Dryland farming in Australia, no matter the region or cropping system, can be managed better with base information. According to Peter Carberry and Neal Dalgliesh of the Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit (APSRU) and CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, farmers are now demanding access to such information and researchers are exploring ways of assisting in delivering the tools and information. In-season rainfall makes for a great crop, but soil water at sowing often ensures a harvestable crop, especially in the northern cropping regions of Australia. While climate forecasts can provide probabilities of seasonal rainfall for each cropping region of Australia (e.g. http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/inde x.html), soil water prior to sowing is readily measurable by farmers and it represents an understandable known rather than a difficult-to-interpret probability.
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