Forced innovation turns farm fortunes around

With no pasture, fences or stock remaining, Mr Seis set about ensuring the survival of the family farm by stripping production back to basics and in so doing becoming an advocate of the innovative pasture cropping approach.

"I was broke with no money and had to work out a way of surviving on the farm," he said.

"Before the fire I was putting a lot of fertiliser on to prop up the improved grasses I was growing but I couldn't afford that fertiliser anymore.

"I knew native grasses didn't require high fertiliser rates so I needed to encourage native grasses to return, which was fairly simple: I just stepped back and let nature fix it for me."

Mr Seis, the winner of the 2014 Bob Hawke Landcare Award and 2007 Carbon Farmer of the Year, has been travelling across Victoria presenting innovative land management workshops that explore his pasture cropping transition.

The change has been lucrative, with what he calls a holistic grazing management saving $80,000 a year in fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides.

Fine-wool Merinos now run at an improved stocking rate of eight dry sheep equivalent across the 840-hectare property, which includes 200ha of oats, wheat and cereal rye.

The stocking rate is double that of nearby traditional farming properties.

Mr Seis said the critical ingredient to the successful transition was using livestock in a more beneficial way.

So how does he do it?

"I run large 2000-3000-head mobs across 20ha paddocks and I use those animals to control weeds by mulching the grass, because they flatten it, and this provides good groundcover," he said.

"They're only on it for two or three days and then the paddock is rested for 120 days – three or four months – because that is what it takes for those plants to recover fully before they are grazed again."

While he hasn't used fertiliser on pastures for more than 30 years, Mr Seis is not an extremist and still uses selective herbicides that don't kill perennial grasses.

He said paddocks were grazed until the crop was sown, strategically during winter and following grain harvest.

While the yield from his grain crop was down by about 15 per cent in the first three years of the transition, he said the yield recovered along with the soil health and structure.

"It has totally revolutionised our operation – there is a lot less work to do than there used to be and I make more money," he said.

"The real gains from this land management technique are greater profitability and reduced risk as the input and labour costs are very low."

During his talks Mr Seis discourages the traditional "burning-off" method of disease control and ploughing soils.

"Crop disease and nutrient decline are really only symptoms of how our agricultural practices are done so we are causing our own problems," he said.

"Our farms should function as eco systems.

"The reason for all our diseases and problems in ag is ecological problems."

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