Alternative pasture legumes in NSW Central West

Summary

This Producer Demonstration Site (PDS) is designed to demonstrate alternative annual forage legume options available to meat producers in the LRZ of CW NSW that have not been traditionally used, showing they can be easily integrated and adopted to existing mixed farming operations to assist in meat production and adaptation to climate variability.

Objectives

By January 2024, at three sites in the low rainfall zone (LRZ) of Central West NSW, the project will: 

1. Demonstrate a selection of deep-rooted, hardseeded annual legumes, such as biserrula, serradella and bladder clover and their establishment techniques, against the current options of sub clover, medics and Lucerne, as forage options that can self-regenerate and become a more reliable feedbase resource for red meat production. 

2. Benchmark ‘local’ dry matter and herbage quality of alternative feedbase options and determine potential livestock production (through Grazfeed) to facilitate adoption and integration with other feedbase options. 

3. Calculate the comparative cost-benefit of alternative annual legume pastures compared to current annual feedbase options, based on DM production, feed quality etc.  

4. Develop skills and knowledge of the core group of producers in the project of alternative annual hardseeded legume feedbase options to allow them to better manage drought recovery strategies and climate variability.

5. Conduct ‘seasonal’ and timely field days to show and disseminate the site results and encourage adoption of the new alternatives that can assist with ongoing farm productivity and sustainability.

6. 15 core producers and 48 key and observer producers, will have improved their knowledge and skills regarding the suitability of hard seeded legumes, including the benefits that pasture legumes have to their overall farm productivity.

7. 15 core producers and 48 key and observer producers will be confident to adopt the project’s management strategies to increase pasture persistence and productivity and address the autumn/winter feed gaps to reduce risk and improve profitability.

8. 8 core producers and 10 key and observer producers will adopt some or all of the new practice by incorporating  alternative annual hardseeded legumes into their farming systems.

9. The results of the project will be disseminated with targeted extension activities (CWFS newsletter, social media platforms, CWFS website, traditional media such as newspapers, linkages with other industry stakeholders, grower groups and relevant projects) to encourage adoption of the most suitable options.

Progress

Producers in the Central West (CW) of NSW identified interest in increasing their capacity to expand livestock production and lessen risk associated with high reliance on grain production. New feed base to better integrate within current systems, including dual purpose wheat and legume phases will allow for better integration of livestock with crop production.  

Two varietal trial demonstration sites were established one at Condobolin, Agricultural Research and Advisory Station (ARAS) and one at Gunning Gap to showcase differences in performance of five different legume species including hard seeded legumes compared to traditional feed base options of dual-purpose wheat and lucerne. One producer demonstration site was undertaken at Condobolin to complement the two demonstration trials.  

As a result of regenerated pasture seed from all pasture species, biserrula produced the highest predicted red meat production for both cattle and sheep at all sites. In addition to providing potential liveweight grain from grazing, bladder clover performed above or comparable to lucerne and dual-purpose wheat in terms of meeting goals and timeframes in line with finishing livestock on lucerne and dual-purpose wheat.  

The project was developed to showcase and demonstrate the most profitable and successful pastures in the low rainfall zone of CW NSW. This enables producers in areas with reduced productive pastures and reduced soil nutrition to re-invigorate their pasture paddocks and approach to pastures, and ultimately increase productivity and carrying capacity.