South Australian Murray Darling Basin NRM BoardRanges to River NRM - Community Science Forum

 Farming Sustainability & Technologies

 

Farms of the future

Rick LlewellynCSIRO

B. Jones

Future farming:

“Farming in the Mallee is going to be very profitable sometimes, middling profitable in some years and, at times, not profitable at all - as has always been the case”.

Bill Malcolm, University of Melbourne

Farms of the future

•Scale and efficiencies

•Enabling technologies

•Management and expertise

•Specialisation

•Convenience agriculture

What can the past tell us

• 1880’s - The search for wheat land (Goyder)• 1906 – The railway• 1910’s – The influx of wheat farmers

• 1910-2010 - A decade of farmer innovation, science, technology, globalisation, new markets

Stump jump plough,

phosphate

All about wheat

Sthn Mallee DC

The result in 2011?

EVEN MORE WHEAT

Wheat and barley account for 90 per cent of grain crops produced in the Mallee agro-

ecological zone (SA-Vic)

$562M p.a.

ABARE 2011

Proportion of Mallee farm area sown to crop

ABARE, 2011

Nitrogen fertiliser

Herbicides

Disease resistant cereal varieties

No-tillage

Future: Greater cropping intensity

ABARE, 2010

The future?

More cropping intensity than now in Mallee

SA Mallee

SA Mallee 57% land cropped; Vic Mallee 72% (CSIRO)

Future: Bigger farms on average and less farmers

ABARE, 2011

Are many farms approaching the optimal size for a typical family farm management unit?

Greater land use intensity in the Mallee

ABARE, 2011

New technologies; more intensity; new constraints

• New varieties • New break crop options• New disease tolerances and treatments• Improved nutrition• New livestock markets

• Opportunities for even more intensity and profitability

MANAGEMENT CAPACITY AS THE GROWING CONSTRAINT

Less managers per hectare ; More management needed per hectare

More management demandsMore available information

Less available labour

‘Attention’ is a scarce and valuable resource

The key issue for future farming:

What does this mean for future farms? • Greater use of consultants and specialist advisors

• Very low current use in SA Mallee (23%)• Supply Vs demand

• More highly specialized farms or specialization within mixed farms• Focus on what your are best at e.g. cropping• But need to avoid excessive risk exposure

• Greater need for off-farm time• Time away from increasingly intense on-farm management demands• Time away from sparsely populated farming districts • Off-farm work and education needs

• Increased farm management capacity• Training and education – approx 20% have more than high school education• Use of tools and technology

• Greater use of Information Technology• Remote diagnostics• Remote monitoring • Networks

• Labour-efficient innovations

Overcoming labour constraints

New in-cab PA systems – Access Managers with operator lock-out

Sheep without shearing

Autosteer and beyond?

Zonal grazing without fencing ??

Increasing recognition of the value of convenience and embodied technologies

Increasing use of new farm business structures

Vision:• Developing and growing efficient farming • Developing innovative family farming

Bringing the economic strength of corporate business to Australia's family farms, while sustaining the social fabric of rural communities.

Introducing specialist skills and practices

Overcoming capital constraints

Economies of scale for applying new technology

Facilitating on-farm specialization

          The future of

Mixed-Farming Agriculture

A livestock management service for

time pressured farmers