Project Overview

Continuous grazing in WA’s Great Southern limits feed utilisation, reduces pasture persistence and groundcover, increases supplementary feeding costs, and constrains livestock profitability and resilience. Adoption of structured rotational grazing remains low, and region‑specific evidence on productivity, soil health and profitability within pasture phases is lacking.

The project will demonstrate that integrating adaptive rotational grazing (ARG) within the pasture phase of mixed farming—supported by Optiweigh and NDVI—improves carrying capacity and whole‑farm profitability relative to continuous grazing (CG).

Background

Improving livestock profitability is a major focus for mixed farming businesses in the Great Southern region of WA. To achieve this, farmers need to optimise their whole of system grazing strategy. Southern Dirt has recently completed a dual-purpose cropping project which demonstrated the benefits of grazing crops to fill some of the early winter feed gap. Southern Dirt is currently running a project to help farmers optimise their stubble utilisation. The proposed project will address the gap between crop grazing and stubble grazing in pastures as part of a cropping rotation. The project will demonstrate how farmers can improve feed utilisation and carrying capacity through rotational grazing of pasture in late winter and spring. Current practises rely on continuous grazing systems, can limit feed utilisation, pasture recovery, reduce groundcover, and contribute to soil degradation over time. This reduces livestock carrying capacity, increases supplementary feeding costs, and ultimately constrains profitability and co-benefits between livestock and cropping enterprises.

The opportunity is to adopt adaptive rotational grazing, supported by tools such as in-paddock weighing (Optiweigh) and NDVI drone mapping, to generate real-time data on livestock performance and pasture recovery. This integration also presents potential carbon co-benefits, through improved soil carbon sequestration and reduced bare ground, and result in increased fertility in cropping rotations, contributing to both productivity and market readiness for carbon-conscious supply chains.

In the Great Southern region alone, over 1,000 mixed-enterprise producers manage livestock and grain together across diverse soil types. While rotational grazing is known to deliver benefits, adoption rates remain relatively low estimated at 10–15% of producers applying structured rotational systems. Current approaches are ad-hoc, with limited regional data quantifying productivity, soil health, or carbon outcomes under local conditions in pastures as part of a cropping rotation.

This PDS offers an opportunity to demonstrate the productivity, profitability, and soil health benefits of adaptive rotational grazing (ARG) compared with continuous grazing (CG) in pastures as part of a cropping rotation across mixed-farming systems in the Great Southern region of WA. Providing objective, producer-led evidence on the benefits of adaptive grazing systems, measured against business metrics such as weight gain, grain yield, and soil condition. Importantly, it will demonstrate how digital tools can reduce labour and decision-making barriers that currently limit uptake.

Southern Dirt Inc. is a well-established grower group based in Kojonup, the Great Southern region of Western Australia, with a strong track record in facilitating producer-led research, trials, and extension activities. The group consists of an active core of 10–12 mixed enterprise producers who will directly host and manage demonstration sites for this project, supported by a wider network of over 150 members and stakeholders across the region who regularly attend field days, workshops, and training events.

Members operate across a diverse range of soil types and farming systems, integrating sheep, beef, and grain enterprises. Their key areas of interest include improving livestock productivity, building soil health, optimising crop–pasture rotations, and adopting innovations that increase resilience to climate variability and market pressures.

The producer group is highly engaged, with members regularly contributing in-kind support through hosting sites and actively participating in data collection and peer-to-peer learning. This ensures that the Adaptive Grazing & Carbon Integration PDS will be both producer-driven and regionally relevant, with strong potential for adoption and impact across the mixed farming sector.

Project Objectives

By June 2029, in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, the project will establish six producer demonstration sites (two sites per year over three years), engaging a core group of 10–12 producers and a wider observer network of at least 150 producers, to:

Demonstrate and assess the productivity and profitability benefits of adaptive rotational grazing (ARG) compared with continuous grazing (CG) within pasture phases of mixed-farming businesses, by:

• • Demonstrating that adaptive rotational grazing enables livestock to consistently achieve optimal liveweight gain targets, measured as both kg/head/day and kg/ha, across variable seasonal conditions.
  • Quantifying effective carrying capacity by measuring total DSE/ha sustained without supplementary feeding.
  • Demonstrating improved feed utilisation efficiency (kg liveweight produced per hectare) through more even grazing distribution and controlled feed allocation.
  • Maintaining greater than 80% groundcover year-round to reduce erosion risk and support pasture persistence.
  • Assessing pasture utilisation and persistence, using satellite-derived NDVI imagery, monthly Feed On Offer (FOO) measurements, and pasture species composition.
  • Evaluating grazing efficiency and management control, including grazing evenness, rest periods, and pasture recovery dynamics.
  • Improving gross margin per hectare by 10–20%, driven by increased carrying capacity, improved feed efficiency, and reduced supplementary feeding requirements.

Identify and quantify the drivers of increased carrying capacity under adaptive rotational grazing, including improved utilisation efficiency, grazing distribution, pasture species persistence, parasite (worm) management, and enhanced feed allocation control.

Undertake annual soil health and nutrient assessments (including NO₃⁻, NH₄⁺, organic carbon, and pH) to build producer understanding of soil function, nutrient cycling, and land-use history. Changes in soil carbon will be used for education and awareness only, not as a primary project outcome.

Deliver targeted training and extension activities (minimum of three workshops and annual field days) to increase the knowledge, skills, and confidence of:

• 75% of core producers
• At least 50% of observer producers, in adaptive grazing management, feed budgeting, livestock performance interpretation, soil nutrient awareness, and the use of digital monitoring tools.

Facilitate a Carbon Awareness and Modelling Workshop to improve producer literacy around soil carbon principles and modelling approaches (e.g. LOOC-C, COMET-Farm), linking soil health concepts with livestock system performance and business decision-making.

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