Field tours
Date: All field tours will take place on Wednesday 21 September 2022.
Time: Field tour 1 and 3 will depart at 8:15am. Field tour 2 and 4 will depart at 9:00am. Please ensure you arrive 15 minutes prior to departure. All tours will depart The Goods Shed and return at approximately 4.00pm for the Trade fair networking event.
Tickets: $95 per person (includes transport, lunch and water).
Register: Please register for your field tour of choice via the conference registration form. Tickets are limited, so please register as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
What to bring: Please ensure you wear weather appropriate clothing, enclosed footwear, a hat and sunscreen.
*Please note that all field tours are subject to changes.
Field tour 1
Application of digital technologies in smart farming
Site: Pacific Seeds Foundation Farm, Allora
The application of digital technologies in agriculture has rapidly grown over the last few years, with new applications, services and service providers continuously emerging. Digital technologies, including proximal and remote sensing and modelling systems, play an increasingly important role in enhancing production efficiencies, increasing productivity, mitigating emissions and increasing the resilience, sustainability and profitability of most production systems. This field tour will focus on how digital technologies increase data availability and how such new data can be translated into relevant and actionable information to support decision-making.
Field tour 2
Irrigated and dryland cropping systems: How do soil, climate and markets define dryland and irrigated cropping system options on the Darling Downs?
Sites: Pampas and Nangwee
The Darling Downs hold some of the most diverse, sustainable and technically advanced cropping farms in Australia. On this field trip you will learn how farmers can maximise water productivity at both the crop and cropping system level; how subsoil constraints condition the choice of crops and even farm activities (cropping / grazing); and how farmers are adopting transformational technologies such as sowing summer crops in winter, moving from furrow and overhead irrigation into subsoil micro-gravity irrigation.
Sponsored by:
Field tour 3
Integrated crop-livestock systems: How do soil, climate and markets define mixed cropping-grazing systems on the Western Downs?
Sites: Grassdale Feedlot and Yathong, Dalby
The Darling Downs is a critical grain and livestock production hub with a diversity of intense backgrounding and finishing cattle closely aligned with grain production systems. This tour will explore ways in which synergies between livestock, pastures and forages and cropping can be achieved with benefits for environment and profitabilty. The tour will visit research on crop-pasture rotations, integrated farming-intensive finishing systems and leuceana-grass pasture systems.
Sponsored by:
Field tour 4
Adapting to variability and change: How do farmers from the northern region manage climate variability and prepare for climate change?
Sites: UQ Gatton and USQ Toowoomba.
Managing farming systems and coping with climate change has been the focus of many farmers in the Northern region. Diversifying cropping systems and managing difficult pests, weeds and diseases will be crucial for farmers to adapt to climate variability and change. This field tour will look at the benefits of incorporating pulses into farming systems in the Northern region to diversify farmers income; managing herbicide resistance and the role of integrated weed management systems; the incursion of new pests (Fall Armyworm); advances in crop pathology and the integration of climate and crop modelling research with the latest Agri-Technologies.
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