It was a coincidence, but also a "marriage made in heaven" - an ever increasing range of grazing cereal options becoming available at the same time as the national Grain & Graze program campaigned for more profitability on Australia's mixed farms.

And it explains why the program's extensive research into grazing cereals shared the limelight with its four National projects and numerous others from around Australia at the recent Grain & Graze National Forum in Wagga Wagga.

According to Grain & Graze's national coordinator, Dr Richard Price, that overall balance of the Forum program was appropriate because seven of Grain & Graze's nine regions see grazing cereals as a major potential contributor to improved profits on Australia's mixed farms.

Grain & Graze is a collaborative partnership between Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and Land & Water Australia (LWA).

Dr Price said delegates at Grain & Graze's Fourth National Forum focused generally on how much producers and other participants really had learnt over the program's four years.

"For instance, the Forum heard that the data collection period of the Biodiversity in Grain & Graze project will finally come to completion in December, with the keenly anticipated results being announced in the following months," Dr Price said.

"This is no small thing. It's Australia's largest ever on-farm biodiversity investigation and farmers across Australia are keen to know about the relationship between biodiversity and production in mixed farming systems."

The project aims to produce farm and regional level lists of invertebrates, plants and birds found on farms around Australia and note their ecological function and requirements.

"Information such as whether invertebrates are pest or beneficial species must help farmers in general management decisions."

Dr Price also said the study of the relationship between the resilience of farming businesses and enterprise mixes in different regions of Australia by Grain & Graze's National Economics Project is starting to produce the goods.

"It's improving our understanding of the whole farm impact of innovation. It's improving researcher and adviser knowledge of biological and economic constraints to change. It's auditing the costs and benefits of innovation. And it's estimating extension's likely effect on farm profit".

The National Economics Project is also helping regional projects through economic analysis and support, holistic integration of biological, environmental and economic aspects of production and improved understanding of the role of new technologies in farm businesses.

"Our National Social Research Project is attracting incredible interest, bringing together financial, environmental and social considerations in mixed farming around Australia," Dr Price said.

"Social researchers in this component of Grain & Graze have found Australian farming families seamlessly integrate their goals, needs and aspirations in making management decisions.

"Farmers are continually balancing finance, the environment and their lifestyles in their decision making. Yet us researchers rack our brains trying to understand this process!"

Dr Price said Grain & Graze's fourth national research project was tackling one of the greatest challenges facing livestock producers around Australia, managing variability in feed supply.

While a number of tools, such as the MLA Feed Demand Calculator, were available already to help producers analyse feed supply and demand on their farms, the Grain & Graze National Feedbase Management Project team is developing a set of principles that will help farmers use the available tools more effectively.

Dr Price said while the Grain & Graze National Forum heard about a range of other Grain & Graze research on stock feed - including grazing of canola, lucerne and perennial pastures - different approaches to grazing cereals dominated reports from regional coordinators, the presentations of local producers and the regional bus tour for delegates.

One interesting result from research in more than one of the seven regions studying different approaches to grazing cereals was that locally adapted varieties performed better than the more widely promoted "dual-purpose" varieties. However producers needed to choose cereal types and varieties to suit their particular rotations and purposes.

"One of the most valuable findings from Grain & Graze research around Australia has been that grain cereal paddocks are an untapped feed source that can add substantially to the winter feed supply without effecting the eventual grain harvest," Dr Price said.

"And that extra grazing is effectively free, because farmers will have already spent the money planting the crop for grain."

For information on the National Grain & Graze Program contact Richard Price, National Coordinator, on 02 6295 6300 or mobile 0409 624 297; Gillian Stewart on 02 6263 6042; Merryn West on 02 6263 6013.