Research opportunities for sustainable productivity improvement in the northern beef industry: A scoping study

The production and economic context of beef production in northern Australia has been seriously challenged over the last decade. Costs of production have escalated rapidly and beef prices have not increased in real terms since 2004 while productivity improvement, necessary to offset these cost-price pressures, has been slowing. Reversing these trends is imperative for a viable industry over the longer term. This report describes an approach taken to explore options for sustainable development of the industry as a basis for guiding research and development for the next two decades. A range of development scenarios that offer potential to significantly improve industry profitability through productivity gains were developed in consultation with industry and technical experts. The potential effect of these scenarios on productivity and economic and environmental outcomes of northern enterprises was evaluated using a new simulation model of northern beef enterprises. The evaluation was conducted for ten regions spanning Queensland, the Northern Territory and north-western Western Australia. The results suggest that significant gains in productivity and profitability can be achieved by integrating individual technologies that target specific components of the livestock system e.g. genetics, reproduction, nutrition

Identifying and Addressing Sustainable Pasture and Grazing Management Options for a Major Economic Sector–The North Australian Beef Industry

Sustainable use of the northern grazing lands is a long-standing issue for management and policy, heightened by projections of increased climatic variability, uncertainty on forage supplies, vegetation complexes, and weeds and diseases. Meat and Livestock Australia has supported a large study to explore sustainable grazing management strategies and increase the capacity of the sector to address climate change. Potential options were explored by bio-economic modeling of ‘representative’ beef enterprises defined by pastoralists and supported by regional research and extension specialists. Typical options include diversification, infrastructure, flexible stocking rates, wet season resting, and prescribed fire. Concurrent activities by another team included regional impact assessments and surveys of pastoralists’ understanding and attitudes towards climate change and adaptive capacity. The results have been widely canvassed and a program of on-ground demonstrations of various options implemented. The paper describes the structure of this program and highlights key results indicating considerable scope to address sustainability challenges

Impacts of Projected Climate Change on Pasture Growth and Safe Carrying Capacities for Three Extensive Grazing Land Regions in Northern Australia

The northern beef industry is a major component of the regional economies of Queensland, Northern Territory and northern Western Australia, and has contributed an estimated $5 billion to Australia’s economy in 2009-10. Projected climate change will have an adverse impact on Australia’s agricultural production (McKeon et al. 2008) with an expected 3.5% decline in beef production in northern Australia by 2030 (Heyhoe et al. 2008). The GRASP pasture production model (McKeon et al. 2000) has been used to evaluate impacts of climate change in Australia’s rangelands (Crimp et al. 2002, McKeon et al. 2008), with the positive effects of higher carbon dioxide (CO2) on pasture growth likely to be offset by reductions in pasture productivity and digestibility due to lower rainfall and higher temperatures (Crimp et al. 2002). The impacts of three projected future climates on livestock carrying capacity of grazing lands in Fitzroy, Maranoa-Balonne and Victoria River District regions were assessed using GRASP

Systematic Management of Stocking Rates Improves Performance of Northern Australian Cattle Properties in a Variable Climate

The risks for extensive cattle properties in the rangelands of northern Australia arising from high inter-annual rainfall variability are predominantly managed through adjustments in stocking rates (SR). This modelling study compared the performance of SR strategies that varied considerably in the extent that they adjusted SR annually at three locations in northern Australia. At all locations, land types and pasture condition states, the SR strategies that achieved the best pasture condition were those that least increased and most decreased SR annually in response to changes in forage availability. At Donors Hill (Qld), these conservative strategies also achieved the highest cattle live-weight gains per hectare (LWG/ha). While conservative strategies produced the highest percent perennials at Fitzroy Crossing (WA), strategies which allowed larger increases and decreases in SR also performed well, enabling them to also achieve high LWG/ha with little deterioration of pasture condition. A similar trend occurred at Alice Springs (NT), although at this location the strategies with even larger annual increases and decreases in SR achieved relatively high percent perennials and the highest LWG/ha. While systematic management of SR appears to perform better than a constant SR strategy when rainfall variability is high, it is unclear if the magnitude of annual adjustments in SR needs to increase with increasing rainfall variability

Wambiana grazing trial Phase 3: stocking strategies for improving carrying capacity, land condition and biodiversity outcomes.

The Wambiana grazing trial, south-east of Charters Towers, began in 1997 with initial funding from the Federal Government’s Drought Regional Initiative and NHT. MLA has provided funding support of $1.16m for the Wambiana trial since 2002. The findings from this long term trial have been critical in demonstrating the linkages between moderate stocking, good land condition, reduced runoff and erosion, reduced risk, and increased productivity and profitability. An external review of the Wambiana grazing trial (March 2014) reported that the trial had largely achieved the original objectives but recommended it’s continuation to allow completion of the embedded projects and permit a full assessment of the new treatments. This project is to enable the continuation of the grazing trial until September 2016 and undertake more detailed analysis of the trial results, to inform a decision on the future of the site

In Deadly Time: The Lasting On of Waste in Mayhew’s London

This paper examines the temporal dimension of waste in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor as an instance of how modernity has produced a largely hidden domain of the non-identical and indeterminate. Through a consideration of the phenomena of uselessness, decay and poverty I argue that the temporal dimension of waste is constituted as a corrosive or malign ‘Deadly Time.’ In placing such emphasis on time directed towards death, I aim to show that Mayhew’s undisciplined researches can be seen as a valuable source for understanding why modern thinking struggles to come to terms with waste

Elasticity near the vulcanization transition

Signatures of the vulcanization transition--amorphous solidification induced by the random crosslinking of macromolecules--include the random localization of a fraction of the particles and the emergence of a nonzero static shear modulus. A semi-microscopic statistical-mechanical theory is presented of the latter signature that accounts for both thermal fluctuations and quenched disorder. It is found (i) that the shear modulus grows continuously from zero at the transition, and does so with the classical exponent, i.e., with the third power of the excess cross-link density and, quite surprisingly, (ii) that near the transition the external stresses do not spoil the spherical symmetry of the localization clouds of the particles.Comment: REVTEX, 5 pages. Minor change

Groups without cultured representatives dominate eukaryotic picophytoplankton in the oligotrophic South East Pacific Ocean

Background: Photosynthetic picoeukaryotes (PPE) with a cell size less than 3 µm play a critical role in oceanic primary production. In recent years, the composition of marine picoeukaryote communities has been intensively investigated by molecular approaches, but their photosynthetic fraction remains poorly characterized. This is largely because the classical approach that relies on constructing 18S rRNA gene clone libraries from filtered seawater samples using universal eukaryotic primers is heavily biased toward heterotrophs, especially alveolates and stramenopiles, despite the fact that autotrophic cells in general outnumber heterotrophic ones in the euphotic zone. Methodology/Principal Findings: In order to better assess the composition of the eukaryotic picophytoplankton in the South East Pacific Ocean, encompassing the most oligotrophic oceanic regions on earth, we used a novel approach based on flow cytometry sorting followed by construction of 18S rRNA gene clone libraries. This strategy dramatically increased the recovery of sequences from putative autotrophic groups. The composition of the PPE community appeared highly variable both vertically down the water column and horizontally across the South East Pacific Ocean. In the central gyre, uncultivated lineages dominated: a recently discovered clade of Prasinophyceae (IX), clades of marine Chrysophyceae and Haptophyta, the latter division containing a potentially new class besides Prymnesiophyceae and Pavlophyceae. In contrast, on the edge of the gyre and in the coastal Chilean upwelling, groups with cultivated representatives (Prasinophyceae clade VII and Mamiellales) dominated. Conclusions/Significance: Our data demonstrate that a very large fraction of the eukaryotic picophytoplankton still escapes cultivation. The use of flow cytometry sorting should prove very useful to better characterize specific plankton populations by molecular approaches such as gene cloning or metagenomics, and also to obtain into culture strains representative of these novel groups