Sustainable management lifts yields

Representatives from the agriculture and natural resources sectors have celebrated the relationship, building on from last year's NRM: Working Together Action Plan 2014-17.

Primary Producers SA chairman Rob Kerin said the past few decades' improvements in sustainable management had contributed to yield advances.

"All production increases picked up 20 to 30 years ago have also been very environmentally friendly," he said.

"Sustainability and productivity have gone hand-in-hand."

He said one example of this was the use of direct drilling in sowing.

"We haven't had any conflict in thinking," he said. "All the major things have been win-win."

Northern and Yorke NRM Board presiding member Eric Sommerville said a high percentage of land in their NRM district was used for agriculture.

"We need to make sure sustainable agriculture is at the forefront of what we're thinking," he said.

To celebrate this partnership the two groups have released a youtube video, with profiles on two farmers - Steve Wicks, Yakka, and Andrew Hansen, Coomandook.

In the video, the farmers discuss how sustainable farming has helped improve productivity.

"Soils are really our biggest asset and we've really got to manage and look after them," Mr Hansen said.

He said they had previously tried combatting wind erosion through minimum tillage, but it was not until the late 1990s when they tried no-till and stubble retention that he started to see "a huge improvement in soil coverage".

Mr Wicks said in the past the surface of the soil had been "like talcum powder" and "hard as granite" underneath.

"A previous owner of the land told me they used to work the ground 11 times in a year, and that was with horses," he said.

Once he adopted stubble retention he said the improvement in his soil happened quickly, along with a lift in carbon content.

"That is enormously gratifying for me," he said.