Best Management Practice and Crop Monitoring
for Alfalfa in Southern Australia.
Mary-Anne E. Lattimore
NSW Agriculture, Yanco Agricultural Institute, Yanco, NSW, 2703, Australia
Alfalfa is a valuable crop in temperate Australia for both dryland and irrigated situations. It provides quality grazing and fodder for livestock, nitrogen for crops, and helps to reduce environmental impacts such as erosion, waterlogging and salinity. Unfortunately, farmers often have problems with both establishment of alfalfa and attaining its full yield potential. NSW Agriculture is using various approaches to improve the management skills and profits of alfalfa growers. Leading farmers have helped to develop these management tools.
Best Management Practices (BMPs)
have been developed by researching current and potential yields of alfalfa, and documenting BMPs of successful growers. This involves literature reviews, farmer surveys and focus groups, as well as peer review by all stakeholders, and is an ongoing process. "LucerneCheck" manuals provide production targets and key management checks based on BMPs for establishment, management, hay quality and stand persistence. These are used with crop monitoring and on-farm farmer discussion groups. Farmers’ experiences are also summarised in color BMP brochures.Crop monitoring systems such as "LucerneCheck" and "Haymaker", use crop record cards to outline key management checks and provide farmers with a permanent management record of each field. "Haymaker" also includes economics and water use efficiency guidelines. Analysis of grower practice highlights individual and common management strengths/weaknesses, and can bring about management changes which can be documented over time. With an increasing emphasis on Quality Assurance, record cards can be used as the basis for QA programs. Farmer discussion groups are an integral part of the success of the crop monitoring systems. They are operated by agronomists on a regular basis to facilitate information flow and ensure that records are kept up to date. Seminars and workshops based on BMP guidelines are also conducted via NSW Agriculture’s educational sector.
Computer based systems are becoming more important for information transfer to farmers. Internet websites such as NSW Agriculture’s www.agric.nsw.gov.au provide general agronomic and economic information, but there is potential to improve the quantity and scope of information available. An Interactive CD ROM, based on BMPs is being developed for alfalfa growers. This provides detailed management information on alfalfa agronomy and will be available for the internet. Interactive databases for crop monitoring are being developed to enable growers to enter their own records and receive comparative crop analyses.
Reference
Lolicato, S. and Lattimore, M. 1998. Irrigated Lucerne — A guide to profitable irrigated hay production. Agriculture Victoria/NSW Agriculture.