Southern Dirt have been awarded GRDC funding for several local projects of importance to our farmers. Through an extensive consultation with farmers we developed a priority list for funding and were successful in obtaining a number of grants.

The 4 trials we are implementing currently include:

Summer Cropping Demonstrations  – This project will be a demonstration of summer cropping and will evaluate the resultant impact on crop growth and yield on winter waterlogged soils in the Albany port zone.

Optimising Timing of Nitrogen – To enable growers to make timely and efficient nitrogen decisions by having a rule of thumb around the cost/benefit of feeding N to crops on waterlogged soils.

Ripper Gauge Trials – Growers will use the demonstration sites to increase knowledge and adoption of deep ripping and controlled traffic farming used for alleviating non-wetting soils, compaction and waterlogging on their particular soil types and farming systems.

Demonstrations of Legume Crops for Reliable Profitability –  The majority of growers in the port zones will have access to agronomy packages for pulses/legumes and to whole farm modelling tools for their own farms to determine if particular legumes are profitable in their system. 20% of growers will be actively using these tools to assess the risks and rewards in growing a legume for a break crop on their property by 2021.