Agricultural
15 March, 2024
Working with nature: NED’s field day
Local Farmers met at Ashley Volz’s Highgrove property for a North-Eastern Downs Landcare field day last week to discuss different ways of sustainably maintaining and improving the quality of soil in grazing paddocks.
Over 30 landholders made the trip to Highgrove for the day, and shared useful information with each other.
Ashley spoke about how he uses Gatton and green panic grasses, and burgundy beans in his grazing paddocks.
University of Southern Queensland’s Regional Soils Coordinator Cameron Leckie spoke about tests he had done on soils in four different sections of the property, these being saddle, existing pasture, mid slope, and an outbreak of salinity.
The salinity outbreak was a result of there being a boundary between two rock units (basalt on mudstone), a preferential flow path through basalt concentrating the water, and evaporation which increases the concentration of salts.
All of these factors resulted in the salinity outbreak.
Cameron said he is looking for local participants for the National Soil Survey.
The results of this survey will be used to inform future soil related extension and other programs being developed by the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF).
The link to the survey can be found here https://melbourneuni.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6JSMQiYe7PnF2YK
