Southern NSW Farmers Benefit From Saltland Research

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IN an Australian first, sheep in the Grong Grong district will soon be monitored to identify how environmental factors improve stock nutrition and on-farm profitability.

The research project will assess the use of saltbush for grazing and its impact on saline soils on a section of John Gawne’s Grong Grong property, ‘Barraclear’.

Six years ago when John bought the land, which is west of Wagga Wagga, he immediately incorporated it into the intensive cereal and canola-cropping rotation used on his other 2000 hectares. But after two harvests he noticed patches along the Cowabbie Creek yielded much lower.

'I could see there was a salt problem - there's lots of dead trees and the soil was just hopeless. I didn't know how to tackle it so we secured some funding and I fenced the patches off and went looking for answers,' he said.

A more recent option has come in the form of the Land, Water & Wool Sustainable Grazing on Saline Lands (SGSL) research site to be established on ’Barraclear’ - the first of its type outside Western Australia. In early October, 60,000 saltbush seedlings were planted on 30 ha of the property.

NSW Agriculture livestock research officer Dr Emma Richardson explained there were three objectives to the Grong Grong research - to determine the benefits of the use of stubbles and other energy supplements with saltland pastures in the field; to establish how shrub spacing affects the growth and composition of saltbush and soil water use; and to conduct on-farm economic analysis to identify and prioritise key extension messages and areas requiring further research and development.

'Saltbush has long been considered a useful component of sheep diets, particularly in environmentally-sensitive areas - but there has been little research on its benefits in the eastern States,' Emma said.

John plans to ‘crash’ graze the site using high density, short-term rotations - moving Merino weaners between crop stubble and the saltbush, which will be undersown with a native grass and legumes.

'For the best results saltbush is meant to be grazed intensively for short periods of time,' he said.

Emma Richardson said the trial will be repeated over two seasons — summer 2004-05 and 2005-06. Animals will be weighed fortnightly and will be removed from the plots when they have reached a designated liveweight. Dye bands will be used to determine wool growth over this period.

At the same time, researchers will monitor saltbush sown at various densities to establish planting guidelines and to identify impact on the water table depth and soil salinity as a result.

For John Gawne, on-farm research is vital to solving environmental problems on-farm such as dryland salinity. 'This has turned out to be a much bigger problem than I first thought. The Cowabbie Creek comes all the way from Temora and Ariah Park and this appears to be the only section with such a salt problem,' he said.

'Neighbours have tried saltbush and it has been a great success so I can't wait to see what happens here.”

Land, Water & Wool is an initiative between Australian Wool Innovation Limited and Land & Water Australia. SGSL is also supported by the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity, Meat and Livestock Australia, Australia’s National Dryland Salinity Program, NSW Agriculture and the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources.

First published November 2003. For more information go to the Sustainable Grazing on Saline Lands Sub-program.