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Track your progress towards your vision for your grazing enterprise
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Engage with your family to regularly monitor and document the condition of your natural assets, weeds and pests
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Carefully record and store your monitoring results
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Key decisions, critical actions and benchmarks
Maintain a photo record
Monitoring progress is critical in long term projects because it is impossible to remember what things were like at the start and how much ‘progress’ is being made despite the ups and downs of the seasons.
A sequence of photos taken over a period of time can provide a rich source of information to monitor short and longer term change resulting from management decisions, climatic conditions/impacts and natural events. Use tool 5.12 to establish and maintain photopoints.
Tool 5.12 and Quickchecks (see signposts) can help you set up photo sites to record change over time. The “before and after” photos in tool 5.13 show how well photos can visually record progress towards your vision over the years.
Label (date, location) and file your photos so you can find them when you need to:
- Locate the site to take another photo at regular intervals
- Prove the multiple benefits arising from your improved management.
Commit to regular monitoring
Define the best month/s to assess the condition of your natural resources, pests and weeds, then take measurements (photos, assessments, counts, etc) at that time. The timing will vary according to your rainfall pattern (see procedure 8.1 in Turn Pasture into Product):
- Winter and even rainfall zones: late autumn (before the break) is often the ‘worst’ for vegetation, groundcover, birds and insects, while mid spring is the ‘best’
- Summer rainfall zones: spring and autumn can also be the most appropriate periods, but autumn will sometimes be ‘better’ than spring.
Seasonal variations can modify the times, but experience has shown that the twice-per-year / stronger-and-weaker approach is fairly robust over time.
Use the tools suggested in this and other modules to monitor change in soil, pastures, salinity, soil pH, remnant vegetation or any of the key resources you have identified.
Whichever tool or combination of tools you use, clearly identify your monitoring sites and come back to the same areas each time you monitor.
Monitor long-term impacts
Use the monitoring tools repeatedly over time to determine if the condition of your key resources is moving towards or away from your vision. Collect information over a number of years so you can clearly see trends over time.
Don’t commit to a program that is too demanding over time. Quickchecks (see signposts) can help you determine the priority sites and monitoring methods according to your vision for your grazing enterprise. The most important thing is to monitor the priority sites at about the same time each year to establish trends. Write these dates in your calendar or diary and commit to implementing your strategy over time.
Explore market opportunities
New markets are likely to emerge for environmentally assured sheep products as domestic and overseas consumers continue to demand greater confidence in the way a product (meat/wool) is produced.
Procedure 2.2 and tool 2.5 in Market Focused Wool Production explore market opportunities for that may be available for environmentally assured wool.
Signposts  |
Read
Quickchecks: Natural Resource Monitoring Tools for Woolgrowers – tools to measure the health of your pastures, soils, woody vegetation, farm watercourses, paddock production levels and birds. Order your free copy on-line at: http://lwa.gov.au/products/stock
The MLA Pasture Health Kit: a field kit for producers to assess pasture health in the paddock. The kit can be ordered from MLA by:
View
Landleader: a voluntary tool that aims to identify and promote the environmental and livestock stewardship credentials of the wool and red meat industries. Visit the website at: www.landleader.com.au/
Attend
The MLA EDGEnetwork® program is coordinated nationally and has a range of courses to assist sheep producers. Contact can be made via:
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