If you live in the country, chances are you’re surrounded by grazing animals of one sort or another. In this district, there’s a mixture of sheep and cattle.

How they’re managed is a subject I know little about. From time to time, though, enough questions arise to spur me into doing a little research.

Ever since I saw a report on Landline some years ago, about cell grazing, I’ve been interested in how farmers manage their pastures. A report in The Land this week has piqued my interest once again. But first, a little background on the aforementioned cell grazing.

When we first moved here, we often saw a densely packed herd, or flock, of animals grazing on a small area of lush pasture. By the following week, they were gone, the pasture diminished but not completely reduced to stubble. The paddock was heavily littered with manure, fertilising the pasture which was left to grow for a few weeks without the animals’ constant nibbling.

We realized, then, that this practice of heavily grazing a pasture for a short time was probably the cell grazing we’d seen on Landline. This intensive rotational grazing system is also known as high density grazing, short duration grazing, block and strip grazing and planned grazing.

While this method of pasture management has proved highly beneficial in sustainable grazing, there’s now another approach that can be added to it to further improve pastures. And I’m not talking about super phosphate.

In The Land, Chris Mirams of Woomargama Station, across the border in New South Wales, talks about the value of permanent perennial pastures and rotational grazing. He credits an organization called EverGraze with some of the successful pasture management methods he adopted.

Now EverGraze, a partnership between Future Farm Industries CRC, Meat and Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovation, are telling farmers that if they want to improve their pastures, they need to plant perennial native grasses.

A Natural Resource Management fact sheet published by the Australian Government in 2006, states that perennial native grasses resist drought, tolerate frost and grow vigorously. Providing increased ground cover, they crowd out weeds, require less fertilizer and use water more efficiently. What’s more, livestock love them.

And by providing food and habit for native animals, perennial native grasses also enhance biodiversity.

We’ll step across the border again, this time to South Australia, where the Mid North Grasslands Working Group has conducted valuable research into using native grasses as pasture in the Northern and Yorke Agricultural Districts Region.

Their findings show that perennial native grasses can improve pasture in terms of its carrying capacity of stock, increased water use efficiency and reduction of weeds. Native grasses also play an important role in reducing dryland salinity.

The five-year study showed that there were environmental, economic and social benefits of planting native grass species. Increased ground cover has protected the soil, especially on north facing slopes. And pastures where native grasses are grown now have increased biodiversity.

Stocking rates have increased due to better pasture and grazing management, thus improving farm economies.

Farmers gather to discuss new ways of working and to attend training sessions. The meetings provide social occasions, often rare in the isolated environment of a busy farmer’s life. Farmers are also regularly updated on the results of the project.

So where does cell grazing come into all of this, I hear you ask.

The project’s success has also been attributed to reduced paddock size, increased animal numbers per paddock with occasional increased stocking density for short periods of time.

The Mid North Grasslands Working Group chairperson, John Neal, had this to say about the project: ‘The results of our initial trials amazed even the most optimistic of our project observers, with both conservationists and graziers being equally pleased.’

Across the country, groups of farmers are ensuring their future, and that of the land, by adopting sustainable practices. It will be interesting to see how many others follow suit.