Development and delivery of Pasture Paramedic in Southern and Western Australia.

Summary

This project was to develop, train and distribute Pasture Paramedic to regions in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia.

Pasture Paramedic kits were developed for southeast South Australia, the Western Australian Wheatbelt and Northern New South Wales. This complements the Southern High Rainfall Pasture Paramedic kit developed and aimed to represent some of the diverse feedbase systems across the country.

Objectives

The objective of this project was to deliver resources to producers and advisors to assist in identifying desirable species composition, stresses/constraints and knowing when to resurrect or intervene in the life of a pasture to optimize productivity, profitability and persistence. The resources are captured under the product name of Pasture Paramedic.
Objectives:

1. Modify the high rainfall Pasture Paramedic tool for the medium rainfall zone in Southern Australia in conjunction with leading agronomists and print 1000 copies.

2. Work with key agronomists and advisors in Western Australia and New South Wales to create two new tools based on the approach used in Pasture Paramedic and produce 500 copies for WA and 1000 copies for NSW.

3. Create regionally relevant resource kits that link other MLA products and services to the decision pathways emanating from the use of Pasture Paramedic.

4. Training of 80 distributors in medium rainfall southern Australia (3 workshops – 30 people), WA (2 workshops – 20 people) and NSW (3 workshops – 30 people) to extend and distribute the tool to producers and producer groups. These trained delivers will be ‘licenced’ to deliver the Pasture Paramedic tool to producer and other clients and will collect copies of the kits at the end of the training sessions.

5. Initiate discussions with the PGS program leader to develop a minimum of two appropriate PGS training packages associated with pasture manipulation and pasture resowing. NB: Development of the PGS training packages would be separate to this project.

6. Development and initiation of a monitoring and evaluation plan to track the roll out and impact of Pasture Paramedic.

Key findings

• 2,500 Pasture Paramedic kits were produced
• 9 training session held (all online when intention was face to face and in-paddock)
• 58 ‘distributors’ were trained in the use of the relevant Pasture Paramedic kits
• Pasture Paramedic has been embedded into three Profitable Grazing Systems courses
• Resource kit to link to MLA products was produced
• A monitoring and evaluation plan was developed.

Benefits to industry

It is anticipated Pasture Paramedic will be the catalyst to encourage producers to assess the condition of their pastures. This can occur in a group or individual setting. After this assessment it is anticipated producers will seek existing MLA information and practices to improve the rating of these pastures.

MLA action

The Pasture Paramedic kits provide a valuable tool to motivate farmers to assess and reach a simple conclusion about the state of their pasture. The kit has a novelty value that creates a curiosity that is more likely to lead to its ongoing use. However, it only intended to ‘spark interest’ and may not lead to practice change unless the next steps in the adoption pathway are also in place.

Future research

1. Create new category B products related to grass and legume management, weed control and soil condition to capitalise on the interest generated by Pasture Paramedic and enhance the impact of existing MLA products.

2. Consider commissioning new information on sub-tropical species relevant to the Northern New South Wales Pasture Paramedic. There was a lack of good information to signpost compared to the temperate pasture systems.

3. Consider implementation of the monitoring and evaluation plan outlined in this report to ascertain Pasture Paramedic use data.