Successfully Managing for Profit and Sustainability in the Pastoral Zone

A passion for operating successful, profitable and environmentally sympathetic wool-based businesses in the pastoral zone typifies five woolgrower families profiled in the latest Land, Water & Wool Insights publication.

Covering one-fifth of Australia’s continent, pastoral zone properties are bigger, dryer and more reliant on native vegetation systems than any other group of woolgrowers in Australia.

The Managing Pastoral Country Sub-program has worked with woolgrowers to identify how pastoral country can be better managed to address key environmental issues while maintaining productivity.

The case studies illustrate how woolgrowers are working with rangelands researchers on a range of initiatives for managing and monitoring their natural resources, including:

* Using a ‘Critical Decisions on Stocking Rate’ process for drought preparation;
* Using satellite imagery to assist monitoring of land condition at the big end of the scale and * using the ABCD Pasture Condition framework at the micro-level;
* Determining the limits of stocking rate indices; and
* Developing a recovery strategy for Mitchell grass.

Managing Pastoral County Sub-Program Coordinator Andrew Lawson said the average woolgrowing property in the pastoral zone is about six times as big as the national average and produces twice as much wool (in kilograms).

“This coupled with the small population means that a few people manage a lot of livestock over vast areas of country,” he said.” The rainfall of the rangelands is notoriously low and unreliable with a commensurate effect on productivity.

“The complex tasks of stock and fodder management are particularly crucial in the pastoral zone, because mistakes are much harder to fix and the country much slower to recover than in the ‘inside’ country with its higher rainfall.

“For the most part, it is native vegetation systems that sustain the wool industry in the pastoral zone. These systems are unique and remain some of the largest and most in tact of native vegetation types left in Australia. In this regard, the biodiversity value of the pastoral zone is immense.”

Andrew Lawson thanked the woolgrowers who appeared in the case study booklet.

“Our profiled woolgrowers have generously opened their businesses, properties and lives to be a part of this publication,” he said.

“Thanks must also go to all of the woolgrowers who were involved in the Pastoral Sub-program projects. Their participation has been essential to ensuring the Sub-program remains focussed on and relevant to the key audience of the research – other woolgrowers.”

For further information, contact Andrew Lawson, Managing Pastoral Country Sub-Program Co-ordinator or go to the Managing Pastoral Country page of this site.

Download a copy of the [Insights Case Studies on how farmers are successfully managing pastoral country for profit and sustainability](http://downloads.lwa2.com/downloads/publications_pdf/PK061226.pdf)

Hardcopies of the publication may be ordered from [Land & Water Australia's Online Catalogue](http://products.lwa.gov.au/products.asp)