EverGraze: a project to achieve profit and environmental outcomes in the Australian grazing industries

Australian agriculture is faced with environmental issues including increasing land and river salinity and reduced biodiversity. Key to the addressing these are to develop livestock systems that achieve improved environmental outcomes and increased profit, in order to promote widespread adoption. EverGraze is a national research and extension project developing innovative livestock production sy stems based on perennial pastures which will deliver improved profit and environmental outcomes. Integrated bioeconomic and biophysical modeling (in consultation with farmers and catchment managers) was used to identify farming systems which have the potential to deliver improved profit and environmental outcomes, as well as identifying constraints to achieving these outcomes. Whole farm systems and component research is now underway across several sites in the high rainfall zones ( 550 mm) of southern Australia to test the potential of new livestock systems and to investigate the specifi c benefits of parts of these systems (e.g., improving sheep reproductive performance through perennial pastures and shrubs). This paper presents modelling results and how they were used to design field experiments, and preliminary experimental results from one of these experiments.