This project will demonstrate, evaluate, and communicate innovative farming practices to low rainfall farmers in the tri-state Mallee and Eyre Peninsula regions to enable them to implement farming systems that maintain ground cover resilient to the pressures imposed by climate variability and management actions.

Improve the capacity of farmers in the low rainfall Mallee and Northern Yorke region to correctly diagnose underlying constraints that limit the productivity of sandy soils, to select the most appropriate strategy or combination of strategies to ameliorate the soil constraints present, and to map soil constraint data at a paddock scale to better target costly amelioration activities.

This project will demonstrate farmer ready management practices that break the cycle of saline land degradation exacerbated by very dry or drought conditions. Two key drivers of soil salinity will be addressed – dry saline land and Mallee seeps that cause lost production in low rainfall broadacre mixed farming landscapes.

This project targets transformative changes to increase drought resilience of the Mallee’s grain and mixed farms (livestock and cropping) through promoting innovative grazing options of fodder shrubs for Mallee livestock farms.

MSF with the support of Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) is on a mission to close the knowledge gap around feed and nutrition in low rainfall zones.

Trials at Walpeup (VIC Mallee) and Parrakie (SA Mallee) are putting a range of ripping tines, accessories and delving tines to the test on compacted deep sands. By quantifying draft force and soil loosening, researchers can calculate the efficiency of ripping tines and other soil amelioration tools. Roughly, the more soil loosened for every unit of draft force, the more efficient the equipment is.