Regenerative Cropping Practice Guides

Biological Seed Treatments

Farmers use biological seed treatments to give their plants the best possible start. Biological seed treatments can include microbes, biostimulants and nutrients.

Multispecies Cropping

Multispecies cropping involves the use of multiple crop species from diverse plant families at the same time. The practice is often used to bring diversity into farming systems, transition ‘problem’ paddocks and build farm resilience.

Reducing Herbicides

Reducing herbicides in cropping systems tends to involve multiple complementary strategies, particularly strategies for weed management. This guide covers efficiency, substitution, redesign strategies.

Foliar Applications

Foliar applications of nutrients and/or biostimulants to crop foliage with the aim of improving plant health, overcoming soil constraints and improving overall resilience.

Biological Inputs and Fertilisers

Biological inputs and fertilisers are microbially active sources of crop nutrition and biostimulants that support crop growth. These inputs are often used to reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, and to improve soil biological health and organic matter.

Improving Nitrogen Cycling and Efficiencies

Nitrogen is an important nutrient for crop growth. This guide explains how nitrogen moves around soils and plants, and how to make the most of the nitrogen applied and improve nitrogen cycling in a cropping system.

Intercropping

Intercropping involves growing two or more complementary crops together to increase plant diversity, with flow-on benefits for crop health, productivity, farm resilience, and soil and ecological health.

Integrated Cropping and Livestock

Integrating livestock involves combining cropping with sheep, cattle or other animals. Integrating livestock addresses one of the biggest challenges to soil and landscape regeneration in cropping systems by reintroducing species diversity, and can lead to immediate improvements in nutrient cycling and weed and biomass management. This guide introduces methods farmers are using to integrate livestock into broadacre cropping and the benefits of doing so.

Soil and Plant Health Monitoring

Farmers Myles and Julie Ballentine share simple soil and plant testing and monitoring methods that they implement on their farm near Banana QLD. They also share the benefits of soil and plant monitoring for them, and how the insights from monitoring help with their decision making.

Building Plant Resilience to Pest and Disease

Building resilience to pests and disease means using a mix of strategies suited to your farm and landscape. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Many farmers are choosing to focus on building plant health and biodiversity as a key strategy for reducing the impact of pests and disease on crops.

Through careful monitoring to diagnose issues and inform management choices, it’s possible to design an approach and implement practices that build plant resilience and allow them to safely reduce or completely eliminate fungicides and insecticides.