New Zealand dairy farms are responsible for a large proportion of this nation's greenhouse gas emissions (GHG-e), arising mainly from enteric methane and urinary nitrogen deposition on pasture. De-intensification and the use of specific mitigation strategies can reduce GHG-e from dairy farms,...

Grazing systems constitute the most extensive land use worldwide. However, economic analysis of these systems has mainly involved the use of linear optimisation methods that provide a general description of the complex processes contained therein. This paper describes a nonlinear optimisation...

type="main" xml:id="ajar12034-abs-0001" <p>Nutrient emissions from pastoral agriculture are a global cause of declining water quality. Their management is complicated through variability arising from climate and soil influences. This paper compares the implications of input-based policies and...</p>

Improvement in nitrogen leaching efficiency (NLE)—the kilograms of milk solids produced per kilogram of nitrogen leached—has been proposed as one strategy to reduce the amount of nitrogen (N) leached from New Zealand dairy farms. A whole-farm optimisation model is used to assess the...

Agricultural systems in the Western Australian wheatbelt are increasingly moving towards specialist crop production due to elevated cereal prices, depressed markets for livestock products, and ongoing labour scarcity. However, the profitability of crop-only farms is threatened by increasing...

Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) helps to prevent soil salinisation in the Western Australian Wheatbelt by reducing recharge to saline water tables. There is broad consensus, though, that it is not sufficiently profitable to motivate producers to plant it at the intensity at which considerable...

The increasing prevalence of anthelmintic (drench) resistance in gastrointestinal parasite populations is decreasing the profitability of the Australian sheep industry. Refugia management can delay its development by not exposing a proportion of the worm population to chemical control. A...