The Conscious Farmer

WATER SYSTEMS FOR LIVESTOCK

5 September 2014 / 3 comments

I know as farmers (and possibly more you men folk) we love to learn from each other the nitty gritty practical ways that we address certain things on the farm. So this week I thought I might start a conversation about stock water delivery and share what we’ve been up to here at ‘The Conscious Farm’. We have a fair variety of troughs and water delivery systems, which you will see. I want to share with you the relative success and downfalls of each and their influences on the land regeneration that we want to achieve.

Our farm consists of black soil plains, sloping red soil country with scattered timber and timbered, less productive hill country. On the plains and some of the sloping country we have portable water troughs and smaller paddock sizes – this is our most favoured system. Some of the sloping country also has smaller blocks, but with a central point that stock water from. The hill country has around 200ha hectares of land that all still comes back to the one watering point – and this is something we would like to change. I will share with you the merits of each system what we have done to optimise each one – given that some systems are less than ideal.

This blog will address water delivery systems, so I won’t go into the details of water quality here today – but be aware that this is a very important factor in stock performance. I might look at that on another occasion.

We have loved the many benefits that rotational grazing has brought to our pastures and farm. As part of this system change, it has meant that we had to alter some of our water delivery systems.

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WHAT’S CONTRIBUTING TO THE CARBON DEPLETION OF OUR SOILS?

30 August 2014 / 2 comments

The adoption of no-till farming has been great for many reasons, but why are carbon levels of soils still depleting despite the return of much carbon back to the soil via stubble? This week I examine why high rates of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser is contributing to soil carbon depletion, as well as what to consider in transitioning from high N agriculture to a lower input system.

The liquid carbon pathway, which is described by Christine Jones and I have reported on in ‘There’s Carbon, then there’s Carbon”, is the way that plants take carbon from the atmosphere and convert it via photosynthesis to carbon rich plant sugars. These sugars which provide two functions for the plant:

providing immediate fuel to the plants
are exuded from the plant roots to feed soil microbiology. In turn, these soil microbes make nutrients (including nitrogen), available to the plant. One particularly important outcome of this process is that these root exudates are the substances in which carbon enters the soil in a stable humate form.

When we bypass nature and supply nitrogen in an inorganic form (synthetic fertilisers), there is no requirement for the plant to supply exudates to the soil microbes that in turn supply nitrogen to the plant. This is because the plant already has access to luxury levels of nitrogen. This means we have interrupted the process by which plants deliver stable carbon to the soil, and soils are subsequently being depleted of their carbon stores.^{1
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‘CHANGE’ AS A LAND HEALER

22 August 2014 / 0 comments

For those of you practicing planned, rotational grazing, can you remember the AMAZING change in your pasture when you first moved from set stocking to a planned/rotational grazing?

Phenomenal wasn’t it? I bet nearly any of the advances since then have not been as dramatic as what that initial change was?

For those of you not practicing planned grazing, it is these fantastic outcomes that keep the rest of us in this regenerative and low or no input system.

Hold these thoughts….

Dick Richardson is an educator and grazier at Boorowa in southern NSW, Australia. He is originally South African, where he practiced HM principles and he now does similar in Australia. It was Dick that suggested to me that “too much grass is a bigger problem than not enough grass”, that I mentioned in a previous blog. It is fantastic to speak to Dick about how to optimise planned grazing, as he puts a very practical slant on planned grazing that is both production and regeneration focused. Now before I go on to talk more about Dick’s thoughts on grazing, I will link you back to the question from the start.

Can you remember the AMAZING change in your pastures that you got when you first moved from set stocking to planned/rotational grazing?

Has there been any pasture advances since, that have surpassed that initial pasture boost from the change in management? This is what Dick advocates – it is the CHANGE in the system that is kick starting something great in the soil and in the pastures. This change may be from set stocking to rotational, or from low density to high density or from a completely ‘spelled paddock’ (ie. 12 months) to an intensively grazed paddock. It may be grazing one paddock as the first with new spring growth, but leaving this as the last grazed spring growth the following year.

So the message is to mix it up as much as possible.

What are the variables in a paddock that can be altered to achieve this desired change?

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PLANTS HELPING PLANTS

15 August 2014 / 0 comments

Plants helping plants! This is interesting stuff. Competition between plants is well known and documented, but what if the opposite could also happen, that plants of different species could actually help other plants. There is nothing particularly new about this – it can be something as simple as a tree providing shelter from direct sunlight and heat, allowing a plant underneath to do better than it otherwise would. But it is more than just this.

First, understand that when species interact for the benefit of either one or both of the species, but not to the detriment of either, it is known as facilitation.

What is really interesting and more recently evident from studies however, is that during times of stress such as drought, facilitation can increase. “Positive interactions, such as those that promoted neighbours’ survival, strengthened in influence, and negative interactions, such as those that hindered neighbours’ growth, weakened.”¹

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ACCOUNTABILITY IS POWERFUL!

8 August 2014 / 1 comments

There’s so much to be said for getting our head in the right space with regard to running a profitable and regenerative farm business. Now I think you’re going to be open to this, because I have generally found that those of us who are brave enough to break away from ‘the norm’ of how things are done in the paddock, are also conscious enough to consider some self-development of the mind. We don’t just aim for our farms to be sustainable, but regenerative right? Well shouldn’t we aim for the same in other parts of our lives? Do you aim for your relationships with friends and spouses to be just sustainable? Of course not, we want them to be regenerative, and so it is true with our minds.

I have personally learnt how to be more accountable in our farm business and it is really empowering as well as helpful for the business. I used to think I was fairly accountable and not one to blame – and in the old way that I defined blame, I probably wasn’t; but I have since realised what it means to be fully accountable when things haven’t gone to plan.

When we fully accept accountability, it is empowering because it puts the ball in our court to be able to fix an issue. When we blame however, we are handing over the power to fix a problem to another person, which makes us feel somewhat helpless. Read this paragraph again.

In handing the power (and responsibility) of fixing a problem over to someone else, they may or may not do something about it – it is out of our control. This is not good enough for our businesses. Let’s face it, in our businesses we want to leave as few things to chance as possible, so being accountable will help us take charge in our businesses and ensure outcomes. Continue reading “ACCOUNTABILITY IS POWERFUL!” »

THE MIGHTY DUNG BEETLE

2 August 2014 / 2 comments

Dung Beetles! – These little guys were something that I knew were a great advantage to have on your farm but had really underestimated just how fantastic they can be! I have rarely seen the production advantages of dung beetles measured, and it may really surprise you – it certainly did me.

If you could get a 50% increase in your pasture production, sustained over at least a 9 year period you’d be pretty happy right? Well this is the change capacity that dung beetles possess. And at no cost! So, wouldn’t the smart thing be to make choices that encourage them onto your farm, or to introduce them to your farm if they are not already present?

Dung beetles are a ‘no off farm input’, true regenerator of the soil – and that’s what we’re interested in! Their tunneling aids in rainfall infiltration, breaking up compaction, moving nutrients into the soil and leaving pathways in the soil through which root systems can easily penetrate – and importantly, they help contribute to our bottom line.

Not to mention that they can be pretty fun and interesting to watch! Derek and I were most excited the first time we came across the ball rolling beetles here at home.

So, the question is, how do they achieve regenerative outcomes and how can we encourage them onto our farms?

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ANIMAL PERFORMANCE & TALL GRASS GRAZING

25 July 2014 / 0 comments

I mentioned a few weeks back the feedback I had from Cam at Uralla (NSW, Australia) about how he is optimising animal performance in his planned grazing operation on the New England Tablelands of NSW. This is something that Cam, like us, has had trouble optimising in the past. But Cam is turning this around with some tweaking of his management; he doesn’t profess to fully understand why he is getting the outcomes he is, but with his income reliant on consistent weight gain and meeting growth targets of dairy heifers, he has got a pretty good handle on what is working and what is not. He takes on heifers from around 120 – 180kg and carries them through until the point of calving, during which time he is regularly weighing, observing and monitoring and changing tact to optimise performance. He is paid for weight and size gains.

It is the density of stocking and the time between moves that Cam has been playing with. He has practiced time controlled grazing for some 25 years now, but it is only within the last few years that Cam has really felt he’s getting a handle on how to optimise animal performance – which is also coinciding with better pasture performance. Let’s look at what Cam has been doing.

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EXPERIENCES FROM THE U.S. – COVER CROPPING

19 July 2014 / 5 comments

How fantastic to chat with two of the world’s leading cover croppers who are reaping the benefits from their multispecies cover cropping. Look back on last week’s blog for the background on cover cropping, and let’s now get to learning from Gabe Brown from North Dakota and Gail Fuller from Kansas, who I have spoken with last week to get some real life experiences of this technique. To me, the most truly amazing improvement that these farmers have affected and measured over time is rainfall infiltration rates. Testing on Gabe’s farm shows increases from initial rates of ½”/hour (12mm) to 8”(200mm)/hour – a 16 fold increase! Gabe says “we can produce more grain on a lot less rainfall”. Similarly, Gail Fuller reports at least a 6 fold increase – from less than 1”(25mm)/hour to 6.5”(163mm)/hour in the high clay soils of Kansas.

This allows them to optimise rainfall capture from the less frequent, but more intense and heavier rainfall events being experienced in recent years. This infiltration then also prevents erosion and nutrient loss from what would otherwise be runoff rainfall events.

Sometimes we find ourselves skipping straight to thinking about why a technique won’t work in our environment, but I encourage you to think, ‘how can I adapt this so that it could work in my environment?” So, before we get too concerned about this not working in a dry climate – I will tell you that Gabe Brown has a 16 inch rainfall (10” falls as rain and 6” as snow – certainly not a wet environment), and things are well and truly working there, where Gabe achieves grain yields 25% above the district average, with just 1/3 of the input costs (more on the input changes later). He has temperatures typically ranging from 36^oC (98^oF) to minus 34^oF (-30^oC), with 90^oF (32^oC) common for much of summer.

If you are considering starting out cover cropping, the first cover crop is likely to be ‘ugly’, as Gail puts it. ”Understand however, that while it may not look like a great success visually, there will be lots of useful and wonderful things happening below ground – even with a poor crop” Gail assures. ”Remember, we have 100 years or so of a ‘dead’ system to repair, so don’t lose heart.”

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THE ‘NEW’ COVER CROPPING

11 July 2014 / 4 comments

There is SO much to offer from the huge and exciting variety of applications of this technique – it’s hard to know where to start! What I will be doing is start by focusing on the concepts of cover cropping and addressing the nitty gritty and real life experiences (which is what I love most) in coming blogs, rather than doing one big gloss over. This will keep the blogs to a readable length and will also allow your feedback and input, which we can build on as the later blogs come.

[Talking of feedback, I had some really great and helpful feedback from Cam at Uralla after last week’s blog on animal performance under planned grazing systems. More on Cam’s feedback and comments in the side bar(to the right) of the main page of this blog. Thanks HEAPS Cam. I'm sure that Cam's sharing with us will help give more of you in our Conscious Farmer community the confidence to share your experiences. You will realise that this is a ‘safe’ place in which you can share; either for the benefit of informing others or for seeking input from me and/or others].

Back to cover cropping! There are ALL SORTS of reasons to cover crop, which include incorporating grazing into the system. Certain farmers have worked with this technique and had some amazing success with it and I hope to take this and share it around other parts of the world.

Just imagine increasing your soil infiltration from ½” (25mm) per hour to 8”/hr (200mm)? This is an astonishing improvement achieved by North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown, whose experiences I will share with you next week! On our farm in recent years, we have experienced longer dry periods between which we have more intense and heavier rainfall events compared with the more even nature of our annual rainfall of last decade. I hear these observations echoed by North Americans with regard to their areas. (I am interested to know if the South Americans and Africans are experiencing similar). What this means however, is that CAPTURE and STORAGE of rainfall are now more critical than ever.

The amount of rainfall that we are able to INFILTRATE during these less frequent falls becomes paramount; more important than our actual yearly rainfall. Not only this, but how much we can then hold in the soil to stretch us through to the next rainfall event is equally as critical.

What is cover cropping?

Traditionally I would have thought of cover cropping as the planting of a legume or oats crop (often referred to as a green manure crop) in between cash crops, which is either worked in or sprayed out. Well, this is old school and playing small compared with the amazing things being done now.

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ANIMAL PERFORMANCE & PLANNED GRAZING

4 July 2014 / 0 comments

All graziers must surely want to be able to grow more grass – more grass means more stock, which means more kilograms of beef or lamb (or whatever animal), which means more money, right? Well – only if managed correctly.

“Too much grass is a bigger problem than not enough grass”

This is something I was told once and my initial reaction was ‘What??!’. I’ve learnt that this CAN be right and I will explain why and when.

…. Years ago we began to manage our cattle under a planned grazing rotation and moved away from a set stock system. We saw lots of fantastic changes in our farm as a result of this changed management. These include:

Dramatically increased ground cover
A lack of weeds, as the opportunity for them to germinate disappeared together with the poor ground cover.
Massive dungbeetle numbers
Much improved water infiltration – evidenced by farm dams that now rarely fill (we water cattle from portable troughs supplied from our bore).
When soils are saturated and do reach the point of runoff – it does so as beautiful clear runoff water.
A succession to higher order pasture species.
The natural regeneration of trees
And LOTS more grass.

Let’s talk about the ‘lots more grass’.

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