Inventory farming systems research and Modelling for the Southern Feedbase

Summary

MLA commissioned this 'Farming Systems R&D and Modeling' project to examine the following: 
1. Identify the farm system level issues and questions that are likely to arise as a result of the conduct of a series of R&D projects that MLA is investing in as part of their Southern Feedbase Program 
2. Evaluate the potential for current whole farm system modelling tools to assist in addressing those issues and questions and develop recommendations for improvements in the capacity of those tools. 
3. If the modelling tools will not adequately address those issues and questions, develop recommendations for either: 
a. changes to R&D projects to obtain better systems level outcomes, or; 
b. new, systems level R&D and/or farm scale monitoring projects that may need to be conducted. 
A significant number of farm systems level issues and questions have been identified following review of R&D project plans and background planning documents for the MLA Feedbase R&D Plan. Consultation with farm systems model developers and users around Australia and review of published outputs from modelling projects has confirmed that existing or updated models would be useful in at least partially answering many of the farm systems level issues and questions likely to arise from Feedbase R&D projects. 
Consultation with livestock producers, farmer advisers/consultants and agricultural researchers has identified a number of needs for further development of models to improve their relevance to production systems, pasture and forage species in current use and some production environments. Maintaining human capacity for model development and practical validation and use of model outputs by livestock producers is another priority for the future. Some production systems, most notably cropping/livestock mixed enterprise systems are likely to warrant further investment in on-ground physical R&D and/or commercial scale monitoring.