Glenn and Julie at Gurrawarra
Resilience in the Rangelands | Updated October 2024
‘It’s very much a holistic approach to regenerating the landscape, working with nature using livestock and providing meaningful work in a healthy environment while operating a profitable business.’ – Glenn and Julie
Glenn Humbert and Julie Conder holistically manage their grazing business using merino sheep and cattle as tools to improve soil function on Gurrawarra near Bourke, NSW. They began their journey to revitalise their land and farming practices in 1999 after they undertook Holistic Management training and put what they learned to work on their previous property in Victoria. When they moved to Gurrawarra in 2010, they found themselves in an unfamiliar landscape with greater variability in climatic factors, such as precipitation, from what they had been used to. In addition, the landscape itself was degraded. With a clear goal to turn this around, they applied the principles of Holistic Management and set out to understand and address the root cause of the degradation. With a curious mindset, they have continued to invest in further education and training with Resource Consulting Services (RCS), such as Grazing for Profit and Executive Link.
Glenn says that having a clear holistic plan, or ‘holistic context’ as Glenn puts it, for their personal lives, business and landscape is essential to enable them to test the decision they are making, and whether it will lead them towards or away from this plan. Glenn and Julie have taken the time to write their plan, which includes a series of statements to help them to make decisions and to take actions that move in the direction of the plan, such as, ‘The soil will have 100% ground cover of growing plants and litter which is mature and decaying.’
When facing an issue on the farm, their approach is to first identify whether a problem is itself the root cause or a symptom of a much larger problem. This helps them to focus on what they are trying to achieve and to only carry out actions that will lead them to their desired outcomes.
To achieve their plan for the landscape and to address the true cause of the degradation, they set out to develop their infrastructure to best manage the grazing pressure across their property. Glenn says that their management process and approach has been key to regenerating the landscape, sharing that ‘it wasn’t any one of the [practices] in isolation, but all of them together’ that has resulted in success.
Drawing on their understanding of grazing principles, they plan and continually monitor and adjust their stocking rate to match the carrying capacity of the landscape, to manage ground cover, to ensure perennial plants receive sufficient recovery and to make sure that there is always available feed ahead for the flock or herd. This is particularly challenging in the rangelands environment where annual rolling rainfall can drop from 740 mm down to 170 mm over 12 months, requiring ongoing and diligent adjustment to their stocking rate.
‘Having a clear holistic context for the landscape, business and people is essential to enable us to test the decisions we are making: Will this action lead us towards or away from our desired outcome described in our Holistic context?’ – Glenn Humbert
This long-term plan has helped guide their decision-making in difficult times and allowed them to adapt their enterprise to the constraints of the landscape. For example, during extreme dry periods, they have completely de-stocked their property to preserve the landscape and use the time to implement their infrastructure plans. They have found that reducing grazing pressure through these times has helped the landscape to be ‘ready to go’ when the rain returns. In some seasons, Glenn and Julie have found that there can be a large amount of dry feed available that the sheep can’t utilise, so sometimes they destock their sheep and take on agistment cattle that can handle the available feed at the time. The flexibility in decision making allows for greater business resilience. They see their approach as working with nature and adapting their plan to the conditions and carrying capacity of the land.
Glenn and Julie were motivated to join the Rangelands Living Skin project because of the opportunity to undertake farmer-led research while generating scientific data on the effects of different management practices in the NSW rangeland landscape. Glenn notes that this landscape has historically received little research attention. In addition, the opportunity to choose to undertake practices they were excited about has made the research and engagement in the project more meaningful.
(L-R) Julie Conder and Glenn Humbert. Source: Grow Love Project.
Image 1. Wildlife abounds on Gurrawarra; a bearded dragon enjoys some sun. Source: Grow Love Project.
Image 2. Emus on Gurrawarra. Source: Grow Love Project.
Farm Facts
Location
Ngemba/Ngiyaampa Country, Bourke, NSW
Climate
Hot dry summer, cold winter
Average Annual Rainfall
370 mm*
Agro-ecological Region
Dry**
Property Size
9,969 ha
Elevation
113 m
*Sourced from MyClimateView.com.au. Farmer reported 240 mm median.
**Extreme variability of rainfall is a defining feature of southern rangelands and has a significant impact on the challenges and solutions being explored at Gurrawarra
Social Structure
Family-owned and operated
Enterprise Type
Self-replacing merino sheep flock, occasional agistment cattle
Landscape
NSW rangelands (northern flood plain, mitchell grass plains, gidgee and brigalow)
Soils
Red and black alluvial clay soils, some duplex soils
*Learn more about soil classifications at Soil Science Australia
Practices for Improving Soil and Landscape
When Glenn and Julie first moved to Bourke, they joined the Western Catchment Management Authority’s mentoring program and were mentored by Graham Finlayson, another Rangelands Living Skin participant. Through this program, they gained the confidence to develop Gurrawarra with new infrastructure.
In 2013 they began by installing significant water and wire infrastructure improvements on Gurrawarra to create smaller paddocks that allowed for cell grazing to be implemented. They installed 13 new water points and 52 new paddocks fenced with single wire electric fencing. They still weren’t getting the results that they were wanting to see, so they continued to dig a little deeper. After extensive monitoring, Glenn and Julie determined that the unwanted grazing pressure from feral goats and kangaroos was not allowing the vegetation in the paddocks to recover and new seedlings to establish. To address this issue, they upgraded their boundary fencing to Total Grazing Pressure (TGP) standards in 2015–16. In addition to the boundary fence upgrade, all dams were also fenced to TGP standards to remove all accessible water from unwanted pressure.
During the dry period in 2013, Glenn and Julie recall that their farm looked the same as the country around them at that stage. They destocked completely, which they continue to do as an approach to managing risk. When the rain came in 2014, they realised their stock management approach wasn’t enough, as they still had a lot of unwanted grazing pressure from wild goats. In 2015, they received a grant for TGP fencing from the Local Land Services and fenced off 6,000 ha ‘out the back of the property’. This reduced the unwanted grazing pressure from feral goats and kangaroos and protected the ground tanks and dams. In 2016, they received another fencing grant to complete the rest of the property. In 2017, they rolled out a second live wire to accommodate sheep. Having smaller paddocks and frequently moving livestock has resulted in livestock that are calmer and easier to muster and handle.
The fencing was a ‘game changer’ that brought everything together because they ‘knew that the feed from rain events would be there for their stock rather than having been eaten by wild goats or kangaroos,’ Glenn said. This change allowed them to confidently budget for their feed, as it would still be in the paddock 6–9 months after a rain event.
‘There’s no one thing in isolation that made it happen. It was a combination of those three or four developments, certainly with the fencing off of the existing ground tanks and gaining complete control of the water. So even in a de-stock situation, the property remained relatively free of unwanted grazing pressure and the goats we’d trapped out, they haven’t been back.’ – Glenn Humbert
Some of the country was severely over-utilised and depleted due to high feral goat populations before the fencing. Glenn and Julie say that this is now some of their more productive country because they have managed the intensity of the grazing of that land. As an outcome of this, they have transitioned to a much stronger perennial dominated feedbase across the property, which holds them in better shape through the dry periods.
Rangelands Living Skin trial practices
As part of the Rangelands Living Skin project, producers are running low-cost trials of various scalable practices that they hope will offer multiple benefits. The trials include a trial chosen by the farmer (demonstration site), as well as replicated trials across the farms and remote sensing data to reflect grazing management.
Farmer-led demonstration site: gypsum plot trials
As part of the Rangelands Living Skin project, Glenn and Julie have implemented plot trials with gypsum applied at three different rates on a degraded claypan area. The application rates in the plot trials have been designed to understand the most efficient rate of application. The design of the plots is identified in Image 3, and the application rates are L =1,000 kg/ha, M = 2,500 kg/ha, H = 6,500 kg/ha and C (control) = 0 kg/ha.
Image 3. Site layout for trials (L = 1,000 kg/ha, M = 2,500, kg/ha, H = 6,500 kg/ha, C (control) = 0 kg/ha). Source: Karl Andersson.
Glenn notes that applying gypsum should be a last resort after exhausting all available management approaches. Despite applying a Holistic Management approach across Gurrawarra for more than a decade and working to address the root cause, some claypan areas were still not improving. Glenn and Julie have had great success in other locations where their grazing management with long recovery periods had provided increased vegetation around the edges of the claypan. This vegetation formed a small levee (self-ponding) which would hold the rainfall on those claypan areas, enabling the moisture to soak in and leach out the salts in those soils. However, because of the sloping landscape, some areas cannot hold water. Glenn and Julie decided to trial gypsum to improve the water infiltration properties of the soil to help kick-start the landscape function again.
Glenn and Julie’s decision to trial gypsum was based on their observation of two claypan locations where gypsum had been stored for later retrieval for another job. Some years after the gypsum had been removed from these locations, they noticed that there was good grass cover and shrubs growing where the gypsum had been. They did some soil monitoring in this area and found that a penetrometer could be pushed right down to full depth without problem, whilst outside this area it could only go a short depth.
They also had previous experience using gypsum when doing laser grading on their farm in Victoria. They started thinking of gypsum as an alternative input, to be used within a Holistic Management approach, that changes the soil’s physical properties, allowing it to retain more moisture.
Image 4. Site planning for trials. Source: Julie Conder.
Image 5. Glenn checking gypsum trials. Source: Julie Conder.
Image 6. Gypsum trial site gridded out to accurately spread required amounts of gypsum by hand over gridded areas according to Image 3. Source: Julie Conder.
Glenn and Julie hope to see similar results to what they saw at the previous gypsum dump sites, however, they note that the tonne per hectare rate would have been relatively high because the gypsum had been stored in a large mound. Hence, as part of this project, they are trialling different quantities of gypsum to determine the cost-benefits of various application rates.
‘We’ve either got a soil that is increasing in its biological activity, because our management is allowing that to happen, or it is going the other way, and the water and mineral cycles are falling apart, which would mean all of our nutrients are eroding away.’ – Glenn Humbert
‘For farmers to apply something like gypsum,’ they share, ‘there needs to be data to show that it is economical and delivers a result.’ This project provides Glenn and Julie with an opportunity to develop that data on the ground to support decision-making. They are curious to find out how low application rates can be to provide the same result and how long the benefits will last.
Having carried out initial site inspections and soil tests, they already have a greater understanding of some of the claypan sites and the salinity levels present on them. In July 2023, they applied gypsum across the plots. Longer term changes in response to the gypsum treatments were monitored through remote sensing and permanent photo points.
In addition, Glenn and Julie would like to see more research done in the future on the more productive areas. For example, investigating high-pressure grazing at 1,000 head/ha with differing recovery periods (180, 365 and 540 days) to observe soil function, carbon levels, species composition and resulting production of the rangeland landscape, albeit a broad area.
Image 7. Drone image of gypsum trials. Source: Grow Love Project.
Image 8. Location where gypsum tailings were stored on the claypan. Source: Grow Love Project.
Image 9. Gypsum applied to soil to help stimulate growth. Source: Grow Love Project.
Replicated plot trials
Replicated plot trials of biostimulants were undertaken across the four participating Rangelands Living Skin farms. The replicated plot trials provided an opportunity to investigate the soil and plant benefits of various treatments on a small scale in a scientifically rigorous manner.
The treatments were selected by the core producers in collaboration with the project partners, and in this case included biological inputs (bioprimers).
The treatments at Gurrawarra included:
- Control: no application of treatments or sowing of new species. This is the reference site to which the other treatments were compared.
- Bioprimer (Solid): application of a solid biological stimulant material to existing vegetation/soil. The solid bioprimer was applied by hand at a rate of 250 kg/ha.
- Bioprimer (Liquid Foliar): application of a liquid biological stimulant material to existing vegetation. The liquid biofoliar spray was applied using a 15 L knapsack sprayer at a rate of 5 L/ha.
At each site, three replicates of each treatment were established in late July 2022 in a randomised, blocked design (Image 10).
Image 10. Trial design for Gurrawarra. Source: NSW DPI.
Image 11. Application of liquid foliar bioprimer in replicated plot trial on Gurrawarra. Source: NSW DPI.
Image 12. Solid bioprimer on the soil surface at Gurrawarra. Source: NSW DPI.
Remote sensing of grazing management
Changes in ground cover in response to improved grazing management (managing stocking rates and resting paddocks) on Gurrawarra over the last 13 years were assessed using remote sensing data. Landsat satellite imagery was used to compare the total ground cover on Gurrawarra with similar land types within 10 km of the property (benchmark areas) for every season since 1989. This method allows the impact of management to be separated from some of the temporal and spatial variability associated with seasonal conditions and different land types. A positive trend in the difference in cover between Gurrawarra and the benchmark area from the time of changed grazing management would indicate positive impacts of changing management practices.
Insights and Observations
Grazing management and ground cover
Glenn and Julie have seen improvement from the increased diversity of grasses, forbs, shrubs, trees and wildlife. Julie shares, ‘From a diversity of species, both grasses and wildlife, it has been amazing that we’ve seen that improvement.’ She adds, ‘Maybe that’s not yet a possible economic advantage, but it’s certainly increasing our diversity and I think that gives us greater strength moving forward.’
Satellite data shows that Gurrawarra has historically had very variable groundcover (between 35% and 70%) and generally lower groundcover than the surrounding region. However, since management change, it has seen a significant increasing trend, with higher groundcover than the surrounding region in almost every year since management change in 2010. This positive trend is taking Glenn and Julie towards their goal of 100% ground cover as outlined in their holistic plan.
Figure 1. Ground cover trends between 1989 and 2023 on Gurrawarra. From top: Percentage ground cover for Gurrawarra (solid line) and the surrounding 10 km region (dashed line), with smoothed trendline for Gurrawarra; Difference in percentage ground cover between Gurrawarra and the surrounding region, with smoothed trendline; Seasonal rainfall (mm). The vertical dashed line indicates the beginning of management change. Source: NSW DPI.
Gypsum trials
A statistical analysis of the gypsum application trials have not yet been undertaken, but early observations (one year from time of application) indicate at least a short-term trend towards improved infiltration and establishment of plants in the trial plots with the highest rates of gypsum treatments (Figure 2 and Image 13). Response of vegetation to gypsum application was most apparent along the old furrow lines. There was little apparent effect of gypsum at low and moderate levels relative to the controls outside the existing furrows.
Image 13. Short-term visual indication of increased water infiltration and subsequent plant growth in plot (right of the post) with higher levels of gypsum application.
Monitoring of plant cover and soil condition will be undertaken periodically to quantify the long-term effect of gypsum, ripping and water ponding for improvements in water infiltration and subsequent productivity on sodic, saline scalds in low rainfall environments.
Figure 2. Average vegetative (plant and litter) cover across different gypsum treatments, 12 months post-application of gypsum. Data from July 2024.
Replicated biostimulant trials
The results of the biostimulant trials highlighted the challenges of using biostimulant products in a rangeland environment, and indicated that management approaches that instead aim to support and grow indigenous soil biology may be more effective. The biostimulant trials replicated across the four core producer properties sought to explore whether foliars, solid vermicast, and biochar changed soil biological function and vegetation biomass, compared to a control site with no treatment. In order to monitor the impact of the biostimulant trial, a series of 25 cm² cotton strips were buried and monitored at 8, 12 and 14 weeks after applying the biostimulants, in addition to lab analysis of indicators of soil biology. Soil biology breaks down cotton, so this test is commonly used to measure biological activity.
Images 14 and 15. Burying cotton strips for the replicated biostimulant trial.
The application of biostimulants did not show a statistically significant change in soil biology or vegetation biomass after 5 months. This result needs to be understood in context. Soil biology and biological activity in rangeland environments is significantly influenced by soil moisture levels, and the variability of these can potentially outweigh any effect of biological stimulants. The trial highlighted challenges in applying the biostimulant products at scale and at optimal times to maximise their success in vast, diverse and climatically variable rangeland grazing systems. In addition, the high sensitivity of biostimulant products to seasonal conditions (e.g. soil moisture and temperature) may be difficult to avoid in a rangeland context, which may make it difficult to make biostimulants commercially effective in a rangeland environment.
While the biostimulant treatment did not show any effect, a Soil Food Web analysis showed that Gurrawarra’s soils had reasonable levels of indigenous biological activity. Over the 14 weeks of the trial, the cotton strips lost between 93% and 100% of their tensile strength, and an average of 5–18 cm² of the 25 cm² cotton strips remained.
Greenhouse gas emissions and soil organic carbon
Greenhouse gas emissions for Gurrawarra were calculated using the Sheep and Beef Greenhouse Gas Accounting Framework1https://carbon-calculator.mla.com.au based on cattle numbers. This analysis can help understand potential opportunities for graziers to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. The greenhouse gas emissions for Gurrawarra over the last four years have been estimated at an average of 260 t CO2e per year, the bulk of which is attributed to livestock methane. The analysis suggested that to offset or inset the emissions would require on average 26 kg of CO2e per hectare per year to be sequestered.
However, there are challenges to verifiably sequestering carbon in rangelands environments. Soil organic carbon (SOC) levels are low in the low rainfall environment of the rangelands, exacerbated by an inherited legacy of degraded and eroded soil. There are a number of constraints in rangeland soils, such as salinity, acidity and sodicity, that could make permanently shifting soil carbon levels difficult. In addition, assessments of SOC at a number of monitoring sites on the property revealed relatively high variability in carbon through the soil profile, making it difficult to verify small changes in SOC levels. The project team advised that the remediation of highly degraded areas such as scalded claypans might provide more easily measurable increases in soil carbon.
Despite the challenges in measuring soil carbon, the types of management changes trialled through this project, such as enhancing plant growth with remediation and grazing management, and encouraging a functioning soil ecosystem, can be effective strategies for land remediation even if SOC levels are difficult to increase in a measurable way.
Profitability
Over the 4 year period of the project, all four core producers including Gurrawarra maintained a positive return on assets (ROA), with an average ROA across the four businesses of 3.76%. This is despite some challenging weather and industry conditions, higher than industry average transport costs for remote producers to get animals to market, and their decisions to sell stock at less than ideal prices during dry periods in order to maintain ground cover. These decisions are intended to build the soil and land condition and support ongoing future profitability.
Reflections on the project
Reflecting on the overall Rangelands Living Skin project, Julie and Glenn were very appreciative of the ability to adopt and use some of the latest technology to quantify results observed in their paddocks, for example with the remote sensing. Glenn adds, ‘We think some very valuable insights have been gained by all stakeholders in this project, particularly in relation to soil biology, ground cover and long-term productivity of the rangelands, and we are excited to see how this gets shared with the wider community.’ Glenn and Julie are also keen to see further research into high density grazing in short duration implemented at the property level. They’re also interested in further exploring strategies to rehydrate the landscape.
Acknowledgements
This case study was prepared as part of the Rangelands Living Skin Project. The Rangelands Living Skin is a four-year project in the NSW Rangelands co-designed by farming families, scientists and collaborators to evaluate cost-effective practices – chosen by producers – for fostering a productive rangeland system now and into the future.
In this project, four core producers trialled a range of practices to improve landscape health, livestock production and business performance to ultimately achieve greater resilience from year to year. The project will create an evidence base to inform the widespread adoption of practices that benefit soil, plants, animals and people – the living skin of the rangelands.
Led by the NSW Department of Primary Industries and funded by Meat & Livestock Australia, this project is a significant investment in the southern rangelands. The Rangelands Living Skin project is a truly collaborative project involving producers, industry, government, academia, researchers, educators and extension specialists, and carbon aggregators.
Soils for Life gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions of the partner organisations in this project. We also acknowledge that the contents of this case study do not necessarily reflect the views of these contributors.
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