Drought resilient grazing practices that can rehydrate grazing landscapes and improve soils and water on farms is the focus of a field trial underway in Central Queensland.

The trial is being delivered by Central Highlands Regional Resources Use Planning Cooperative (CHRRUP) as part of the Future Drought Fund (FDF) Drought Resilient Soils and Landscapes program.

Nichole James and Jake and Adam Fietz are participating in a field trial, which supports building drought resilience by enhancing total biomass, reducing erosion and contributing to increased productivity of grazing enterprises.

Nichole’s property is one of five included in the project. Glenn Landsberg, a Regeneration Consultant, has been working with Nichole to modify her farm landscape for better water retention, particularly focusing on the restoration of gullies.

‘Recovery here isn’t really going to happen until we intervene and make something happen’ Glenn said.

After working with Glenn and employing earthworks to retain water across her property, Nichole has also implemented smaller fenced paddocks and rotational grazing to allow soil and pasture to rest and recover.

‘Now we’ve done earthworks, it’ll help make it recover quicker and slow the erosion. Now that I’ve split the paddock, I can control the grazing pressure even more. With these earthworks, which will also help with slowing the water, we should see a much bigger recovery in a much shorter time’ says Nichole.

At ‘Hiddenvale’ in Queensland, Jake and Adam’s property is also part of the project and already is seeing results through effective water management, which reduces soil erosion and surface run-off.

‘The drought over the last 10 years has just knocked us about. It’s just mind blowing how much it has actually knocked us around, just so much destruction. I don’t want to ever be in a nasty situation again where we have to destock. If we have to destock again, we’d have to sell the place basically’ Jake Fietz said.

Adam adds, ‘This was all deeply eroded, lots of dead trees and a lot of water run-off. We used the dead trees and wind-rowed them up, slowed the water run-off. That caught some seed, and this is what’s happened. I’ve got them about 80 metres apart all the way up. And well… you can see….it’s all grass now. It stopped a lot of the erosion which is always a good thing’.

Source: Department of Agriculture