Soil work pays dividends

But was it sustainable? No, but Mark’s journey into regenerative farming had to start with recognising that he had a problem.

Mark has been running the farm at Sunnyside, Tasmania since he was 18 and, 28 years later, he’s still on the same farm, but it’s about four times the size.

The farm is about 300 metres above sea level on red volcanic soil with plenty of rocks with a 1050mm annual rainfall.

He started with 75 cows, Mark and his wife Roslyn and their 10 children now milking 570 cows organically, grain free and with zero bought-in feed and only moderate debt levels.

Mark shared his journey at Dairy Australia’s inaugural Grounds for Growth conference, an event designed to support farmers to adopt multispecies pastures and other practices to improve soil health and function.

One of the key messages of the conference was to maximise home-grown feed and, thanks to his changes, Mark is already ahead of the pack.

“People have mentioned about maximising on-farm feed – well that’s all we use,” he said.

“It’s been a complete change of mindset to the way we used to farm.”

It started with Mark pondering why his farm wouldn’t grow clover, why his cows would get milk fever and grass tetany during the milking season, why the ground was so hard and the soil barren except for ryegrass, and why did he have to apply so much nitrogen?

Consultants recommended “putting on more of this and more of that” but Mark, whose volcanic soils had issues with aluminium, iron and manganese, started doing his own research and came across the findings of Dr Carey Reams and Dr William Albrecht from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

“In those days, fertilisers and monocultures began dominating the farming landscape,” he said.

“It worked well for a time, but slowly, they began to degrade the landscape — and that’s what I was seeing on my farm.”

He also followed the published work of Barry Rowe (2008) from Elliott Research Station who put on 15 tonnes of lime per hectare over eight years, and recorded the changes over the 18 years of study.

As the pH increased above 6.3 (in water), the pastures went from almost clover free to clover abundant, the rye-grass was more persistent and the pasture grew 7.5 per cent more dry matter, all outside of the spring flush.

“It was articles like these, that gave me the confidence to do things differently,” Mark said.

“We stopped using the conventional fertilisers most damaging to soil life, replacing them with sulphated forms of fertilisers, and reduced their quantity.

“With the same fertiliser budget, we started applying large amounts of lime and dolomite.”

Within a year, milk fever and grass tetany outside of calving was eliminated, and over the following years, corbie and cockchafer grubs were no longer a problem, while weeds like capeweed and ragwort disappeared.

The soil softened and water infiltration rates improved, and plants like red clover, lucerne or chicory started coming onto the farm.

“The soil started coming back to life,” Mark said.

The farm grew so much better with so little fertiliser that in 2016, Mark turned to organic farming, but it wasn’t an immediate success.

“The pasture turned yellow; and we thought, `what have we done, this is never going to work’. It took a few months for the soil biology to kick in and the pasture to regain its colour.

After a serious illness that left Mark barely able to work for three years, he had a total re-set of priorities.

“I didn’t even have the energy to organise fertiliser or weed spraying.”

He now tops the paddocks in summer, and says “if the cows eat it, it’s a herb, if they don’t, it’s compost.”

Staffing issues led to once-a-day milking and Mark’s answer to cell count demands from the milk factories was to cull 110 cows in one year to make the cell count tolerable.

“Looking back, it was during this time that we really took regenerative farming into our stride,” he said.

The changes made in subsequent years have seen the farm business become more profitable with less risk and less work.

On top of what we were already doing, we introduced standing hay (deferred grazing) on the dryland areas of the farm. Longer rotations on the irrigated land.

“We also re-sowed as many stone free paddocks as we could spare on the farm to perennial multispecies, including short-lived species of self-replacing pasture swards,” Mark said.

“This led to around 15 per cent less water use, saving energy or allowing more irrigation.

“We now feed significantly less hay and silage, weeds are under control, the dryland pastures grow longer into the summer months, and we can easily work through short feed pinches, without any additional feed inputs.

The cows are more settled, and production didn’t drop because of changes to the pasture system, only with the once-a-day milking.

He now sees herbs dominating the pasture sward, as well as a large increase in worms, insects and birds.

Importantly, the cows love the multispecies pasture and actively seek out their favourite foods.

“With a higher pasture coverage, the multispecies and less grazing frequency, I barely see the soil now after grazing, this has led to a vast reduction in weeds on the farm.” he said.

“Even with so little fertiliser being used, the pasture is growing better than ever, with the worst paddocks vastly more productive and the best paddocks still growing just as well.

“Most of the things I have learnt along my journey, even if I was conventionally dairy farming, I would still do them.”