A 13-way cover crop has been planted in between the rows.
It’s hoped a regenerative cropping trial in Winnaleah, the first of its kind in the region, will result in improved soil health and growing conditions for seasons to come.
After experimenting for the past five years, Winnaleah farmer Jarrod Smith has planted almost half of his 25-hectare maize crop with wider row spacing to make way for cover crops.
Row widths have been doubled to one metre to encourage sunlight penetration to an inter seeded forage crop.
“The objective of doing that is to have an established forage crop ready to be grazed as soon as the maize is harvested,” he said.
“It’s important to note I’m still planting the same population per hectare which is 100,000 seeds to the hectare so to double row width I just need to double metering.”
In the past, once the maize was harvested, they would plant a multi-species cover crop.
“The practice of inter-seeding into a growing maize crop is a great head-start on what we were doing before because there is no lag time,” he said.
“After a maize crop if you can drill something straight away, it’s still six weeks to two months before you’d get anything off it.”
As part of this year’s trial, Mr Smith has planted a 13-way cover crop in between the rows with Italian rye grass, six different clover varieties, buckwheat, phacelia, plantain, chicory, rape, and tillage radish.
This diversity not only helps improve soil health but effectively offers up a ‘salad bowl’ for cows to graze once the maize is harvested.
Improvements have been made to equipment to enable maize to be directly planted using no-till.
“No-till is beneficial for soil biology. Every time you run a cultivator through the ground, you’re closing earthworm channels and killing soil biology,” he said.
“It’s pretty clear the benefits to soil health we’ve seen so far – when you dig a shovel full of soil and its full of worms that’s a good sign.”
“Another objective of regenerative agriculture is to reduce chemical inputs which can be harmful to soil biology so that might mean a potential short term decrease in yield with a goal of achieving normal yields over time through improved soil health.
“Research shows minimal yield loss which is more than made up for by the under-sown cover crop.”
Mr Smith said this is just the tip of the iceberg.
“This is just one tiny aspect of what you can do to improve soil health.
“We’re looking at making more on-farm compost which is an extremely friendly fertiliser source for improving soil health.”
He said his advice for farmers looking at growing high value forage crops, is to start small.
“You won’t know if it’s going to work in your system or not until you give it a go,” he said.
“I have 25 hectares in and I’ve planted 10 hectares this way so you don’t have to go guns blazing either, you can try it in a small area and see how it goes.”
Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania (RANT) president Celia Leverton said the organisation started 18 months ago, in response to the growing interest from farmers around the state to this approach.
“It’s a profitable way to move away from dangerous chemicals,” she said.
“The focus is really on increasing soil health, landscape health and being profitable.
“Farming has a very exciting future. The fact that regenerative agriculture also increases carbon in soil is just the icing on the cake.”
RANT offer statewide workshops about regenerative agriculture practices.
This article was first published in the North-Eastern Advertiser on February 12, 2020.
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