Our Projects
latest projects
Enhancing farmer knowledge of soil function
This project aims to provide “the why” behind the decisions SA farmers need to make in relation to adopting practices to address the range of SA specific soils characteristics, soil biology, subsoil constraints, soil nutrition dynamics, etc. It will do this by posing a series of specific questions about soils from an on-farm management perspective.
Developing robust ground cover to enable resilience in low rainfall mixed farms
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.
Building knowledge and capacity in growers/ advisers to diagnose sandy soil constraints to ensure successful amelioration of sands
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.
Building resilience to drought with landscape scale remediation of saline land
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.
Building drought resilience on Mallee Farms
This project has been funded to help Mallee farmers tackle wind erosion with practical ways of improving and maintaining groundcover on erosion-prone soils.
There are two main themes in the project:
1. Promoting cropping practices that improve crop performance and leave more ground cover
2. Promoting forage shrubs and livestock containment designs to broaden the livestock feedbase and protect groundcover on vulnerable soils.
Improving sheep nutrition through assessment of regional feedbase nutritional deficiencies
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.
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