Monitoring grazing management: Don’t think, know!
Mid Lachlan Landcare have devised a program for six local grazing farms to establish sample plots that will be crash and time grazed then professionally monitored over two years to see if they find ecological and production improvements.
“Don’t think, know”, was the message given by Victorian Holistic Management guru, Graeme Hand when he spoke to a group of Mid Lachlan graziers in 2016 about monitoring their holistically managed grazing areas to see if they were finding ecological and production improvements in their management techniques.
As a follow up, six farms have been selected to build two 30 by 30m plots, side by side. The plot will be inensively grazed at intervals selected by the farmers. The plots will be left to recover in between. According to Graeme Hand, this kind of intensive grazing should encourage native seed germination. The recovery periods will allow perennial pasture to establish.
Mid Lachlan Landcare’s, Scottie Hickman who operates the “Growing the Grazing Revolution Program” is behind this idea.
“Together we will discover which perennial species are present in the seedbank of the soil, what sort of establishment period the land on each farm needs and how long the land takes to recover after grazing”, said Hickman.
“The main outcome of this project is to utilise these practice plots to trial different recovery periods and grazing intensity before replicating outcomes on the rest of the farm”, he said.