Pasture 365

Finding a successful forage mix for pastures

Pasture 365 is a research project aiming to find forage mixes that could potentially provide feed for all 365 days of the year.

Agriculture Victoria is measuring whether species-diverse pastures can grow feed all year round to negate the summer-autumn feed gap.

Getting the mix of grasses, legumes, herbs, brassicas, and cereals right, has the potential to increase productivity for farmers with grazing animals across all livestock sectors.

Agriculture Victoria teams conducting the research at the Ellinbank and Hamilton SmartFarms include; agronomists, animal nutritionists, experts in water movement and soil nutrients, plus on-ground practitioners.

Why Pasture 365 is an important project

Farmers of grazing animals in temperate southern Australia often experience an annual summer-autumn feed gap, where supplementary feed is needed off-farm.

This tends to occur in most pasture-based systems, usually where there are perennial monocultures that are typically ryegrass-based. During dry periods such as summer into early autumn, these pastures perform poorly resulting in a feed gap. Under future climate scenarios, the duration and severity of dry periods are predicted to increase requiring forward-thinking solutions to reduce feeding gaps.

Traditionally, farmers purchase off-farm feeds or design containment feeding strategies to maintain livestock productivity. If homegrown feed bases fail it can result in destocking, increased financial costs, and negative wellbeing impacts for farmers. That’s why designing multi-species pastures able to grow feed all year round is highly important for the agriculture industry.

How the project will benefit food producers

Based on a robust and innovative experimental design, the extent of the trials ensures multispecies pasture systems are tested under an expansive range of control systems, climate, and soil conditions under varied management.

Grazing animal farmers will be able to apply learnings produced by the research project and may provide farmers with practical science-based strategies.

Implementing appropriate multispecies pasture mixes suitable to their environment that are resilient to changing climate conditions and have potential to grow all year round.

Experimental plots at Ellinbank SmartFarm

The multispecies pastures selected for the project were informed by a co-design process including farmers, Traditional Owners, and agronomists.

Ellinbank SmartFarm is investigating four different multispecies combinations. Each combination has an assigned N fertiliser regime based on the nitrogen-fixing capacity of the species mixes planted.

In addition, the project is also investigating the inclusion of native and annual species, in some of the mixes being tested.

Project partners

The research is a national initiative, with long-term experimental sites in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.

Comparable studies are being run by our partners, who are sowing multispecies mixes. Including South Australian Research and Development Institute, Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development Western Australia. It is anticipated that multispecies mixes will differ according to the environment they are being tested. The aim is to develop multispecies options best suited to local conditions such as rainfall.

Satellite sites are also being run across participating states where individual farmers implement a single multispecies mixture.

Pasture 365 is a 5-year research project that started in 2023 funded by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Future Drought Fund.