A Place for Perennials | Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

Gary Abbott Farmer West Arthur - WA


Living adjacent to the unique Lake Towerrinning, in the Shire of West Arthur, second generation farmer Gary Abbott has observed the impact of salinity on the lake’s ecology and reductions in his farm productivity.
In response, Gary embarked on strategies to both mitigate this, reduce waterlogging and adapt to the salinity.
In the early 1990’s Gary successfully direct seeded some of the salt affected areas of his farm with a mix of saltbush varieties and salt tolerant grasses including tall wheat grass and puccinellia. Other efforts include the fencing of the lakeshore, farm waterways and revegetation.
More recently, Gary has established a 15-hectare salt affected paddock with alleys of Anameka™ an elite line of oldman saltbush. This saltbush was developed after 10 years of research and refinement by CSIRO researchers involved in the Future Farm Industries Co-operative Research Centre’s (CRC) Enrich farming system. Anameka™ provides consistent higher level of biomass production and nutritional value for grazing sheep as well as the environmental benefits of reducing the further impact of salinity. To further boost grazing productivity and provide nitrogen to the tall wheat grass in these saltbush alleys, Gary has established a new salt and waterlogging tolerant legume species called messina (Neptune cultivar). He is finding that the saltbush is reducing the salinity in the root zone and the understory productivity is increasing including the annual pasture species and the tall wheat grass.
These perennial-based fodder paddocks on his farm are helping fill the autumn feed gap and reducing the costs of supplementary feeding for his 4000 Merino sheep.


Read more at:
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/soil-sali...

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