18 March 2026
The first full year of outcomes from long-term mixed farming field trials at Wagga Wagga have been released, yielding some critical insights for the region’s producers.
The Southern NSW Drought Resilient Mixed Farming Systems Long-term Field Trials have their core site at Charles Sturt University’s Ashmont Farm in Wagga Wagga, where testing and analysis of different mixed farming treatments aim to identify which systems have the optimal impacts on productivity, economic value and resilience.
Shawn McGrath, Associate Professor at the Gulbali Institute and Project Lead, said 2025 provided an important test of system resilience given low rainfall, delayed crop sowing opportunities, and persistently high weed pressure, particularly from glyphosate-resistant annual ryegrass and fleabane.
“Last year provided our first full year of results from these trials, following on from 2024, where we set up the rotations and systems. 2025 was a pretty dry year, and for the project objectives that was useful because we did learn quite a lot about the systems and how they performed in really challenging conditions,” Shawn said.
The three mixed-farming systems being tested - Traditional Mixed Farming, High Intensity Mixed Farming and Ley – all generated similar overall gross margins, but by using different combinations of livestock and cropping contributions. In contrast, the Continuous Cropping system produced lower gross margins due to the high cost of production and no contributions from livestock.
Shawn said other important insights from the 2025 season at the Wagga trial site included:
- Crop yields were broadly comparable across systems, indicating that gross margin differences were driven more by income diversification than by inherent differences in crop productivity. This may change as the experiment progresses into a long-term comparison, as legacy effects, for example, on soil water and nitrogen, become more apparent from different crops and pastures in the rotations.
- Enterprise mix was the primary driver of gross margin differences. Mixed systems derived 54 to 84% of total gross margin from livestock and forage production, buffering whole-farm profitability in a very dry season, noting that livestock prices were relatively strong in 2025.
- Mixed systems increased tactical flexibility, allowing poorly established winter crops to be grazed or cut for hay while assisting with weed management.
- Hay production and sales were a surprising and strong contributor to returns in the Ley farming system, supported by high forage prices during spring last year.
Shawn said, “In a year that was characterised by low rainfall and a late autumn break and high livestock and forage prices, mixed-farming systems outperformed continuous cropping in our field trials because of the diversification, with livestock and hay making a significant contribution to these systems.”
There were also interesting insights about grazing opportunities and grain yields to take from making comparisons between the decisions made at the Charles Sturt core site in Wagga versus what happened at FarmLink Research in Temora.
Another Charles Sturt researcher working on the project, Associate Professor Jeff McCormick, commented, "Due to the later sowing window presented in 2025, we decided to switch from a dual-purpose winter wheat cultivar (Ilabo) to a spring wheat cultivar (Ironbark). Sown at a higher seeding rate, we could have grazed this crop in early August, but ultimately decided we didn't need to.
"This is in comparison to what happened at FarmLink, where they sowed different cultivars in a late sowing window - in June - to investigate forage and grain production. Together the trials showed that it might be more important to decide what you sow. In other words, if you had an early break, you would go with a winter wheat cultivar, but if you had a late break, you'd probably sow a spring wheat cultivar, or even barley, as that will be your fastest option to get some forage, and you can balance this with having some yield and getting grazing.”
At some of the project’s other trial sites around southern NSW, key learnings from the 2025 season included:
- At FarmLink Research’s Temora trial comparing grazing potential and grain yields in a season with a late Autumn break, the observation was that a single grazing in August of any of the cereal crops had a minimal impact on grain yield. This also provided a bonus in terms of stock feed at a time in the year when feed supply on-farm can be limited.
- At the Irrigation Farmers Network annual legumes trial in Kerang, the vetch proved to be quite productive, matching the total biomass produced by ryegrass pasture, however the quality of the vetch hay was better. Also, productivity under sprinkler irrigation was similar to the surface irrigation treatment, but it reduced the total amount of irrigation required by 25%.
- At Central West Farming Systems’ Condobolin trial, the lucerne production proved strong despite the dry year and provided quality feed for livestock, making it a continued valuable component of a mixed farming system. In addition, the use of soil moisture probes proved effective for monitoring the pasture performance.
For more details on the 2025 season insights at the Wagga trial, read the Gulbali Institute research update.
