'Starborough Flaxbourne Soil Conservation; changing attitudes and practice for farming dryland Marlborough.'

This Sustainable Farming Fund project’s aims were to change farmer attitudes and land management practices for farming dry land in the Awatere/Seddon area of southern Marlborough in the Upper South Island.  The Starborough Flaxbourne Soil Conservation group developed working relationships with farmers, sharing knowledge and expertise in an effort to identify options for improved land management, with erosion issues being a key focus in this area.  The project was designed to be driven by the community, regularly bringing science providers, farmers and agencies together to achieve practical outcomes. 

This highly successful project came to a conclusion in June 2008. The innovative work carried out on the project clearly demonstrated to the local farming community that it is economically viable to farm sustainably in the area. A field day entitled 'Beyond Reasonable Drought' was held to mark the end of the project. It attracted 420 people. A brochure was made available as part of the event. It is available to download below (210K) : 

Dry hills of southern Marlborough.

A final report entitled 'Beyond Reasonable Drought - Adapting Dryland farming to Climate Change' is available for download. To make the report easier to access over the internet it has been broken down into individual chapters.

Intro and Chapter 1 -  Variability and Trends in the Climate (1.2M) :

Chapter 2 - The Soils of the Starborough / Flaxbourne District (900K) :

Chapter 3 - Seasonal Priorities for Successful Grazing Management of Lucerne (1.7M) :

Chapter 4 - Adapting Farm Systems to a Dryer Future (250K) :

Chapter 5 - Plant Solutions for Drought Prone Saline Soil (700K) :

Chapter 6 - Growing Natural Capital (1.2M):