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.
For the Croppers
Depending on how your current cropping operation runs. Instead of changing one input over a bigger area and tracking the plant health, insect presence, yield outcome and profit. Why not take one farming block and cut it in half and treat one side with a different programme and leave the other under your traditional management? Carry this out over a number of years. Make sure you compare all the advantages or disadvantages of the two systems. For example, if one programme allows you to plant a week earlier into a more optimal sowing window (due to moisture differences), then this is what should happen. Traditional trialing would have both blocks sown at the same time, to remove this variable, but I say – this difference that one of the systems has enabled is the very point! If one programme/system allows earlier planting, (which may be an advantage), then that is the very reflection of the system, and how it should occur.
What might you try differently?
- Put in a multi species cover crop?
- Move from petrochemical fertilisers to softer options?
- Could you measure brix levels and tissue test to then change things accordingly to achieve the healthiest plant?
Trying something new on the farm may mean seeking some help from someone different – someone outside your usual circle of influence or advice.
For the Graziers
What might you like to try differently? Options here will depend on what you are currently doing. Can you just take one block and treat it differently; graze one paddock differently?
- Can you combine mobs to increase grazing intensity?
- Can you split a section of the paddock off with an electric tape and graze it really intensively in this section?
- Can you allocate one paddock as a priority paddock – to immediately come back to graze once pasture has recovered? Continue this for the whole growing season. (You may wish to refer to my previous blog Animal Performance and Planned Grazing).
- Can you completely rest a paddock for 12 months and see what happens? (This is what we are trying this year).
What are we doing?
Despite having utilised planned grazing for many years now, we have never actually taken one of our more productive blocks out of rotation for a 12 month period. This is something different that we are going to try. We are going to drop a grazing block completely out of our graze plan and rest it for 12 months. These are subdivisions of a larger paddock. So, the results can be readily compared with other subdivisions, which will not be dropped out for 12 months. We have chosen a block that was on high rotation grazing last summer. So, we’re trying to mix it up as much as we can. It is a sub-tropical grass pasture that has limited diversity in summer, aside from these grasses; we are hoping that the changes may help to encourage some different species. (You will see this block in the photo above; it had great clover over winter, but we would still like more diversity – especially over summer). We have noticed a few more native grasses since the high rotation grazing (this is anecdotal not measured from a monitoring point), and we’re hoping this will improve more with further change. We will choose the block with our monitoring site in it, so we can track any changes in pasture species and density. I would also like to try some higher density in one of the other blocks, via some extra subdivision with some electric tapes – as it is a great opportunity for comparison. (Notice I said “I”. I will have to talk to the main ‘on grounders’, as there will be a little more work involved – but worth it for the comparisons).
we are the innovators!
Innovation most often comes from farmers, rather than from industry bodies. So, if we sit around waiting for something to be tested, tried and proven in your area before you give it a go, we may have to wait a while. I understand that some of the techniques that I blog about may have examples that are in a very different environment to yours, but this is the VERY reason we need to give these things a go ourselves. We need to give it a go on a small area to work out how such ideas can work in each of our soil types, climates, and with our different machinery and infrastructure that we have available to us. How can we tweak the system to suit the context of our business and lives?
Then I’d love you to share it with us, so we can all learn from each other’s experiences – then others will reciprocate and you will learn too. You can do this by placing comments after my blogs or by giving me a call for a chat or by emailing me.
What are you going to do differently in the next 12 months?
Let me know what you might try differently in the next 12 months or what you have tried differently in the past 12 months?