Delivery of Best Weed Management Practices for Meat Sheep Producers
Purpose of research project
The aim of this project is twofold - to identify best weed management practices currently used by sheep meat producers in Australia, and to make those readily adoptable practices known to others in the industry in an innovative way.
Project description
Weeds are a major impediment to the production of quality sheep meat through their effects on the quality and quantity of the pasture resource base, physical animal injury and plant toxins consumed in the grazing process. In the past, effective weed control has been achieved through the use of herbicides and regular resowing of pastures, but there is a growing realisation that unfavourable economics and environmental impacts now restrict the use of these techniques. Nor will biological control necessarily be successful in the presence of antagonistic environmental conditions and pasture management practices. Integrated strategies are required. Recent research by the CRC for Weed Management Systems and other agencies has advanced the science of weed management in sheep-grazed pastures, but adoption of integrated strategies lags well behind technology.
This project builds on work by the Pastures Program of the CRC, SGS activities and prior Best Practice Management (BPM or BMP) research (e.g. Trotter and Sindel 1999) by uniquely obtaining and validating a producer perspective on the integration and implementation of best weed management practices for lamb and sheep meat production in Australia, as described below. The project also provides PhD research training for a bright young scientist, Mr Mark Trotter, across the often-disparate disciplines of science and social science relevant to the sheep and beef industries. Therefore, whilst the broad scope of the project is described, many of the specific details will be planned in consultation with the PhD student to give the candidate experience in project design as an essential part of their PhD training.
It is proposed that the project involve six major activities:
1. key informant interviews and pilot survey,
2. national producer perspective survey,
3. respondent interviews and on-farm visits,
4. regional focus group meetings,
5. on-farm monitoring and replicated experiments,
6. feedback to regions.
After developing and refining the survey in 1), we will obtain the producer perspective on the integration and implementation of best weed management practices primarily through the mail survey in 2) sent to approximately 7,500 graziers (i.e. sampling 15% of the target market) across up to five regions of Australia (1500 in each region). The survey will aim to identify the regionally important weeds, the impact and benefits of these weeds, graziers who have successfully controlled one or more species over a range of seasonal conditions, the strategies that they have used, the principles that they have applied in the integration of weed control practices, the reasons for adoption and lack of adoption of integrated weed management strategies, and how to best package integrated weed control information to ensure adoption on farm through required information being delivered in a manner that is most relevant and useful to producers.
In 3), best weed management practices will be clarified through respondent interviews and “perceptions of success” in weed management will be checked with on-ground physical measurements from selected farm visits in each region surveyed. This will also serve as the first on-farm monitoring and validation point in activity 5).
In 4), one focus group per region of 10 or more producers (based around one or more functional weed groups) will be used to discuss the survey data and assess the portability of best weed management practices and elucidate constraints to their adoption.
Depending on regional issues identified in the survey and availability of suitable existing trials and regional collaborators, best weed management practices will be validated in 5) in each of the 5 regions through on-farm monitoring or monitoring of existing field trials such as that proposed in the MLA/AWI 4SpaM project. For the purposes of the PhD, one or more replicated field experiments will also be established in 5) on either the Northern Tablelands or a nearby region to elucidate some of the fundamental processes and mechanisms by which best weed management practices are working. For practical resource purposes, these trials will focus on only one or two functional weed groups.
In 6), information on best weed management practices that work as articulated by producers in the survey will be delivered back to producers through the most appropriate means as identified in the survey and where possible include field days based around focus groups and on-farm monitoring sites. The feedback will also include a direct mail-out to survey respondents, regional newspaper articles and incorporation of scientific information and testimonials in a publication such as Prograzier or Feedback.
Contact
Mark Trotter
Agronomy and Soil Science
School of Rural Science and Agriculture
University of New England
Armidale, NSW 2351
Tel. (02) 6773 2143
Fax. (02) 6773 3238
Email. mtrotter@une.edu.au