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Advice the big benefit of farm planning process

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Sustainable Agriculture

Kelly and Justin Mann form Beverley are part of our Australian Government Mixed Farming project that is working with farmers to plan for improved ground cover outcomes that not only seeks to improve soil health will make life easier for farmers to manage the summer feed gap.

The Mann property is part of the Dale area and typically is hilly, rocky and with lots of creek lines leading down to the Dale River.

Justin and Kelly were looking for ways to manage some of these challenging areas to improve carrying capacity.

Working with AgVivo’s Phil Barret Lennard, the Mann’s now have a clear plan which includes the fencing of key creek lines, planting of perennial fodder in the form of diverse saltbush species and enhancing existing pastures through the addition of clovers and salt-tolerant grasses. 

Phil also suggested the building of confinement pens to better manage the health of the sheep during late autumn to early winter.  This will give Mann’s ability to defer pastures and maintain healthy groundcover levels.  He also suggested that by delaying lambing to July they can better match feed supply to the increased livestock nutritional requirements.

Kelly reckons the planning process was “Really good and exceeded expectations they had when they put in the application to be a demonstration farm.  The knowledge and advice they received was fantastic.”

Kelly went on to say she would highly recommend the process to other people.  “Planning is the key, having the expert advice was a fantastic opportunity for us, it was invaluable.”

Currently, we are carrying out soil testing to baseline existing soil carbon levels. At project end, we will evaluate if the perennial fodder that is planted will impact carbon storage in the soils.

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