This project is building farmers’ skills and confidence to adopt drought-resilient pasture systems by demonstrating modern perennial grass and legume combinations that improve feedbase reliability, soil health, biodiversity and landscape resilience.

This project is creating a reporting tool that helps farmers better assess the full risk–reward profile of new farming practices by incorporating financial, environmental, social and governance factors rather than relying solely on traditional gross-margin analysis.

This project is demonstrating three proven strategies—diverse legume rotations, early sowing of slower-maturing crops, and better nitrogen management—to improve soil health, water holding capacity and profitability, helping farmers build stronger drought resilience across varied farming systems in NSW and northern Victoria.

This project is demonstrating alternative annual forage legumes to help Central West NSW producers rebuild livestock numbers, diversify feedbase options and improve resilience to climate variability by integrating new legume species into mixed farming systems where traditional legumes are no longer reliable.

This project is comparing organic nitrogen from legume-based rotations with synthetic urea to assess their effects on soil health, grain yield and profitability, giving growers evidence to guide nitrogen management decisions in the Central West.

This project is assessing how organic amendments such as manures, composts and biosolids can unlock bound soil nutrients, improve nutrient-use efficiency and enhance fertility across different soils and cropping systems.

By analysing nutrient forms, testing innovative application methods and evaluating plant uptake and soil responses, the research aims to provide practical, sustainable alternatives that reduce reliance on conventional fertiliser resources.

This project is investigating how increasing plant diversity through rotations, cover crops and perennial legumes can reshape rhizosphere processes to improve soil function, moisture dynamics, crop performance and farm profitability across different farming systems.

This project tests different nitrogen-banking targets and crop nitrogen-demand scenarios on-farm to identify the most profitable, lowest-risk strategies for closing the wheat yield gap caused by inadequate nitrogen supply.

This project is developing and testing locally tailored knowledge-sharing strategies to boost landholder engagement in soil-health practices, helping grower groups use more effective extension methods—from digital tools to field days—to drive adoption of best-practice soil management.

This project is developing modern lime-management and soil-carbon tools—supported by new machine-learning acidification models—to help farmers in southern and central NSW prevent subsurface acidity and soil carbon decline, improving long-term productivity and resilience across cropping and pasture systems.

This project develops and tests an Integrated Weed Management strategy to help low-rainfall zone growers control increasingly persistent and herbicide-resistant barley grass through large-scale, practical demonstration trials.

Southern NSW Innovation Hub (SNSW Hub) official launch sharing the background of the Hub and CWFS Field Walk will follow. This will be the first time we have hosted a field walk since 2019 and we are excited to welcome new and existing members to The Fettell Centre on 1 September.

Lunch was delicious and plenty of laughs were had as we looked back over the project reflecting on how the Jo Palmer program strengthened our network and community.

This project develops an Integrated Weed Management strategy for glyphosate-resistant Feathertop Rhodes grass by benchmarking its spread in southern NSW and studying its local biology to design effective, region-specific control approaches.

This project improved irrigator capability and profitability by demonstrating precision and autonomous irrigation technologies, best-practice management, and soil-moisture–driven decision-making to maximise crop returns per megalitre of water.

The Cool Soil Initiative partners with growers and farming systems groups to trial and validate practices that reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions, providing financial support, data tools and peer learning to improve sustainability, productivity and long-term resilience in the Australian grains industry.

This project empowered women and under-employed people in Central West NSW to gain the confidence, skills and digital capability needed for remote work through training, mentoring and peer support, helping rebuild workforce participation and resilience during drought and COVID-19.

This GRDC project is evaluating long-season wheat varieties sown early on stored soil moisture to help growers adapt to shifting rainfall patterns, showing that with the right phenology and conditions, early-sown winter wheats can boost yield potential and better fit modern sowing programs in central and southern NSW.

This project investigates the social and institutional factors that influence farmers’ adoption of soil-improving practices, developing criteria and insights to help future programs and research achieve greater uptake and real on-farm change.

This project is building an interoperable, farmer-focused soil data platform that makes Australasian soil information easy to access, visualise and use, helping improve decision-making, drive new research and ensure agricultural data is securely governed and shared across industry.