The Victorian Department of Primary Industries is undertaking a GRDC-funded project aimed at increasing farmer adoption of lucerne in dryland farming systems. The rationale for increasing lucerne adoption is to reduce ground water recharge. Farmers identified the lack of economic analyses of dryland lucerne farming systems as a major barrier to its broader adoption. To address this, economic analyses of case study farms that have changed from annual to lucerne pastures have been conducted. As part ofa larger analysis of grains and grazing farming systems, a subset of selected farms was used to investigate critical sheep management factors affecting the profitability of the change. Stocking rate estimates included adjustments for sheep body weight,lambing percentage, lamb growth rate and age of marketing lambs using the GrazFeed simulation model (Freer et al. 1997). One dse (dry sheep equivalent) was defined as the amount of metabolisable energy needed to maintain a 50 kg dry sheep for 1 year. Commodity prices were standardised to a 6-year average.
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