INCREASING GROUNDCOVER TO BUILD RESILIENT SOILS IN THE WESTERN FITZGERALD BIOSPHERE

Timeframe: July 2021 - August 2022

Funding Source: Smart Farms Small Grants (Federal Government funding administered jointly by  Departments of Environment and Energy and Agriculture and Water Resources)

Project Coordinators: Jolene Daniel

SUMMARY

This project has two overarching objectives. One is to increase soil health and resilience across our landscapes by encouraging farmers to experiment with new and innovative ways of maintaining continuous live groundcover on their paddocks. The second is to actively seek out and provide ongoing support to local farmers who are interested in adopting transformative NRM practices. To increase the proportion of agricultural soils under permanent ground cover we will provide incentives to adopt practices such as establishing perennial palatable native fodder species using the Enrich model and variations on it, multi-species forage pastures, pasture cropping and planned grazing management. Our area has just experienced three years of drought and climate change modelling predicts more frequent extremes of weather in the future. The activities in this project are intended to help farmers pre-empt that risk by helping their soils to help them