Ag Excellence News and Updates

As the Ag Ex and SA Drought Hub MEL Officer, most of my work centres around gathering data and stories from Hub partners across the state, so we can better understand practice change, adoption, and what projects are making a real difference.

An outstanding group of growers and industry innovators driving South Australia’s grain sector forward have been named as finalists for the 2025 South Australian Grain Industry Awards, announced today as early bird tickets go on sale.

A strong collaboration between key agricultural industry groups has resulted in the twelve month appointment of a Mixed Farming Intern with MacKillop Farm Management Group.

Phosphorus (P) is essential for maintaining crop productivity, particularly due to the vital role it plays in regulating crop physiological responses and tolerance to abiotic stressors like heat and drought. Managing P in different soil types is challenging and our understanding of the long-term effects of P applications is limited.

On 17 November BIGG hosted a pasture walk at the Pasture Trial Network (PTN) site near Angaston attracting a solid turnout of 18 farmers, agronomists and consultants.

Australian grain growers are being asked to help steer the future of on-farm automation, with Grain Producers Australia (GPA) launching its 2025 Autonomous Farm Machinery Survey to capture how producers are using, testing, and planning for autonomous equipment in the paddock.

Brett Nietschke (BIGG Technical Facilitator) also gave an update on BIGG’s two long-term pasture projects:

Multi-species perennial pastures
Trials are being conducted at Marananga to determine the productivity of various perennial based multi-species treatments.
The importance of getting species off to a strong start and particularly through their first summer has been highlighted. This is because perennial species establish slowly (compared to annuals), therefore issues such as moisture stress, competition from weeds and overgrazing can significantly reduce plant density and diversity of the mix.
Pasture recovery with containment feeding
Trials are being conducted at Flaxman Valley and Keyneton to quantify the benefits of paddocks which have high feed on offer (FOO) and ground cover going into the break of the season, compared to paddocks with low FOO and groundcover.
To date, the high FOO paddocks have produced better outcomes well into the growing season, including having higher grazing value, groundcover and more favourable pastures species, compared to the low FOO paddocks.
The BIGG trial projects have been funded through the Federal Government’s Future Drought Fund’s SA Discovery Farms program.

Grain Producers SA (GPSA) has opened nominations for the much-anticipated 2025 edition of Harvest 100, the statewide search for the ultimate harvest playlist that keeps headers humming and…