.

I hadn’t seen him speak before and I would definitely recommend him to any soil ‘When you visit other health organization or similar. people’s farms you don’t Tony: Cam Nicholson was a good operator too. It was good having the guest just discuss the current topic, say soil health. You speakers come along. see other things that Brent: Yeah it was terrific, absolutely terrific , and brought up a lot of things. they’re doing there, that Tony: The Focus Farm Group process reinforced to us that chook manure does a good job, but no one’s still quite sure whether we’re just feeding the bugs or might not be actually on the agenda, but you end altering the balance of something. Whether its that little bit of nitrogen its got in up getting something else it, not sure quite what the go is there—something may turn up after a few years. good out of the day. ‘ We still haven’t understood the full biological process, putting on the bugs etc.

Biological methods may be alright, we spent a heck of a time in the group talking about it, but then there’s nearly always someone there from a company pushing their stuff. We are in the Irrewarra Farmcare group program and there were a number of speakers there pushing their stuff.

Brent: We have seen farmers who jumped into biological and now they’re slowly creeping back a bit. We really don’t know too many people who have stuck with it; even people who have been promoting it have come back a bit. The main part of the group was to find out what is going to possibly work or not, to get a bit more hard facts on that.

Tony: For future meetings having a visit to a farm is much better than just sitting in a hall, most people I reckon would say its better to go kick the dirt than look at a wall. We still need the lecture or speaker, make it specific and talk in depth about what a particular farmer is attempting to do so we might get a better understanding.

When you visit other people’s farms you don’t just discuss the current topic, say soil health. You see other things that they’re doing there, that might not be actually on the agenda, but you end up getting something else good out of the day. It seems you nearly always come across a good idea that you haven’t seen before, and be able to quiz them on that at the time.

At the end of the day, we’re all trying to be better farmers.

At Tony Nobles farm, the group combined with the Evergraze group to look at pasture species and management . Anita Morant (DPI Hamilton) presented learnings from the Evergraze program. Evergraze compared 3 pasture systems and is showing management strategies that significantly increase profit, improve soil N and clover content. This was followed by Karl Drever from Stephens Pasture Seeds, who explained various pasture species (both old and latest) and how to mix and manage them to maximise production from these pastures. This was followed by Tony Noble explaining his management system and his reasons for it, the group then inspected of some of Tony’s pastures.

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Looking Underground Scott Seebeck Gerangamete Dairy Farmer Declan McDonald came with the Farm Focus Group and we dug a few holes and looked at the profile of the soil, starting at the top at the root zone right down to the clay level. We examined the holes in detail, one was about 700mm and the other 500mm.

We ended up finding root zone in one of the holes down to about the 400mm mark, 5 years ago I reckon it would probably only occur in the top inch (25mm).

I put the result down to biological farming and moving away from chemically produced fertilizers. We haven’t really changed the units of fertilizer that we put out, what we’ve done is change the products that we use so those products aren’t so detrimental to the soil. What they’re doing is building up the biological diversity of the soil. We think that there’s an increase in, say, the worms, definitely seeing more worm castings as we get around. That is a change that we can see.

Declan McDonald This year we noticed a huge influx of dung beetles, haven’t seen them for I has over 25 years suppose 15 years, certainly not to the level we’ve had this year. Whether that’s experience in agricultural, seasonal I don’t know. it means we could be becoming more friendly to the horticultural and ‘good bugs’. We employed a fellow to work out our program to advise us on recreational soil what we’re doing, being a whole new farming method, we’re all dairy here. management. Declan has With opening up the hole Declan explained what happens to your soil structure. a strong background in By getting your root zone deeper you can get an increase in your topsoil depth, Production and Natural leading to being able to measure your pH levels to deeper depths, and being Resource Management able to determine any changes. You can do this through core samples and through his work with State and Local boring and things like that, but by actually having an open hole we could see Governments and things as a group a lot better than just looking at cores.

It was probably the highest fertility paddock on the farm, so it was a bit of a Catchment Management Authorities. benchmark. It pointed out that you should be expecting to see your fertilities He has authored / are at this level. co‐authored a number of Some of the soil is not as good as it should be, its quite poor but I can see that publications aimed at over the past 3 years its trending in the right direction. There’s been a few improving understanding noticeable changes and that would include animal health. and management of our It’s all very long term, its very hard to pin point one area. One area where we soil resources including have noticed a significant difference is a very large drop in our cell counts, our Soils Alive! In his current position of Specialist, cases of mastitis has probably dropped by 60%. So whether that’s a result of Productive Soils with Farm biological farming or not, I don’t know, although we haven’t done any major Services Victoria, his changes in the shed or the operation of milking which we could attribute it to. primary focus is to

promote sustainable productive soil manage‐ ment across the state.

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The best part of this Farm Focus process is, I believe, getting the feed back from everyone about the changes in their operations. That tells you that you are going down the right track. There was good information from the guest speakers, but the participants discussing their practice change and the benefits that they’re getting from it was the most valuable.

We’ll probably just keep going down the track we’re going at present … it comes down to milk prices to be able to fund new things. I think our next step will be to trying to process all the compost on farm.

Explaining Visual Soil Assessment The Visual Soil Assessment (VSA) was developed in New Zealand as a quick method to help farmers determine the health of their soil. As the name suggests it provides a process to examine your soil and to assign scores to a number of measures that add up to a total estimate of health for your soil. This value is used to compare changed condition over time.

It is important to note that this test will not replace the need for regular soil testing; however, it does provide a framework for a quick check and on this basis, can be very useful, especially if you go back to the same place at regular intervals to see if conditions are improving or declining. The VSA comes with a score card and this should be part of your regular (annual) assessment.

While the VSA looks at a number of soil properties, its approach to soil structure evaluation is very good. It involves taking a soil sample of about 150mm square and one spade depth. This sod is dropped onto a hard clean surface (a concrete slab is ideal) from waist height. The manner in which the sod breaks gives a very good appreciation of the structure of this soil. Ideally it should break into lots of small, irregular aggregates. If the soil is compacted or low in soil carbon it may either remain largely unbroken, or it may shatter into very small particles (low aggregations), or it may break into a few large particles. This is a good indication of the conditions faced by the roots of your crop or pasture plants.

‐ (contributed by Declan McDonald)

Scott runs an intensive dairy farm where he had recently, for family reasons, reduced his herd size from 500 back to 350 cows. He explained how he had pushed the system and was harvesting 10.5t/ha of dry matter and using regular N applications to generate growth. He was concerned about how sustainable his system was. Declan McDonald (DPI Soil Specialist) used several group members soil samples that they had brought to demonstrate VSA (visual soil assessment).

He used this process to explain to farmers the importance of the soil properties and the biological systems that work to improve its properties. The group then went and inspected two pits that Scott had dug in his paddock. Declan continued the discussion on soil health.

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Grain and Graze Scott Dennis ‘Bleak House’ Warncoort Cropping, sheep When the Focus Farm Group came here the subject was pasture and cropping and trying to combine the two; firstly, getting grazing off cropping and also trying to plant a harvestable crop into a Lucerne stand or a pasture. This would mean we can get more grazing off it in winter and potentially take it through to harvesting in summer. Not last winter but the winter before, I think it got too wet, so most of it got washed out or overtaken by weeds, so it wasn’t a terribly great demonstration. In the Lucerne paddock we actually had to re‐sow the Lucerne because the seed got damaged by the moisture, and that’s why the crop wasn’t doing so well. In terms of having people come and have a look, it was really good to get other farmers views on what was happening, what might work and things like that.

The guest speaker who came was Cam Nicholson who spoke about the Grain and Graze program, which is more specifically about getting extra grazing off cereal crops. It was about how to work that without compromising your yield at the end. We didn’t do anything last year because it was so wet, but this year with it being a little bit drier we’ve got two paddocks which we’re lining up to do more work in. I’ll try and get grazing off them. We sowed in early to try to get a bit of bulk, and we put in a winter red wheat variety, about 70 to 80 hectares, which we’ll hopefully move into by mid June.

Our main operation here is about 1000 acres of cropping, and roughly 2000‐2500 acres which is mainly pasture. We used to have 2000 acres of crop so a lot of that hasn’t been re‐sown yet. It is old with stubble and weeds, and eventually we’ll sow that down into pasture. We do have some beef cattle but are primarily focused on sheep and we sold pretty much our entire herd a couple of years ago when we went into cropping. We’ve backed out of the cropping now, so that at the moment we’ve got about 200 head of cattle on agistment and about 100 of our own. We’ve gone back into the cattle a bit.

We found that, and I’m not too sure how this sits with everybody else that did Focus Farm, especially south of Birregurra, we used to be big hay cutters. We got a lot of hay in the Spring and then spent the winter and a quite a bit of the rest of the year feeding the hay out, so we had a large beef herd of breeders and a large number of sheep and wethers as well. Now we’ve tried to go back to a core enterprise of merino sheep and then adjust the numbers of the cattle and lambs that we hold to match the grass that we’ve got and try not to cut hay, and try not to feed it out. That’s why I’ve got agistment animals on, so you can get rid of them theoretically at any time. I say theoretically because the neighbour said he can’t take them back at present because he doesn’t have any grass.

Focus Farm Project

Grain & Graze The Grain & Graze program has three targets: 1. A 10% increase in mixed farm profitability, driven by a 5% increase in grain yields and a 10% increase in livestock production; 2. Improved condition of natural resources on mixed farms in line with regional or catchment targets; and

3. Confident and knowledgeable mixed farmers making decisions and using tools that sustain production and promote biodiversity.

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Having other farmers come here was really good. Hearing what Simon Falkiner had to say was really good, although most of us had probably heard the general theory behind it, he had some up‐to‐date research that reinforced what could be done so that was good. There was a bit of a general discussion about that.

Touring in the paddocks was also good because I hadn’t had much experience with Lucerne, certainly no experience with sowing wheat in with Lucerne, and a few people had grown Lucerne successfully and knew how to manage it, so they could see the paddock that I had done it in was looking a bit ordinary. So yeah it was helpful and interesting.

Simon Falkiner Diploma of Farm Management Marcus Oldham Agricultural College Livestock Manager I suppose there are pros and cons to whether you get a consultant in and get Murdeduke Agriculture one to one or working with a group. I suppose getting a consultant in you can Simon works with look specifically at what you want to look at, as a group you’re sort of dictated by a small team to provide cutting edge advice and what the group wants to do. There was definitely a very wide range of assistance in the fields of: businesses and enterprises in the northern group. There were a couple of sessions where we combined with the Prime Lamb group, which Terry Makin • Advanced livestock and mixed farm facilitated, which was a good way to do it because you’re getting a wider management. audience so you’re getting more people who are interested in that subject.

• Advanced animal Certainly the farm business session from Cam Nicholson was very good, and I reproduction (ET & IVF). think that was because it was something that most farmers hadn’t been • Agricultural based exposed to before. project management

• Seed Stock production.

He also has close links

with Landcare and environmental issues.

At the meeting at Scott and James Dennis property “Bleak House” there was a presentation by Simon Falkiner focused on Grain & Graze 2 program and how to build more resilience into our farming systems by having more options to cope with changing circumstances. It covered grazing cereal crops to increase feed for stock without reducing yield and the use of lucerne as an integrated part of the system. He also covered the place of IPM in these systems to reduce costs and chemical use.

The group then inspected and discussed the Dennis's experience with grazing a red wheat crop and direct seeding cereals into their 2 year old lucerne stand with optimum grazing techniques to maximise both the lucerne and cereal growth.

Group also inspected Dennis's native pasture which has never been ploughed or sown. There is a trial site where treatments have been tried to improve the regeneration of native species. The Dennis’s are in the process of putting a covenant on this 100ha to protect it in perpetuity. These remnants of volcanic plains grasslands on private land are very important as little is left unploughed and there are few State owned reservations.

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Livestock Farm Monitor Project Colin Cannard Irrewarra Fattened Steers I enjoyed it always, but I’m an avid learner so probably there’s not one thing that I haven’t got value out of. Unfortunately I think the groups were too spread out, and those things really work well on feedback loops. The courses themselves and the speakers invited were of really high quality.

I enjoyed it even though it’s not my primary business which is a bit strange. I’m a geologist so I have a science background and am used to constantly learning new things at conferences for example where you are bombarded with a large number of speakers over a short period of time and huge amounts of data that you can’t keep up with. You are provided with a large folder with the information which you can then go back and absorb it. But, I understand the pace these farm groups go at, because you are basically trying to convince the sceptics, not all the time, but the conundrum is the diversity really. I wouldn’t like the task of ‘With soil health organizing them and making them work. It’s the diversity from “I won’t believe it you’re really looking till I see it, unless it works, unless it works the first time”. It’s a conundrum, but I at complex science. loved what they did.

70% of the species on With soil health you’re really looking at complex science. 70% of the species on the planet earth are the planet earth are virus, and we probably know 5% of them and another 15% virus, and we probably are bacteria, mainly soil borne. So you can’t quickly change how people think know 5% of them and (about soil health), it’s a 50 – 100 year process. I worked on the gold fields, and another 15% are we could go back every 10 years and re‐ explore it, because technical knowledge bacteria, mainly had grown so much in 10 years. The knowledge about soil will simply explode soil borne’ over next 100 years, and in 50 years time we’ll look back and say, “We knew nothing back then”, because that’s really where we are. Most people accept that, but some people think that they’ve got answers. I’m a sceptic in terms of potions and solutions, but as we understand soil chemistry more and more, there’s going to be major advances, there has to be.

With the Focus Farm Group, to learn you have to give up your time. My judgement was that perhaps 8 out 10 of the regions’ farmers didn’t want to give up their time, so if you accept that premise, they’re not going to learn. They only want to go to something that interests them. That should be the starting point, not the end point. To learn you have to discuss. The reality is that the farmers in the future are going to be pumped, they’re going to be pushed, and they’re going to have to learn.

As for climate change I have very strong opinions. Because basically, your weather is what you get for the next 10 years, no one is interested beyond 10 years. The beauty was that the last 2 years have shown that we were in an 8 year drought, not radical climate change.

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Climate change is probably real, but 8,000 years ago you could walk to Tasmania.

I’m a geologist who’s worked on 3 million year old rocks, I think that 8000 years ago, in the scheme of things is ‘yesterday’. So what has the climate change been in the past 8000 years? One of the things that I don’t understand, 8000 years and 80 metres of sea rise, that’s a metre a century, that’s the rise they’re talking about. It hasn’t wiped out life as we know it. Life evolves around it. The The reality is that the conundrum for the farmer is the next ten years. If he gets another drought that’s farmers in the future are a bigger change for him. Climate change is real, but is the worry worth worrying going to be pumped, about? they’re going to be I have 300 acres just outside of Colac, and I just fatten steers. With the Focus pushed, and they’re Farm Group I did get know some other farmers fairly well. It was really good. going to have to learn.’

Everyone was great but it did teach me how different people approach things from different angles.

Tony Berrisford (DPI) presented the results of the Livestock Farm Monitor Project using Colin Cannard’s farm as a case study. This generated significant discussion on what are the key performance drivers and how group members may be able to use these results to improve their farm management performance.

The Livestock Farm Monitor Project is a farm based comparative analysis study that aims to:

• monitor trends in farm productivity and profitability;

• provide benchmarks for livestock, and some cropping, enterprises in

Gippsland, North East and South West Victoria;

• evaluate the differences between top performers and other farms; • provide feedback to farm participants; and

•provide a historical dataset of farm comparative analysis information.

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Climate Change Wayne Johns ‘Westside’ Winchelsea Mixed farm I’m a mixed farmer, about 50% cropping, cereal and oil seeds, and 50% grazing that covers dual purpose sheep and a small beef herd.

We’re spread over 2 sites just to make things difficult, nearly half of my farm is nearly 50 kms away, and it’s a bit of a challenge. That one we put into raised beds and we just crop the lot because it’s remote, so we didn’t have to worry about livestock handling. It works out reasonably well. I do contracting as well, which provides me with bit better cropping machinery, than if I was just doing my own.

There were a lot of interesting sessions. I especially liked the one at Peter Dooley’s place. It was about Risk Management and a little bit about bench marking analysis and that was really relevant because those are things I’m thinking about all the time, or at least think about currently in the business. Some of the modern technology and methods are things that , with my background and level of education, are a bit more advanced than what I would normally consider. It is really very interesting to find out what is going on and the state that the industry is currently in. What people are doing is fascinating. It was very good of Peter to do the Risk Management session, it was a real challenge and the time to prepare it was a big thing to ask him to do. It was excellent. Just to know that other people are making constant decisions, especially they’ve got ‘With climate change and mixed enterprises and when and whether to make changes was very relevant variability in the seasons and I did appreciate it and got as much out of it as any of the sessions. we’ve had to look at Hearing other farmers talking is great. I used to be involved with the VFF and pasture species different things to try and get the ‘connection’. I’ve also done a couple of selection ... courses, Whole Farm Planning and different things over the years, but due to and that’s part of my family commitments and financial pressures, I haven’t done much lately, so its really good to benefit from the experience of being from being involved again. current problem right now.’

The same decision making and challenges appear in different enterprises. You may have different soil types and different types of farming but the same things come up, and you can adapt some knowledge gained to your own situation. I attended some sessions where we did paddock walks. At Nigel Thompsons we looked at different things he’s done; it good to look at the successful things and its good to look at the failures. A lot of people wouldn’t normally talk of their failures, but in the Focus Farm group, people are realistic enough to realise that everything isn’t always a success and to learn from other to avoid making the same mistakes if we can. With climate change and variability in the seasons we’ve had to look at pasture species selection and change from Rye grass type cropping to more deep rooted phalaris etc., and that’s part of my current problem right now.

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Graeme Anderson – What I thought was a perennial pasture lasted 2 years, and we didn’t get a good Senior Climate Specialist autumn break (of rain) so I ended up with nothing in a paddock that I expected DPI ‐ Farm Services to have the lambing ewes in, so now I’ve sown oats on it. I still can’t graze it so Victoria now I’ve got a mob of ewes lambing that are technically homeless and are in a Graeme leads DPI’s climate extension paddock of cattle. If we had sown a more suitable species that could adapt to program, and can offer the variability in the climate it would’ve headed off this disaster, whereas we are some practical insights feeding them and keeping our fingers crossed that we can scrape through. It’s into the carbon and not going to be a roaring success, so if we can get through without too many emissions story for our farms, as well as the casualties it’s the best we can hope for. Once the oats get established in the next types of areas where few weeks we’ll be able to put the sheep back in, but to not have a paddock for 6 farmers are taking weeks when you really need it is a problem. There is lots that you pick up from action to the benefit of these groups. their business.

He has a 23 year

All the Focus Farm Group speakers were excellent. There were 2 speakers at extension background in science and policy Nigel Thompsons and one spoke on the climate, and we all learned a lot from communication, farm him. It filled in the gaps as to why we are in the position we find ourselves in planning, catchment now. Now we’ve got a few reasons as to what caused the fact that the grass management, forestry didn’t persist. Advice from an agronomist and then information from a specialist and agriculture industry in Climate variability, and you put the two together, explains why we’re where development and land we are. Hopefully it’ll help stop the same thing happening again. At least it use change. He has explains it, instead saying I’ve got no grass for the sheep and not really knowing previously managed a why. plantation carbon sink I am now changing a few of the practices on my farm. I’m trying to catch up with pilot program which brokered carbon some of the younger ones, they’ve had more recent education and possibly agreements with more progressive, and possibly in a little bit better financial situation enabling Victorian farmers – them to try new things, and that’s where I’m benefiting from it. Its like the learning much in the Whole Farm Program and the planting of trees, its all got to add up financially by process which he is keen the end of the day. You’ve got to be able to pay for it. The financial side of it is to share. He is more important than ever, especially with the narrow profit margin in farming. passionate about How all the international markets and general financial situation all fit together supporting our brings it to where we are in the day to day world. You’re never quite sure if agriculture leaders and there’s money in it due to say the exchange rate or even a combination of things, rural communities to be it is constantly changing. It’s a fluid thing, it changes so often it’s good to try to better able to make sense of climate and keep up and understand. Its hard to cover it all, I don’t know where you stop and where you start. I ‘d be just as interested in that if the Focus Farm Group was carbon issues so we can make well informed able to keep going as well as the ‘hands‐on’, land care sort of stuff. decisions in the decade ahead.

Climate Variability & What drives weather, Review of seasonal Conditions Graeme Anderson DPI climate specialist presented and discussed climate variability and how the weather systems affect on farm conditions. This included how these systems are changing and what this may mean for farmers management systems. Chris Bluett (HRZ Consulting) led a discussion reviewing the recent abnormal weather conditions and the lessons learn from this experience. This was followed by a farm walk and discussion about Nigel Thomson’s farm and management. Nigel had recently entered into a contract arrangement growing out free range pigs for Otway Pork.

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Healthy Scepticism Peter Mercer ‘Meadowell Farm’ Gerangamete Raising Dairy Calves on Jones Program I thought the Focus Farm Group was very interesting and well organized. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of attendance by some members, because I think it loses something when you have limited membership, but in general terms, something I’ve always believed, the more you learn, the less you know. This program in some areas certainly proved that.

Visiting somebody else’s farm was beneficial. If you don’t learn something when you visit someone else’s property, you’ve got a problem. I really enjoyed visiting the properties but don’t think we got quite enough detail, and I can understand why, because to get the detail it starts to become very personal, so I can fully appreciate the reason, but to be able to make valid judgements you do need the details. They may be very inspirational, but to go any where with it you need more.

The main area I was interested in was the soil biology, and the main thing I learned from our guest speakers is that virtually no one really knows anything about it. We had a biologist, and what he told us I thought was absolutely tremendous, and it’ll help me make decisions when the snake oil salesmen come round try and sell you something. He gave me the background to understand that what the

salesmen were saying is absolute rubbish, but he admitted that there had been Podsols very little research and that they still know very little. He pointed out that In soil science, podzols they’re looking at research all round the world to see what effect the chemicals (also known as podsols or Spodosols) are the we traditionally apply to the farm have, well that doesn’t tell us what effect they typical soils of eucalypt are having on Australian soils in south west Victoria. forests and heathlands Some of the trials that people are carrying out are incredibly important, but they in southern Australia. need someone like Cam Nicholson so they are genuine and not something done Most Spodosols are poor by snake oil salesman who has a very persuasive way of convincing his clients soils for agriculture. that he’s improving the soil, and I believe that in some cases that’s not so. The Some of them are sandy system that we’re working with, i.e. farming, is very complex. There are so many and excessively drained. factors it’s hard to attribute these things to one thing that’s why it difficult to Others have shallow measure them. That’s why I think that the Department of Agriculture has done rooting zones and poor nothing about soil biology up till now because its an extremely difficult area. Soil drainage due to subsoil cementation. changes so markedly even with the climate, or more correctly probably the Well‐drained loamy weather, too wet, too dry, occasionally just right. types can be very I have always been a sceptic on virtually everything, I take a lot of convincing. productive for crops if I deep ripped this place for 17 years, every year, on the 18th year I decided that lime and fertilizer are I’d been wasting my time. I feel very strongly that the correct way to farm is with used the biological method. I am not convinced yet that we have the right biological method yet. I am part of the composting trial (GOSIP) from the Barwon Regional Waste Management program coordinated through Neil McInnes at the UBLN.

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But even there, I’m very happy to be part of it but I’m still as yet doubtful that it Visiting somebody else’s farm was beneficial. works, although I have a son who’s utterly convinced that it works. He’s an If you don’t learn organic farmer that grows olives. He wouldn’t think of using the fertilizers or something when you sprays I use. visit someone else’s The soil here is typical podsol type of soil, top soil that doesn’t have a lot of property, you’ve got a nutrients in it, then a spew layer underneath when it gets very wet, then clay problem. under that. I’ve raised the pH quite considerably. I’ve applied lime over the past ten years to about ten tonnes to the hectare. I’m currently just using the artificial fertilizer, approx 400 kg 1:1 super potash per hectare per annum.

Long Term View Stuart Brien ‘Greenhills’ Birregurra beef farmer

The Focus Farm program became focused on soil health issues and some of us in the area are trying these other ways of fertilizing the property – instead of using traditional fertilizers. We are looking at healthier ways of growing grass. Soil health leads to animal health, healthy grass means healthy beef. It is a slow process – easy for someone to get a quick result from artificial fertilizer but it’s not for the long term. We were going backwards using super. We need to learn the best ways, lots of companies are out there trying to sell stuff. There is much ‘Soil health leads to animal health, healthy variation within the group; dairy/beef/sheep/crops, and the comparison is not grass means healthy straight forward, people are using different companies and different methods. beef.’

With a broad acre farm you have lower inputs with a slow response so it’s hard to see results. Dairy farms though have a high input so you’d expect quick results.

That’s why we are at the beginning; we need to see the results long term.

You also need to know what’s actually working but also the cost effectiveness of it. Soil tests are only an indication, I now do tissue tests to show what the plant is actually taking up. If I need to tweak, it may be a little but the result in paddock might be substantial. Visual results seems positive, and I think I am seeing a positive result in animal health. The cattle are not as prone to parasitic attack, general health leads to heavier weight. To get any value out of the Focus Farm Group it needs to keep going for another 3 or 4 years with the same group of professional farmers. If we don’t continue we will have wasted our time – we need longer time to prove that we are getting results, all these things are long term. We may not have facts and figures to back up our impressions. The variation between seasons has a big effect, there are always other factors involved, so we need to trial over a few seasons. Some members of the group are entrenched in old ways, this group was good in that it questioned and challenged your ideas and methods, and made you reassess your ideas after each discussion group session.

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The Challenges of Change Will Hanson ‘Narcombie’ Irrewarra Prime Lamb Breeders We went to Winchelsea initially and had breakfast, Terry Makin gave us a rundown of what we were going to do and it all seemed pretty positive, pretty good. The guest speakers we had were really good, we had a great farm tour out to Stewart Hamilton’s place to his block out there talking about Canola and raised beds and that sort of thing. We went to Nigel Thompsons place north of Winchelsea, right on the river there and had a look at his pastures. The farm visits we did were really good, at Nigel’s place we had Graeme Anderson from the DPI come and talk to us about the weather, and he gave a good presentation. And then we had a couple of presentations down at the Irrewarra football club, one of which was about the Farm Monitor project. The presenter gave us the book about it, which I read through, but I missed his presentation which was unfortunate.

I think we had a bit of trouble with the timings of the meetings to enable everyone to get there. When we got together at the start of the program the dynamics were positive and it created a lot of energy. The discussions were really good but that petered out as unfortunately the numbers dwindled. Adrian Kennelly, who facilitated the first meeting at Winchelsea did a good job setting up the framework of what we wanted to do going forward. But, it did fall over given that our group (the north group) couldn’t quite get everyone to meet and that sort of thing; whether it was because in our group were a lot of cropping people, and it being a busy cropping time...

There was a diverse group involved and those that could make it to all the meetings were those that weren’t cropping. But they were interesting people to talk to. For example there was a fellow with a mining background, Colin, who was now into cattle, he was an interesting guy to listen to. I thought the people in the group were good value. It was a good mix of people, always interesting to listen to. I think farmers ‘ground truth’ what they hear all the time, they’re happy to listen (to a guest speaker), and then consider whether it’s a bit of ‘we do it this way, we’ve always done it that way, its such a risk in trying to do something new, so we always do it this way because of the soil or what have you.’ Many people are a little bit adverse to trying new things, they’ll go along and see what other people are doing, listening to other people and find it interesting but whether it inspires them to try doing new things is another step.

I haven’t changed things but it sort of helped to make a plan going forward I think. We think that what we are doing here is pretty good, it’s been working for us, but we still have to manage our risk in terms of price and that. Some of the operational stuff we saw on other people’s farms were really good and it was definitely “try a bit of that”.

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I certainly got a lot out of the fellow who presented the weather information, and that’s probably in terms of understanding information about climate change.

We think that this farm here isn’t really a cropping farm, but in dry years we can crop quite successfully. If we have a wet year like we did last year or the year before, it was pretty much a write‐off, especially when you’re growing high risk crops like canola. But we’re still cropping, so I suppose we’re saying that we expect things to be suitable for cropping again. It’s a risk, and you can’t ignore it.

If you make a mistake on a farm it will cost you big dollars, lots of dollars. All your costs are upfront, and if you make a mistake you lose it all.

I think that the more information you can get hold of, the better it is.

I also think the meeting at Peter Dooley’s (regarding Risk management) was good and I jumped straight up and spoke to Cam about it. I was hoping he’d come and sit down with us like he did at Dooley’s.

I think the Focus Farm Group was a very worthwhile exercise, I really enjoyed it.

It’s always an issue getting people to meetings, particularly when you’re having a series of them… the presenters are still the presenters so sometimes the smaller groups are better, although with farm tours it’s better to have a bigger group.

You can go to a series of meetings and hear stuff and learn stuff but it does take a lot more time, effort and commitment to get it implemented on your farm.

People can go out and sow a paddock differently or sow different varieties or fertilize differently, but things like financial arrangements are very hard to change; its habit I suppose. It does take a lot of effort and commitment getting it implemented at your farm and in your business after being inspired, even after a couple of meetings. Its almost like you need some sort of mentor program to keep you going. We have a little local Irrewarra Farmcare group and we’re meeting all the time. Things do gradually change, it takes years but the group doesn’t deal with anything financial which is more important than most things.

Our business used to be part of an RCS group where we did Profit Probe and we still work with some people on that board, that was helpful, especially with our sheep program. One particular fellow has been a mentor in that program, but to be going forward, we need to do more, especially financially, and be more aware of what we are doing.

‘It does take a lot of effort and commitment getting it implemented at your farm and in your business after being inspired... its almost like you need some sort of mentor program to keep you going.’

@RISK Analysis is a new innovation by Grain & Graze 2 program to analyse the enterprise mix to provide scenarios that allows farmers to choose how much risk they can handle based on their personal judgements. Factors taken into account may include soils and climatic conditions, strengths and weaknesses, debt levels and stage of life. The RISK tool leads to discussion and learning about how to run a more resilient businessThis exercise was done using Peter Dooley’s property as a case study. It is a very useful management tool to assist a mixed cropping/grazing farm in determining the percentage of land to use for cropping.

Increasing cropping can increase income but always at increased risk.

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@RISK Program analysis Peter Dooley ‘Brolga’ Irrewarra Cropping, prime lambs, dairy agistment Cam Nicholson came here a couple of weeks before the Focus Farm Group session and we put details of our farm onto his computer, we communicated back and forth till we sort of got it right, it’s a bit hard to get it exactly right, till we were both happy with it. He then came here with the group and presented his modelling. We collectively went through it and then we put in different scenarios to see what would happen. One was looking at what we call our “marginal cropping areas”. These are areas where in certain years we get pretty ordinary yields out of them, more often than not. It showed up as not worth cropping those areas over the long term. We are improving the pasture on a lot of those paddocks anyway, and we thought we’d get a few years of cropping on the way. They’re going to a phalaris based pasture now. Some I’m still cropping as wheat, but we won’t go back to canola in the marginal country, because the records show it really struggled. It’s actually not marginal country, it’s good grazing country, but its not cropping country unless you get into raised beds and I didn’t want to get into that. Cam’s modelling reiterated and emphasised what we already knew, especially when you go through and crunch the data ‐ you really see how much it is making. It puts it there in front of you. I think it was good, it was very good information. It showed that we just can’t go back and keep doing what we were doing, we’ve got to put it to pasture and just crop our best country. I like cropping with the sheep, we graze all our ‘The @RISK Analysis tool cereals. It works well, especially with this year coming, and that showed up really facilitated by the Grain well in the Risk analysis. We’ll go back to Cam and see how much money that’s and Graze program was worth to us. useful in this project as it I found the guest speakers normally well worthwhile. It depends on how relevant assists farmers make they are (to your particular needs). The Grain & Graze ones including Simon reliable predictions when Falkiner were very good. In those things I get as much out of talking to other altering enterprises or good farmers. It’s a great spot when you start talking about a specific issue and changing the ratio of you’re listening to other farmers, and I’m really interested in what they’re doing. their enterprises. This It doesn’t seem to matter how much you’ve been doing it yourself, you still can increases confidence in a learn from others, especially the Lucerne and the cropping side of it, which farmer's decision making ability.’ ‐ Neil McInnes , I haven’t been doing for many years. I was learning quite a bit from that side of coordinator it. You can talk to people who have actually done it and trialled it for a number

of years and see what they think. A specific one was chicory and plantain, a couple of blokes now tell me they wouldn’t put plantain in again because it cropped alright but the stock doesn’t like it, so stay with the Lucerne. There’s always been the push to go with the mix. I respect the bloke that said it, and I expect he’s right. As a long term thing the chicory takes over and you don’t get the best production from your Lucerne. It’s all those little things that you learn.

The group situation is a really positive thing, absolutely. Not always of course, it depends on the members, but you learn something from everyone and especially from the better operators you learn a lot.

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There was a good mix of people in this group. There were a few big cropping blokes in it, and quite a few sheep/prime lamb farmers in it. I really did appreciate the soil sessions. Something we all really need to understand more is the soil biology and the fertilizers; how we make more money out of using less.

It’s all about how we can fertilize our soils without it costing so much; it’s something that every farmer wants to do. We went up to the Woady Yallock trials which were really interesting, and I’m actually trialling the idea where you put out some cropping manures , which showed up very well with a bit of TN21 which is an organic. We’re just trying them this year to see how it goes. It is expensive, like a lot of these things. We currently spend a lot of money every year on fertilizer and that is a major cost to anyone who’s growing rye grass or crops.

Everything comes back to the soil. We’re all starting to think that we aren’t getting the response from our traditional fertilizers that we were, for whatever reason we’re not sure. I don’t think that biological is the bee’s knees either.

There’s a lot of wasted products that are being sold that cost a small fortune that the farmers are not making anything out of. It would be great if we could ‘People change from get a really serious trial. It might cost $200,000‐300,000 and run for 5 years, necessity but some maybe even ongoing for 10 years, because that would really sort out the rubbish change more than others, from the good stuff. There’s so much variation, how can you attribute something and we’re always looking to just this or that. A 2 – 3 year trial is hardly enough. I know that there’s a lot of at how we can improve.

But you’ve got to be management in doing this, but down the track it’s one of the biggest things we careful that you’re not can do for farmers at the moment— how are we going to fertilize our soils? changing too much, Naturally or organic or inorganic. It’s certainly needed. otherwise it’s like chasing It all depends on whether our current farming methods are sustainable for the rainbows, you never get long term. We’re not farming differently, except for intentionally rotating stock, them. ‘ than what we were 30 years ago. Fertilizers are still the same, pretty much.

All these other ones are coming in but they’re not really proving anything particularly. Some of them may in time, but they’re just too expensive. You can’t spend 5 years hoping that something will come good.

An issue about the group process is I know its hard to get people because they’re busy, and sometimes there are more government people there than farmers and that’s not exactly ideal. You just can’t get to everything, there’s sometimes too much on.

When we came here originally we took on a lot of agistment because we’d bought a big farm, and we didn’t initially have the money to buy the sheep, and the agistment worked pretty well for a while, but we’re gradually going back to running our own stock. You tend to go where you’re making your best money.

The dairy agistment side of it has changed. We’ve moved away from that because there’s no money in it. People change from necessity but some change more than others, and we’re always looking at how we can improve. But you’ve got to be careful that you’re not changing too much, otherwise it’s like chasing rainbows, you never get them. You have to have a clear idea of what you are running. I think the prime lamb is very good and going to stay that way for a long time.

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Evaluating the program ‘The best part of this Focus Farm process is I believe getting the feed back from everyone in changes in their operations So that tells you that you are going down the right track. ’—Scott Seebeck

‘A lot of people wouldn’t normally talk of their failures, but in the Focus Farm group, people are realistic enough to realise that everything isn’t always a success and to learn from other to avoid making the same mistakes if we can’ —Wayne Johns

‘The Focus Farm Group gave a little more confidence in thinking that I’m doing the right thing.’—Nathan Bennett

A lot of these information gathering and sharing type groups are specifically, say, for lamb, beef, dairy, industry based farmers, so you’re talking to like minds.

Whereas with the Focus Farm group we crossed over borders a bit, so that was great. So you siphon off what might work for you.’ ‐ Gavin Brien

‘The benefit of the Focus Farm group was that the majority of the speakers that we had were lateral thinkers, it doesn’t mean that they would necessarily agree with my or others ideas but they would listen.’ ‐ Peter Gannon

‘The Focus Farm Group was part of my way of doing things, which is to learn new ways’ ‐ Peter Billings

‘The Focus Farm Group helps to prove or disprove some approaches used by the biological methods, especially by using the trials set up and the speakers’ ‐ Brent Harwood

‘It was really good. Everyone was great but it did teach me how different people approach things from different angles.’ ‐ Colin Cannard

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‘The group situation is a really positive thing, absolutely. Not always of course, it depends on the members, but you learn something from everyone and especially the better operators you learn a lot.’ ‐ Peter Dooley

‘I think we had a bit of trouble with the timings of the meetings, to enable everyone to get there. When we got together at the start of the program the dynamics were good and it created a lot of energy’ ‐ Will Hansen

‘Just to know that other people are making constant decisions, especially they’ve got mixed enterprises and when and whether to make changes was very relevant and I did appreciate and got as much out of it (@RISK session) as any of the sessions.’ ‐ Wayne Johns

‘Some ... are entrenched in old ways, this group was good in that it questioned and challenged your ideas and methods, and made you reassess your ideas after each discussion group session.’ ‐ Stuart Brien ‘It would be good to get back together in 2 – 3 years when everybody can report, and even the speakers may’ve developed their theories.’ ‐ Stewart Green

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Evaluating the Program The significant feature of the project was the open discussion between all group members and presenters. There was a genuine interest in working together to develop enduring practices. The farmers have a greater appreciation of science after being able to openly discuss their experiences with the people providing technical information. It also gave the presenters access to the experiences and opinions of farmers who will be implementing practice changes. There is a lot of unrecognised innate knowledge in the community and the process we used gave the farmers opportunity to share their knowledge with their peers as well as the technical presenters. This project reinforces that farmers have more confidence in research and extension if they are involved its design and delivery.

The format of discussion group type meetings allowed for quick information and opinion sharing between all parties. Farmers had access to up‐to‐date technical knowledge and information that was critiqued with their peers rather than waiting for it to filter down through traditional methods.

Experiences and opinions were freely shared which built confidence in proposed 'solutions'.

An unintended benefit of this project is the social connectivity it built between participants. Farmers are renowned for 'looking over the fence' and the project capitalized on this trait. Some difficulty was experienced with establishing the North Group. This could be attributed to spread across a wider geographic area, so there was more travelling and less social connection. It was also mainly cropping orientated, which meant day to day weather had a bigger impact on time availability for off‐farm activities. Cropping is also a sector which has been better serviced by grower organizations and the Department of Primary Industries in recent years.

As the projects' intent was to build resilience into the whole farming operation there was a wide scope of topics and presenters that could be used to address climate change as well as other farm issues.

The topics were chosen by the participants (sometimes recommended by a presenter) and the most relevant farm in the group was selected for that meeting. Improving soil health was a common theme for many meetings. The farmers identified this as the basis for building resilience into their systems with the added bonus of sequestering optimum levels of carbon.

Helping the farming sector in our area develop enduring practices is a high priority of the Upper Barwon Landcare Network. The network will continue pursuing resources to build on the successes of this project and support farmers to adopt better practice management techniques and strategies that best suit their situation—Neil McInnes, Upper Barwon Landcare Network Coordinator

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...and where to from here.

I think the trial at Peter Billings is a magnificent trial, but I want to see the results, this year, next year, and the year after, and after. And I think there’s still a lot for us to learn yet—Peter Gannon

To get any value out of the Focus Farm Group it needs to keep going for another 3 or 4 years with the same group of professional farmers. If we don’t continue we will have wasted our time – we need longer time to prove that we are getting results, all these things are long term. We may not have facts and figures to back up our impressions. Variation between seasons has a big effect, there are always other factors involved so we need to trial over a few seasons.—Stuart Brien

‘for future meetings; having a visit to a farm is much better than just sitting in a hall; most people I reckon would say its better to go kick the dirt than look at a wall’ ‐ Tony Noble

‘It would be great if we could get a really serious trial. It might cost $200,000 ‐ 300,000 that ran for 5 years, maybe even ongoing for 10 years, because that would really sort out the rubbish from the good stuff. ‘ ‐ Peter Dooley

‘I that, in going forward, we need to do more, especially financially, and be more aware of what we are doing.’ ‐ Will Hansen

‘The financial side of it is more important than ever, especially with the narrow profit margin in farming...I‘d be just as interested in that if the Focus Farm Group was able to keep going as well as the ‘hands‐on’, land care sort of stuff.’ ‐ Wayne Johns

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Final Reflection ‐ by Terry Makin ‘Soil is the foundation of the whole farm business …’

The feedback from the interviews and the booklet that Neil and Mandy have produced is an excellent resource and conclusion to this project. I commend their effort in achieving this outcome.

The interviews from the farmers show that farming is a very complex business. The farming system is comprised of many sub‐systems within the farming system. The challenge for farmers is getting all the sub‐ systems working together to create a synergetic effect. That is “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.

There was a significant focus on the soil system in these groups and a lesser focus on the financial system. This makes sense and as one of the farmers commented, “the more he found out, the more he realised that no one knew enough about soil biology”. Soil is the foundation of the whole farm business and our farming practices have contributed to a decrease in soil health.

Terry Makin DDA (Dookie), M App. Sci. (Extension & Rural Development) (Hawkesbury) Extension is the process whereby the interaction between researchers,

extension personnel and farmers generates learning that gives us improved Terry dairyfarmed in practices based on evidence. As group facilitator I saw my key task was to make Northern Victoria at Kyabram until 1995 on a the “space” where extension happens and change can take place.

300 cow irrigated farm.

The positive comments from these interviews have reinforced the value of He was a farmer Director on the board of Dairy extension principles and what farmers are looking for when we work with them Australia’s predecessor, to improve their farming practices. Although they valued the inputs of the Dairy Research & information from credible speakers, they got the most value from the discussion Development Corporation and questioning by their peers of their own practices and the speakers (1986 ‐1996). Since 1996 he has consulted in presentations. It is the discussion and dialogue which facilitates the learning of agriculture, and has individual members. This assists the creation of new knowledge which they can been a facilitator since use in their farming business.

2006. He is particularly interested in how to live The group process also creates and improves the social networks between and farm sustainably.

farmers and this increases the social capital of the community. In the group we are trying to create a place that people feel secure and able to share their information and experiences for the benefit of each other.

In conclusion it was a pleasure for me to work with these groups of committed farmers who were thinking and challenging each other as they looked to find better ways of doing things.

Focus Farm Project

‘There was good information from the guest speakers, but the participants discussing their practice change and the benefits that they’re getting from it was the most valuable.” ‐ Scott Seebeck

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Focus Farm Meeting dates and details

April 2010—Formation luncheon meeting Information session for all participants about program, gathering of farmers issues and areas of focus, formation of groups.

SOUTH GROUP

May 2010—Introductory brainstorm session and farm tour of Peter Gannon’s property and his setup.

July 2010—Presentation by Tim Johnston from the DPI on soils, tour of Nathan Bennett’s Farm and inspection of group trial of ryegrass seeding and yeoman ploughing.

July 2010—Presentation by Cathie Harvey, 2006 Nuffield Scholarship on Biological farming. Tour of Gavin Brien’s farm which Included an inspection of a saline site where biological products are being assessed.

Sept 2010—Presentation of results of Grain & Graze trial of biological fertilisers by Cam Nicholson of Nicon Consulting. Tour of Peter Billing’s property.

March 2010—Setting up Sub‐soil manuring trial Peter Billings property by Cam Nicholson.

July 2010—Presentations by both Anita Morant (DPI Hamilton) on the Evergraze program and Karl Drever (Stephens Pasture Seeds) This group combined with the Evergraze group. Tour of Tony Noble’s property.

October 2010—Presentation by Declan McDonald (DPI soils specialist) and inspection of soil pits at Scott Seebeck’s farm.

October 2010—Visit and visual inspection of members trials.

NORTH GROUP

July 2010—Meeting with Adrian Kennelly and discussion of decision making and risk management followed by strategic planning session by the group.

September 2010—Visit to Southern Farming Systems site at Inverleigh and tour of Stewart Hamilton’s property on the value and results with raised beds.

October 2010—Presentation by Simon Falkiner on Grain & Graze 2 program, then inspection and tour of Scott, James and Claire Dennis’ property.

March 2011—Tony Berrisford (DPI) presented the results of the Livestock Farm Monitor Project using Colin Cannard’s farm as a case study.

July 2010—Graeme Anderson DPI climate specialist presented and discussed climate variability and how the weather systems affect on farm conditions. Chris Bluett led a discussion on the recent abnormal weather conditions. This was followed by a farm walk and discussion about Nigel Thomson’s farm and management

August 2010—Andrew Whitlock presented on precision agriculture and how this technology works and the benefits that it has for crop farming . Inspection of Stuart Hamilton’s crops and discussion on how the technology works for him.

October 2010—RISK analysis with Cam Nicholson (Grain & Graze coordinator SW Victoria) using Wayne and Stephen Peel’s property as a case study.

March 2012—RISK program analysis of Peter Dooleys farm –combined session with South Group Due to the success of the first RISK exercise it was decided to offer it to a wider audience. Cam Nicholson used data from Peter Dooley’s farm to do a RISK analysis of his business.

Focus Farm Project

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Upper Barwon Landcare Network 57 Main Street Birregurra 3242 5236 2041 www.ubln.org.au

Focus Farm Project

A pdf version of this publication can be viewed online by going to www.ubln.org.au and clicking on the Focus Farm link.

A web version of this document is also available. Go to www.focusfarms. org

Published by the Upper Barwon Landcare Network 2012

Production and Artwork by Pennyroyal Creek Printed by the Colac Herald

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