Cool temperate forage systems

Background:

Profitability on most dairy farms is driven by successful harvesting of pasture or home grown forages. The forage base is consistently changing, increasing the complexity of management. Despite seasonal, price and cost variations, farmers need to make profitable feeding decisions. To do this, they need to increase their pasture management skills, understand animal and plant grazing relationships, and know how their system responds to feed decisions.

This project focuses on improved pasture production and consumption. Significant improvements are made possible by understanding and optimising the response to key inputs (nutrients, water and grazing) in a complex and variable environment.

Project objective:

Increase the profitability and resilience of dairy farms by increasing the amount of pasture utilised, and improve efficiency to reduce the cost associated with milk production from pasture systems.

Project scope:

This project has a local and national scope. It is a collective R,D&E effort utilising capacity within the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research and collaborative service providers, using an array of research approaches including biophysical and farm system modelling, field and farm system research. Key activities include developing improved practices and technology to assist farmers in making pasture management decisions.

Outcomes/benefits:

Improved pasture management helps farmers improve profitability. Specific outcomes for the project are:

• Maintain industry confidence with current pasture-based systems, leading to farm expansion, dairy conversions and sustained industry growth.
• Address a key profit drivers in dairy farm business – the amount of pasture consumed per hectare, while also focusing on improving the efficiency of key inputs to reduce production costs.

There is potential to increase profitability of systems based on pasture alone by 30-50% compared to the benchmark set by the top 10% of the industry. Significant gain can be made by improving pasture consumption across the industry - the best performing farms achieve between 70- 80% of their potential pasture consumption, compared with an industry average of 40-50%.

More information:

For more information, contact Dave Henry, Dairy Australia Feedbase Program Manager.