Planning and execution the secrets to success

More than 200 farmers attended four field days held recently on properties at Boggabri and Purlewaugh with mainly light soils. Excellent annual legumes such as rose clover, serradella, biserrula, arrowleaf clover, naturalised clovers and sub clover featured as part of perennial grass pastures. 

The season was good, but these pastures are several years old (in some cases more than 25 years) and have been featured at field days annually regardless of seasonal conditions. Annual legumes co-exist well with tropical perennial grasses in good and bad years supplying both summer and winter feed. Both properties are profitable businesses.

George Avendano with his wife Maree own the Boggabri field day property. Mr Avendano summed up the success of pastures on both properties by stressing that careful planning and execution of such plans was essential to achieve close to 100 per cent success with establishment and persistence, plus high productivity. 

The Avendanos purchased land in the Boggabri area 28 years ago, with their new farm commonly regarded as poor soil being largely acidic, light textured, low fertility and previously further degraded by cultivation-based cropping with little nutrient deficiency correction. “We couldn’t run 150 cows at first”, Mr Avendano stressed. They now run 1000 cows, have expanded considerably in area as well as per hectare performance, sell offspring at 500 kilograms or heavier to premium markets. Farm income has paid for expansion.

Planning for improved perennial pastures includes cropping for at least two and preferably three years prior to sowing perennial grasses in mid spring. Cropping has two purposes; to provide winter feed and to allow summer and winter weed seed banks to be largely eliminated prior to perennial pasture sowing. 

A recently released NSW Department of Primary Industries booklet “Temperate perennial pasture establishment guide: Steps to ensure success” also stresses similar technology for perennial species like phalaris, even though they are sown at different times. Ensuring weeds are not the limiting factor is also critical for them.

It is generally not feasible to upgrade all of a property with introduced perennial pastures at the one time because of the unbalance this causes to livestock enterprises. For example one only needs a given amount of winter fodder crop, the typical precursor to sowing perennials. Having too big an area under summer fallow also impacts too much on most stock enterprises.

All too often I am asked “can’t I just direct sow perennials into a paddock, even if I firstly pre-spray it out or plough it once ahead of sowing?” While such haste is appreciated, it is impossible to avoid massive weed competition for the newly established pasture, more than often the reason for establishment failure.

Plans often need adjusting, but generally result in progress. In the case of the two field day properties one has achieved 70 per cent tropical grasses across the whole farm over the last 28 years (with total area expanding via new purchases) and the second has established 40pc over seven years of ownership. Establishment success in both cases has been close to 100pc. 

A lot of factors are critical for property upgrading, including adding winter legumes, correcting soil fertility, good legume nodulation and grazing management. But nothing has been as critical as planning and execution of the plan. 

Next week: Big choice in types of dual purpose cereals for autumn sowing.