The Free Food for Thought - Grazing Winter Crops Roadshow has been making its way across the mixed farming zones of southern Australia. This series of Grain & Graze workshops is helping farmers apply the collective wisdom of researchers and collaborating farmers who have investigated the risks and benefits of grazing winter crops. Feedback has been positive with many producers indicating they would try the concept this coming season under suitable conditions.
Highlights from some of the regional roadshows
Eyre Peninsula
Eyre Peninsula Grain & Graze hosted three grazing winter crops workshops in March at Cummins and Cleve on Eyre Peninsula and at Clare in the neighbouring mid-north region. The EP team also provided support to the workshops held at Lameroo and Loxton in the Mallee. In total more than 130 farmers attended the workshops, with many requests being made for information from those unable to attend.
Feedback indicates the workshops were well received - a preliminary evaluation showed the majority of attendees would now consider grazing cereals as an option, whether putting crop in for feed in lower rainfall areas or to be harvested for grain in the higher rainfall areas.
Corangamite Glenelg / Hopkins
There have been two roadshow workshops in the region at Inverleigh and Dunkeld which between them attracted 180 people.
The workshops covered the following topics -
- The opportunities and costs of grazing winter wheats;
- Important management decisions including when and what to sow and getting grazing management right;
- The effects of grazing on crop maturity, grain yield and quality, livestock response and animal health issues, crop weeds and disease; and
- How to fit grazing a winter crop into the whole farm system.
If the evaluation from the 180 at the two workshops is anything to go by, 48 % of farmers indicated they would be grazing some of their crops this year and 39 % said they would graze all their crops. This is an excellent result given hardly anyone was grazing any crops a few years ago.
Northern Ag Region
Two grazing winter crop roadshow workshops were run in the region in the last week of March. Simon Falkiner (Southern Farming Systems, Geelong) & Nathan Scott (livestock manager, Peel Agriculture) from Victoria joined local producers and researchers to discuss the use of grazing cereals to improve early pasture production, manage seasonal variation and risk, and ways to do so without affecting grain yield.
The outcome of the workshops highlighted that grazing cereals could be of some use to farmers in the NAR of Western Australia in many different ways. These include:
- Using grazing cereals as a source of early feed, when feed demand is at its highest (e.g. lactation);
- Feeding lambs in late spring for early turn off; and
- As a standing fodder crop during summer.
In dry seasons, modelling suggests that it is more profitable to graze crops grown on weaker soils than to harvest these crops. Winter wheats are not suited to the warmer temperatures and shorter seasons of the NAR and spring wheats are showing potential in a dual purpose capacity. The grazing window the region has for the spring wheats is believed to be only 3-4 weeks, before yield may be affected.
Feedback from both events in the NAR was fantastic with some farmers planning to make use of some early season rainfall and sow some cereals for both grazing and grain yield.
More workshops are being planned for Tasmania and South Australia in the next few weeks.
View the Free Food for Thought workshop notes