Dollars on the table for mixed farming enterprises

A NEW $2.1 million, four-year pilot project designed to put more dollars in the pockets of mixed farming businesses has been launched by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and the Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC).

The joint project is targeting businesses producing both livestock and grain across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.

The goal of the project is to showcase to primary producers how new or alternative management practices, along with key learnings from scientific research and development, could benefit commercial mixed farming operations.

As a first step, the project co-ordinators are calling for preliminary applications for producer demonstration sites (PDS) across Australia.

Applications opened on August 15 and close on September 25.

MLA project manager for producer demonstration sites Alana McEwan said partnering with GRDC was a critical and collaborative step in delivering better outcomes for mixed farmers.

“The close linkages between MLA’s PDS program and GRDC’s National Grower Network in delivering impactful, on-farm, locally relevant projects created an opportunity to develop a partnership demonstration site program targeted towards mixed farming systems.

“This partnership program will support groups of producers to demonstrate, adapt and validate the benefits of integrating new management practices, research and development outputs, and associated skills within the context of their commercial production systems.”

GRDC senior regional manager south Stephen Loss said the project was an important opportunity for industry collaboration that would help support on-farm practice change and peer-to-peer learning and deliver production and profitability gains.

“We know it can be challenging for producers to translate R&D into actionable practice change in the context of their local environment and farming system,” Dr Loss said.

“This partnership between GRDC and MLA will see the development of six PDS projects that will provide producers with a hands-on and guided experience to implement research on-farm which highlights profitability and productivity benefits to drive practice change.”

The MLA/GRDC Partnership PDS Program aims to have producer groups aligned with these six projects and in action by early 2025.

These groups will be able to access the PDS sites to demonstrate, adapt and validate the benefits of integrating new management practices, along with research and development outcomes within commercial farming systems.