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Our activities are structured around three priority areas – Forages, Feeding and Innovations.
FutureDairy’s science or technical research is primarily located at NSW Department of Primary Industries’ Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute (EMAI), about 70km south west of Sydney.
Forages
Our Forages trials have produced on average more than 42t DM/ha/year for the past three years. This is five times the average irrigated pasture utilisation in Australia.
We achieved the high yields using a ‘complementary’ forage rotation, based on growing three crops a year:
- a bulk crop (eg maize);
- a forage to provide a pest/disease break and improve soil aeration (eg brassica); and
- a legume for nitrogen fixation (eg clover).
On-going research is investigating the economic and environmental sustainable of the CFR in the long-term. We are trialling a simpler CFR system based on growing two crops per year but alternating the brassica and legume every two years. The benefits of this approach would be easier management and better disease control while retaining the complementarity. In addition a whole farm system is being evaluated with 35% CFR and 65% pasture.
Feeding
Our Feeding research commenced in early 2005 and seeks to determine how we could best use supplementary feed brought onto the farm. This strikes at the very basis of our future (feed) management systems: do we continue to focus on high stocking rates, in order to retain pasture utilisation or do we try and feed more towards our cows’ genetic potential? In this study, the economic and management issues of raising production/cow by 50% or increasing stocking rate by 50% (from 2.4 to 3.2 cows/ha at EMAI) are being investigated.
Innovations
FutureDairy is assisting in the development and evaluation of innovations that will either:
- improve labour use efficiency or lifestyle eg automatic milking systems (AMS); or
- allow more precise agriculture without the need for more labour eg remote sensing of animal (rumen) function and pasture status or remote videoing of farm activities.
The major emphasis is on developing an AMS to suit the typical Australian dairy farm – grazing of large herds on pasture. The two issues to be addressed are:
- development of a feeding/grazing regime and farm layout that will optimize voluntary visitation by cows to the AMS unit; and
- evaluation of a new concept AMS unit with throughput of more than 200 cows/day.
To be acceptable to the industry the new concept unit will need to be competitively priced with conventional milking systems.
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FutureDairy’s systems work aims to explore how our technical findings work under commercial conditions.
Partner Farms
Partner Farms are commercial farms who work closely with the FutureDairy team to explore and monitor the practical implications of our research.
With help from a local support group of farmers and advisers, Partner Farmers apply our technologies (eg the CFR, remote pasture meter) to their farming operations.
Partner Farms provide a site for the exploration of whole system, labour and lifestyle implications of technologies. We have two Partner Farms and a case study farm, which is trialling the CFR on a smaller scale.
Our Partner Farmers are Bill and Alison Jessep, from Maffra, Victoria, and Steve and Darren Berkefeld from Mt Gambier, South Australia. Our case study farmers are Paul, Wayne and Vicki Clarke from northern NSW.
Systems integration
FutureDairy is piloting an innovative ‘systems integration’ process to capture the experience and lessons learnt from Partner Farms growing the CFR.
The process will help us identify the key extension activities needed to help farmers develop the skills they need to apply the CFR. It will also identify priority areas for future research and development to address knowledge and service delivery gaps.
FutureDairy is trying to better understand the innovation process. We are interested in the social impacts of adopting new technologies on-farm; for example their impact on labour and lifestyle, and how these issues influence farmers’ decision making processes.
We are also interested in the interactions between researchers, advisors, Partner Farmers and farmers. Insights from social research will help us develop more relevant extension programs for adoption of new technologies.
FutureDairy’s social research experience will also be of benefit to other dairy industry projects in the future.
Our combined approach of technical research, Partner Farms, the integration process and social research will fast-track the research and extension process.
The end result should be that dairy farmers are provided with new technologies and practices sooner, and with confidence that they are relevant for their region. The project also receives support from the University of Melbourne, DairySA, DIDCO and the Dairy Research Foundation (NSW).
The FutureDairy project is featured in the Dairy Research Foundation Annual Symposium. The Symposium will be held this year on the 6th and 7th November, 2008 in Camden, NSW. Please click here for further information.
Click here for Information Sheets, Technical Notes and Publications
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