Building Soil Function

Improving Soil Health & Crop Productivity in Low-Rainfall Areas

Addressing soil health challenges through salinity, pH, soil zoning, and yield mapping to improve crop productivity in low-rainfall areas.

  • Targeting Soil Constraints

    New technologies like salinity, pH, soil zonal, and yield mapping are being used to identify and address soil constraints, improving efficiency and effectiveness in low-rainfall areas.

  • Improving Soil Health for Resilience

    Corrective measures aim to restore fragile soils, enhancing their resilience to drought and extreme weather, ensuring sustainable farming practices.

  • Boosting Productivity and Profitability

    By tailoring inputs to specific soil conditions, farmers can improve crop and livestock productivity, leading to greater financial stability and long-term business resilience.

Project Overview

Combating Soil Constraints and Drought Impacts in the Goyder Region

Five years of drought have significantly impacted profitability and soil health across the Regional Council of Goyder and surrounding areas. The Northern and Yorke Landscape Board (NYLB), together with Goyder’s Line Agricultural Network (GLAN), is investigating new technologies that focus on salinity, pH, soil zonal, and yield mapping to provide opportunities to be more efficient and effective in alleviating major soil constraints for crop production in low-rainfall areas.

Justification for the project

By improving understanding of soil variation and limitations, inputs can be tailored to suit. This, in turn, allows improved soil health and resource conservation, thus reducing impacts from the currently overworked and drying soils.

It is expected that the fragile soils will begin to recover (through corrective measures) and allow these soils to improve their level of resilience to drought in the longer term. Farms with improved soils will be able to improve their sustainability under challenging conditions, including periods of drought and heavy rainfall, and have increased crop and livestock productivity and profitability, leading to better financial stability and farm business resilience over time.

Discoveries

Key outcomes

  • 1
    Step

    Advancing Soil Management Knowledge and Sustainability

    Project activities positively influenced farmers’ understanding and implementation of soil management practices. The project demonstrated the long-term benefits associated with adopting improved soil management practices in terms of improving the overall sustainability of the farming system.
  • 2
    Step

    Practical Solutions for Fertiliser Efficiency Amid Drought Challenges

    Despite the low seasonal rainfall and subsequent drought, the events conducted throughout the year were successful in terms of demonstrating practical management practices that provide the opportunity to improve fertiliser efficiency and better manage soil constraints.
  • 3
    Step

    Precision Soil Management

    The project underscored the importance of precision soil management to enhance productivity and resilience in low-rainfall farming systems.

Barriers to adoption

The main barrier to adoption is the lack of consultants and technical expertise in the Goyder LGA, which has resulted in low uptake of new techniques. It is difficult to increase knowledge when experts are not available or charge considerably more to travel. Additionally, low-rainfall cropping and grazing don’t attract the same attention from industry when delivering new technologies and, therefore, often miss out.

The project provided an opportunity for technical expertise to examine on-farm issues directly related to these local low-rainfall farmers and to work on and demonstrate new technologies to farmers in the area

Contact persons: Molly O’Dea, Andrew Harding and Brian Hughes

Rate our resource

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 4 / 5. Vote count: 2

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

Leave the first comment

Join the Conversation & Share with Your Community

Engage with fellow farmers by commenting on resources, sharing your experiences, and spreading valuable insights across your networks on Soils Connect.

Explore Key Categories

Building Soil Function

Strategies like ground cover and amelioration to enhance soil structure and fertility.

View more

Soil and Carbon

Exploring carbon farming practices to boost soil health and reduce emissions.

View more

Soil for Drought Resilience

Addressing land degradation challenges, including saline soils and Mallee seeps, to improve resilience to dry conditions.

View more

Soils and Cropping

Integrating soil management with agronomy for improved crop productivity and sustainability.

View more

Soils and Livestock

Optimising livestock and pasture systems to enhance soil quality and pasture performance.

View more

Frequently asked questions

Ask Charlie Carbon: Your Soil Questions Answered