Sheep Productivity and Profitability Webinar

Assessing pasture - its starts with our eyes but are we seeing it all and interpreting it correctly?

In this webinar Jim Virgona and Nathan Ferguson from leading pasture agronomy service Graminus Consulting will be discussing how producers can diagnose and manage factors affecting their pastures productive potential through the correct interpretation of visual cues.

Nathan Ferguson

Nathan is based at Tumut, in the Riverina Highlands. He has been providing advice to the agricultural sector since 1996. With a broad technical background in agronomy having worked in retail agronomy for three years in the Wimmera and with the NSW Public service as a District Agronomist at Coonamble, Moree and Tumut over a 14 year period.

Nathan is passionate about agriculture. He likes nothing more than developing client’s knowledge and skills in managing their businesses, getting them to analyse their current situation and explore the possibilities, is there something different they could be doing to make the business better? He has an ability to look at an issue and to think laterally to determine a range of potential solutions.

Jim Virgona

Jim studied agriculture at Sydney University majoring in agronomy before completing post graduate studies in plant physiology at Macquarie University and ANU. Pasture agronomy has been Jim’s focus for the last 25 years working at NSW DPI and then as an academic at CSU. His areas of expertise include pasture establishment, grazing management, species evaluation, and integration of livestock and cropping enterprises.

He has developed a keen interest in understanding and influencing farm management throughout his research and teaching career. To this end, he has addressed many conferences, workshops and field days over the years. In recent times, this also led to an interest in examining the thorny issue of the role of evidence in decision making. Jim retains an interest in R&D and is currently modelling sheep production for the Fred Morley Unit and retains links with the Graham Centre at Charles Sturt University Wagga.