Production per unit of water, whether bales of cotton or tonnes of grain, may become a useful assessment of irrigation efficiency for individuals as well as whole industries.
The Healthy Soils for Sustainable Farms Programme is a wide-ranging, $5 million programme that covers a variety of agricultural sectors across almost all the states of Australia.
The current range of agricultural industries involved in the Healthy Soils for Sustainable Farms Programme includes:
• Grain and crops
• Cotton
• Sheep and wool
• Sugar
• Vegetables
• Organics
The scale of the projects supported (more)...
Irrigators want to improve WUE in terms of bales per ML or tonnes per ML, with the intention to maximise their profitability or $/ML. An important step to achieving this is through the adoption of irrigation management best practices. Consultants will be mentored to increase their knowledge, skills and confidence to deliver a range of irrigation services. Irrigation training, farm (more)...
Focusing on sub-tropical eastern Australia including the northern grains belt, southern cane industry, the southern Qld and northern NSW dairy industry, subtropical grazing, most of Australia’s cotton industry and a range of subtropical horticultural crops, this project will determine key Climate Science R&D necessary to improve existing forecast skill. Applications and tools that are likely to be of high benefit to agriculture will be proposed.
Most cotton farms are situated on riparian flood plains and best management practice (BMP) of soils is imperative to the sustainability of these landscapes.
One of the best ways to improve water management and to optimise nutrition inputs to reduce the impact of rising fertiliser costs to improve soil health and management.
A 2005 study of Australia’s cotton industry examined farmers’ current knowledge and understanding of soil health. It (more)...
Felicity Roos, at the University of Sydney, will be doing a short trial of the ‘SoluSampler’. The SoluSampler is a water sampler that collects samples at various root depths in order to monitor rootzone salinity. This tool has been used in citrus and grape crops and Felicity will be testing it for suitability for monitoring nutrient leaching and salinity levels under irrigated cotton and grains.
A key issue identified by the research community working with the cotton industry was the lack of understanding and acceptance of the concept of deep drainage. Deep drainage is defined as the part of the water (applied to the surface and as rainfall or irrigation) that moves past the rootzone. In general the existing paradigm was “cotton soils don’t leak”. However, the research community related to the Australian Cotton CRC (ACCRC) (more)...
This report summarises the major findings which have arisen from the project Knowledge Management in Cotton and Grains Irrigation. This report should be considered in conjunction with the detailed evaluation report prepared by Coutts JR consultants.
The lessons learned are detailed and recommendations provided where appropriate. They are discussed under the following headings:
Knowledge Management concepts and (more)...
This is an abbreviated version of the Signposts report of the same name.
Signposts for Australian agriculture (Signposts) is a partnership between industry, government and research organisations. It provides access to economic, social and environmental data specific to an industry in order to inform policy development, strategic decision making and research priorities.
Agriculture is under pressure to demonstrate its performance credentials - in particular its environmental (more)...
