Improving Traditional Crop-Pasture Farming Systems with Lucerne South East Australia

This chapter is based a study of 13 farmers in south east Australia who have improved their farming system by introducing lucerne pastures while conducting intensive, and often no-till, cropping. Growing lucerne did not reduce cropping intensity, and there was no consistent effect on crop profitability. Replacing annual pastures with perennial lucerne improved overall profitability on all the farms. This was associated with large increases in stocking rate and a greater emphasis on prime meat production rather than on store stock or wool production. The claimed advantages of lucerne were: (i) providing a profitable pasture phase; (ii) spreading risk with income from two major enterprises (grain and livestock); (iii) using summer rainfall; (iv) reducing the rates of nitrogen fertiliser applied to following crops and (v) improved weed control in the lucerne phase carrying over into the crop phase. The key challenge to growing lucerne in rotation with grain crops is whether overall returns from this combination can match those from continuous cropping rotations, particularly given the greatly improved continuous cropping technology and equipment now available.