PIRSA has announced it will establish a farmer-scale demonstration site for their New Horizons program at its Struan Research Centre, near Naracoorte.
The State Government recently showed its support of the project by allocating $1.1 million in the recent State Budget for further development of the New Horizons program.
“Our continuing investment in New Horizons will help to bring forward the adoption of the research by the State’s farmers, resulting in jobs and a positive economic impact for SA,” Agriculture Minister Leon Bignell said.
“New Horizons has the potential to boost the state’s economy by $800 million a year in crop and livestock pasture production if the trial results can be replicated on the applicable soils.
“The new site at Struan will look at more cost-effective treatments and the benefits of sourcing locally available organic matter.”
Mr Bignell said New Horizons had shown soils could be dramatically improved and crop production increased through managing the top 50cm of soil, rather than the traditional top 10cm.
“A program like New Horizons delivers more than just a revolution in dryland agriculture – it means jobs in our regions for farm hands, business advisers, accountants, bankers, farm consultants and machinery suppliers, and significantly increased demand on our transport services,” he said.
“To progress this, we are collaborating with the University of SA’s agriculture machinery research and design centre.
“Their experts will look at current machinery available to our famers and then design, build and test engineering machinery necessary to deliver the New Horizons practices.”
New Horizons is a PIRSA initiative and is being delivered in collaboration with farming systems groups, the University of SA, the University of Adelaide, and the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources.
Existing trial sites are located in Karoonda in the Mallee, Cadgee in the South East, and Brimpton Lake on the Eyre Peninsula.
