In this edition

Events

• Red Hill Show 2023
• Building soil carbon and nitrogen, crop disease updates
• Horticulture Pulse Check
• Farm budgeting masterclass
• Excel for farm business
• Occasional counsellor-online
• Our Farm Our Plan Online workshops
• Business EDGE workshop

Resources

• Renovating flooded pastures
• The Fast Break - Victoria
• Soil moisture monitoring in cropping regions
• Soil community of practice newsletter
• Nuffield Drought Resilience Scholarships
• Innovation Ag Podcast
• Webinar recordings

Supports

• Victorian flood and storm support for farmers
• Financial support for flood and storm-affected farmers
• Farmer Online Assist Program
• Health and personal wellbeing
• Managing stress on the farm
• Dealing with a stressful season
• Mosquito management strategies
• Farm Business Resilience Program

Red Hill Show 2023

Agriculture Victoria will be there next to the Alpaca Pavilion for the latest advice and support for farmers affected by the floods, emergency animal diseases and farm biosecurity.

Location: Red Hill Recreation Reserve, Arthurs Seat Rd, Red Hill

Date: 11 March

Time: 8:30 am - 5 pm

Cost: $20 - $25

More information: Is available online via the Agriculture Victoria website

Contact: Jennifer Shaw on 0499 684 237.

Building soil carbon and nitrogen, crop disease updates

Ouyen

Location: Ouyen Club Inc. 9 Pickering Street Ouyen, VIC 3490

Date: 14 March

Time: 1 - 3:40 pm

Cost: Free

Registration: Online via the Agriculture Victoria website

Brim

Location: Brim Recreation Reserve, Simson Street Brim, VIC 3391

Date: 15 March

Time: 9 - 11:40 am

Cost: Free

Registration: Online via the Agriculture Victoria website

Stawell

Location: North Park 7-15 Lamont Street Stawell, VIC 3380

Date: 15 March

Time: 2:30 - 5:10 pm

Cost: Free

Registration: Online via the Agriculture Victoria website

Lake Bolac

Location:

Date: 16 March

Time: 9 - 11:40 am

Cost: Free

Registration: Online via the Agriculture Victoria website

Horticulture Pulse Check

Location: Tatura SmartFarm

Date: Thursday, 23 March

Time: 10 am - 3 pm

Registration: Reserve a spot online via the Agriculture Victoria website.

Details

• Tips on managing disease
• Soil health after waterlogging
• Preparing for extreme conditions
• Farmer health
• Business support
• Horticulture innovation and practices
• Technology and orchard management

Contact: Andy Clark

Farm budgeting masterclass

Budgeting skills are essential in running a business, not just for cost management, but more importantly for profit maximisation.

Location: Online
Register your interest: Online

Excel for farm business

This course is designed for people who are either new to Excel, or who want to fill in gaps and gain confidence and independence using Excel.

Location: Online
Register your interest: Online

Nick Linden

Livestock Industry Development Officer, Agriculture Victoria

As we head into autumn and the window for resowing pastures opens up there are some key things to consider when thinking about renovating flood affected paddocks.

Firstly, it’s worth doing some pasture assessments to establish if resowing is the right choice.

You will no doubt have a picture of what your pastures were like pre floods, and what’s likely to come back post autumn. 

That said, if there is a useful base of desirable species – good grazing management and managing soil fertility can help to increase the percentage of the desirable species.

As a guide to assessing pastures in late summer you can assess;

1. ground cover (dead and dry plants), 
2. loose trash/dry matter covering the ground; and 
3. number of live perennial plants over a representative area of the paddock.  You make the assessments across a number of ‘quadrats’, and a rough way to do it is to stand with your boots about half a metre apart and visualise a square 0.5 x 0.5m in front of your toes, then just estimate what’s in each quadrant you check.

The Pasture Paramedic tool referenced below outlines a method for pasture assessment. Each of the categories above gets a score, and then the totals dictate possible action. 

A low score would be a candidate for resowing, while a medium can be improved by manipulation (fertiliser and grazing). 

If you do decide that now is the right time for resowing there are always a couple of things to keep in mind;

1. weed control is critical to ongoing success, 
2. if you don’t get at least seven-plus years out of the newly sown (perennial) pasture, then resowing has probably been a marginal exercise, and;
3. if other factors like grazing management and soil fertility aren’t taken care of, then there is every chance that three to four years after resowing you will struggle to find any of the resown species.

Many paddocks benefit from a period of pasture cropping to enable additional weed control.  What you pick as the ‘break crop’ depends on a couple of factors such as when you need feed and the key weed species. 

The purpose of the break crop is weed control prior to establishing the permanent pasture – so think about what your key weed species are and then plant a break crop that gives you the best chance to control those weeds.  Local agronomists will give great advice in this space. 

Which way you go lets you delve into what options are best for your environments.  There are a multitude of ryegrass options out there.

Some are intended to persist for more than one season if conditions are favourable, but keep in mind that if you are primarily using the crop as weed control a short season option such as the ‘older’ style annual ryegrasses known as ‘westerwolds’ might do the job for you.

•  Other ‘break crop’ options could include any of the grazing cereals as well, oats is popular – but just make sure you have chemical options to control your target weeds. What you choose could also be influenced by what you plan to do in the spring, so are you content to graze, want to make hay, or have the resources to harvest grain?

The other plus to having a year of a break crop is that it gives you the chance to check soil fertility and develop a plan to address any issues.

Undertaking a soil test in the middle of the year is a great option and can identify early a number of things that could cause a mid-term failure of the resown pasture.  

We have people that can help with soil test interpretation, so don’t let a sheet full of numbers put you off.

If you haven’t done soil tests before and are keen for more information feel free to contact your local Agriculture Victoria representative to find a  team member who is really good in that space.

Selecting the best pasture species for your enterprise is really an individual/local choice so speaking to someone in your area is a good idea, company reps or local agronomists can have good insights.

Just make sure the selected pastures will stand up to your management practices – so if you tend to do more set stocking look for species that are a bit ‘flatter’ growing.  

Getting a clover into the system can really aid livestock performance (will maximise animal performance from the other grass species, and is good for the soil and pasture growth rates at the same time).

Keep an eye out for upcoming Pasture Paramedic course registrations in future Recovery & Resilience newsletters.

Resources

• Pasture Paramedic
• Soil Moisture Monitoring of pastures
• Land and pasture management

Seasonal climate risk information for Victoria
Volume 18, Issue 2, 27 February 2023

A drier month over most of the state except for the Murray River fringe and particularly in the Upper Murray, which was much wetter.

Soil probes on northern cropping paddocks were unchanged, presumably with good weed control. Southern paddocks have been declining, some by large amounts with dry conditions and full profiles at the start of February.

You can read the full report and subscribe to The Fast Break newsletter through the Agriculture Victoria website.

The Rain and Grain Project, with the use of soil moisture monitoring (SMM) probes, provides real time soil water content data. They record soil water content at one source point from 30cm down to 1 metre as a reference point for a paddock.

Monitoring sites have been commissioned in cropping regions throughout Victoria by Agriculture Victoria.

To read the current issue and subscribe to the newsletter head to the Agriculture Victoria website here.

As a subscriber to the Soils Community of Practice you will receive regular newsletters containing news items, events and announcements that are of interest to our broad soils community.

We encourage our members to get involved by submitting any items or events that may be of interest to others, and by providing feedback or suggestions as to how the group may be improved.

To read the latest issue and subscribe to the newsletter go to the Agriculture Victoria website here.

Nuffield Drought Resilience Scholarships

Applications are now open for Nuffield Australia’s 2024 Scholarship program, which for the first time includes scholarships aimed at drought resilience study topics.

The Future Drought Fund (FDF) is investing $1.6 million dollars through Nuffield over the next two years to help farmers increase their knowledge of drought resilience and better prepare themselves and their communities for a changing climate.

Scholars will have the opportunity to travel overseas to study drought resilience and learn from international leaders in the field.

Each scholarship is valued at $35,000 and farmers and others working in food and fibre production aged between 28 and 45 should apply now.

Applications close 9 June 2023.

Find out more about the Nuffield Drought Resilience Scholarships and apply at: nuffield.com.au/how-to-apply

Innovation Ag Podcast

Is there such a thing as an innovation roadmap in farming and agriculture?

Probably not. But consider this podcast series the next best thing.

Episode 1: What is innovation and what motivates people to do it?

Episode 2: Innovation and Decision Making – How do you implement change, without betting the farm?

Location: Listen on Apple, Spotify or Amazon Music or here on the VicHub Drought & Innovation website.

Webinar recordings

On the Agriculture Victoria Flood recovery webinars webpage, you'll find webinars about:

• Control and repair of paddock-based erosion
• Repairing erosion damage to roads, tracks, stream crossings and dams
• Flood recovery: Biosecurity planning
• Flood recovery: Feed budgeting
• Flood recovery: Animal health issues
• Cash flow budgeting.

A range of support measures are available for flood and storm-affected farmers. Information about these measures can be found at agriculture.vic.gov.au/floods. For any urgent animal welfare needs, please contact 136 186. 

Technical Information and decision-making support 

Agriculture Victoria is working with Victorian farmers and industry to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters (including floods and storms) through delivery of technical information and decision-making support services to help farm business recovery including: 

• Grazing, cropping and pasture management
• Irrigation and horticulture system rehabilitation 
• Soil erosion management  
• Land management 
• Animal health and nutrition  
• Farm mapping and planning  
• Water quality
• Weed management.

Farmers are encouraged to contact the Agriculture Recovery team on Phone: 0427 694 185 (Mon-Fri between 8.30 am and 5 pm) or Email recovery@agriculture.vic.gov.au.

Flood and storm affected farmers are eligible to apply for financial support via the current flood recovery grants. Applications close at 4 pm on Sunday 30 April 2023.

Available grants include:

Primary Producer Recovery Grants:

• Up to $75,000 grants to cover the cost of recovery and get businesses up and running again.
• Note: This replaces the $10,000 Primary Producer Flood Clean–Up, Relief Grants announced on 19 October.
• Producers that have received a Primary Producer Flood Clean–Up Relief Grant of $10,000 can now apply for up to a further $65,000 under the Primary Producer Recovery Grant, bringing the total to $75,000.

Rural Landholder Grants:

• Up to $25,000 grants to cover the costs of disaster impacts for small-scale producers.

Primary Producer Concessional Loans:

• Up to $250,000 to restore or replace damaged equipment and infrastructure, or to cover short-term business expenses.
• The Primary Producer Flood Recovery Concessional Loan has been amended to allow primary producers who suffered a significant loss of income as a direct result of the 2022 Victorian floods and storms but who did not suffer direct damage to assets to apply for a concessional loan of up to $100,000.

Primary Producer Transport Subsidies:

• Up to $15,000 to support the transport of emergency fodder or stock drinking water, and the movement of livestock.

Contact Rural Finance or 1800 260 425 to access the Primary Producer Flood Relief Program. 

For more information, visit the Agriculture Victoria website.

It is normal to have strong reactions following a distressing or frightening event and people can experience a range of physical, mental, emotional and behavioural reactions.

There are a number of support services available (listed below) to assist you and your family recover from the strong emotional or physical reactions you may be experiencing.

Are you concerned about your own mental health? Reach out to Lifeline for a safe place to talk on 13 11 14.

Available support includes:

• Your doctor or local community health centre
• A counsellor or psychologist
• Parentline 13 22 89
• Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800
• Nurse-On-Call 1300 60 60 24 – for expert health information and advice (24 hours, 7 days)
• Australian Psychological Society Referral Service 1800 333 497

Click to read or download this Managing Stress on the Farm book from the National Centre for Farmer Health website.

You can also request free hard copies from the website.

Stressful periods like floods, extended wet conditions and associated production losses often result in farmers themselves getting a bit stuck and operating at less than their best.

A key to recovery is to remain as healthy as you can and recognise that experiencing stress following extreme climatic events is normal.

The National Centre for Farmer Health has developed some quick tips to help you on the journey.

• Mosquito management strategies - a factsheet outlines how mosquitoes are managed and mitigated, and by who
• Mosquito-borne disease information (including Japanese encephalitis vaccination program updates) can be found via the Department of Health website.

The Farm Business Resilience Program is jointly funded through the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund and the Victorian Government’s Future Agriculture Skills Capacity Fund.

If you are deaf, or have a hearing or speech impairment contact the National Relay Service on 133 677 or relayservice.gov.au

Don't forget to check out Agriculture Victoria's social media sites for up-to-date information and news.