Aust mixed farms lift profits, despite adversity

Research under the Grain & Graze program has found that despite tough conditions, Australia's mixed farmers are continually adapting and surviving.

"Despite going through the driest five year period on record in Australia, we've been able to see a 9pc average increase in profit for mixed farmers participating in Grain & Graze program across Australia," the program's national co-ordinator, Richard Price, says.

"That is just testament to the resourcefulness of farmers.

"The great thing about mixed farming systems is that you can adapt to different climatic circumstances by adjusting the cropping-animal mix."

As agriculture sails into waters made stormy by the cross-currents of climate change and soaring input costs, Grain & Graze pinned down diversity as a fundamental principle of farm adaptation.

Diversity starts with the mixed farm, an entity that has often been ignored in the commodity focus of research and lobby organisations, but which is at the heart of farming across southern Australia.

Researchers took a look at some of the enterprise mixes available to mixed farmers, like grazing of winter cereals, and identified the techniques that make these enterprise interactions successful.