Can you maintain permanent groundcover
while growing an annual crop?
Can you improve biodiversity and regenerate soils while growing an annual crop?
Can you crop your pastures and graze them too?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes!
New Innovations: Pasture Cropping by Christine Jones
Some Australian farmers are drilling an annual crop directly into native groundcover and producing yields similar to those from conventionally farmed crops, and after harvest find their pastures actually improved.
(At left: Holistic Management® practitioners June and Keith Blomfield (foreground) inspecting pasture cropped wheat at a field day on Cluff’s property, “Olive Lodge.”)
“Pasture cropping” leaders Darryl Cluff and Col Seis have grappled for many years with the development of workable and regenerative solutions to the severe land degradation problems in the Birriwa-Gulgong area in central west New South Wales, Australia. Lateral thinking, teamwork, daring to be different and the perspective of five generations on the land have been essential ingredients for the continuing development of their techniques.
When their families settled in the Central Western Slopes region north of Canberra in the 19th century, they found the perennial grasslands on the flat to undulating country highly productive and ideal for raising livestock. However, the winter-active perennial grasses and palatable native legumes rapidly disappeared due to set-stocking and failure to reduce stock numbers during droughts. The Seis family grew their first wheat crop near Gulgong in 1882, and cropping soon became a major enterprise for most farmers.
Traditional techniques, which involved the complete removal of all vegetation, resulted in vast tracts of bare ground both before and after the crops. These areas were recolonized by relatively unpalatable perennial grasses and naturalized annual weeds. Soil erosion on arable land became extensive, particularly between 1910 and 1970, accompanied by soil structural problems and rapid nutrient decline. Fortunately the dense tree cover on the surrounding rocky ridges remained more or less intact
Trial and Error
The long-term average annual rainfall in the Birriwa-Gulgong district is around 24 inches, with a slight summer dominance, although it is unpredictable and highly variable within and between years. In 1995, following an 18-month drought during which he thought long and hard about the effects of traditional cropping practices, Cluff direct-drilled an oat crop into a native redgrass (Bothriochloa) pasture in which sub-soil moisture levels at sowing were zero, yet the crop performed well. The pasture cropping technique was born!
At left: Australian wheat varieties grow over winter and are harvested in spring. Here, the wheat has matured and is ready for harvest. The summer-growing native pasture is coming through underneath, ready for grazing immediately after crop harvest.
The following year, Cluff began experimenting with wheat, and Col Seis, a fellow member of a local Landcare [conservation] group, tried pasture cropping oats, some grown without herbicide application. He direct drilled the grain into the permanent groundcover at 10 or 12-inch (25-30 cm) row spacings, approximately 30 to 35 pounds of seed per acre (35-40 kg/ha) with 75 to 120 pounds per acre (85-135 kg/ha) of Granulock 15 fertilizer (N15:P12:S12) dropped into the rows with the seed.
Cluff and Seis are continuously developing their methodology via the feedback loop of test, observe, discuss and re-test. Funding has been obtained this year to monitor soil physical, chemical and biological processes.
The pasture cropping technique utilizes a niche in the growth cycle of what remains of grasslands that have lost cool season perennials almost completely. Healthy, high-yielding, profitable cool season annual crops face little competition from warm season perennials and thus require no cultivation and little or no chemicals, and they improve the vigor and biodiversity of the grazed pasture and the condition of the soil. These objectives are impossible to obtain with any other currently known cropping method.
Cluff intends to continuously crop some of his wheat paddocks to determine whether the microbial biomass and diversity associated with the living pasture base will be sufficient to prevent the proliferation of pathogens in the soil. In other paddocks, he’s trying alternative crops such as lupins and experimenting with the re-sowing of native grasses such as Themeda australis (kangaroo grass) with the crop seed.
Seis has preferred to rotate the paddocks he pasture crops each year, due to the significant improvement he has observed in the vigor and diversity of his pastures. His principal focus is on livestock production and he uses pasture cropping as a pasture improvement technique. In years gone by it would have been unthinkable that cropping could improve a pasture. This only highlights the extent of the breakthrough that these two farmers have achieved.
Seis now pasture crops 600 acres of his 2000-acre property to oats, wheat and lupins. He has been able to increase the cropped area every year without reducing his stocking rate, not only because the pasture health is improving each year, but also because the land doesn’t have to be taken out of production and “prepared” for cropping.
Livestock are an important component of the pasture cropping method. Seis has improved the gross profit on his sheep enterprise by using sheep to heavily graze pastures prior to sowing, rather than spending money on pre-sowing herbicides or cultivation. He also now does not have to re-establish pastures, as used to be the practice in the past, because they are rapidly improving.
Of course not everything worked perfectly the first time. Both Cluff and Seis found that crops established more slowly in the pasture base than in cultivated soil. Now they sow about two weeks earlier than the recommended date for their area. They have also observed an increase in red-legged earth mite but feel this will cease to be a problem once the diversity of plants and invertebrates increases. Lupins, which are legumes, performed so well last year that follow-on summer pasture regrowth was inhibited.
In most cropping areas in Australia, the entire native pasture base has been lost. However, now that productive native grasses can be re-sown with crops and nurtured via the pasture cropping technique, millions of acres of farmed land currently suffering severe soil degradation and dryland salinity problems, will be able to be rehabilitated. Seis will experiment with the re-sowing of native Paspalidium and Urochloa [prev. Brachiaria] species with some of his crops this year. The two farmers also hope to reestablish native legumes.
Machinery
n their original experiments with oats and wheat, Cluff and Seis used an Agrowdrill direct seeder of Australian design and construction, but incorporating wild seed into the plan required something more. Machinery capable of harvesting and then sowing the often difficult seeds of native grasses and legumes along with a grain crop, has required much thought, testing, observing, discussing and re-testing. This creative process, occasionally lubricated by what might pass, among Australian farmers, as moderate amounts of home-brewed beer, has been incarnated in metal by Col’s cousin, Doug Seis. Doug is a professional welder, and his Scorpion brush seed harvester and Germinator seeder have made the harvesting and planting of locally occurring native grass seed much easier.
Up to now they have not had to clean harvested grain as there are no grasses seeding at the same time.
Working it Out For Ourselves
While pasture cropping as practiced by Col Seis and Darryl Cluff may not work without modification outside the Slopes and Tablelands of New South Wales, the concept of maintaining permanent groundcover for soil stability, structural improvement, organic matter accumulation, weed control and the enhancement of below-ground diversity, should be applied in all agro-ecosystems. Only lack of imagination prevents us from growing healthy crops in biodiverse landscapes.
Cluff and Seis farm in a less-brittle environment without extreme temperatures that has been modified (degraded) in a very particular way through the loss of cool-season perennials. For this reason, other landholders might naturally say, “pasture cropping would never work in my area.” Yet, of course some people are still saying it won’t work in New South Wales, even though it does. The point is: there are general principles involved here that I believe can be put to use in many different environments, if we persevere and learn how.
In the past we have sought to increase yield by minimizing variation within the system.
On the other hand, we all know that soils are healthier under pastures, especially holistically managed ones, than under crops or fallows. Even the textbooks tell us that plants form soil. Take the plants away and you lose soil. It’s as simple as that. High density planned grazing (I call it pulsed grazing) is the most effective method for maintaining plants and soils, as large amounts of sloughed root material are added to the underground ecosystem during each graze period.
So, why do we cultivate, spray, and fallow fields prior to cropping? Mostly because we’re doing what we’ve been told--that if you leave plants growing in the field, they’ll use up all the moisture. Right?
Wrong! Irrespective of our “average annual rainfall,” if we haven’t got 100 percent groundcover, 100 percent of the time, there’s no way we’re going to make full use of the rain that falls.
Finally, although the downward spiral associated with the removal of groundcover can usually be reversed, remember this: It takes from six to fifteen years for many of the perennial grassland species to re-establish. And don’t forget those precious soil biota! The long-term ecological and financial consequences of native groundcover removal need to be factored into cropping and pasture replacement budgets, but rarely are. Aside from the cost of fertility loss, the campaign to reduce greenhouse gasses may well create a market for carbon credits. Some current estimates value a one percent increase in organic carbon in the soil at US$25/acre (A$90/hectare).
Expectations Make the Difference
I believe that Darryl Cluff and Col Seis defied conventional wisdom because they instinctively realized that their farms wouldn’t survive unless their practices were “regenerative.” Sustainable isn’t good enough. We’re nevertheless conditioned to think it is. Consider:
Australian extension personnel make widespread use of the Universal Soil Loss Equation, which enables me to calculate probable soil loss for a given combination of parameters relating to slope, soil type, rainfall, land use, etc.
For example, I have software based on the USLE that will tell me that a red-brown earth on a 3· slope in a 600 mm summer rainfall area would likely lose 20 tons/hectare (9tons/acre) if cultivated over summer and 5tons/hectare (2.25tons/acre) under permanent pasture with 70% groundcover. Losing five tons of soil per hectare annually is considered sustainable because there are no “known” ways to reduce soil loss below this level on undulating country.
As far as I know, no one has developed a Universal Soil Formation Equation with accompanying software packages. Why not? Pasture cropping is the kind of thinking that will create a demand for one.
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