THE take home message from a pasture field day at Piries last Friday, October 6, was that planning and adopting a systems approach to establishing pastures ensures better productivity for landholders.

The field day which featured 10 trial plots of different pasture species was a partnership between Tactical AGA, and Roger Stephens from Mansfield Fertilizer, started 12 months ago.

Tactical AGA has a team of three agronomists who work with various farmers across rural Victoria including the Mansfield district to tailor a pasture planting program suitable for their area.

The free event was attended by several district farmers including some who are already using the services of Tactical AGA.

Senior agronomist, Wayne Firth said, “The purpose of the field day is basically about a systems approach to pastures and to provide a firsthand experience of how the systems improve pastures.”

Wayne from the Surf Coast area was joined by Ruby Gow from Geelong and Matt Wright from Echuca as part of the team who were on hand to answer questions.

Wayne explained the business was not your typical store-based warehouse with much of their time spent in the field “helping family farms” to achieve positive outcomes.

Tactical AGA has an established demonstration site at Mt Duneed on the Surf Coast which was initiated last year to display 50 different pastures suitable for local conditions.

DLF Seeds, a major leader in forage seed in Australia and with more than 80 years research and development expertise has teamed up with Tactical AGA to provide high-performance products that are appropriate for local farmers.

Sharing this knowledge during the field day was DLF Seed’s Simon Hunt who provided an overview of the various seed mixtures including annual and perennial grasses that were viewed in the trial plots.

Considerations of what to plant for successful pasture growth include amount of rainfall and terrain.

Certain species will do better in hilly areas such as those around the Mansfield district.

Wayne said that the aim should be for “clean, fertile and productive” pastures.

This can include getting rid of weed grasses without a lot of herbicides and using rotation.

According to Wayne pasture regeneration helps to boost production and push out weeds which benefits the health of livestock.

There was also discussion about using superphosphate and lime, and the need to ensure that elements such as copper, magnesium and zinc were included.

Wayne used the analogy of a chocolate cake and the need for other ingredients as part of the program.

He also advised that landholders need to ensure that they have slug control in place before establishing pastures because they will not grow otherwise.

Conical snails can also be just as destructive as slugs.

It is hoped that the Piries site will be expanded next year to include more plots.