WORDS BY RICHARD RENNIE, IMAGES SUPPLIED BY RICHARD RENNIE
Australia’s vast scale often means many New Zealanders carry a simplified, condensed version of it in their minds, often only featuring expanses of desert banded by its glittering coastal cities including Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
But it is a shorthand version that fails to include Australia’s huge and highly productive farming sector, a sector on the march upwards in its contribution to the Lucky Country’s already enviable wealth.
Big wet country
In the past four years since the devastating bush fire season of 2019-2020 Australia has enjoyed, and even endured, above average rainfall in many parts of the continent.
Ongoing deluges of rainfall have featured over the past four years, with this March the third wettest on record. It has not meant all of Australia is damper than usual, with areas like southwestern Victoria, Tasmania and coastal Western Australia have reporting extremely dry times.
But taken across the past four years the country’s rural sector has doubled down on drought proofing itself. That is thanks in part to an enormous AUD$5 billion Future Drought Fund initiative encompassing not only farmers and farm methods, but rural communities and groups to improve their preparedness for the next inevitable big dry.
With this comes the adaptation of new technology, boosted research, and a focus on reducing emissions to help sectors meet targets like red meat’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030 (the CN30 initiative).
Meantime the primary sector has ramped up in its contribution to the Australian economy.
What was only a few short years ago a AUD$60 billion a year industry is slated to be worth AUD$85 billion this year, and with the tail wind off good market prices and weather could hit AUD$100 billion within a few short years.
Looking across the ditch it is easy to envy the funds available in a country 30% wealthier than our own. But regardless, plenty of lessons are still to be learnt from our Australian cousins.
Fortunately, they hold our farming sector in high regard, and are happy to collaborate and share solutions to the two nations’ farmers’ shared issues.
Dealing to methane
Methane emissions, back up for review here in New Zealand, are getting plenty of attention from Australian researchers. Farmers there do not have quite the same pressure as New Zealand farmers to meet set targets, given their contribution to total gas emissions is only 17% against NZ’s 48%.
Regardless, scientists are making major headway to determine the best combination and means to feed methane mitigators to livestock.
Researchers at University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales are already starting to trial different combinations of methane mitigators on sheep and investigating the best ways to get them to take their dose.
Feeding them a red seaweed compound, itself an Australian discovery, combined with another compound called Agolin is achieving 80% reductions in methane emissions in chambers.
However, lead researcher Professor Julius van der Werf is honest about what could be achieved in reality on the farm.
“We realistically think it would be nearer to 10–20% reduction at an industry wide level, with lower levels of mitigation on farm, and given adoption will not be complete.”
He is adamant it is no silver bullet, but that reduction is sufficient to make it a valuable tool for farmers once the practicalities of how to feed it whether as a stock lick, in the water or in a pellet are determined.
“The best options are the ones where farmers are not having to invest a lot into infrastructure to deliver it.”
He is quietly confident most Australian farmers will be using some sort of mitigator additive within five years.
Meantime his fellow researchers are also working hard to identify sheep sires capable of producing productive offspring with lower methane emissions, and demand is growing from breeders to have their sires assessed.
He expects they will have caught up to New Zealand and have estimated breeding values for methane out by next year after testing almost 10,000 sheep.
Answer lies in soil carbon
Australia’s soils, with a carbon content often considerably lower than New Zealand’s also offer farmers the opportunity to build and store carbon emissions. It is a contrast to New Zealand’s efforts at offsetting, which tend to sit above ground in the form of tree planting.
Victoria farming family the Olsen’s have taken their efforts to build carbon on their beef farm and turned it into an entirely new enterprise. Unable to find a cultivation-sowing machine capable of placing multiple different seed types at once, Niels Olsen did what any practical farmer does—he designed and built one himself.
Today the SoilKee soil renovator has a patent in 46 countries and has been sold in 100 countries as far afield as Canada and soon, New Zealand. With its patented cultivation tines, the machine is capable of breaking up soil in a varied pattern that suits the variety of seed sizes and types being sown in their regenerative system.
“It can handle up to 20 species planted at the same time, as varied as wheat, oats, peas, linseed, chicory and even sunflowers,” he says.
The machine has also delivered more than just another business unit for the family. Carbon gain benefits have come from the varied, dense sward it plants, along with significantly more feed.
“In the first couple of years we were getting 11.7–12 carbon credits per hectare per year. Seven-eight years in, it is coming up at 26–27 credits per hectare, which is about six tonnes of carbon increase on a hectare.”
Their farm is among one of the first in Australia, and possibly the world, to be recognised for building carbon within its soil profile.
This also now equates to a valuable income stream for the Olsen’s.
“Doing the beef plus carbon credits, each are about the same income amount, which is better than what we would get dairying.”
Gene editing offers lower emissions future
The Olsen’s have proven carbon can be stored in soil, but Australia’s gene editing regulations are also helping scientists develop pasture species that reduce methane at source.
The regulations, recognised as being more open, outcome focused than New Zealand’s mean New Zealand company Grasslanz has been drawn across the Tasman to develop a low methane emitting clover species.
The company has taken a New Zealand white clover cultivar and working through PGG Wrightson Seeds have edited in a gene from the closely related hare’s foot clover with high condensed tannins.
The goal is to deliver a clover whose higher tannin levels will result in a lower bloat risk and reduced methane emissions from livestock when consumed.
The end of the lengthy development period is closing in as the breeders sort out the best-performing 2500 seedlings from the latest generation, which will be used to produce seed for animal feed trials, in New South Wales.
Grasslanz CEO John Caradus says the gene-edited and GM field work in Australia presents a far more viable option to the New Zealand option, where the regulatory process is challenging.
“Gaining approval for such field trials in New Zealand has not been attempted for over a decade as a result,” he said.
The work sits alongside many GE projects running throughout Australian research universities and companies to develop crops also capable of enduring tougher growing conditions under climate change.
Dr Karen Massel at University of Queensland heads up a team leading the charge on developing GE sorghum, a maize like feed, to produce a variety capable of weathering drought conditions and delivering a higher protein level, improving its feed value.
Her and her colleague Professor Ian Godwin are optimistic about the future of GE as a valid response to changing climatic conditions.
“Much of the technology can be applied to multiple crops, for example GE Bt resistant sorghum has been done for cotton also.
“And if fall army worm got into wheat crops here, we would have a resistant wheat variety pretty damn quick,” he says.