How are Australian Farmers Working to Help the Environment

While agriculture often gets blamed for creating significant negative impacts on the environment, here are 10 ways Australian farmers are working to help protect our planet.

This planet is the home to over 8.7 million species all playing their vital roles in our earth’s ecosystems. However, now many of them are facing the next mass extinction. The 7.7 billion humans and the industrial revolution has put an unpresented amount of pressure on the earths resources to sustain the rapid population growth. One of the biggest strains is on the agricultural industry, which is depended on to feed the ever-rising number of hungry mouths being born every day.

Farmers are on the front line when it comes to working with soil, which is the true gold on our planet. Let’s have a look at 10 revolutionary ways farmers in Australia are working to protect the environment by using both modern, and traditional agriculture techniques.

The goal is simple: produce more food on the same amount of land while preserving habitats.

So, what are sustainable farming practises and methods?

1. Precision tools

Farmers are implementing the use precision tools to help reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture. Everything from GPS to auto-steer tractors allow farmers to steward their land while using less fuel and fertiliser. To learn more about their farm land and related productivity, farmers have also turned to scientific data collections from their soil and water. This way, they are tackling efficiency with collection and analysis of data through soil sensors, yield monitors, and digital elevation modules. This way they can better distribute water, fertiliser, and attention to their land.

2. No till or Low Till

No till farming, which is also known as zero tillage or direct drilling, is a method of growing crops without disturbing the soil through tillage.

Tilling is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation such as digging, stirring, and overturning often by using heavy and aggressive machinery.

Reducing tillage saves time, lowers fuel costs, creates less soil compaction, and soil erosion! It has shown that by not turning the soil over every year, it helps the soil retain more water, keep vital organic matter, and improve cycling of nutrients. Tilling has also been linked to losing vital carbon and nitrogen into the atmosphere, disruption of soil aggregations, and increased amounts of soil erosion. More farmers are adopting no or low till practises to help improve soil biological fertility.

3. Cover Crops

Cover crops is vegetation farmers plant near or in between their produce to help protect the soil from the harsh sun, enrich the soil with vital nutrients, and aid to control pests and diseases. These cover crops increase organic matter, minimise nutrient loss, and have been shown to increase crop yields.

Some of the most commonly used crops are legumes as they can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and add it into the soil. Legumes such as hairy vetch and crimson clover can provide 45kg of nitrogen per hectare. Other crops such as various wheat and grasses fix carbon into the soil.

The theory behind cover crops and companion planting is that by mimicking nature and allowing relationships between various plant species, farmers can harness the power of nature to minimise fertiliser and pesticide use. Many regenerative agriculture farms operate under these goals.

4. Crop Rotation

This method has been used as early as 6,000 BC due to every crop utilising different quantities of nutrients from the soil. Farmers found that when a single plant was grown on a field every year, without giving the soil a break to recuperate, soon the yields would decrease, and crops would succumb to disease. If plants continually take nutrients from the soil without adding nutrients back in, fertile soil quickly becomes drained of its resources and resilience. Alternating crops and giving certain fields a season to rewild, can help increase productivity in the long run.

5. Green energy from biomass

In the attempt to be more environmentally friendly many farmers have increased waste to energy efforts. In Queensland, the sugarcane industry has made enormous strides of using the collected green leftovers. Originally, most sugar cane farmers would burn their crop at harvest time, but now are transitioning to ship the waste and green cane residue to generate power.

Now sugar mills are almost self-sufficient in energy due to the bagasse, which is the fibrous cane stalk that is burnt to generate electricity which then drives the mill operations. Out of all the energy generated, the mills use only half of it with the other half exported to the national electricity network. By using the waste products from the sugar industry as fuel for electricity, the sugar industry has been able to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 million tonnes every year.

6. Biofuels from by-products of farming

The Queensland University of Technology has been working to try and convert by-products from the sugarcane industry into biofuels to be used in the transportation sector. This is to address the amount of fossil fuels used once the sugarcane is harvested, to move and transport it.

A theory is that cane residue and leaf matter contain fuels such as ethanol which can be converted into biomethane or biodiesel. While biomethane is similar to compressed natural gas, it is quickly burned in a vehicles engine and then emitted as carbon dioxide.

Additional financial benefits: One of the biggest benefits of converting waste into energy, is that on top of reducing carbon footprint from fossil fuels, it can also increase the industry’s profits. Estimations currently say that with the biofuel market growing at an annual rate of 16%, biofuels could bring $1.8 billion to Queensland’s GDP.

7. Using integrated pest management

To reduce the harm created by pests’ farmers can depend on a variety of mechanical and biological method. These can by applied systematically to keep pest populations controlled without depending on chemical pesticides which have harmful impacts on the environment. Mechanical control includes changing the soil and crop environment to discourage pest establishment, including nets, reducing source of inoculum, and works to prevent pest damage rather than stopping an existing pest population. Biological control focuses on utilising the effects of predatory or parasite insects which are considered ‘good’ bugs to help control chewing and sucking insects that damage farming crops.

8. Vegetated Buffer Zones

To ensure natural biodiversity is not completely stripped from farmland, many farmers opt to create vegetative buffer zones between fields. These are typically bodies of water with strips of native vegetation which create a habitat for local flora and fauna. The plants growing in these semi wild areas help keep soil in place, filter any harmful chemicals, minimise soil erosion into water ways, and provide areas for endemic animals to live. This means any water leaving treatment system with smaller amounts of sediment and nutrient loads.

9. More efficient water use

With droughts becoming more frequent and severe in Australia, farmers have implemented many practises for more efficient irrigation and management of water and energy. The government has created multiple programs to help support farmers. These include infrastructure initiatives, mapping resources, and assessments of under utilised water in all of Queensland. Drip irrigation, capturing and storing water, irrigation scheduling, compost, and cover crops are some of the additional methods farmers implement on their own land to miminise water use.

Do these methods surprise you? Do you know of any other methods farmers utilise to help protect our environment? Make sure to let us know in the comment section, and help support your local farmers by buying Queensland produce!

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