Amy Wright remains the contact for the local farming community in her updated role of Sustainable Agriculture Facilitator (SAF), based at Kimba. Under the SAF role, Amy will focus on:

• Engaging and informing farmers, landholders, community groups, and agriculture industries within our region about climate-smart, sustainable agriculture practices, including best practice natural resource management, biodiversity and carbon markets, and practices that support emissions reduction and build climate resilience on-farm, to help achieve climate-smart sustainable agriculture outcomes.
   
• Facilitating partnerships and connections that will assist farmers, landholders, community groups and agriculture industries to work together to achieve sustainable agriculture outcomes.
   
• Supporting the delivery of climate-smart, sustainable agriculture projects in our region.

Joining Amy is Landscape Officer, Geraldine Turner who has also been appointed as the Carbon Outreach Officer (COO) for the region. Geraldine will continue to be based at Tumby Bay.

Together, Amy and Geraldine will work closely with South Australia’s nine landscape boards to deliver a Carbon Outreach Program that supports the agriculture and land sectors as Australia transitions towards net zero emissions by 2030. This includes strengthening landholders’ knowledge in best practice agriculture to address issues that arise in a changing climate.

We know that every farm and enterprise is different, and that the range of information available in this rapidly changing space, can be hard to keep up with. We will be holding workshops for local landholders within the next 12 months to extend further information and support, but in the meantime we encourage you to reach out to Amy or Geraldine if you’d like to discuss carbon on farms.

• Contact Amy on at amy.wright@airep.com.au or on 0467 004 555.
• Contact Geraldine at geraldine.turner@sa.gov.au or on 0407 603 574.

From the Eyre Peninsula Landscape Board

Our landscape officers have been working on a range of pest plant control across the region.

In Streaky Bay, the focus has been on gazania control. Following early June rain, it's been the ideal time to control gazania. It may appear to be a decorative garden flower but it’s actually a declared weed which competes with natives for moisture and water, causing biodiversity loss. Gazania spreads along road reserves, degraded native vegetation areas and coastal dunes, forming dense stands that excludes other plants. Read our gazania fact sheet for more information including control options.

In the Eastern district, we’ve been seeing great results with previous Cacti control as the plants die off. We’ve also been distributing more of the Cochineal beetle – which eats the Cacti – around eastern and western areas including at Kiepla silos, a rest stop at Cootra and in Wudinna (including on the pictured below Indian fig cacti). Further south, we have also been distributing Cochineal beetle at an old school site at Lipson and on roadside plants near Tumby Bay and Cockaleechie.

White weeping broom control has also been taking place around lower Eyre Peninsula. As we work towards eradicating White weeping broom from our region, a thorough search for this pest plant has been undertaken in areas with known sites including Port Neill, Point Boston, Tumby Bay, Bergs Beach, Port Lincoln and Lipson.

Our landscape officers have been working with private landholders and councils on these site inspections with subsequent control work involving cutting and swabbing the plants in sensitive areas such as creeklines, and using the basal bark method in others. Read our fact sheet for more details on control methods and plant characteristics.
 

African Boxthorn control work has also been carried out over 300km of roadsides and priority areas in the eastern district. More than 1,600 boxthorn plants have been treated to date. Work is focused on preventing the outwards spread of boxthorns, working from the least infested areas and pushing back towards the most infested areas around Cowell and Arno Bay. Fully surveyed and treated roadsides include the stretch of Lincoln Highway between Whyalla and Cowell, Cowell to Kimba Rd, Cowell to Cleve Rd, and the Lucky Bay Rd.

Boxthorn seed is spread easily by birds feeding on the fruit of mature plants, so it’s important to treat boxthorns now while they are actively growing - before they bear fruit in spring. See our African boxthorn fact sheet for more information about control options.

For more details about declared weeds including control options, see our pest plant page. Our staff at your closest landscape board office can also be contacted for control advice.

Learn from the Eyre Peninsula farmer trials by taking a look at the case studies on our website. Here’s a snapshot from just two of these case studies.

• When a lower Eyre Peninsula farmer starting having issues with aluminium toxicity such as a reduction in drought tolerance and fertiliser to yield conversion along with dead patches in wet seasons, they started rotational liming. Read the McDonald case study to find out more about their experience of managing soil acidity at their properties at Whites Flat, Koppio, Wanilla and Winters Hill.
   
• A lower EP farmer trialled deep ripping combined with mixed species to see if it would improve production and soil health in the longer term. Read this case study.
   
• A mixed species demonstration site at Cleve on drought-affected land, looked at legumes v no legumes. Find out what worked and what didn't.