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.

• During 2023, three on-farm demonstration sites were set up to demonstrate the impact of variable rate technology and early sowing on crop performance and ground cover.
• For an overview of two of the demonstration sites and agronomic insights to date, see ‘Vari-rate demonstrations, disease and keeping cover at Carwarp’ and ‘A talk from and MSF crop walk – sowing time demonstrations in the Millewa’ in Podcast episodes below.
• An overview of findings from the demonstration sites will be presented in fact sheets, podcasts and a project workshop in early 2024.

2. Promoting forage shrubs and livestock containment designs to broaden the livestock feedbase and protect groundcover on vulnerable soils.

• During 2022, forage shrub demonstration sites were established at three sites across the Victorian Mallee, in the Millewa, at Patchewollock and at Murrayville.
• Workshops have been run to promote forage shrub plantings and different confinement feeding set-ups.
• Further fact sheets are being developed to show the feed value and benefit costs of forage shrub plantings and typical confinement feeds.
• A forage shrubs decision tree has been developed to guide livestock producers towards shrub designs that best suit their circumstances.