A five-year project will help farmers across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales test which regenerative practices could help grain producers contend with a more volatile climate.
Regenerative agriculture refers to farming and grazing practices which seek to restore and improve the health of the production system and the landscape, rather than just sustain it.
The Stress Testing Regenerative Agriculture Practices (STRAP) project is being led by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.
Dr Mark Farrell, a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO and project lead, said the project offered a rare opportunity to rethink farming systems in Southern Australia.
“We have trials running in very different environments across the southern region. This gives us a real opportunity to redesign farming systems for a more constrained future which features less water, nitrogen and more stress,” said Dr Farrell.
The project responds to questions raised by growers through their local farming systems groups. Ag Excellence Alliance coordinated those groups to act at scale.
Dr Jade Rose, Project Manager at Ag Excellence Alliance, said that was the project’s strength.
“Each farming systems group knows its own district. Working together, they can answer questions that matter to the whole region, while every trial site stays relevant to local growers,” Dr Rose said.
The trials will explore the impacts of intercropping, legumes as a source of nitrogen, alternative fertilisers and integrating pasture into the cropping system.
Emphasis is placed on innovative tests for soil health and resilience, while also considering the environmental and economic sustainability of each system.
Small plot Experiments are designed to be analysed together as a cohesive multi-environment study. A pasture-focused small plot trial and four larger demo trials augment this, allowing researchers to predict performance in a region where a strategy has yet to be tested.
Local evidence matters, Dr Farrell said because practices that work overseas won’t always suit Australian conditions.
“Assuming a practice from Europe’s fertile, humid farming systems will work in Australia’s dryland systems is just flat out wrong ,” Dr Farrell said. “Our soils are older and more weathered, and our rainfall is far more variable. We need to build the evidence base here.”
To deliver on this, CSIRO is building data systems that link to AI and geospatial platforms to help researchers analyse complex results efficiently and at scale, covering greenhouse gas emissions, input use and economic risk.
For Dr Penny Roberts, Research Manager at Mallee Sustainable Farming, these questions are close to home. The region she works in has fragile soils and low, unreliable rainfall patterns.
“Our growers want to know how to best manage soils including ground covered year-round with systems that are economic and resilient in environments with limited moisture to work with. This project gives us answers from our own paddocks, alongside results from right across the southern region,” she said.
The STRAP project is funded by almost $8 million from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund Long-term Trials of Drought Resilient Farming Practices Program Round 2. Led by CSIRO, it is being delivered in partnership with Ag Excellence Alliance, Ag Innovation & Research Eyre Peninsula, Agriculture Kangaroo Island, MacKillop Farm Management Group, Mallee Sustainable Farming, Upper North Farming Systems, Fleurieu Farming Systems, Agbyte, Agronomy Solutions and Coutts J&R.
