Webinar - North Queensland cotton, grains and cattle farming systems - Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia

Summary

Dr Joe Eyre from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation’s Centre for Crop Science presents this QAAFI Science Seminar .

The lack of a common vision and integrated approach for agricultural development across Northern Australians’ agro-ecological niches has weakened the effectiveness of limited public and private investment to develop cost-effective and feasible solutions.

Integrated crop-livestock systems (CLS) provide an opportunity to manage risks (markets, climate, policy, biosecurity), increase resource use efficiency and land-use, and provide flexibility for tactical decision making.

The North Queensland cotton, grains and cattle farming system project will build on momentum initiated by the Etheridge Shire Council, the Far North Queensland Sustainable Cropping Group (FNQSCG) and on-going CRCNA programs to:

1. Co-design scalable diversification options and drought resilience practices for northern Queensland cotton, grain and cattle enterprises, and quantify the economic, social and environmental values and risks of these options

2. Attract public and private co-investment to sustain participatory action research and development (R&D) for addressing complex crop-livestock systems problems in NA

3. Facilitate extension and adoption of successful practices across the region in partnership with the Cotton Seed Distributors-led Enhancing extension capacity to sustain growth of North Queensland Cropping Systems (A.2.2122031 )” project.

Watch the webinar

Cotton Grains Cattle program: North Queensland farming systems

This project aims to co-design scalable diversification options and drought resilience practices for northern Queensland cotton, grain and cattle enterprises, and quantify the economic, social and environmental values and risks of these options. Whole farm level systems participatory research will examine: current farm resources and business performance co-designed time sensitive responses to drought and market volatility information and tools needed for adoption the impact of extreme climate events on productivity and sustainability the level of climate information accuracy and timeliness required for economic value how climate variability influences the risk of not adopting available solutions whole farm economic models for assessment of on-farm produced grains and/or forage crops when grown in cropping systems for cattle feed, existing environment stewardship frameworks alignment with north Queensland mixed farming systems, agri-business and community regional development vision and what are appropriate stewardship guidelines and self-assessment options for balancing the costs, legislation, social license and value chain demand and opportunities?