Extracting more profit from our farming systems

The Southern NSW Farming Systems project is one of the most comprehensive comparative farming systems projects in New South Wales. Led by John Kirkegaard, the project is investigating strategies to convert annual rainfall into more profit across a crop sequence, while managing costs, risk, soil fertility, weeds and diseases. The project aims to improve whole farm profitability by identifying the agronomic factors that drive profit and adopting management practices that optimise returns. The project will be lengthened from six to nine years with co-investment from GRDC, CSIRO and the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD).

A new project component, ‘Diverse Farms,’ led by Kirrily and Greg Condon of Grassroots Agronomy, will comprise six paddock-scale trials across the region managed by the growers and their advisers to compare current systems with a new system emerging from the small-plot experiments.