Hey all just thought I would start this thread as I am trying this system(to an extent) on a paddock this year. To be more accurate I am trying "no kill cropping" on a pasture paddock that we consider too heavy to crop. I got some oats no tilled into the native pasture in late march(just before the hoppers REALLY got going). this was into moisture but not really good moisture and the crop only came up in the better soil. The rest had to wait out a very dry april before it could start. Ideally they would have been sown dry to get the best chance to compete with the natives but..... happens!

This system I am trying uses no fertilizer, no chemicals and is more of a soil conservation and stock system with crops being used to encourage further native pasture growth with a decent crop yield a bonus. Stock are time controlled in grazing which means that they do not ever eat out a paddock. And the aim is for 100% ground cover 100% of the time.

This is the first year of this experiment so I am not expecting miracles but so far I am pretty happy with the growth of the oats considering they are competeing with native pasture that is established. If the season continues to deliver good rains I reckon I will be harvesting the oats and making some money off the experiment.

I am going to continue the experiment but next year I may try barley or at least a taller variety of oats to allow for easier harvesting and hopefully a more bulky cereal.

Others who have converted to this method have seen the native pasture really respond to crops being sown into them and this has allowed the pastures to increase in growth and diversification. This means that the pastures become more valuable for stock feed and start to allow for higher stock numbers to be put onto them. So far I am noticing that the winter active pastures are responding to the soil being broken up and are growing healthier than normal. From a field day on pasture cropping I went to early in the year I learned that the remaining pastures that are in the area, are the very base of what used to be here. It was explained to us like this..... put a heap of kids in front of a table full of lollies and a few vegies. We all know that the vegies will be the last to be eaten and they will be hungry to even go near them. Well This is my attempt to restock the table with some lollies and hopefully improve my soil.

Is anyone else giving this a go or adopted this as your system?

From what I`ve heard , it`s going to a big help to the soil . By using european farming methods on our soil is only doing harm . Not only benefits the soil microbes , it maintains or improves the soil carbon often lost by using off-sets and turning the soil , which decomposes green matter , releasing carbon into the atmosphere .

No doubt , you`ve heard of Colin Seis , he developed the pasture cropping system and has quite a following .

As yet , I haven`t tried it only due to the lack of suitable equipment , I am in the process of developing a no-til/zero til/pasture cropping plough that can be towed by a decent 4x4 and still be able to get through the 8-9ft gates that plague the district , any country that cant be driven on by a 4x4 shouldn`t be cropped anyway .

I think I started a thread like this some time ago , and was met by the "bah-humbug" crowd .

Remains to be seen what else they say .

Sounds good mate! Yeah heard of Colin and have been to a field day the local cropping research group put on. Pity it was not well attended as it was a really good day.

Anyway my experiment worked really well! Well sort of.... turns out the the crop had the worst of conditions to come up in and this really held it back. Basically I got it sown just as we entered into a month long dry spell and the tynes sort of only slotted the soil and this dried out and left much of the seed exposed to air and birds. Still a lot did eventually come up but the small amount of disturbance REALLY stirred the rest of the paddock into gear! Dad reckons the paddock has never had so much feed on it and the native stuff that is usually only ankle high or so had shot right up to be thigh high! Bad side is though that I did have rygrass in the paddock that I thought was delt with by heavy grazing last year and the year has really suited it. Therefor there is a drity mob mob of sheep on it now cleaning it up but they will be taken off before they bare it out and we will try Barley in there next year. I reckon the oats I tried this year were just not competitve enough to dominate like I was hoping. They were not my ideal choice but I had nothing else to put in there apart from old barley seed and that was not going to give it a decent chance.

I am definatly happy with the trial as it did what I set out to do... improve the growth in this paddock cheaply and without much risk. I was not expecting a crop as the year was not a good start and the seed was not my ideal type. I was trying "zero kill" cropping and this is more of an opportunistic cropping where it is sown for grazing but cropped if deemed good enough. Due to bad emergence and weeds I don't want to spend money on a contractor to harvest(but may have done if I had a suitable header).

I am going to try it on my farm up near Texas(QLD) next autumn.
As you are probably aware the native pastures there do not grow at all from late autumn to mid spring so I am going to drill in some oats around April and see what happens.
Having to work it up etc takes to much time and money and also means I loose valuable sheep feed for a couple of months.

Hi Adon, what sort of seeder did u use? i've used a sod seeder to restock pasture grass (rye & clover) never put grain in, never thought it would be able to compete.
Hi Farmer, hope ur soils not too "hard" or too "tight" up in Texas or u might be buying a new clutch kit after sowing!!!
cheers FE

Interesting thread for a weather forum!

I work for NSW Ag (DPI, I&I, whatever the next incarnation is) with the guys who have done some pasture cropping research. There are many claims out there about how fantastic PC is but I think people need to assess very carefully whether PC is the right thing for them to do. There is a Primefact on the topic on the NSW Ag website (http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/276807/Pasture-cropping.pdf). As for soil improvement and particularly soil carbon sequestration, I believe the jury is still out on these topics. My current research project will allow some more comparisons between PC, conventional cropping and permanent pasture in soil C to be made and this links in with another project that the Grains R & D crop is doing on microbial activity. No doubt we will have an improved understanding of these issues once results from these research projects begin to flow.

Anyway, best of luck to those who have crops still waiting to come off. I have heard stories of 5t/ha from wheat around Tullibebgeal.

Regards
MS

Hi FE,
Our soils are mainly sandy loam soils that are cleared White Cypress Pine and the Native Invasive Types.
I will be using a disc seeder like an older Conner Shea so should be OK

Thought I would dig up this old one as I have "sort of" continued with my pasture cropping experiment this year. The reason I said sort of is that I actually ran out of decent seed to sow this year and well the bloke who I got my barley off has no idea of weight estimation and I ran out of seed to do it properly!

Anyway I decided to try sowing some oats into another paddock of windill grass in april with my direct drill combine I bought at a sale early this year. The oats were a couple of years old and I did not have that many of them so they were sown rather thin until I ran out. I was using this as a bit of a practice run with the combine to make sure everything worked before I started sowing the proper crops. Anyway the sowing was once again done dry into pretty thick windmill grass and was left to it's own devices with no rain in sight.

Mice are pretty bad down here this year so I would think that a lot of the seed was taken by mice as it was a while before any germination was possible. However after a small rain I did see some germination. I was not overly impressed but knowing how it went in and the less than ideal seed I never really expected much. This was destined to be stock feed again so no harm done really.

Fast forward to about a mid July after coming back from a holiday. The farm was pretty dry and we had not had any decent rain other than the May rain we sowed on (about 20mm) My no till wheat was doing OK for moisture but some minimum till stuff was really starting to run out and if no rain was to come within the next few weeks I would have been coping some pretty hard yield losses. Not really thinking about the pasture cropping but (actually chasing a fox!) I found myself in the pasture croped paddock. I spotted a small box thorn in need of removal so I pulled up beside it and got out to start diggin it out...... that's when I found how WET it was in this paddock! If I had not known better I could have sworn this paddock had recieved an inch of rain within a week or so! I was so impressed I had to go home had get my father to have a look. He was quite bemused to find this unusual moisture content as well and to be honest we were a little lost for explanation. We actually put it down to the wind protection offered by the cover(which I still think is a big part of it). The Local soil conservationist who I have been working with was called and asked whether he could come for a look and see what he thought about it.

Then Life got busy again and we lost contact as we seem to frequently do. We only caught up to each other last week and he told me that while hew was out there, he took some core samples and also did an emergence test of the oats. His findings are pretty surpising to me! The average emergence rate was a little over 50 plants/m2. It ranged from 0-115p/m2. Mice damage would have been the cause of some of it and I also suspect the wishy washy rains it did get would have promoted some moulding of some seeds. He also sent me a photot of the core that he took. He said it was some of the best organic carbon he had seen in the area and was very high on organic carbon from the surface to about 30cm into the soil. I now have some oats that obviously germinated fairly quickly that are nearly knee high(not bad for dwarf poteroo oats!) and a lot that is not growing well but shot quite a bit later. I will try to take some pics of this but I think this needs more effort and if I can get a good even germination and not be smashed by mice, I may be able to get a half decent crop from this!

Edited several times for terrible spelling......well I am getting near the end of as night shift and am a wee bit fatigued!

Good to hear Adon. Although not a farmer myself, I do have an interest in it (hard not to when you live in a small rural town and your boss is off the land) and in innovative methods and techniques generally.

Good luck with it and let's hope the mice don't come back too hard in Spring.

Very interesting Adon and the best of luck up there.
You deserve a decent break for once after all these past seriously hard years and I hope you can finally can get a good run of decent years.
ROM

Very interesting Adon.

We run a combination of improved and native pastures on our beef cattle property and never stock it to the max because we have the 'luxury' of having off farm income. As a result we usually end up having reasonably good ground cover year round. We found that this really helped us during the drought years because we were able to trap so much more moisture at soil level. This meant that even in terrible years our stock managed to remain in reasonable nick. The other thing we noticed is that even in some pretty heavy frosting this year, the extra cover has helped to protect some of the fresh growth occurring at the base of the grass stand which should now give it a bit of a head start coming into spring. There is of course one drawback to having extra cover and that is if things dry out, there is plenty of fuel for grass fires. We have had some decent rains in the last week or two so I have a sneaking suspicion the season might be broken and we might be away, beats waiting out a hot dry September for rains in October!

Good stuff Adon , i am not a famer but i am intrested in this stuff , Hope it works out you guys deserve some luck Cheers .

Andy you will also find that because you have cover and keep it year round, you will find you have a lot of organic carbon in you soild too. This will help hold a lot of water in the profile and help that would help you pasture too.