What happens to productivity on a pasture-based dairy farm when nitrogen fertiliser is halved or eliminated?
Researchers at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) are looking for practical solutions to this question and preliminary results are being shared publicly each month.
An ambitious target was set to help dairy farmers grow 20t of forage dry matter from irrigated pasture and produce 2000kg of milk solids per hectare per year, while using only 150 units of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.
TIA’s Dairy Research Facility in North-West Tasmania was transformed in 2022 to establish a long-term research trial using four farmlets or ‘mini farms’ that test research theories under real farm conditions.
The farmlet trial involves the management of four separate dairy herds under different and diverse pasture mixes and varying levels of nitrogen from zero applications to 300kg per hectare.
You can receive regular updates from this trial by subscribing to a monthly report that includes an overview of daily production, production-to-date, pasture performance, dry matter intake, nitrogen use, and observations from the research team.
The farmlet trial is part of the Dairy HIGH2 project which is funded by Dairy Australia and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.