The Conscious Farmer

PASTURE SEEDING THROUGH GRAZING

22 November 2014 / 0 comments

As regenerative farmers we are trying to increase our pasture quality and diversity for the benefit of animal performance and for the benefit of the land. Ensuring plant recovery between grazings and planning of our grazing helps to assure this, but we can also speed up the pasture productivity or diversity with no, or virtually no associated costs.

We can do this in a couple of different ways.

Existing pastures that have seeded

We know that livestock can spread weed seeds, but we can also use this to our advantage to move desirable seeds around. At times, opportunities arise where a grass or a desirable broadleaf is seeding and we can plan some strategic grazing to move this to an area that lacks that species.

Livestock can spread seed both on their coats – which works well with fluffy, fine grass seeds. It can also be spread through their manure. When seeds are spread in the manure, they are sitting in a nutrient rich environment – just perfect for the growth of the plant once it germinates. Strategic grazing of different paddocks can quite easily allow this to happen – improving pasture with no seed or planting costs. Continue reading “PASTURE SEEDING THROUGH GRAZING” »

Melanised fungus growing on an agar plate

IMPROVED OPPORTUNITIES FOR STORING SOIL CARBON?

16 November 2014 / 0 comments

A predictable and reliable increase of long-lived carbon in cropping and grazing soils would be a wonderful thing for the farming industry. Carbon sequestration will benefit soils, improve the resilience of businesses and the productivity of our farms. There may also be opportunities for financial gains from carbon trading.

To reap the benefits for crops and pastures, and for the confidence of trading however, we need to ensure stable soil carbon. The processes required for deposition of stable organic carbon is the subject of research of which details are emerging. When similar topics popped up several times in my learnings in the last few weeks I thought it was time to check it out.

I have previously written about the importance of root exudates in the process of sequestering stable soil carbon (see There’s Carbon, then There’s Carbon). We also know that many different soil microbes play a critically important role in the carbon cycle. Microbiologists/mycologists at Sydney University, have proposed a process that gives us a better explanation of how carbon is sequestered. The potential commercialisation of their findings could be an enormous breakthrough to our industry – especially for grain growing industry. Continue reading “IMPROVED OPPORTUNITIES FOR STORING SOIL CARBON?” »

LET’S DIP OUR TOE IN THE WATER

6 November 2014 / 0 comments

If we want to grow our businesses and improve our yield/ profit/ fulfillment, we need to always be looking for a better way of doing things. It’s great to learn new ideas and become enthused about a new system, but if we don’t act then nothing changes. I’d like to encourage you to try something different this season. Or have you already tried something different on your farm recently? In trying something different I don’t necessarily want to use the word ‘trial’ as this tends to indicate multiple plots tested under the reductionist mentality – where one input is changed and the outcome or yield tested accordingly. With the complexities of nature’s systems, to alter one input and look at the effects sort of misses the point of many of the processes used in regenerative agriculture. The symbiosis created from changing several things can be of great benefit and missed in the reductionist scientific model.

Doing something different may mean you have to be a little brave. Continue reading “LET’S DIP OUR TOE IN THE WATER” »

SOLVING (& PREVENTING) CALVING PROBLEMS – the natural way

24 October 2014 / 0 comments

Unnecessary costs associated with vet bills and lost production from lost calves are certainly not things we want as graziers. We want to reap the monetary reward for carrying a cow in our business for a 12 month period and keep every dollar in our pocket. I want to share with you a simple way that we have done this and give you an understanding behind what went on.

Quite some years ago now we had pretty dramatic calving issues (dystocia) with our heifers. When I say pretty dramatic, I mean pulling around 50% of calves. I can’t recall if it was a dry season, or what specific conditions may have contributed to this anomaly (as this certainly was not the norm for us), but it was clearly not a great occurrence.

Frustrated by what was happening, we pulled out ‘Healthy Cattle, Naturally’, a cattle health book by Pat Coleby. Continue reading “SOLVING (& PREVENTING) CALVING PROBLEMS – the natural way” »

$Refractometer up close$

PLANT HEALTH AND SUGAR LEVELS

18 October 2014 / 0 comments

What do you reply when you are asked what you do? Maybe that you produce corn, wheat, lamb, beef, wool or chickpeas?

Yes, we farmers ARE doing these things, but we are actually in the business of maximising the capture of light energy from the sun, for the production of chemical energy and sugars in the plant. With these sugars we want to maximise our food and fibre production, because this is our profitability. And, as regenerative farmers, we want to do this whilst increasing the quality of our asset base (soil, farm environment and our team).

So, the sugar levels in the plant are like a gauge of photosynthetic activity. They are also a gauge of the health of the plant; the higher the sugar levels – the healthier the plant. A determination of the plant’s sugar levels, (as well as other dissolved solids like minerals) is measured as Brix.

Measuring brix levels is a helpful thing to do because it is very quick to do and gives us clues as to the health of the plant and the subsequent likelihood of insect pest attack, frost susceptibility, possible plant growth limitations and more. If higher brix levels can have such benefits to us and our crops, then we also want to know how we can increase brix levels. Continue reading “PLANT HEALTH AND SUGAR LEVELS” »

OUR EXPERIENCES WITH LOW STRESS STOCK HANDLING

10 October 2014 / 0 comments

We don’t ‘run’ the cattle into the yards anymore! You may recall from a few weeks ago that with low stress stockhandling, attitude is everything. This includes our language. If we don’t want to move our cattle at a constant trot all the way to the yards, then let’s not phrase it this way. I would like to share with you some examples of how Low Stress Stockhandling has helped us in our operations. I think the examples help to give a better understanding of the principles I talked of a fortnight ago.

Whilst we haven’t actively tried to do any comparative measurements with cattle here at home, we have much anecdotal evidence of the benefits. I will share with you some of the differences we have noticed and some specific examples of what we have done. Continue reading “OUR EXPERIENCES WITH LOW STRESS STOCK HANDLING” »

GROWER EXPERIENCES WITH EXHAUST EMISSIONS and basic plant physiology

5 October 2014 / 0 comments

I spoke with a couple of farmers this week who have been using the Bio-Agtive Emissions Exhaust system, to see how their crops are performing. I want to share this with you, but I also want to share a basic understanding of plant physiology in trying to help you understand how the Bio-Agtive exhaust system may be getting the results it is and how natural processes can support plant growth. Sometimes we forget to go right back to basics to understand things and I think it is helpful in this situation. Regardless if you are a cropper or a grazier or what you think of the exhaust system, there is some great understanding about plant growth here.

HOW DO PLANTS GROW?

Photosynthesis

I’m sure you will all recall the process of photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is taken from the air by plants, and along with water from the soil and light energy from the sun, plants convert these things into plant photosynthates (sugars, starches, proteins, carbohydrates). Oxygen is released from the plant in this process. It can be simply represented by this equation.

6CO₂+ 6H₂O + sunlight energy = C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

(Carbon dioxide + water + sunlight = glucose + oxygen)

This is how carbon gets from the air into plants. The plant releases some of the produced sugars as root exudates to feed soil microbes and fungus (which supply nitrogen and other nutrients to the plant), as a result this is also one way that carbon ends up in the soil. Continue reading “GROWER EXPERIENCES WITH EXHAUST EMISSIONS and basic plant physiology” »

LOW STRESS STOCKHANDLING for boosting productivity

27 September 2014 / 1 comments

I’ve talked quite a bit about land management in previous blogs, but being a ‘conscious’ farmer to me is about also treating our livestock well. This is important for the welfare of the animals, but also because whatever is good for the animals is also good for productivity, meat quality and carcase yield. Not to mention that it also makes a day mustering, or in the yards a much more pleasant experience! It would seem like madness to spend our efforts on the right pastures and genetics for optimising weight gains, to then send stock off to market and lose an unnecessary amount of this to shrink as a result of poor handling.

I think I’d be fair in saying that with Low Stress Stockhandling it’s one in, all in. So, after my husband Derek attended a school about 5 years ago, it was not long after that his father and I then went on to upskill too! We’ve been practicing it ever since. I’d like to share with you the great impact that this can have on your herd, as well as the principles behind practicing it. For any of you who have previously trained in this area, I hope you enjoy a re-cap (as I have also done in writing this blog). For those of you that haven’t, I hope it gives you a taste for what is possible. I strongly encourage attending a course, as no amount of writing can truly convey what the hands on learning can.

I also had a chat with Low Stress Stockhandling founder Jim Lindsay, to get an update on whether anything had been updated or changed since I had attended training.

One of the important things to remember about low stress stockhandling, is that it is NOT about NO stress, it is about LOW stress, and low stress is even perhaps better expressed as appropriate pressure. Continue reading “LOW STRESS STOCKHANDLING for boosting productivity” »

TRACTOR EXHAUST EMISSIONS AS A SOIL PRIMER

20 September 2014 / 0 comments

If we can omit a negative from our farm businesses, then this is a good thing, but if we can turn that negative into a positive, then even better still! This has been the experience of growers who have taken tractor exhaust emissions are directed them into the soil.

Three negatives are eliminated:

The release of carbon into the atmosphere
The use of certain artificial fertilisers that can harm beneficial soil microbes, leach into waterways and aquifers and create mineral imbalance in the plant.
The use of fungicides as seed treatments – which can also harm beneficial fungi in the soil.

The exhaust emissions become a desirable thing – as they stimulate soil biology, fumigate planting seed and provide carbon and micronutrients to the soil. The emissions are not designed to be a plant fertiliser in themselves, but rather are there to prime the soil microbiology, so that THEY can make available the necessary nutrients for the crop or pasture. Continue reading “TRACTOR EXHAUST EMISSIONS AS A SOIL PRIMER” »

MAGNIFICENT MYCORRHIZAE

12 September 2014 / 0 comments

We found a mushroom in our black soil country this week, which was very exciting for us. This country has been in perennial pastures for 4 years now, but before this, had a history of years of chemical use and fallow periods. We think this is a pretty good indicator of the soil health improving as Derek has never seen one on this black soil farming country before… ever. My Dad talks of taking box trailers full of mushrooms to the Sydney markets, which he picked as a kid from the pastures in their paddocks at Yass, in southern NSW (Australia). Whilst there are still mushrooms about, they are not of this quantity that they once were and it got me thinking about fungi, which led me to mycorrhizal fungi.

It’s pretty clear that mycorrhizal fungi are a wonderful advantage to have in soils – you will even hear the benefits of it touted in conventional farming circles! Let’s examine it a little more though – because when we understand the potential benefits of something, is when we begin to value it enough to encourage it and work out how we can incorporate it into our farming systems.

Unlike mushrooms, mycorrhizal fungi exist in obligate symbiotic relationships with plant roots. What does this mean? This means that the mycorrhizae are entirely dependent on the plant roots for their survival – they cannot exist without the plant roots. They rely on the liquid carbon containing exudates from the roots of their host plants. You will no doubt be familiar with the appearance of fungi – with the strand like threads of hyphae that they produce. These hyphae grow into the tips of the roots and extend out into the surrounding soil – seeking nutrients like N, P, S, Zn and Boron, as well as moisture. It seeks and supplies these things for the plant in exchange for the carbon rich root exudates which it feeds on for energy. Continue reading “MAGNIFICENT MYCORRHIZAE” »