FarmTalk#28 – Farm Profitability and the MSF message

Fact Sheet #28 – August 2007

Mike Krause, Applied Economic Solutions P/L

The issue
Mallee Sustainable Farming (MSF) has been conducting research for over 10 years and with the recent retirement of David Roget it is an opportune time to reflect on recommendations coming out of the research. The main issue for Mallee farmers is taking the research results and assessing how they fit into their ‘whole-farm’ contexts. This farmtalk reports on MSF farmer workshops held in December 2006 and March 2007 with David Roget, Mike Krause and Dr. Rick Llewellyn.

The main messages coming out of MSF research as reported at the workshops are:

• The development of more environmentally sustainable farming systems significantly decreasing wind erosion.
• The need for matching inputs to yield potential.
• The need to understand the use of nitrogen with increased crop intensity.
• The importance of soil available moisture.
• The possibility of better understanding farm paddocks with the use of EM mapping.
The question for the workshops was ‘Do these new farming systems improve the profitability of farming’?