Grain & Graze 3 is the third phase of a long-term mixed farming program, more recently supported by GRDC.
Since the Grain & Graze initiative commenced in 2003, considerable progress has been made towards increasing the understanding of grazing crops, how to integrate livestock and cropping on farms and the management challenges and risks of operating a complex farming system.
The focus for Northern Victoria has been on three areas:
- Smarter grazing of crops and stubbles to optimise business and production risk and increase profits.
- Grazing crop type: crop (wheat, barley, oats and canola) and variety assessment
- Grazing crop agronomy: timing of grazing, intensity of grazing
- Forage variety assessment
- Use of failed crops & the grazing value of stubbles
- Summer crop potential
- The impact of livestock in no-till systems
- Better management crop and pastures within a rotation to improve crop and livestock production.
- Pasture type: variety assessment
- System effects of time of termination legume pastures
- Grazing management across large Mallee paddock areas
- Native pastures and pasture cropping
- Containment management – design, managing animals in and on return to paddock
- More informed decisions made by growers and advisors about the enterprise mix that best meets their needs and goals.
- Enterprise mix & what makes businesses robust
- Managing risk across the farm business
- Understanding people how they make decisions
- Business analysis – how do decisions and different scenarios impact the bottom line
Since 2010 when BCG became involved, along with you, we’ve experienced seasons ranging from decile 1 to 10 demonstrating the full range of production possible! Assessment of 2016 trials, and scenario analysis using Farm4Prophet for 10 farm businesses, will be completed over the next two months to complete project activities.
Our learnings from Grain & Graze 3 that will help you make better mixed farming decisions, have been presented through a range of trial and event presentations, BCG Results summaries, and are progressively being uploaded onto the new BCG and Grain & Graze 3 websites.
Please contact Alison on alison@bcg.org.au or 0429 922 787 if you’d like further information.
