IMPROVING AGRICULTURE'S ENVIRONMENTAL CREDENTIALS: CAPTURING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Mr Jason Alexandra

EarthWatch Institute (Australia) Email: jasona@impag.com.au

Australians are increasingly valuing non-production values of landscapes – including lifestyle, amenity, bequest and spiritual values; their capacity to generate ecosystem services; and their cultural and natural heritage. Recognising that healthy landscapes produce a variety of important services is central to the idea of ecosystems services and helps us shift from conceiving of rural landscapes as primarily producers of commodities to a broader view that includes services and non utilitarian values.

Rural landscapes are inherently diverse. They are socially constructed: through their beliefs and actions, people are constructing the landscapes of the future. Australia 's agriculture landscapes are evolving due to profound shifts in the underpinning cultural, institutional and economic relationships with nature. Changes in human relationships with country manifest in many ways. Early in the 21st century, profound changes are occurring in agricultural and natural resources policy. Agriculture is declining in national significance, becoming less dominant economically and politically, facing increasing regulatory constraints, and losing its right to transform landscapes in the name of production. Intensive agriculture is becoming concentrated in areas suited to reliable cost-effective production; other values, policies and relationships are beginning to reshape the relationships with much of the country. Aboriginal land rights, absentee landlords and structural and demographic change are changing ownership patterns. The goals of resource management are being redefined to include production of a wide range of goods and services generated by healthy ecosystems – including spiritual, inspirational, recreational and other life fulfilling ecosystems services. Recognition of the multiple values of rural landscapes is leading towards more European style policies of multi-functionality and towards greater acceptance of nature as both provider and in need of care. Nature is no longer viewed as a simply a cornucopia of resources available for human exploitation. The nation's institutions and sense of identity are changing. Agriculture, forestry and industrial production systems are being critically examined. Bioregionalism is emerging as a framework for understanding and managing a large and diverse continent. Localised celebrations recognise the symbiosis between cultural and natural heritage.

Rural landscapes produce more than food or fibre, more than export commodities: our landscapes are shapers of our spirits, our values, and cultural symbols. Our population, of mostly recent migrants, is increasingly acknowledging that landscapes are laced with culture. While a factory or a mine is an adequate analogy for landscapes that produce commodities: cathedrals, theatres, museums, universities or great art galleries are more appropriate analogies for the multi-faceted relationships we have with nature. People live and work in rural landscapes and over generations the combined impacts of individual actions transform massive regions: a single settler wielding an axe could not foresee the profound cumulative impacts of their labour. Substantial lag times can separate cause and effect in large-scale ecological systems. This ancient, living continent bears deepening scars of agricultural development – salinisation, eutrophication, species extinctions, and desertification. Nature is still adjusting to the pressures of new settlers with their technology, values, and the genetic materials which ended the 300 million years of “separate evolution” that began when Gondwanaland broke up.

Farming reshapes landscapes using powerful tools. In a rapidly evolving combination of technology, genetics and knowledge, industrial-scale systems for producing food and fibre have reshaped the planet. During the 20th century, the world population tripled, water use increased six-fold and the area devoted to agriculture escalated. Humans have become the world's dominant evolutionary force. Technology, consumption patterns and growth in population are delivering unprecedented rates of change to the global systems. The development of production systems that enhance rather than further degrade nature is critical. Fortunately the revitalisation of degraded landscapes is becoming a major collective endeavour, finding clear expression in collective attempts to restore nature to landscapes via movements like landcare and farm forestry. Developing sustainable production systems and the restoration of degraded landscapes is both a symbolic and practical activity: Australians are creating the landscapes of the future.

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NATIVE VEGETATION MANAGEMENT FOR CONSERVATION AND PRODUCTION

Len Banks [Presentation 426kb pdf]

Department of Natural Resources. Email: len.banks@dnr.nsw.gov.au

In NSW the Native Vegetation Act 2003, defines native vegetation as species that existed in the State before European settlement, including trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and grasses.

We all gain benefit from native vegetation, and this presentation describes examples of those benefits, and mechanisms in place to capture the benefits for as many people as possible. Native vegetation provides direct saleable products such as timber and fuel and indirect products through its utilisation to produce meat, wool and honey. It also provides less tangible but vitally important environmental benefits in the form of habitat, water quality and soil stability, as well as a resource for tourism, education and amenity.

In capitalising on some of these benefits and in the recognition that there are higher value land uses, we have replaced large areas of native vegetation with agriculture, residential development and infrastructure services. But we have also protected areas of high conservation value and replanted native vegetation to increase the opportunities for future benefit. For example, in the past decade in NSW nearly 450 new national parks have been created and almost 200 voluntary conservation agreements have been signed with private landholders.

The common factor across all sectors of the community that have aspirations and goals related to native vegetation is a desire for multiple and ongoing benefits; both commercial and community benefits. We want to conserve or protect existing areas of native vegetation to continue to gain the values it provides; we want to enhance the quality or condition of degraded areas of native vegetation to increase the benefits; and we want to establish renewable and sustainable production systems based on native vegetation.

We will only be able to achieve these goals across the range of stakeholders and interest groups through the use of a mix of tools:

• There are still knowledge gaps to fill so research, communication and education will be important tools.
• Clear guidance is needed through policies, strategies and planning instruments.
• Implementation to achieve public benefits will require assistance or incentives to facilitate the changes beyond private benefit.
• In order to ensure that targets are achieved in the public interest and that policies and plans are complied with, legislation and regulation are parts of the tool kit in reaching the goals of both conservation and production outcomes in native vegetation management.

There are many excellent examples of the balance being found to achieve multiple benefits from native vegetation. The presentation at the Fenner Conference 2006 will highlight some real life case studies where native vegetation is successfully managed for both conservation and production outcomes. For example:

• forest management for both timber and livestock production and habitat value;
• the value of scattered trees for pasture, livestock and crop production;
• incentives for native pasture improvement and ground cover maintenance.

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THE AUSTRALIAN AGRO-ENVIRONMENTAL NEXUS: PRESSURES AND PROSPECTS

Jeff Bennett [Presentation 43kb pdf]

Crawford School, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. Email: jeff.bennett@anu.edu.au

Agricultural production and environmental protection are frequently in competition for the same scarce natural resources. Land can be cleared for grazing or trees can be kept as a wildlife preserve. Water can be extracted from a river for irrigated cropping or left in situ to protect endangered fish species. Resource use choices are therefore a ‘question of balance' between these competing interests.

The returns from using natural resources in many agricultural industries have been declining over time. With lower incomes being generated from agricultural uses, resource asset values have also declined with a consequential negative impact on the incentive and capacity to husband the resources. At the same time, broad social interest in environmental protection has been increasing. A key question is how to match land owners actions to this changing pattern of demand for their resources. Will land owners move more toward environmental protection and away from agricultural production to meet the growing community demand for conservation outcomes?

Such a move is more often than not costly both in terms of foregone agricultural production earnings and the explicit costs of conversion. Financial returns from the change are limited. The conservation outcomes are frequently ‘public goods' for which markets do not form. Governments can introduce measures that will ensure greater supply of environmental protection. They can purchase land to enhance the public reserve network. They can regulate agricultural activities by legislation. However these options are both costly and can inadvertently cause diminished incentives for landowners to husband their natural resources.

Alternatively, governments can develop policies that provide better linkages between producers and consumers of environmental protection. Increased effort to achieve international agricultural trade reform would enhance land owners' incentives and abilities to husband their natural resources. Abandoning policies that involve the effective confiscation of natural resource rights would provide enhanced security of tenure and so encourage a longer term perspective on management. The development of policies that mobilize the community's willingness to pay for environmental protection so that land owners are rewarded financially for their conservation effort would provide an indirect linkage between demand and supply. The facilitation of private sector initiatives to protect on-farm ecosystems would provide a more direct linkage.

The overall goal should be the development of mechanisms that will reduce the barriers that currently exist between willing buyers of environmental services and willing land owner suppliers in order to achieve mutually advantageous exchange.

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ENVIRONMENTAL PATRONAGE AND PRIVATE LANDS CONSERVATION

Carl Binning

Chief Executive, Greening Australia, Canberra ACT 2601. Email: cbinning@greeningaustralia.org.au

This presentation considers the role of and progress in achieving private lands conservation in Australia.

Successful private lands conservation requires the coincidence of a number of factors: a willing land holder, an appropriate plan/technology and the financial and human resources to implement.

More often than not private lands conservation is narrowly defined to include land, containing high quality native vegetation, that is voluntarily set aside for nature conservation using government or philanthropic funds. A broader definition is proposed involving assessing the role of all land-uses on private land in delivering nature conservation and ecosystem services. Under this definition the motivations and potential synergies between the public good and private interests can be better understood.

The ways in which private land can contribute to nature conservation include:

• Setting land aside exclusively for nature conservation.
• Creating multiple use land zones in which conservation is one of a range of objectives
• Finding new land uses or adapting existing land uses to provide greater environmental benefits
• Achieving the right mix of land-uses at the landscape scale to integrated production and conservation objectives.

In turn the range of motivations for financing private lands conservation can include:

• Public investment through programs such as the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust
• Private landholder investment
• Corporate investment through sponsorship
• Corporate investment through Corporate Social Responsibility investments including securing a license to operate
• Private investment aimed at increasing short or long term returns

Each of these strategies and motivations is necessary but not sufficient to deliver nature conservation outcomes at the landscape scale. Moving beyond the site scale requires that we harness the skills expertise and experience of all sectors of community to achieve our objectives. A number of examples are used to emphasise the importance of this broader definition including.

• Private lands acquisition using philanthropic and government funds
• Carbon sequestration projects
• Sandalwood plantations
• Bluegum plantations
• Urban development projects
• Management of mining exploration leases

Viewed from this prism, private land conservation and environmental patronage is growing fast with many new and emerging opportunities. The challenge is assess how to integrate the contribution of different strategies and address the difficult trade-offs that may need to be made from time to time.

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CONSERVING PLANTS IN AUSTRALIA 'S CHANGING RURAL LANDSCAPES

Mark Burgman ¹, David Keith ², Steve Hopper ³ [Presentation 275kb pdf]

¹Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis, University of Melbourne. Email: markab@unimelb.edu.au
²NSW Department of Conservation and Environment, Hurstville, 2220, Australia
³School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia , Crawley, 6009, Australia

The status of the Australian flora was reviewed by compiling published information on all critically endangered and endangered species listed federally in 2004. Threatening processes were categorised and their contributions to past, present and future declines were assessed. The information was cross-referenced against State agency information and field knowledge. Land clearance for agriculture (grazing and cropping) and urbanization have been the primary causes of range contractions and habitat loss in the past, responsible for the current status of the majority of threatened Australian plants 1 . In the future, land clearance will remain important but new issues are emerging. Many species are now at risk from demographic and environmental uncertainty alone. Threats growing in importance include disease, salinity, invasive species and changed disturbance regimes. Many species are subject to common, landscape-level threats. A key issue to emerge from our analysis is that most species are threatened by a number of interacting factors – threat syndromes. Several future risks may be mitigated effectively by simple, low-cost changes in policy, such as more effective and targeted management of land clearance, fire, and the importation of plant species. Other factors will require greater effort and new strategies to mitigate, including social and legal initiatives in urban landscapes and broad strategies for pathogens, climate change and other landscape-level processes. Risk analysis has a role to play in understanding strategies to mitigate risk, and in exploring alternatives that maximize robustness to uncertainty for environmental, social and economic consequences.

Burgman, M. Keith, D., Hopper, S., Widyatmoko, D. and Drill, C. 2006. Threat syndromes and conservation of the Australian flora. Biological Conservation (in press).

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN REVEGETATION TO REACH REGIONAL TARGETS

David Carr, Kimberlie Rawlings, Fleur Flanery and Owen Cox. [Presentation 2,103kb pdf]

Greening Australia Ltd, Yarralumla, ACT, Australia. Email: dcarr@greeningaustralia.org.au

Catchment management authorities (CMAs) have set ambitious revegetation targets to address resource degradation. These targets are usually set based on the area of revegetation needed to address degradation problems in the short, medium and long term. This presentation will discuss three examples of regional targets from Southern Australia (Table 1). These targets include a mix of revegetation types and methods. Long-term aspirational targets such as that for the North Central Victorian region are based on achieving a 30% threshold of native vegetation. The presentation will also discuss examples of recent research and innovative projects that illustrate the types of activities required to achieve revegetation targets.

Table 1. Estimated seed requirements and costs for revegetation targets in three southern Australian regions.

There are two technical difficulties for regions to achieve these targets: 1. Supply of sufficient quantities of native seed of suitable quality; and 2. Technology to carry out large-scale revegetation at low cost to produce self-sustaining ecosystems.

Seed supply
Table 1 shows the estimated quantity of seed required to meet each target. Direct seeding uses much more seed than tubestock planting, but is considerably cheaper. Increasing the efficiency of direct seeding would be one way to increase the amount of available seed. In areas with low remnant native vegetation cover seed is a scarce resource, so investments in seed infrastructure (seed production areas) and capacity building (training for collectors and users) will be required.

Landscape-scale revegetation
To achieve the desired range of vegetation communities within revegetation targets, regions will require a considerable scaling-up of current revegetation practices. We are already seeing innovative technologies and methods to achieve this. The development of Wattle Grow® by CSIRO (Thrall et al. , 2001) and the Grassy Groundcover Project, run by University of Melbourne and Greening Australia to reestablish diverse grassy ecosystems, are such innovations.

Low cost, reliable establishment of a broad range of species at the scales represented by the three examples given presents many challenges for both researchers and practitioners. We believe that with strategic planning methods such as scenario planning and back-casting (Manning et al. , in press), these targets can be achieved.

Manning, A.D., Lindenmayer, D.B., & Fischer, J. (in press) Stretch-goals and backcasting: approaches for overcoming barriers to large-scale ecological restoration. Restoration Ecology.
Thrall, P.H., Murray , B.R., Watkin, E.L.J., Woods, M.J., Baker, K., Burdon, J.J., & Brockwell, J. (2001) Bacterial partnerships enhance the value of native legumes in rehabilitation of degraded agricultural lands. Ecological Management & Restoration , 2 , 233-235.

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BALANCING PRODUCTION, CONSERVATION AND NRM: SOCIOECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS IN POLICY DESIGN

Helena Clayton, David Pannell [Presentation 137kb pdf]

University of Western Australia and the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity, Perth, Australia Email: clayth01@student.uwa.edu.au

In this paper we discuss some of the socioeconomic challenges involved in integrating and balancing agricultural and environmental imperatives, in the context of the regional NRM arrangements. There are balances to be struck at each of three scales: the farm, the region, and the national or policy scales.

Priorities at the farm-level will reflect the realities of people who make a living from agriculture. The balancing of priorities between agricultural and environmental assets will inevitably reflect family and personal values and goals. It will also depend on the farmer's skills and experience, the resources of the farm business, the opportunities to generate financial and environmental benefits on that farm, and the farmer's personal perceptions about those opportunities. On some farms, because of the nature and value of the environmental assets that are present, there are opportunities to generate or protect very substantial environmental values, while on other farms this is not the case. This interacts with the farmer's preferences. Some may not value environmental benefits highly, no matter how special they seem to others. The diversity of physical and personal circumstances means that the selected balance between production and environment will vary widely between different farmers. At the national and regional level there are policy and program options for influencing where the farmer strikes the balance, to a greater or lesser extent, but fundamentally decisions belong to the farmer.

In their attempts to influence farmers' decisions, regional NRM bodies are also required to strike balances in several areas. For example, they must balance their investments across different parts of the region, or between investments on private and public lands, or between different conservation/NRM issues. They need to strike an appropriate balance between the use of different sorts of policy tools and they need to decide where to strike a balance between highly targeted interventions to protect specific environmental assets and more diffuse interventions, such as capacity building. We make a number of suggestions on ways to enhance the ability of NRM bodies to do their difficult task of delivering environmental outcomes that the community values highly.

At the national-level, policy makers also have to balance the allocation of funds between states/regions, and between environmental issues/programs. Just as regional bodies attempt to influence the balances being struck by farmers, the way that policy makers design the constraints and guidelines of their policies influences the balances being struck by regional NRM bodies. We argue that a key challenge at the policy-level is the need for decision-making guidance, technical support and mechanisms of accountability that can feed down to both the regional and farm scale to ensure that scarce resources are being used in the most effective way to meet agricultural and environmental goals.

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THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN: CONFLICTS AND SYNERGIES IN CATCHMENT MANAGEMENT

Dr Wendy Craik [Presentation 2,633kb pdf]

Murray-Darling Basin Commission. Email: wendy.craik@mdbc.gov.au

Dr Wendy Craik, Chief Executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, will outline the importance of the Murray-Darling Basin , which covers 1/7 of the Australian continent and generates about 40% ($9 billion) of Australia 's income derived from agriculture and grazing. It supports half the crop land and ¾ of the irrigated land in Australia with 75% of its water is used for irrigation, generating $4.5 billion GVP. It also provides water for environmental services, industries and 3 million domestic consumers.

The current demand for water will be addressed, looking at the 100 year average and the 10 year average to date. Water demands over the next 20 years will be examined, particularly how the relative demands for irrigated agriculture and environmental services are expected to change. The Murray-Darling Basin will also be compared to the major rivers of the world.

The challenges of managing the Murray-Darling Basin with six partner government, their roles and responsibilities and the role of the Commission will also be addressed.

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THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY - A PRACTITIONER'S PERSPECTIVE

Martin Driver

Murray Catchment Management Authority. Email: martin.driver@cma.nsw.gov.au

Rural and regional Australia has been built on innovation - necessity has been the mother of invention. Innovation has been the hallmark of developing rural industries and enterprises since the European settlement.

However this presentation argues the case that the need for further technical innovation is not necessarily the greatest problem in bringing about change in natural resource management at present. There has been a lot of innovation and innovators, but still the on-ground changes are frustratingly slow and simple innovations not necessarily incorporated in agricultural systems.

The fence is hardly a new innovation in agriculture, but an innovation none the less. However it's sensible, planned placement for vegetation management is still nowhere near where it should be. This is even after one hundred years of acknowledgement that vegetation decline is a problem, and a problem that is primarily caused by grazing animals that can be managed by fences.

Economic pressures in agriculture is in part to blame, but even when incentives are available to offset the costs, the issues of time labour shortages and support systems come into play.

The case that I would like to argue proposes that the real issue at present is the way innovation and innovators (landholders and extension practitioners) are continually thwarted and worn down by-

• Institutional processes, that are restrictive and inflexible
• Short term and insecure NRM programs & political inertia
• Failure to integrate programs that address the problems in regional Australia in a holistic manner

It is not a case of not needing further innovation but of making sure that the basics are dealt with and the future need for innovation properly address the full range of issues.

It is also contended that some innovations in agriculture (economic, technological and labour saving) are actually working against what is needed in NRM and the desired social and economic outcomes in regional Australia . The combined impact of these issues is that many innovations are currently not able to meet the needs of the natural ecology or the social/ economic ecology. And without people who want to be involved in NRM, and a capacity to hold them in regional areas much of the capacity for future innovation is lost.

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LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE: ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS

Michael Dunlop [Presentation 1,238kb pdf]

CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra. Email: michael.dunlop@csiro.au

The development of agriculture in Australia has brought great financial and social wealth to the nation, but it has also been and considerable environmental costs. In this day and age it is clear that further environmental impacts are highly undesirable but that further developments are required in agriculture for it to continue to be globally competitive. Opinions vary considerably on the how and why agricultural and environmental outcomes should be combined in the management of Australia 's landscapes.

In this talk two scenarios for Australian landscapes will be presented that illustrate markedly different approaches to the challenge of integration. The scenarios will be presented as “futures that might happen” rather than “options between which we must choose”. Their purpose is to help provide a platform for reflecting on contributions throughout the conference and to stimulate further discussion about the roles of different approaches to balancing agricultural and environmental imperatives. Following speakers in this session will provide their perspectives on the “integration challenge” prior to open discussion.

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THE AUSTRALIAN WHEAT INDUSTRY: CONTRAINTS, RISKS AND OPPORTUNITES

Tony Fischer [Presentation 46kb pdf]

Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, Canberra, Australia. Email: fischer@aciar.gov.au

The Australian grains industry, in which wheat cropping is embedded, is the dominant enterprise over the wheat-sheep zone (approximately 60 m ha). It is characterized by extensive rainfed cropping (12 m ha of wheat, about 10 m ha other crops) in rotation with grazed pastures (20m ha, a unique feature of the Australian industry), while the balance is non arable land with or without substantial modification of the original vegetation. The number of grain farms is now only 30,000, showing a generally modest economic rate of return masking substantial variation among farms.

Constraints and risks to grain farming have traditionally come from our poor soils, unfavorable climate, difficult terms of trade due to reliance on exports, and the inability of farmers to quickly adopt improved technologies leading to a persistent “yield gap”.

Looking to the future of the industry (25 years ahead), in aggregate these constraints will probably remain or even become more severe, while a new constraint, national and international concern for environment, health and safety, as embodied in growing regulations, is likely to become worse. Opportunities in this scenario will continue to come from grains research and development, grain farmer's resilience and innovation, and enlightened Australian government policy towards the industry. The outcome will also depend on how our competitor nations deal with these similar developments, and on their natural resources base for cropping, including the various effects of climate change. Technical progress through R and D is probably slowing down everywhere, but yield gap is large in some competitor countries (e.g. ex USSR ). Recent R and D does, however, offer win-win solutions to some environmental problems of cropping.

The relative success of our research investments and the skills of our inevitably-declining number of farmers are the keys to a more favorable outcome, while national environmental policy could hinder or help. What may also help is the more severe competition for grain lands in many overseas countries, especially the relatively favorable ones where higher value crops can be grown and where population density is highest and encroachment on agricultural land and water resources will be greatest. World wheat, barley, sorghum and pulse production (and ruminant livestock fattening) will gradually concentrate in the extensive semiarid rain fed lands of the world where these crops have a unique comparative advantage. This includes the Australian wheat-sheep zone.

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RURAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS - THE NEED FOR GREATER DIVERSITY

Tony Gleeson [Presentation 1,248kb pdf]

Synapse Research & Consulting. Email: syncons@bigpond.com

Agriculture has a dominant and transforming impact on rural landscapes. Institutional arrangements governing agricultural innovation, in particular R&D and agricultural markets are prime determinants of the future of those landscapes. Hence these arrangements need to be guided by a broad public policy reference, including consideration of the extent to which embedding rural innovation so dominantly in an agricultural context limits cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring (thinking about things differently) enables the representations that are so critical to insightful problem finding and resolution.

Australia 's agricultural R&D has evolved to the current position whereby its direction and management are dominated by rural R&D corporations (RDCs).

Analysts of the RDC arrangements correctly point to substantial gains in agricultural productivity, and they posit that these gains are substantially attributable to R&D.

Almost universally the RDCs operate risk averse innovation systems characterised by multiple layers of industry related gatekeepers. These features are well suited to improving productivity, a readily perceived destination requiring non-insightful problem solving processes and skills. Hence we have a legitimate goal, effective processes and demonstratable outcomes; but is this a sufficient package?

In an aggregate sense, the economic performance of the agricultural sector is, at best, modest.

Notwithstanding dramatic increases in the volume of agricultural production Australian net farm (agricultural) income continues to decline. In fact over the past fifty years or so there has been little if any change in the real gross value of agricultural production. Aggregate farm costs and the capital employed in agriculture remain fairly constant. This reality casts doubt as to whether incremental increases in productivity will be sufficient to warrant maintaining agriculture's high levels of access to land and water resources.

Analysts of the impacts of the RDC arrangements point to increasing industry funding for R&D. However the public sector continues to provide about eighty percent of rural R&D expenditure, approximating one billion dollars annually or about ten thousand dollars per farm establishment. The rationale for this expenditure warrants critical and independent examination, as do its effectiveness and efficiency.

Most RDCs have charters restricted to a single industry or to a cluster of related industries. Those RDCs that aren't so restricted (RIRDC and LWA) are generally unwilling or incapable of operating beyond the traditional agricultural paradigm. Effective integration across the RDCs is rare and characterised by high transaction costs. Clearly there are functions that are best executed industry-by-industry but this is far from being universally so, in part because most farms operate two or more industries. Furthermore public good outcomes from agricultural R&D are rarely industry specific.

For the future of agriculture and of Australian landscapes, there is a need for greater diversity in the products of innovation. In addition to incremental improvements in existing systems/industries there is a need for innovations that change system parameters and create new systems, new ways of relating to rural landscapes. To do this we need to unleash the creativity which researchers believe is constrained by current RDC managerial cultures and processes. We also need to envision landscape futures less fenced in by agricultural norms and by social and environmental goals determined (by default) by market mechanisms.

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LAND DEGRADATION AND WATER QUALITY ISSUES

Kevin Goss

Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity, Perth, Australia. Email: kgoss@fnas.uwa.edu.au

Recent revisions and debate on past predictions of future salinity hazard invite the question: are predictions of hazards and costs of land degradation and water quality decline worth doing? It is 30 years since the first national assessment of land degradation and yet we are still poorly served by data on status and trends in natural resource condition.

This paper will draw on the history of land and water resource assessments, their revisions up to the present day, and the policy and program responses of governments. There are some outstanding successes in recovering declining natural resource condition, good progress in coping with degraded natural resources, and now some “wins” because the hazards have dissipated; for example, saline ground water no longer rising and past predictions proving to be wrong.

On the other hand, intractable decline and loss of natural resources and biodiversity remain. It can be argued that there has been more success controlling point-source pollution and protecting of natural resources for utilitarian values, than for more diffuse environmental values.

Take dryland salinity for example. The current situation can be summed up as:

• Some instances of successful reversal – River Murray, Denmark River and individual farms;
• Marginally profitable options for living with salinity; and
• More reliable data on current condition, with some flattening and reversal of trends.

Yet impact on and threat to native species and habitats in the SW Land Division of Western Australia remain very real, as does stream salinity in some Murray-Darling Basin catchments. One million hectares of land is currently salt-affected in WA, typically larger areas of wheatbelt valley floors, with another million hectares of salt-affected land more dispersed in SE Australia .

This paper suggests that:

1. Adequate data and analysis of trends in condition of natural resources, and estimates of net benefits in taking actions should be a top priority;
2. Predictions of hazards and costs should be conditional on rigorous external review and accreditation of the modelling where appropriate; and
3. In general terms, an effective strategy for natural resource management has two parts –
   a ) focus and intervention on protection of agreed high value environmental assets at risk as highest priority for public funds, and
   b) directing assistance to enterprises dependent on natural resources only where there are profitable options and net benefits in doing so.

Two case histories illustrate this strategic approach well:

• The “first step decision” for The Living Murray was based on a broad consensus of “icon assets” to receive priority environmental watering and rigorous analysis of the water allocations, engineering works, whole of river and local environmental water management, and the economic and social impacts involved.
• The work of the CRC Salinity shows there are few profitable options for salinity management being available today. For much of the Australian farmed landscape which is non-saline and will never suffer dryland salinity, a “profitable perennials” strategy is now recommended.

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INCENTIVES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RESOURCE SECURITY: INISIGHTS FOR IMPLEMENTING STEWARDSHIP PAYMENTS

Steve Hatfield-Dodds [Presentation 355kb pdf]

CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra. Email: Steve.HatfieldDodds@csiro.au

Recent years have seen growing interest in implementing some form of payments for ecosystem services as a central component of the next wave of environment and natural resource management policy.

This presentation will outline five policy guidelines that would help ensure that the implementation of stewardship payments at scale meets two essential criteria – that they (i) support stewardship and sustainable resource use, and (ii) are perceived as providing ‘good value' for public expenditure.

1. Implementation of stewardship payments should be based on coherent iterative regional plans that integrate regulation and public investment . These should coordinate across policy mechanisms and build the knowledge base required to ensure resource management avoids damaging the integrity and productivity of the natural resource base as a whole (implementing the catchment care principle [1, 2]). Regulation should focus on preventing ‘net cost activity' and be as flexible as possible, allowing the greatest management freedoms consistent with mandatory resource standards and the catchment care principle. Public investment should focus on facilitating improvements in resource condition, including through repair of past damage where this is worthwhile. Resource users who benefit should contribute to these investments [3].

2. A practical framework should be developed for ensuring that stewardship payments are not provided for actions that are required by resource managers' general environmental duty of care . This could be achieved through embedding the Wentworth Group's catchment care principle [2] into implementation frameworks, such as integrated catchment plans linked to farm plans or approvals covering management of water, native vegetation and other natural resources [1, 3, 4].

3 Policy should recognise the range of motivations that shape resource management and conservation decisions . Behavioural economics and institutional theory point out that that monetary payments are only one form of incentive, and that offering payments can in some circumstances reduce conservation outcomes – even if these payments are later withdrawn [5, 6]. This suggests a general presumption against paying for conservation covenants, which are not currently undertaken for financial motives.

4 If possible, the political negotiation of stewardship payments should be used to secure agreement to enhance resource security through preventing net cost activity . Existing regulatory arrangements leave resource managers largely free to damage the resource base of other land owners – allowing costs to be shifted onto other farms and future resource users – while markets at times provide pressure to do so. This results in ‘net cost' activity, undermining resource security by reducing the value of the natural resource base. Assessing the extent of this problem is difficult, but existing information suggests that inappropriate management of relatively small areas is resulting in significant costs.

5. Regional implementation and planning should engage key actors and promote mutual appreciation of different values and viewpoints, address key knowledge gaps, and promote incentive alignment . Processes should also promote devolved decision making supported by appropriate reporting and accountabilities. These social processes are important to ensure that plans and priorities are based on the best available information, including scientific data and local knowledge, and to foster acceptance and participation by local stakeholders (given that external enforcement of governance arrangements is generally not feasible).

1 Wentworth Group, 2003. A New Model for Landscape Conservation in NSW: Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists Report to Premier Carr . WWF, Sydney; see also Wentworth Group, 2002. Blueprint for a Living Continent , WWF Australia , Sydney
2 Hatfield Dodds, S., 2006. ‘The Catchment Care Principle: A new equity principle for environmental policy, with advantages for efficiency and adaptive governance', Ecological Economics 56 (3), 373-385
3 Wentworth Group, 2003, Blueprint for a National Water Plan, WWF, Sydney ;
4 Young, M. and McColl, J., 2003. ‘Robust Reform: The case for a New Water Entitlement System for Australia ' The Australian Economic Review 36(2): 225-34.
5 Reeson, A., 2006. Institutions, Motivations and Crowding Out: Theory, evidence and policy implications . CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Discussion Paper, August 2006;
6 Frey, B.S., 2001. Inspiring economics: Human motivation in political economy . Cheltenham : Edward Elgar.

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THE BUSINESSES AND PEOPLE THAT MAKE UP AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE: SOME OVERLOOKED FACTORS IN THE QUEST FOR NATURAL RESOURCE SUSTAINABILITY

Mick Keogh [Presentation 163kb pdf]

Australian Farm Institute, Sydney, Australia. Email: keoghm@.farminstitute.org.au

The people and the businesses that make up Australian agriculture have changed significantly over the past two decades, as the world has transitioned from a period during which food insecurity was a major concern to the present when global per capita food and fibre production have never been higher, and obesity and food oversupply are a major focus for international policymakers.

The relentless downward pressure exerted on international farm commodity prices by rapidly growing agricultural exports from low-cost producers in developing countries is forcing Australian farmers to pursue ever-increasing rates of productivity growth, and also to seek out specialized higher-value markets which are less readily available to farmers in developing countries.

These higher-value markets have more stringent requirements than bulk commodity markets, and necessitate that farmer/suppliers become more specialized, utilise higher levels of skills and technology, operate more capital intensive businesses, and become more closely integrated into supply chains. Farmers supplying these markets also face heightened levels of market risk, which can to some extent be offset through contract marketing arrangements, and greater control over inputs.

Such markets are more accessible to larger, corporate-scale farm enterprises, which have access to the required levels of skills and technology. Medium-scale farm enterprises are less likely to be able to access these resources, and seem likely to be progressively squeezed-out – either being aggregated into larger entities, or becoming more and more reliant on off-farm income, with the farm business becoming a part-time leisure activity. There is evidence that these changes are taking place in Australian farm populations.

Natural resource policies and programs that do not recognise the growing diversity of farm businesses in Australia , nor the increasingly diverse culture and motivations of those involved in the agriculture sector are unlikely to result in real progress towards more sustainable natural resource management. A particular danger lies in policies that are prescriptive about land and water use practices, rather than being focused on desired outcomes. A key challenge is finding ways to ensure natural resource sustainability is achieved without limiting the ability of farmers to respond flexibly as market conditions change.

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PROSPECTS FOR ENHANCING AND PROTECTING NATIVE SYSTEMS IN AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES

David Lindenmayer

Centre for Resource & Environmental Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200 Email: davidl@cres.anu.edu.au

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended on vegetation restoration in Australia . Restoration efforts have aimed to control soil erosion and reduce the negative impacts of salinity. It is also believed that vegetation restoration has positive effects on biodiversity conservation, but such effects have not been quantified. This presentation reports the preliminary results of a major series of studies that have directly quantified the biodiversity responses associated with replanting efforts at the site, farm, and landscape levels. A particular feature of the study has been the way that cumulative impacts of planting and existing areas of native vegetation can be quantified. Results to date show that species belonging to groups such as reptiles and arboreal marsupials are less likely to occur on farms with more replanted vegetation. This is a lag effect of previous land clearing that has major implications for current on-farm vegetation management strategies such as offsetting 1 . Contrasting results are found for birds at the farm-level – the spatial scale most important for land managers but also the spatial scale largely overlooked by ecological researchers. Data analyses completed to date show that most (62%) of the variation in bird biota is associated with existing remnant vegetation on a farm. Replantings explain a further 21% of the variation in a statistically significant co-contributed sense. Hence, existing native vegetation is three times more important for overall bird biodiversity than replanted areas. However, particular elements of the biota, including several threatened species, are strongly associated with replanted areas and rarely found in native remnant vegetation. The implications of this work are important for vegetation management policies and they suggest that replanted areas on farms are valuable for some elements of the biodiversity and more restoration efforts are required. However, replanting should not come at the expense of clearing existing areas of native vegetation.

1. Cunningham, R.B., Lindenmayer, D.B., Crane, M., Michael, D., and McGregor, C. (2007). Large scale revegetation and mammal and reptile response: novel multi-scale and interactive effects . (Ecological Applications ). (in press).

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PRODUCTION VERSUS BIODIVERSITY: LINKAGES BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND AGRICULTURE

Mark Lonsdale ¹, Jeremy Burdon ² and Brian Keating ³ [Presentation 195kb pdf]

¹CSIRO Entomology, Canberra, ²CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, ³CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Brisbane. Email: mark.lonsdale@csiro.au

The development of modern agriculture has led to phenomenal improvements in productivity, in human health and prosperity in many parts of the world, including Australia . At the same time, however, agricultural activities such as tillage, drainage, grazing, the extensive usage of pesticides and fertilizers, and clearing of native vegetation have significant impacts on wild species of flora and fauna (1).

Since the mid 20 th century, Australia has seen an increasing proportion of its land given over to agriculture while, at the same time agricultural productivity has increased dramatically. This contrasts with Europe , where intensification and productivity gains have allowed land to be set aside for conservation purposes.

The major focus of conservation effort in Australia has been protected areas, whereas in countries like Britain , on-farm conservation measures have been an integral part of biodiversity conservation for some time. European landscapes are relatively young and all relatively “disturbed / transformed” by human activity – hence in Europe targeting of conservation effort to agricultural landscapes (i.e. “on-farm”) is likely to have a significant impact (2).  In contrast, Australia 's landscapes and ecosystems are generally very ancient and human impacts have been more recent, with the exception of Indigenous management (often associated with fire). However, as agriculture has expanded in area and intensity in Australia , the interaction of farming practices and biota with native biodiversity has become ever more intimate, with the native fauna and flora increasingly exposed, directly or indirectly, to the consequences of agriculture.

The policy response to this has taken the form of Federal and State initiatives that aim to integrate the continuing need for the economic viability of farmers with natural resource management and biodiversity conservation. However, simple changes to agricultural practice, applied over a large area, can often have unpredictable effects, because both agro- and natural ecosystems are complex interacting systems. For example, the introduction of high value multi-purpose wheats into the high rainfall zones of southern Australia are likely to generate significant changes at a range of scales, for example –

• to obtain the best possible yields will require the development of agronomic practices that are not needed in the traditional wheat belt (e.g. raised beds to combat water-logging);
• greater cultivation of annual crops may reduce the incidence of perennial pastures, increasing the possibility of local erosion and have a significant impact on local and catchment level hydrological processes;
• livestock may be increasingly pushed onto semi-improved pastures or native grasslands that are home to native biodiversity, including endangered plant and animal species.
• Changes in the economics and type of farm operations will have concomitant impacts on service industries in local communities.

The challenge, then, is to devise strategies that will be resilient to such uncertainty, by recognizing that the long-term viability of farming systems is based in integrated approaches that balance economic and social needs and aspirations with biodiversity, and ideally even improve production through biodiversity protection (3). This implies thinking at large (regional) scales and over long time frames.

1. McGlaughlin, A., and Mineau, P. (1995). Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 55, 201-212.
2. Council of Europe (2002). http://www.coe.int/t/e/cultural_co-operation/environment/Nature_and_biological_diversity/Publications/RE53-bil.pdf
3. McNeely, J.A. and Scherr, S.J. (2002). Ecoagriculture: Strategies To Feed The World And Save Wild Biodiversity. Island Press, Washington , DC .

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PRECISION AGRICULTURE APPROACHES (TO INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS)

Alex. McBratney ¹, Brett Whelan ¹, Tiho Ancev ¹, James Taylor ¹

¹ Australian Centre for Precision Agriculture, McMillan Building A05, The University of Sydney , NSW 2006. Email: A.McBratney@usyd.edu.au

The definition of precision agriculture is still evolving as technology changes and our understanding of what is achievable grows (1). Over the years the emphasis has changed from simply ‘‘farming by soil'' (2), through variable-rate technologies, to vehicle guidance systems and will evolve to product quality and environmental management. At various places throughout the world the degree of development, and consequently the focus, varies. In new countries (or new crop commodities), yield mapping and the option of variable-rate application of inputs are generally what gets things started as a means to save costs while, in time, product quality comes more into focus. When governments learn about PA, environmental management also becomes a focus but this is a cumbersome process as it implies changes in the existing policy paradigms (3).

Definitions of PA abound. The diversity is well displayed on the website of the Laboratory for Agricultural Machinery and Processing, Katholieke University , Leuven (http://www.agr.kuleuven.ac.be/aee/amc/research/precag/introduction/PAdefinitions.htm —last accessed 05/06). One generic definition could be ‘‘that kind of agriculture that increases the number of (correct) decisions per unit area of land per unit time with associated net benefits''. This moves the focus a little away from simply spatial resolution to one involving the fineness of decisions in both space and time. This more generic definition does not imply a particular technology or set of technologies, the decisions can be made by electronic sensors, GPS, GIS, variable-rate technologies etc. but they can also be made by humans. We have concentrated on crop production, i.e., site-specific crop production, but similar issues arise with respect to livestock, fisheries, forestry and other natural resources management.

What are those associated benefits mentioned in the definition above? In simple terms—a concomitant increase in quantity and/or quality of production and/or the environment along with the same or decreased inputs. A proper definition of this in quantitative terms has been elusive. This will indeed involve a triple-bottom line kind of definition focussing on sustainable development and taking into account traditional profitability along with environmental and social benefits. Such an approach will be outlined.

1. McBratney, A.B., Whelan, B., Ancev, T. and Bouma J., (2005). Future directions of Precision Agriculture. Precision Agriculture 6, 7-23.
2. Robert, P.C. (1993). Characterisation of soil conditions at the field level for soil specific management. Geoderma 60, 57–72.
3. Bouma, J., van Alphen, B. J. and Stoorvogel, J. J. 2002. Fine tuning water quality regulations in agriculture to soil differences. Environmental Science and Policy 5, 113–120.

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MAKING CONSERVATION PAY

Ian McClelland [Presentation 1,740kb pdf]

Birchip Cropping Group. Email: awmcclelland@bigpond.com

Ask a dozen economists what constitutes a healthy landscape in the Mallee and Wimmera and you will get a dozen different answers. Ask a group of farmers and a dozen conservationists, and you will get a number of differing qualifications to a number of different answers. Differing knowledge, varying experiences, backgrounds, prejudices and individual priorities tend to influence the opinions. In fact there probably is no right answer.

An example is: what constitutes a healthy soil? An answer might be: one that fits it's purpose. A farmer might want to grow a crop on highly fertile ground or maybe for a national park they may want a low fertility soil that encourages the regeneration of the native vegetation.

When I asked a NRM professional this question, I thought his logic was sound that we need to keep the answers simple and concentrate on the main areas of sustainability. His three measurable parameters of a healthy landscape were:

• The condition of the remnant vegetation.
• A wide range of species in an indicator directory, especially including woodland birds.
• Soils and land cover.

Others talk about connectivity of vegetation, the ecosystem function of a landscape and the distribution of water across a catchment, including the maximizing of water use by plants and fauna. For many including farmers both the language that environmentalists use and the complexity of what healthy landscape means is too complicated.

The above could be summarized or simplified by saying that we want to maintain the stock of biological assets for the future. From a farmers perspective it could be maintaining or improving the productive capacity of the land for future generations. However, it is important to remember that being able to use the land to maximize profits and enhance living standards are now the key drivers that most farmers are immediately concerned about. The people living in the rural/ regional towns also want financial prosperity and a landscape that appeals to them.

So what do we want to change or influence and how do we achieve our objectives?

There is no doubt in my mind that to make changes to or to protect a landscape, the best way is to appeal to people's living standards or to their economic prosperity. These are the pragmatic drivers that result in actions. If we cannot make a link to these two factors, change will be difficult unless by regulation. Financial inducement by governments fits squarely in the economic prosperity compartment. We can however influence the desires of people to adopt new strategies by seducing or persuading them with knowledge and understanding. Equally important can be their involvement and participation in projects, such as Landcare tree planting, that can result in change of attitudes.

Examples of great promotions have been the anti smoking campaign, Life Be in It , Keep Australia Beautiful program, the save the whale crusade and even the protection of snakes and eagles regulations.

The Birchip Cropping Group program of Making Conservation Pay has as a goal and a promise to develop farming practices that are more environmentally sustainable either in terms of profit or living standards. Areas of interest include:

• Developing refuge and remnant areas for the whole farm.
• Developing alternative watering points for birds and animals in a piped system.
• Understanding the ecology of the whole farm
• Demonstrating how Precision Agriculture though productivity mapping can manage different or unproductive areas of the farm.
• Using alternative pastures to increase productivity.
• Limiting the impact of foxes, rabbits and feral cats potentially by vermin trading.
• Finding livestock management solutions that are able to adapt to our variable climate.

This paper endeavors to explore examples of how focusing on a sustainable landscape and linking it with productivity and life style can achieve desired outcomes for future generations.

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COMPUTER ASSISTED FARM AND FARM ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT

Andrew D. Moore ¹, Michael J. Robertson ²  [Presentation 422kb pdf]

¹CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600 , Canberra 2601, Australia, ²CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and APSRU, PMB 5, PO Wembley 6913, Australia. Email: Andrew.Moore@csiro.au

Australian farmers face a long-term decline in their terms of trade, and must therefore continuously improve the efficiency of their production systems. At the same time they are faced with uncertainty in their short-term production, largely driven by weather, and by long-term resource management issues (in particular the preservation of their soils from erosion, acidification and salinity and the impacts of climate change). Better management decision-making must be a major part of farmers' responses to these challenges.

A sustained research effort over several decades has produced a suite of mathematical models that integrates our understanding of plant and animal physiology and of processes in the soil in ways that are relevant to the management issues faced by Australian rural industries (e.g. 1-3). When combined with modern software engineering techniques that allow them to be used efficiently in a range of contexts and combinations, these models form a “toolkit” that can be applied to explore the short- and long-term consequences of farm management tactics and policies.

We will present four examples of the range of ways that this modelling toolkit is being put to use:

• GrazFeed (2) is a computerized version of the Australian Feeding Standards for sheep & cattle. Graziers and advisors can use GrazFeed to decide what level of animal production a pasture will support; and the right amount of supplementary feed required to meet production targets. GrazFeed has evolved from an application used mainly by advisers to one that graziers use independently. This shift was largely brought about by a synergy with the PROGRAZE extension programme (4).
• Yield Prophet ® (5) is an on-line risk management tool for grain production based on the APSIM crop and soil simulation models (1). It supports decision-making about nitrogen fertilizer inputs, crop variety choice and irrigation scheduling. By combining site-specific weather and soils data with generic models, the Yield Prophet system can compare the risk profiles of alternative crop management tactics. Yield Prophet was originally commercialized by the Birchip Cropping Group and CSIRO for dryland cropping in the Victorian Wimmera and Mallee, but its use has expanded rapidly.
• In the Murray-Darling Basin Commission's LANDMARK project (3), the GRAZPLAN simulation models for grazing systems have been used to explore the consequences of different on-farm management policies for the water balance of, and stream flow from, a whole catchment.
• Finally, we will describe our involvement in the national “Grain and Graze” programme of research, development and extension in mixed farming systems. CSIRO's suite of agricultural simulation models is being used to address specific options for improving economic productivity and the tradeoffs with associated NRM impacts. We are also working towards processes for better understanding the triple-bottom-line impacts of mixed farming systems by integrating agro-ecological and economic analyses.

A common thread running through these examples is that in agriculture, computers – and models – are a means of communication as much as of calculation. We will describe the ways in which different user interfaces (broadly defined) to our “modelling toolkit” are used to communicate the science embodied in models to a diverse range of users.

1. Keating, B.A., Carberry, P.S., Hammer, G.L., Probert, M.E., Robertson, M.J., Holzworth, D., Huth, N.I., Hargreaves, J.N.G., Meinke, H., Hochman, Z., McLean, G., Verburg, K., Snow, V., Dimes, J.P., Silburn, M., Wang, E., Brown, S., Bristow, K.L., Asseng, S., Chapman, S., McCown, R.L., Freebairn D.M. and Smith, C.J. (2002). European Journal of Agronomy 18, 267-288.
2. Freer, M., Moore , A.D. and J.R. Donnelly (1997). Agricultural Systems 54, 77-126.
3. Landsberg, J.J., Waring, R.H. and Coops, N.C. (2003). Forest Ecology and Management 172, 199-214.
4. Bell , A.K. and Allen, C.J. (2000). Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 40, 325-330.
5. Hochman, Z., van Rees, H., Carberry, P.S., Holzworth, D., Dalgliesh, N.P., Hunt, J., Poulton, P.L., Brennan, L.E., van Rees, S., Huth N.I., Peake, A.S., and McCown, R.L., 2006. Journal of Experimental Botany (in press).
6. Beverly , C.R., Avery, A.L., Ridley, A.M. and Littleboy, M. (2003). Proceedings of the 11th Australian Agronomy Conference, Geelong . www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2003/i/5/beverly.htm

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THE CONSERVATION FARMING REVOLUTION

James Pratley [Presentation 1,530kb pdf]

EH Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga NSW 2678. Email: jpratley@csu.edu.au

For agriculture, the soils, climate and geography of Australia pose unique challenges to farming. Following the initial introduction of European farming methods and plants, progress during the last two centuries has included the development of the railway system connecting the farming districts with the ports, the release of adapted crop varieties, the replacement of horse-drawn implements with mechanical power, the development of ley farming with legumes, understanding the causes of soil acidity and tackling the issue of soil salinity.

This talk is focussed on the evolution of farming towards a more sustainable system. In the early 1900s, American disc technology replaced mouldboard ploughs and, together with the availability of the tractor, soils could be tilled more rapidly and frequently. The negative consequences of farming included a loss of soil structure, increased rates of erosion and proliferation of weeds such as skeleton weed. By the 1970s, agricultural lands were in poor shape physically, with the symptoms including gully and sheet erosion, induced compacted layers (hardpans) at plough depth, surface sealing of soils and low levels of organic matter. Off-farm consequences included the silting and eutrophication of waterways, and dust storms,. Farmers had very few tools to deal with these problems other than a pasture phase, a system known as ley farming, which gave some weed control and allowed soils to reclaim some structural stability and fertility.

The 1970s was the enabling decade for conservation practice in agriculture. For the first time, a range of chemical herbicides could replace much of the tillage necessary for weed control and crop establishment. ‘Knockdown' herbicides, such as paraquat/diquat mixtures and glyphosate, allowed crops to be sown without physical seedbed preparation. Diclofop methyl (marketed as Hoegrass) enabled farmers to control annual ryegrass and wild oats for the first time by in-crop, post-emergent application of herbicide, rather than by cultivation. These tools have been augmented and refined since then to provide integrated systems of weed control along with a more sustainable and productive system of farming. Farmers have also adopted technologies such as global positioning systems, controlled traffic and stubble retention to give greater control over inputs and to limit degradation.

As well as the technical revolution, a social adjustment was needed. The Australian Government declared the 1980s as a 'Decade of Landcare'. This initiative, which was supported by State Governments, underpinned the attitude change that was needed to give effect to the philosophy and conduct of conservation farming. The achievements of the Australian farmer in the last 30 years are insufficiently recognised by the detractors of farming, whose vision remains fixed on the degraded image of agriculture prior to the 1970s. Now, on the land, sustainability is the focus and the grain and livestock industries continue to evolve.

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LINKING PADDOCK TO CATCHMENT OUTCOMES THROUGH INTEGRATION OF SPATIAL INFORMATION

Anna Ridley ¹, Geoff Park ² [Presentation 3,094kb pdf]

¹ Department of Primary Industries, RMB 1145 Rutherglen, Vic, Australia 3685. Email: anna.ridley@dpi.vic.gov.au ² North Central Catchment Management Authority, PO Box 18, Huntly, Australia Vic 3350

Many farmers are doing excellent on-ground works, either self-funded or using incentives, with some using Environmental Management Systems (EMS). Despite much activity the condition of natural resource assets (such as biodiversity and water quality) continues to decline in many areas (eg. Anon. 2003). EMS is a useful process to show improvement in business performance and environmental management and for preparing Australian farmers to meet the challenge of increased environmental scrutiny, locally and globally (Anon. 2006). Alone however, EMS will not guarantee improved environmental outcomes.

What will it take to markedly improve environmental outcomes both on farms and in the broader catchment? It is certainly important to have sufficient profitability to maintain an acceptable lifestyle, but these are far from the only things important (Ridley 2004). Other important factors include: 1) Mindset change about the way land is owned and farmed; 2) Consideration of the spatial and temporal impacts beyond the farm. Without these, EMS or any other management system is unlikely to achieve large improvements.

Leading farmers who successfully manage both production and environmental aspects usually make comments along the lines of 'we don't own this land, we're just looking after it' (Bill Twigg, personal communication, Park et al. 2006, Ridley et al. 2003). Mindset change can occur in many ways, such as through a lifetime of observing, reflecting and ‘doing', but it can also occur over a relatively short time (several years) through provision of good information and facilitated discussion (Ridley et al. 2003).

For farmers to think about environmental consequences beyond the farm, provision of knowledge and spatial information about farms and surrounding landscapes is important. For example, it is difficult to consider the impacts of fertiliser application and groundcover management on river health, if you don't have any information about declining water quality of the river. Similarly, if there are no data on the condition of remnant vegetation, it is difficult to know whether action should be taken to improve remnants on your farm.

We are currently trialing a prototype web-based spatial information management system (called eFarmer) with 40 landholders over 4 Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) in Victoria. Spatial information encompasses digital maps, aerial photography, satellite imagery and spatial layers (eg. crown allotments, soils, vegetation, river condition) from the Victorian corporate geospatial data library. Previously this information was available to agency staff but not readily accessible by farmers. efarmer allows farmers to find their own farm, select paddocks, and assess management scenarios, such as what impact sowing paddocks to lucerne will have on farm ‘perenniality' (surrogate for deep drainage/salinity risk) or the impact of increasing patch size of native vegetation on progress towards catchment targets. What makes eFarmer innovative and different from available products is that users can view available spatial information on-line and it provides the capability of data manipulation to help farm and catchment planning. Indications are that it provides an intuitive, practical and information rich environment for editing and sharing natural resource management information. It has potential to start discussion about the realism of catchment targets and their achievability, as well as providing farmers with dynamic, up to date spatial information to make better decisions about production and environmental management. It has potential to underpin reward systems through incentive payments by CMAs, and to link to predictive modelling tools (Beverly et al. 2005). Although early days, indications are promising and interest from farmers and catchment managers is strong.

Anon.(2003). North Central Regional Catchment Management Strategy 2003-2007. North Central CMA, Huntly, Victoria.
Anon. (2006). EMS news, August 2006. (Natural Heritage Trust, Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, Canberra
Beverly , C, Bari , M, Christy, B, Hocking, M, and Smettem, K (2005). Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 45 , 1453-1469.
Park, G, Hamilton, J, Twigg, B, Russell, L and Russell, P (2006). International Landcare Conference (accepted).
Ridley, A. (2004). Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 44 , 595-568.
Ridley, AM, Paramore, T, and Seymour , E (2003) Australian Journal of Botany 51 , 637-645.

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THINKING AGAIN ABOUT SALINITY

Richard Stirzaker, Hamish Cresswell

CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, ACT, 2601. Email: richard.stirzaker@csiro.au

During the 1990's, salinity burst forth to become the premier ecological problem facing agriculture in Australia. Hydrologists talking about salt headed the media statistics across all of CSIRO. The message was simple. Clearing for crops and pastures had flipped a delicate balance. Salt, which had been slowly accumulating at depth over the eons, was now moving sideward to lowlands, rising to the surface and discharging to rivers. The scale was unprecedented and the prognosis catastrophic.

Agriculturalists were immediately on the back foot. It was their crops and pastures that were allowing drainage to increase by one or two orders of magnitude. Moreover, they found the hydrologist's message very hard to combat. There were big arguments over small drainage numbers and far more model predictions than data sets to settle them. Now, fifteen years later, salinity is still seen as one of the big ecological issues facing agriculture, but no longer the defining problem of agriculture.

The debate between hydrologists and agriculturalists was largely dysfunctional. Agriculturalists complained that the hydrologists did not have the data to support their claims and hydrologists thought the agriculturalists were ignoring the obvious. This was partly due to the different approaches both bring to their science. Agronomy, for example, is a data rich activity in which the driving variables must be expertly teased out from the background noise. An experiment may have a simple hypothesis, but vast amounts of data are required to accept that the variation observed is indeed due to the imposed treatment. In a subject where the ANOVA is king, there is little value in speculation.

By contrast, hydrology is conceptually strong but data poor. Few parameters can be measured with certainty, and the time scale between imposing the treatment and measuring the impact is far too long. There is a strong reliance on interpreting integral behaviour and applying expert judgment.

In this talk we draw on ideas from the complexity and adaptive management literature to help rethink the salinity debate (1, 2). Complexity theory weans us away from simple cause and effect. Variability plays itself out in strange ways, and non-linearity between scales, lags, and feedbacks make certainty elusive. The adaptive management framework was developed to deal with complexity. The focus is on finding the simplest conceptualization of the problem that can be shared by those who have to solve it, which includes hydrologists, agriculturalists and farmers. When the conceptualization is made explicit, it becomes much easier to develop a monitoring or measurement protocol that will challenge our mental models and build our collective understanding of causation.

The complexity/adaptive management approach has a stronger focus on learning how the system works rather than striving for the answer. Part of the journey is to distil credible simplicities. Many of these simplicities turn out to be naïve, but for a time they give us a place to stand and take action while we deepen our understanding of the system.

1. Lynam, T. and Stafford Smith, M. (2004). African Journal of Range and Forage Science 21, 69-78.
2. Holling, C.S. (2001). Ecosystems 4, 390-405.

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FARMING PRACTICES IN AUSTRALIAN GRAIN GROWING - THE MEANS FOR BITH PRODUCTIVE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Alan Umbers, Murray Jones [Presentation 837kb pdf]

Grains Council of Australia Limited. Email: aumbers@grainscouncil.com

Grain productivity, as measured by output and yield has increased markedly in the previous two decades in Australia. This is ascribed to contributions from better cultivars and rapid improvements in crop management and agronomic knowledge, with these advances being rapidly adopted by grain producers. Such improvements have been built into the farming practices and production systems in use around Australia today, and continual improvement is a feature.

These farming practices have also brought dramatic improvements in environmental factors, which it is argued have resulted from these improved practices, while also contributing to the increased grain production seen.

Several aspects of modern Australian grain production systems are examined in the context of their effects on important environmental parameters, notably soil, water, nutrients and carbon.

Recording and reporting the extent to which desirable practices have been adopted can be a suitable and useful measure of an individual or an industry's contribution to environmental management. An approach is suggested that allows these measurements to be made and used, allowing producers to compare their performance with accepted best practices. This system avoids the drawbacks of currently proposed paper-based methods.

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CONTSTRAINS, OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS FOR AUSTRALIAN GRAZING SYSTEMS

Andrew L Vizard

School of Veterinary Science, University of Melbourne, 250 Princes Hwy, Werribee, 3030 Australia. Email: a.vizard@unimelb.edu.au

The environmental sustainability of grazing farms in Australia is inexorably linked to their economic performance. Surveys of Australian beef, sheep and dairy farms have shown that many farms are consistently failing to generate sufficient income to maintain their soil, pasture and other resources, placing their long-term biological and financial viability in jeopardy 1,2 . For example, it was estimated that in 2003/04 year the average return on capital for specialist Australian dairy, sheep and beef farms was 0.7%, -0.6%, and -0.5%, respectively 2. The same surveys also show enormous variation in financial performance of farms in regions facing similar biological and economic constraints. This variation is driven by farm-to-farm variation in management, rather than intrinsic differences in environment. Better performing farms typically have a lower cost of production but greater expenditure on resource maintenance and improvement. Adoption of existing, proven technologies by farm managers offers a substantial opportunity to enhance both the economic and environmental sustainability of many marginal grazing farms. But farm managers are ageing, management of Australian grazing farms remains closely linked to ownership of the land, with most farms too small to warrant a full-time professional manager.

The relentless decline in terms of trade for primary producers, of about 2% per year, means that farmers must continuously lower their cost of production just to maintain existing profit levels. In the higher rainfall zones of Australia, intensification of production, mainly through increasing stocking rate on suitable classes of land is a potent means of lowering the cost of production. Improving pastures and enhancing soil fertility are key components of that intensification process.

Environmental sustainability must be regionally specific. Currently most farmers are motivated to improve their farm's environment but are attempting to manage environmental sustainability with little monitoring of key indicators of environmental impact and in the absence of clearly defined objectives of what they wish to achieve. Research is required to help provide indicators of degradation that can be used by farmers to monitor sustainability in various ecosystems.

For reasons of efficiency and reducing the risk of failure, public good outcomes, such as improving biodiversity and conserving native flora and fauna, need to be managed on a regional rather than on a farm basis.

In the absence of other signals or forces, farmers that generate sufficient income to invest on improving farm resources will tend to place their investment where they perceive private, rather than public, good. Sometimes private and public good coincide. Weed control and reducing soil erosion are examples where there is potentially close alignment. Consequently, it can be generally expected that farmers will invest efficiently to control weeds and reduce soil erosion. Reserving a portion of the farm for self-sustaining native habitats is an example in which the alignment of private good is probably significantly weaker than the perceived public good. One could reasonably expect that fewer farmers will take such action and those that do will be driven by private considerations, such as limiting the reserved native area to the poorest agricultural land. From a public good viewpoint, such investments are relatively inefficient, and possibly offer little chance of providing the outcome that society may be seeking. In cases such as these where the public good dominates, Australia , like some other developed countries, may need to implement specific and targeted policies designed to encourage farmers to deliver these public environmental services.

1.Victorian Department of Primary Industries (2005). Farm Monitor Project. Summary of Results 2004-2005.
2. Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (2005) Australian Agriculture and Food Sector Stocktake.

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APPLICATION OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY TO RESTORATION AND MANAGEMENT OF NATIVE VEGETATION

Andrew Young

CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600, Canberra ACT 2601. Email: andrew.young@csiro.au

Successful management of native vegetation for long-term persistence of plant and animal populations requires good knowledge of the spatial and temporal dynamics of key demographic and genetic processes that effect population viability. Modern molecular ecological methods are now capable of providing information on these processes which have previously been difficult to measure. Application of DNA approaches to measurement of genetic diversity, pattern of local adaptation, parentage and paternity analysis are all providing critical insights into the ecological function of remnant vegetation within agricultural landscapes and the responses of processes such as pollination, hybridization, dispersal and recruitment, to changes in farming practices and landscape structure. The utility of these approaches will be demonstrated with a range of case studies from southeastern Australia.

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POLICY DIRECTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND USE

Charlie Zammit

NRM Policy Branch, The Department of the Environment & Heritage, GPO Box 787 , Canberra , ACT 2601. Email: Charlie.zammit@deh.gov.au

Over the past 20 years the concept of sustainability has been incorporated into public policy through defining and implementing new approaches under the policy framework of ecologically sustainable development. In Australia this has resulted in a broad suite of innovations and reforms across jurisdictions that aim to improve policy integration across different societal objectives, make better use of incentives to influence individual and organisational behaviours, strengthen the role of credible science and evidence based decision-making and build community understanding, capacity and engagement.

Regional Forest Agreements and the Natural Heritage Trust provide examples of two substantial national scale policy responses to the driver of sustainability. While both of these programmes provide evidence of early progress in taking better account of ecologically sustainable land use issues in public policy, they remain partial responses that have been constrained by competing paradigms and existing governance arrangements. No one argues that the challenges presented by the sustainable development paradigm are not formidable and will require ongoing and substantial innovation and reform, investment and commitment by government and society.

One of the challenges facing sustainability policy is being able to respond sufficiently quickly and with defendable conceptual and operational foundations to address contemporary land use issues. Making this transition needs to be better informed by new and clever ideas for sustainable land use. The research community and governments worldwide continue to explore and test innovations designed to help policymakers deal with the complexities of sustainable resource management. These include developing and testing concepts such as resilience and ecosystem services to better understand the boundaries for sustaining natural and social capital, using different psycho-social and economic approaches to understand what people value (eg inclusive wealth) and new formulations of what duty of care means in a sustainable world.

The second frontier for a workable sustainability policy will be to better reach the hearts and minds of individuals and their institutions for two reasons. First to build on the culture of community based action so strongly demonstrated through the regionalisation of environment and natural resources management. Secondly, to open up a greater preparedness for achieving environmental outcomes by shifting individual behaviours through emerging markets and other incentives. Recent NRM initiatives provide a testbed to further develop these opportunities.

The third frontier is governance. Managing the transitions to sustainable land use requires policy development and its implementation through an embedded and complex maze of constitutional responsibilities, institutional arrangements and competing interests. Governments continue to struggle with this transition, but there is a growing recognition that greater flexibility and adaptive capacity are required to meet the pace and direction of policy responses.

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WHAT DO THE GOOD FARM BUSINESSES DO?

David Sackett [Presentation 166kb pdf]

Holmes, Sackett and Associates, PO Box 5757, Wagga Wagga, 2650

Farmers manage for profit and well managed farm businesses accumulate wealth at rates that are competitive with alternative investments. ABARE estimates that average farms return about 6% on investment (1998-2005); the farm businesses we deal with are approaching 11% return on investment and this compares favourably with alternative investments (1). Yet there is a wide and incorrect perception that agriculture is not doing well. This arises from the often large disparity between the performance of good businesses and those that are managed poorly.

In good businesses (1999-2004), just over a third of profit was derived from farming operations, about 20% was due to increase in livestock value and half came from increase in capital value (1). Capital value increases in real terms at about 2%/year and offers a substantial opportunity for increase in wealth. Remnant vegetation on farms, trees, clean streams, well managed soils and pastures, lack of erosion and many other environmental issues contribute to the capital value of farms. No farmers that have a choice will undermine their capital value because it is a major part of their business wealth. Consequently, it is important to realise that farmers are in the business of generating trading profits as well as an increase in capital value.

The highest trading profits are achieved by “low cost” producers who aim to produce each kg of sheep or beef, or tonne of wheat at substantially less cost than their competitors. This is the reality of global agriculture and those that are not competitive will eventually leave the industry. To be low cost, it is true that most utilise higher than average inputs and produce higher than average outputs; but this is not always the case. Investment in fertiliser, for example, often leads to improved profitability (Fig. 1; livestock enterprises) but it is clear from this example that high gross margins do not require the highest inputs. Instead, they are associated with appropriate investment in inputs, attention to other efficiencies that can be gained (e.g. farm scale, labour efficiency) and getting the details of producing a crop or managing a livestock enterprise right.

In recent times, it has been asserted that farmers should mimic Australia 's “natural systems”. Whilst this concept has some merit, there is also a duty to be realistic. A comparison of the gross margins that farmers can achieve from wool ($165/ha), wheat ($178) and kangaroo farming (-$28) illustrates this point well. Kangaroo growth rates are much slower than sheep or cattle and are, therefore, not profitable. If we expect farmers to adapt their systems there must be economically viable alternatives and markets equal to those in which they already participate.

Good farmers make clear strategic decisions about enterprise choice over the longer term using a range of modern tools, advisors and other sources of information. Good farmers also make good tactical decisions. Australia has a highly variable climate and risk management in the face of this is extremely important. Unfortunately, seasonal forecasts are not sufficiently accurate to support many tactical decisions (2), but there are other tools such as the Rainfall to Pasture Growth Outlook tool' (3) or GrassGro (4) that farmers use, or can use in conjunction with their advisors to make better tactical decisions than previously possible.

Good farmers are generally good environmental managers, but we must distinguish between within the farm and issues at catchment or regional levels. Within farms there is a lot of compatibility between the farmers' and NRM objectives because they are concerned to protect and enhance their capital investment, but there are also issues they cannot do well (e.g. efficient gain production and biodiversity are incompatible) or perhaps don't do well (e.g. “tidy” farms offer less fauna refuge). It must be acknowledged that there has been a lot of effort on farms to correct errors of the past and that efforts to embrace better environmental management are increasing. At catchment/regional levels it is a different story because there is not a strong imperative for farmers to necessarily adopt what might be best for the wider environment. This requires an enlightened scheme of stewardship payments that encourage activities that go beyond what we should expect as a farmer's normal duty of care.

Farmers want change and change that allows their industries to progress. However, they also need evidence to underpin the changes we may expect from them in improving their NRM practices. Too often this is lacking and then it should not be surprising if adoption is slow.

1. Sackett, D.M., McEachern, A., Holmes, P.R., Francis, J. and Lee, D. (2005) AgInsights – Knowing the Past: Shaping the Future. Holmes Sackett & Associates.
2. Vizard, A.L., Anderson , G.L. and Buckley, D.J. (2005) Meteorol. Applic. 12, 243-355.
3. www.mla.com.au/.../Pasturemanagement/Rainfall+to+Pasture+Growth+Outlook+tool.htm
4. Moore , A.D., Donnelly J.R., and Freer M. (1997) Agric. Syst. 55, 535-582.

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INNOVATION IN THE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM SUPPORTING AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE

Andrew Campbell [Presentation 1,060kb pdf]

Land & Water

CAN WE BALANCE ENVIRONMENTAL AND AGRICULTURAL IMPERATIVES?

Ted Lefroy [Presentation 22kb pdf]

University of Tasmania

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