11am – 4:30pm (all times AEDT)

Participants are encouraged to join the meeting for the entirety or to access sessions of most interest to them.

See full Program here

Paul Greenfield – Chair Soil CRC (11am)
Michael Crawford – CEO Soil CRC (11:05am)
The Hon Penelope Wensley – National Soils Advocate (11:20am)

The role of the National Soils Advocate is to raise awareness of the vital role soils play and to provide strong leadership and advocacy on the importance of conserving and improving the health of Australia’s soils. The Honourable Penelope Wensley AC was appointed to the role in August 2020. A former Governor of Queensland and a distinguished Australian diplomat, Penny has long worked to promote excellence in science and the importance of scientific research and knowledge as a basis for good public policy. Penny will outline her observations so far and what she sees as the priorities for soils in Australia.

Soil Carbon – What is the role of the Soil CRC? (12pm – 12:45pm)

Building Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) is a key strategy to regenerate soil health, which in turn helps to sustain productivity and resilience of agro-ecosystems. There is also a lot of interest in the opportunities for soil carbon sequestration to help offset greenhouse gas emissions. The Soil CRC is developing a range of approaches to increase SOC content, though maximising diversity of C inputs by using cover and intercropping, understanding mechanisms of regenerative farming systems, and through maximising C stabilisation in soil from products of photosynthesis or organic amendments. What role does the Soil CRC have in the soil carbon story?

Soil Stewardship – What are the opportunities? (1:30pm – 2:15pm)

Soil stewardship refers to approaches and practices that maintain or improve the capacity of soils to function and be healthy in the long term. Investments in soil stewardship can increase productivity and provide various ecosystem services. However, soil management for agricultural production is complex, and existing markets and policy instruments fail to adequately encourage and reward soil stewardship. What are the market, policy and other opportunities for encouraging soil stewardship?

Soil Sensors – What’s in the horizon? (2:30pm – 3:15pm)

In any business, measurement and monitoring is an important part of effective management, In soils, farmers are looking for cheaper, accurate and quicker ways to measure their soil performance so that they can improve their management. There are a number of advances in sensor technology development that show potential. What do farmers need and what are some of the promising sensor technologies in (on) the horizon?

Farmer Groups – Working in the Soil CRC (3:30pm – 4:15pm)

An important aspect of the Soil CRC is the collaboration between farmer groups and research scientists. This is important to ensure that research is industry driven and ultimately brings benefit to farmers. Many projects in the Soil CRC are demonstrating good examples of this collaboration. What is working well? What is not so good? What can we do more of in the future?

CLICK HERE to register for the meeting (Soil CRC Participants)

This meeting is for staff, students and members of Soil CRC Participant organisations and invited guests only.

During 2020 we held fortnightly webinars that covered a wide range of topics focussing on the research activity in the Soil CRC. If you missed one of our webinars, you can watch them here.

We will be resuming our webinar program in April after our 2021 Participants Conference.

The Soil CRC webinar series will continue in April 2021.

More details to come.