Productive saltland in Western Australia
Benefits of collaboration between a farmer and researchers in Yealering, Western Australia

In the video is:
Don Bennett Research officer, Department of Agriculture and Food
Chis Walton Farmer Yealering


DAFWA research officer Don Bennett and Yealering farmer Chris Walton discuss the performance of a site sown to saltbush as part of the Saline Lands project. Discuss the results of the planting of saltbush and how it has significantly reduced the damage caused by salt build upon the surface.

Transcript
Don: Yeah, well this productive use (from saltbush) is from the Saline Lands project, has been going now for about 10 years, Chris, and I guess from our perspective we have got a lot of good, very good data out of it. I guess from your perspective you probably made quite a few observations and might have some comments about those?
Chris: Well I have. It's been a fantastic result the growth, the outflow of salt dramatically reduced, water usage and just this grazing. We've had 450 sheep here for over five weeks now you can say they've, well, they really haven't hammered the saltbush much at all. Wonderful feed resource at this time of the year, just before the break, and sheep do really well on it. It's good cover. As you were aware, it was just barley grass nothing here before.
Don: Well this bit was bare completely wasn't it?
Chris: And this has taken up beautifully by itself and it's great cover, food resource. We couldn't crop it anymore because we were losing around 30 per cent of the affected area through salinity so this is a really, really good result - very happy.
Don: This started as a, about a 25 hectare block, you’ve look at that over the years, how much saltbush would you have planted in the valley surrounding this now.
Chris: There is probably nearly 100 hectares here all up. There are two 25 hectare plots. One was a control and this was planted initially in 2005 and this had not quite 700 stems per hectare and the other sides got a thousand. The other areas have been planted at varying rates but these two sites in the ones that we really wanted to develop, because they have the flumes that measure water out goes.
Don: Yeah and you planted the year before last, you planted the control sight.
Chris: We did.
Don: So we will watch the result of that, on water flow and salt.
Chris: Yes we had a really good take-up of all the clover varieties and we planted over top of them with old man saltbush and that actually looks really good.
Don: The sheep seem to prefer it.
Chris: They do. No that is really good very encouraging that site.
Don: And you changed your design a little bit over there to didn't you based on what you had seen here.
Chris: Yep. We put four rows, so we planted to close together with them just slightly further apart instead of just the two and the three that were here. So they look really good.
Don: Yeah, it does, it looks great.
Chris: Sheep do very well on it, so that's probably the premium site now believe it or not.
Don: Yeah, yeah, the under story is really good.
Don: CSIRO started this in 2003. They carried on the main thrust, of the data gathering until 2008 when the Department of Agriculture and Food came back into it in a more comprehensive way and continued on the monitoring of the surface water flows and the groundwater using loggers.
Chris: And it is a wonderful result for a valley floor that's heavy grey clay, going saline, to see what it is now and it's been a wonderful partnership with the department, but look at it now it's just tremendous.
End of transcript

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