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Dairy nutrient accounting tool cuts lo$$

If you’re not accounting for the nutrients used on-farm, you could be wasting tens of thousands of dollars a year, a new dairy program has found.

By Susan Webster - 24th May 2007 - Back to News

A Gippsland farm that used nutrient accounting, spending $3000 on soil testing, found savings of more than $40,000 over two years with no loss in pasture production.

The work was a pilot study for Australia’s first national dairy nutrient accounting framework that will be available to farmers within three years.

Accounting for Nutrients will help farmers efficiently produce more pasture and milk without wasting fertiliser and other nutrients.

Research went real-time on the West Gippsland dairying enterprise run by HBI Holdings. Darryl Hammond and his wife Trudi, along with Chris Bagot and his wife Charmaine, own a two-family partnership incorporating 10 farms running 850 milkers and 600 young stock.

They farm off 493ha covering several different soil types, from red/brown clays to grey loam and volcanic soils. Consolidating a variety of farms has meant the pair has had to cope with a range of fertiliser histories.

Nutrient accounting gave them a roadmap into what was needed ... or not needed.

Scientists from the Department of Primary Industries – Ellinbank helped them map not only fertiliser applications but all nutrient inputs, including those brought in as silage from their support areas and grain.

Project leader and Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) scientist Dr Cameron Gourley said: "A nutrient accounting tool for Australian dairy farms not only needs to address the basic input and outputs of nutrients used to calculate a whole farm budget, such as fertiliser and milk, but must also include nutrients in the diets of cows which impact on manure nutrient loads and forms, and subsequent re-distribution of nutrients around the farm.

PROJECT

Accounting for Nutrients is a national project that will develop a standardised nutrient accounting framework for the Australian dairy industry. It will help account for nutrient inputs and outputs and within-farm nutrient movement of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, calcium and magnesium.

As part of this project, researchers will measure nutrient inputs, outputs and within farm transfers of nutrients on 50 dairy farms across Australia.

By monitoring nutrients on these farms, the framework will be refined and the project will also get a valuable snapshot of nutrient accounting in the Australian dairy industry.

Dr Ken Peverill, Dairy Australia’s co-ordinator of the Accounting for Nutrients project explained: "This project is developing the national standard for nutrient accounting on dairy farms. It will help farmers target efficient nutrient use, cut fertiliser wastage, lessen environmental risks and make the farmer nutrient-dollar deliver more.

"Losing nutrients is in nobody’s interest, and the dairy industry has been at the forefront in helping to build one of the world’s most comprehensive programs to manage it."

Accounting for Nutrients on Australian Dairy Farms is backed by dairy and fertiliser industry stakeholders including Dairy Australia, Dairying for Tomorrow, the Victorian and other state Departments of Primary Industries, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, GippsDairy, Bega Cheese, Murray Goulburn, the Victorian EPA and various Catchment Management Authorities.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: susanw@ptarmigan.com.au

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