Agronomy Services

The increase in climate variability depleted soil health, and water stress means that farmers must produce more with fewer resources. Each piece of land is unique and requires data-driven decisions that inform resilient, sustainable and productive agriculture.

Our network of certified Soil Specialists and Agronomists can help you with:

• Both on-farm and online sustainable land-use and management
• Sustainable Nutrient Management Planning and fertiliser input choice
• Sustainable plant health management planning and programs
• Soil, plant tissue and water quality (spray & irrigation) testing, including sampling if required
• Chemical and Physical Soil and Compositing Assessments
• Land and Water Management Planning
• Plant disease and pest monitoring for integrated management
• Land auditing, capability, and land use impact studies
• Irrigation suitability assessments and scheduling
• Customised seeding, cropping and livestock choices
• Tailored farming systems design

Production Agronomy

Our Production Agronomists work closely with farm businesses and corporate agribusiness clients, providing:

• Regular farm visits to identify crop and pasture pests and diseases. Early detection of pathogens in crops enables us to initiate control measures much earlier, preventing the spread and reducing the impact of disease
• Monitor crop growth and provide agronomic advice on crop rotations, fertiliser and irrigation. A thorough understanding of soil, water and nutrient relationships and extended agronomic networks nationally and internationally ensures the provision of comprehensive production agronomy services.
• Efficacy evaluation of new and existing chemistry- insecticides, acaricides, fungicides and adjuvants
• An Integrated Crop Management (ICM) approach is taken with particular reference to sustainability and economic viability.

Soils

• Up to 60% of your yield is dependent on soil fertility. We are confident that crop nutrition can do much more.
• We are focused on exploring and advancing crop nutrition knowledge and practices. This involves investigating the interactions between soil condition, crops, water and biotic stress – and the environmental factors that influence them.
• Every soil is different. So is every solution.

Periodic Table of Crop Nutrients

17 nutrients are essential for plant health. Optimal yields can only be produced when all these nutrients are in proper supply. If just one nutrient is lacking in the soil, crop yields will suffer. Understanding each nutrient’s role and value will ensure your crops will thrive, producing maximum yields.

READMORE

Why is Soil Health Important?

Healthy soils contain a wide range of micro-organisms that:

• Help control plant diseases and pests.
• Form beneficial relationships with plant roots.
• Recycle nutrients.
• Improve soil structure to maintain water and nutrients.
• Ultimately improve crop production.

Soil conservation sustains plant and animal productivity and health and improves water and air quality for current and future generations.

Healthy soils are the cornerstone of productive and sustainable agricultural farming systems. Globally there is growing recognition of the critical importance of maintaining and rebuilding healthy soils for long term sustainable agricultural production. As the world population continues to grow, production requirements also grow, placing more and more pressure on farmers to increase yields and quality, but often to the detriment of our soils. A healthy soil is a dynamic and living system, where Physical, Chemical and Biological attributes must be considered and managed equally. Too often the physical aspect of soils is managed by bigger and better tractors and equipment, and nutrition has been easy through the ready availability of fertilisers. Similarly, weed control was made easy via the chemical application. However, farming has almost come about full circle, and we are learning that mechanical manipulation of our soils is not the answer to good lasting soil structure. Changing legislation and consumer demand is also changing chemical availability, so growers are increasingly looking for new and different products and methods to help improve the health and productivity of their soils. Ecosustain is committed to working with our clients to maintain the health and productivity of our soils.

Monitoring And Assessments

At Ecosustain, we can assist you with customised ‘Soil Health Checks’, which address your specific needs and requirements, providing a holistic, integrated approach to understanding your farming systems. A soil Health Check compliments your standard soil testing requirements, by looking in detail at the chemical, physical and biological aspects of your soil. For your soil to function optimally, these three criteria should be considered equally. Prior to any soil testing, we work with growers to gain a thorough understanding of rotations and management history, along with other site or catchment conditions that may impact on productivity, such as poor drainage, salinity or disease pressure.

Ecosoil health checks can be tailored to each farm’s needs through the selection of any number of key soil attributes. These may include:

Physical: structure, texture, compaction, aggregate stability, infiltration, slaking and dispersion, rooting depth etc.

Chemical: total carbon, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, pH, salinity, sodicity, organic matter etc.

Biological: particulate organic matter, earthworm populations, beneficial macro-fauna and pest macro-fauna. Soilborne pests and diseases and various microbial populations can also be assessed through associated laboratories we work with.

Ecosoil health check reports are presented in an easy to understand format, allowing growers to quickly understand their overall soil health and identify areas of concern for immediate action(refer to soil health report sample below).

Regular monitoring enables proactive management of your soils, ultimately minimising potential risks and increasing opportunities to improve crop quality and overall yields. Soil Health checks will compliment regular nutrient analyses and facilitate the development of Soil Health Management Plans integrating crop rotation and agronomic advice from your local Agronomy partner.

Soil Health Report

• Is based on robust science, which is used by a large number of accredited laboratories.
• Being a comparison test report, this report needs two samples, one being for the set of norms.
• The test is focused on the theory that “Happy Microbes = Happy Soil = Happy Plants”
• Each variable on the laboratory report is analysed in detail, usually reflected on 15 graphs
• From this analysis, your consulting partner will discuss remedial options to help improve the health of the soil, promote soil biodiversity (diversity within and between species
  • Soils are an important reservoir of biodiversity containing up to a third of all living organisms on the planet. However, only around 1% of all soil micro-organisms have so far been identified.

About Your Soil Sample

Will you supply a sampling kit?

A sampling kit and full instructions will be provided for each sample purchased.

How do I return the sample?

A pre-paid and addressed envelope will be provided for you to return your soil sample.

Why do you require information about the field the sample is taken from?

Your field information on location and crop management will be added to our database to allow us to continually improve our understanding of the results, and determine which microbes are present in healthy soil.

Precision Farming And Land Use

DID YOU KNOW…?

50% of fertilizers and 95% of pesticides miss their targets ​

15-20% of crop yields are lost due to inadequate fertilizer application

10% of fields experience >10% yield loss from undiagnosed health conditions

Ecosustain’s drone-enabled data collection and analytics solutions can easily and quickly capture and stitch virtually thousands of high resolution, multi-spectral images together to produce detailed prescription maps for everything from disease and pest infestations to weather impact and improper irrigation – all before these issues can be detected by the naked eye.

When teamed with Ecosustain’s smart data-driven solutions, precision growers are able to utilize their time and equipment more efficiently, reduce input cost, increase crop yields and profits, and minimize environmental impact.

Ecosustain facilitates aerial data collection and analytics solutions help farmers and agronomists to acquire high quality, actionable intelligence that results in higher equipment efficiency, reduced crop damage, improved yield, less time on foot in the field and increased profits.