The relationship between biodiversity and on-farm production was under the microscope when researchers and farmers gathered at the Biodiversity in Grain & Graze (BiGG) Farmer Forum in Hobart in late January.

The BiGG project is investigating the relationship between biodiversity and on-farm production and involves 47 farms across Grain & Graze's nine national regions.

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) that aims to boost the profitability of Australia's mixed farms. The Natural Heritage Trust is also a significant investor, specifically in the BiGG project.

With the approval and support of the collaborating farmers, field research officers monitored and collected biological samples each autumn and spring in four paddocks, each with different land uses, over two years. The biodiversity information collected by the field officers goes hand-in-hand with landholders actively working towards improving natural resources on their farms.

The farmers play a vital role in the project and that is why they were invited to Hobart to meet with the BiGG research team and share the knowledge and experiences of their individual properties and the data collected on-farm. It was by this means that BiGG was able to bring hard science face to face with life on the land.
The information collected in the BiGG project is in the process of being been analysed by a research team and the information collected includes soils - nutrients and decomposer activity; vegetation, invertebrates - beetles, spiders and ants; and, birds. So far the project has collected more than 225,000 "bugs" of which "every single one" has been categorised by the science team.

For the researchers, much of the material collected has been an unexpected bonus.
A number of new beetles have been identified including several rare native weevils not seen for about 100 years. The research has also discovered a rare trap door spider in WA, while in the bird surveys, of the 193 species identified, 33 of the species are listed by either State and/or Federal Governments as threatened species.

Dr Peter McQuillan, an entomologist in the School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, said the project had revealed there were substantial amounts of biodiversity alive and well and living on Australian farms. Dr McQuillan said across the 47 farms the project investigated, there was a large range in the numbers of native invertebrate species that survive. He said it was clear that by adjusting farming methods it is possible to maintain relationships with biodiversity. "Once we can understand it we can start to manipulate it in various ways and try and use the outputs in terms of improved productivity or improved sustainability on some of these farms," Dr McQuillan said.

While the collaborating farmers expect the Biodiversity in Grain and Graze (BiGG) project to deliver meaningful results which better help them to manage their mixed farming systems, the project will have wider consequences in the scientific material it unearths about the state of biodiversity on Australia's mixed farms.

As Grain & Graze aims to lift profit on mixed farms while also sustaining - if not improving - the well-being of natural resources, the program stepped up to be the driver of the country's largest ever biodiversity-on-farm project.
As the project gathered its momentum, the collaborating farmers began starting to ask a range of questions like

• Is there a relationship between biodiversity and land-use?
• Can farms be managed to improve ecosystem services and profitability?
• Does enterprise diversity on farm lead to increased biodiversity?
• How does landscape and terrain influence farming practices and biodiversity outcomes?

What started out, as an aspiration for solid science to address important questions about the relationships between mixed farming and biodiversity rapidly became a rich mix of blue-sky investigation, fundamental routine research and farmer participation in the research process. BiGG, has therefore, emerged as a quintessential example of community science.
Biodiversity in Grain & Graze National Project Coordinator, Dr Kerry Bridle said the project addressed the "'triple-bottom line components of farming" - profitability, environment and social impact. "The team decided we needed a national biodiversity project as a way of trying to document what mixed farming systems offered in terms of biodiversity conservation and preservation across the nation, and we decided this was a good way of doing it."

Dr Bridle said the project was a participatory approach. "We have tried to involve the farmers and the regional catchment agencies as much as we can so we hope they can inform us as much as we inform them. Dr Bridle said the project sought to examine life below and above the ground and in the air - "that's how we like to describe it". "We looked at soil decomposition, surface invertebrates - beetles, ants and spiders - and looked at vegetation and birds."

Dr Bridle said not only the remnant vegetation patches, but the whole farming landscape provided habitats for all the species collected and identified. She said the farmers also held a huge bank of knowledge of what was living and growing on their farms. "Part of the project was to ask farmers how they used their landscapes - what kind of management tools they used, (like) pesticides, what kind of tillage practices they used so we could try and relate that back to the biodiversity values we were getting," Dr Bridle said.
"Especially the farmers who have been there a long time - they know more about their landscapes than we could ever know and they observe their landscapes and we need that feedback for interpretation on data we are getting."

One of the outcomes of the Hobart forum was a call by the participating farmers and the industry investment partners to see if this understanding could be turned into guidelines for improved management practice.

For more information about the National Biodiversity in Grain & Graze Project, contact the National Project Coordinator, Dr Kerry Bridle, on 03 6226 2837