Taking grazing principles from Mexico to the Mitchell grass – Latrobe demonstration site

The Improving Grazing Land Management (IGLM) project within the Queensland Pasture Resilience Program (QPRP), focusses on native pasture production systems. A key part of the IGLM project is the series of on-property sites, demonstrating the benefits of good grazing management. With nearly ten sites across Queensland, the practices demonstrated range from occasional wet season spelling to intensive rotational grazing. Whilst some sites are a continuation of previous projects providing valuable long-term data, 2024 has also seen the establishment of three new sites. One of these is Latrobe in western Queensland on the Mitchell grass downs south of Longreach. This site is trialling holistic resource management, to evaluate if high density, short duration grazing can improve species composition and land condition.

Don and Wendy Brown purchased Latrobe from Don’s parents in 1990, before buying the neighbouring property Arlington in 2000. Along with their daughter Jody, the Brown family having been practicing good grazing management, and have had active involvement in the Regenerative Rangelands space for several years. After stumbling across a holistic resource management presentation on YouTube, Jody was inspired by the impacts that regenerative grazing systems in harsh, fragile landscapes could have. Following some in-depth independent research, the Browns sought to find someone else applying the principles under similar, harsh conditions. As it were, ranchers in the Chihuahuan Deserts of Mexico weren’t the first to come mind!

Seven years ago, the Brown family were introduced to Alejandro Carrillo, a rancher in the Chihuahuan Desert using regenerative grazing to reverse desertification and boost biodiversity. Learning from his experience, they started mobbing cattle together to create more rest for their pastures. Despite record heatwaves and a lot of trial and error, there was a good response to rainfall in the first year. Motivated by this, the Brown’s continued to adapt their grazing management and became actively involved with the Regenerative Rangelands group finding great benefits from the peer-to-peer learning and the support network it offered. Since becoming involved, Latrobe has hosted conferences and several property tours.

Michael Allen has been working as a station hand on Latrobe for three years and has been hands on with the management of the regenerative grazing. During this time, he spent four months working on ranches in the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico where he saw first-hand the success of high-density strip grazing to regenerate landscapes with extremely low rainfall (250-300ml).

Michael says “The biggest lesson from Mexico is how well-managed grazing can regenerate degraded landscapes. It has huge potential to restore and make resilient the ecological cycles that have been broken through overgrazing or misguided land management here in Australia.”

Using these experiences, Latrobe are trialling high density strip grazing in a Mitchell grass dominant paddock. The 493-ha paddock was subdivided into four smaller cells with single wire electric fence. These are then strip grazed with a hot tape. A mob of about 500 pregnant cows have been working their way through each of the cells since September with daily movements. The size of the daily grazing area is based on close observations of pasture availability, quality, utilisation and condition of the cows. At the end of the grazing period, the trial paddocks will be spelled for around 12 months. By creating more rest through shorter grazing periods, the hope is to see improvements in species composition, biodiversity and soil condition. The demonstration at Latrobe will compare the effects of this high density, short duration grazing with a simpler rotational grazing and spelling system in a neighbouring paddock.

The DPI team visited in March and September this year to set up monitoring sites across the different paddocks. These will allow the pastures to be monitored and change assessed under the different systems. In future, ground truthed remote sensing will also be used to provide more data on how pasture yield and cover change through the year, and compare how pasture condition changes, relative to the district.

Jody says “It’s valuable to have genuine support from people who know what you are trying to do. We wanted independent monitoring to back up what we were seeing.”

The aim of Latrobe and the other demo sites across the state is not only to demonstrate what can be achieved with good grazing management, but also to act as extension hubs.  Jody hopes the project will help build and share knowledge between graziers and researchers. With ever growing interest from industry in regenerating the rangelands and improving performance, the Latrobe team see this as an opportunity to get more information out there.

The team at the DPI are all looking forward to working with Latrobe and our other demonstration site partners and will be reporting back on our progress in future editions of the newsletter.

This work is possible through the Queensland Pasture Resilience Program, a partnership between the Department of Primary Industries, Meat & Livestock Australia, and the Australian Government through the MLA Donor Company.