Saving Our Soils During Drought
Saving Our Soils During Drought (SOS) is an adoption project funded by the Future Drought Fund Drought Resilient Soils and Landscapes Grants Program (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) in partnership with the Southern NSW Drought Hub.
Drought can have a devastating impact on livestock production systems and on farm natural assets, soils that are exposed due to loss of groundcover make them particularly vulnerable to wind and water erosion. Appropriate management of livestock during drought is critical to the resilience capacity of soils, vegetation, and farming enterprises across the landscape.
The Saving Our Soils project will demonstrate best practice application of confinement feeding areas supported by a comprehensive suite of tools, materials and information across New South Wales. This will provide the knowledge and importantly, the confidence that producers are seeking to adopt confinement feeding areas for maximum benefit.
The project aims to:
- increase the number of land managers trialing and adopting drought resilient land management practices – both directly through project activities, and by providing case studies and evidence that can support the “scaling out” of effective practices
- strengthen collaborative networks between farmers and other land managers in support of increased adoption of drought resilient land management practices
- demonstrate the effectiveness of particular land management practices, and combinations of practices, in improving drought resilience.
The project will develop case studies, develop demonstration sites, prepare a comprehensive information program and suite of workshops, and produce modelling examples that will demonstrate the significant value confinement feeding areas bring to the broader landscape and to individual farming businesses. This will be achieved by bringing together farmers and partners with expertise and experience from across Southern NSW to clearly demonstrate the positive implementation of these practices on a large scale.
Local Land Services has partnered with Farming Systems Groups from across southern NSW to produce workshops to their members, this partnership ensures a collaborative approach to reach farming networks and distribute information to our landholders.
Resources
- Saving our Soils: Groundcover trigger points for pasture resilience during drought, PDF 979.91 KB
- A guide to confinement feeding sheep and cattle in NSW PDF, 5591.67 KB
- Confinement feeding.
- Dry times webinar - Do I keep and feed or sell in a falling market.
- Dry times webinar - Feeding sheep in dry times.
- Dry times webinar - Feeding cattle in dry times.
- Dry times webinar - Early weaning of lambs and calves in dry times.
For more information
Contact the project manager, Nyssa Belton-Liddy from Local Land Services on:
E: nyssa.belton-liddy@lls.nsw.gov.au
M: 0400 957 308
Otherwise, please get in touch with one of our project partners:
- Southern NSW Drought Hub
- Holbrook Landcare
- FarmLink Research Limited
- Riverine Plains Inc
- Central West Farming Systems Group
- Irrigation Farmers Network
- Southern Growers Inc
- The Soil Knowledge Network.
This program is supported by NSW Local Land Services, through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.