Eroding soil risk

Location:	The project area covers the upper and western regions (dune swale country), across to eastern Eyre Peninsula and the Cowell flats. Cleve, Cowell, Lock, Minnipa, Wudinna (Eyre Peninsula)
National priority area:	Sustainable farm practices
Funding:	$941 200 (over 4 years 2009-10 to 2012-13)
Partners:	Primarily Rural Solutions SA. Also working with the SA Dept of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Australian Bureau of Agriculture, Eyre Peninsula Ag Bureau groups, Minnipa Agricultural Centre, South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI), South Australian No-till Farmers Association (SANTFA), Lower Eyre Agricultural Development Association (LEADA), Eyre Peninsula Agricultural Research Foundation (EPARF), Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FFICRC), Ag Excellence Alliance.

A collaborative approach to improving land protection outcomes for erosion prone soils on Eyre Peninsula

Encouraging adoption of management practices to reduce soil erosion on the more marginal areas of Eyre Peninsula.

Approximately 1.8 million hectares of land on the Eyre Peninsula has a “moderate to high” potential for soil erosion. The scope of the problem is daunting but a starting point has been found: targeting marginal areas. About 500 000 hectares of this marginal land is managed by 470 landholders, as determined by field surveys, pilot satellite imagery and local knowledge.

The Australian Government’s Caring for our Country initiative has invested $941 200 in a four-year project mitigating erosion on Eyre Peninsula’s high-risk soils. A pilot market based instrument - the first known demonstration of reduced soil erosion risk achieved through tender for management contracts - was trialled as part of this project.

Project officer Neil Ackland says funding enabled landholders to enter into management contracts through a competitive process to adopt sustainable land use practices - one of Caring for our Country’s key national priorities.

“Landholders submitted expressions of interest on how they would address soil surface cover issues to reduce soil erosion on their properties,” Neil explains. “Landholders agreed to a set of management actions such as changing stocking rates and times, stubble management, revegetation, planting of perennial vegetation or re-siting of watering points and fencing.”

Land managers compete for available funds by entering a bid price to achieve a specified level of soil erosion risk reduction, in the form of an amount of soil surface cover. Funds are distributed on a value-for-money basis.

Twelve landholders have entered into contracts under a market-based instrument approach, which aims to increase ground cover over 495.6 hectares. These landholders signed “soil cover agreements” to increase soil cover to a minimum of 50 per cent on designated areas of their property over three years.

The average district soil surface cover level at the time of offering these contracts was 47.7 per cent and the contracted sites were markedly below similar land classes in the region. By early 2010, the difference in soil surface between managed and control sites was no longer significantly different from the district average.

“The change in soil surface cover at managed sites was significant and about 80 per cent of sites complied with our requirements for introducing new soil management techniques in the first year of the program,” Neil says. “This is high for the first year of implementing a novel project approach.”

Funding has also supported awareness-raising events. More than 400 farmers joined on-farm property walks and about 300 landholders were introduced to new technologies and innovative farming systems that could be adopted on Eyre Peninsula.

Workshops and seminars attended by some 100 farmers were held on minimum tillage, precision agriculture and grazing techniques. The project was further promoted at the Eyre Peninsula field day, which attracted more than 21 000 visitors.

“There is a degree of generational change occurring,” Neil says. “We need to increase the knowledge and skills of a new generation of farmers. Farmer-driven groups, if linked well with knowledge about natural resource management, have the networks to disseminate sound land management methodology and bring about landscape scale change in these high erosion prone soils of Eyre Peninsula.”