The foundation of a productive farming system is the soil. To grow high performance crops and pastures through to the health and productivity of the stock that graze them, whether beef, sheep or dairy, all depends on the soil and its management.

A healthy soil environment is important not only to capturing profits in good seasons but building resilience into your system and business for a tight finish or drought.

The accumulation of organic matter is a key strategy. Optimising groundcover in some form, be it the addition of perennial species through native or ‘improved’ pastures, pasture cropping or well grown crops and retained stubble.

Then “whether it is climate change or just climate variability the farmers who have improved their soils - deepening the effective root zone of their crops and pastures in order to better ‘farm’ the rain that falls or their irrigation allocation - will be better prepared.”

With or without a dollar value attached to carbon, increasing soil carbon has benefits in improved soil health and productivity to the farmer or grazier.