MADE delivers Smart Farms program

June 2023

With the Australian Government's Smart Farms program, MADE has helped local potato farmers to start applying new practices that will increase our farming community's long term natural capital. 

Starting with farmer engagement in April 2021, MADE heard about their challenges and the barriers farmers saw to becoming more sustainable. They feel the stresses of climate change and extreme weather events, pests and increasing cost of inputs - all impacting the viability of their farms. 

In responding to these issues, MADE worked with Graeme Sait from Nutri-Tech Solutions to deliver four 2-day workshops on how soil works, how it influences plant growth, and alternative sustainable agricultural practices to improve soil and plant health, increase yield and profitability.  Learning about the mineral, biological and structural elements of soil helped farmers in doing in-paddock soil assessment, using precision ag tools from the new community tool library to monitor plant health across growth stages, interpreting their soil and plant leaf tests and integrating this new understanding in real time to inform their crop management decisions. With lots of discussion and shared problem solving, program participants worked out which new practices would help them best. For some, the results on plant health and yield were amazing. As MADE finalises the project, farmers are being supported to install and utilise more precision ag tools for ongoing advanced monitoring of soil and plant health. 

MADE gained valuable insights into the best ways for supporting farmers to transition to new practices. Beyond just learning new theory, we saw the real value of discussion, the benefit in talking with an expert about your local challenges, how spending time in the paddock was critical to building new understanding, the importance of spending time on Q&A so you can dig into what you have learnt and feel more confident in having a go at something new. 

February 2021

MADE has been awarded a Commonwealth Smart Farms grant to increase technical knowledge and capability of local potato farmers, increase on-farm adoption of sustainable agriculture practices that enable them to improve soil health, reduce chemical inputs, reduce costs and better manage limited water resources. The 45 local farmers in our area produce over 23% of the potatoes grown in Victoria and we understand that embracing new sustainable agricultural practices is critical for our community to thrive and grow in the future.  

To achieve our project objectives, we will: 

• build farmers’ knowledge of soil and plant health 
• support them to increase their independence in real-time monitoring of their soil and crops
• build their confidence to interpret results and alter their farm practices in response 
• give them experience and exposure to the opportunities available in through precision agriculture technologies and decision support systems 
• grow their skills in monitoring, recording and how to undertake effective trials that enable them to make confident decisions about shifting to new and improved practices 
• facilitate a peer support environment and a local community culture that values knowledge sharing, experimentation and improvement. 

Our project will significantly improve the knowledge of soils across our cohort of farmers while increasing adoption best practice sustainability using AgTech that individual farmers would alone unlikely consider due to complexity and lack of individual resources and skills. These things combined will work to improve soil health, plant health and water efficiency, whilst supporting improved yields, lower costs and better profitability.