New management tool for East Australian graziers

Primary producers from Rockhampton in Queensland across to Ceduna in South Australia and down to Tasmania can now access newly released satellite pasture growth data from the Pastures from Space website –: www.pasturesfromspace.csiro.au.

The Pasture Growth Rate (PGR®) data on the website is from the previous weeks’ climate records and satellite images which are merged to calculate how fast the pasture is growing at the national, regional, farm and paddock scale.

PGR® supports farmers in making management decisions like grazing rotation, feed budgeting, fertilizer application and other ‘precision’ techniques. Because the data is on the web, near real-time decisions can be made.

Spatial analyst from CSIRO Armidale, Graham Donald, says PGR® provides an assessment of the amount of pasture grown in the last week (in kilograms of dry matter per day).  “The major difficulty graziers face with climatic uncertainty is how to match fluctuating feed supply with demand.

“It is economically and environmentally vital for producers to manage productivity, meet market demand and maximise profit – but to do this they must utilise their available stock feed strategically and sustainably,” Mr Donald said.

“These accurate satellite estimations of PGR® provide information on feed resources allowing producers to more effectively manage their enterprise and raise the productivity of their businesses,” he said.

“Producers in eastern Australia now have the tools capable of measuring positive and negative effects on their farms and farming regions generally,” Mr Donald said.

In providing information about seasonal and yearly fluctuations in pasture production, the Pastures from Space project has also proven invaluable as a decision support tool to shire councils, state government agencies and the banking and finance sectors.

CSIRO developed PGR® in collaboration with the Western Australia Departments of Food & Agriculture and Land Information (now known as Landgate), with the Bureau of Meteorology providing critical regional climate data.

A high-resolution PGR® image of the impact of climate variation is available at: http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/mediarelease/mr07-11.html