Capital region farmers prepare for hot summer and possibility of future drought

Posted October 18, 2015 08:16:24

Two thirds of New South Wales southern tablelands farmers have experienced moderate to severe drought conditions over the past five years, according to new research from the University of Canberra (UC).

But, according to the study, advancing age and rising debt were factors more likely to prompt farmers to leave the land compared to drought.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting a hotter and drier summer for southern NSW, due to the El Nino.

UC social scientist Dr Jacki Schirmer said most farmers were already prepared for the possibility of drought.

"It is not just about loss of income," she said.

"It is about the changes you feel when you see the landscape and the land you look after not going so well.

"There is a concept called solastalgia which is about when you look out at the land you are managing and it has changed and you are seeing trees that you have planted dying.

"That actually has quite a negative impact on your mental health according to all the emerging research."

In the last drought we were actually surviving on the dew and most people don't realise that.

Organic farmer Antony Coote

UC's annual nation-wide Regional Wellbeing Survey found regenerative farming was gaining popularity with respondents, who said they felt more drought prepared.

About 3,700 farmers voluntarily completed the survey in 2014 with around 300 of those farmers hailing from the ACT or nearby NSW.

Dr Schirmer described the regenerative farming movement as a management philosophy that may involve rotational grazing, de-stocking early and maintaining ground cover to increase the rate of recovery from drought.

But, while most farmers have developed drought preparedness strategies, academics said they had not independently identified which preparedness strategies could succeed financially.

"A lot of regenerative farmers do tell us they feel they are more profitable," Dr Schirmer said.

"We are not seeing them necessarily being more profitable, but we are seeing them finding it easier to maintain their financial viability over time, which is a slightly different thing.

"So they are not going down as far in drought, but maybe they are not as super profitable at other times because they have got a different philosophy of how they manage their land."

Regenerative farmers consistently report higher rates of wellbeing, even when they have been affected by drought, meaning they also have a head-start recovering from drought conditions, according to Dr Schirmer.

Water banking near Bungendore 'helping drought-proof Sydney'

Bungendore region organic farmer Antony Coote said since the last drought he had given up on sheep altogether.

Mr Coote owns and manages Mulloon Creek Natural Farms between Bungendore and Braidwood in the NSW southern tablelands.

He has also founded an educational and scientific charity on his properties called the Mulloon Institute which he describes as a "living laboratory" in perpetuity for all Australians.

The not-for-profit organisation encourages sustainable and holistic farming and engagement with the wider community.

"We found it hard to manage the overgrazing of sheep and it wasn't doing our country any good," Mr Coote said.

Instead, Mr Coote said his team moved one large mob of cattle every couple of days to preserve ground cover across much of the 2,600 hectare operation.

"One of the things that we realised in the last drought was that we were actually surviving on the dew and most people don't realise that," he said.

"We had this realisation that you couldn't farm on de-hydrated land."

Mr Coote has begun making adjustments due to the current El Nino outlook, including destocking.

Since the millennium drought, he has planted hundreds of exotic deciduous trees like oaks, willows and poplars to increase drought fodder, shade and reduce fire risk.

Other strategies involve putting rocks, logs and other debris back into previously cleared floodplains and waterways to build chains of ponds that deliberately leak underground into the water table.

"We are only retaining 0.2 of 1 per cent of the water that flows through this creek," Mr Coote said.

"In the worst part of the drought there was no water flowing in this valley.

"It has never stopped flowing through this leaky weir that we now have.

"So the neighbours downstream are getting continual water all the time."

Deliberately "leaky weirs" were pioneered by Hunter Valley farmer Peter Andrews as part of his Natural Sequence farming approach.

Mr Coote said the farming approach had now been adopted by 20 neighbouring farms at the headwaters of the Sydney catchment.

Together, the properties comprise 23,000 ha, including about 30 kilometres of creeks and rivers draining to the Shoalhaven catchment, called the Mulloon Community Landscape Rehydration Project.

"This creates the model to be able to be banking water, under the ground not above it, all the way to Sydney," Mr Coote said.

"To drought-proof Sydney for the future.

"This water gets taken out of the bank, which is the floodplain, naturally by nature when there is a drought to keep the stream flowing."

He said for Sydney to be drought-proofed in this way, other land managers in the Sydney catchment would need to change their practices.

Drought lots used during extreme weather conditions

The millennium drought is still fresh in the mind of Alison Southwell who leases farms in a relatively high rainfall zone on the edge of the southern tablelands and south-west slopes.

Dr Southwell is also a pasture science and agriculture lecturer at Charles Stuart University's Wagga Wagga campus.

"It scarred people," she said.

"Water usually hadn't been an issue, but we were down to two water sources at that time."

Managing wet conditions was more common on Dr Southwell's family property, near the small farming town of Bookham, around 35 kilometres west of Yass.

"It shifted expectations in terms of what you expect seasons to be like," she said.

"There was the realisation that this can occur in a lot of years."

Since the millennium drought, Dr Southwell said she had focussed on flexible protective management.

She said this was also motivated by her tenure as an absentee lease farmer, who lives at Wagga Wagga and commutes to farm at Bookham.

She was running 30 per cent less sheep than her forebears and she has lined up emergency agistment further afield in the cropping belt for when conditions at Bookham worsen.

Dr Southwell has also constructed a small paddock with extra water and feeding infrastructure ahead of the next drought.

The yard is called a drought lot because feed-lotting livestock in a dedicated area can protect pastures in paddocks further afield.

"To take stock away from the paddocks where the plants are already under stress and to prevent them doing any more damage to the pastures while they are in that delicate state," Dr Southwell said.

"We can look after the sheep in the drought lot and maintain them so that when the drought breaks and pastures start to grow again the stock will be ready."

But she said feed still needed to be stockpiled ahead of livestock being penned in the drought lot, and grain prices often rocketed up in price during extreme weather conditions, like drought.

"I don't feel as drought prepared as I would like," she said.

"I would love to have a lot more feed on store, a lot more grain. But prices are fairly high at the moment."

Topics: drought, sustainable-and-alternative-farming, rural, water, water-management, yass-2582, bega-2550, bungendore-2621, canberra-2600, act