Ross Kingwell

This study assesses how weather‐year‐dependent sheep and crop management tactics affect farm profitability and farm system greenhouse gas emissions in the central Great Southern region in Australia. To investigate the impact of farmers' tactical decisions on farm profit and emissions, a whole farm optimisation model known as the Australian Farm Optimisation Model is employed. The model describes a typical mixed enterprise farm, the weather‐year variation that underpins the farm system and the plethora of strategic and tactical management options available to the farm manager. Modelling results reveal that utilising all tactical management options increases expected farm profit by 26% and expected emissions increase by 11%; however, the emissions intensity with respect to farm profit is reduced. Access to tactical options can greatly improve profits and emissions intensity in particular types of weather‐years. Emission and profit outcomes are a combination of direct effects of individual tactics and the strategic structural shifts they trigger across the whole farm (enterprise mix, stocking rate), underscoring the value of whole‐farm optimisation models for guiding management and policy. The modelling results also reveal that assessing the value and emission impact of tactics depends on the other tactics already available to the farm manager. This indicates the need for whole farm system analysis if the stacking or bundling of tactical options in agricultural systems is to be properly understood and estimated.

Frameworks and metrics that reliably describe agricultural emission sources and carbon sinks are critical to the formulation of cost‐effective mitigation investment. This study identifies and compares three distinct emission reporting frameworks across metrics of total emissions and emissions intensity. The frameworks and metrics are applied to agricultural industries in Western Australia. Findings for 2005 and 2023 and the trends and uncertainties over the intervening period are reported. This study novelly considers a framework that includes emissions and sequestration from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities at an industry scale. Most of Western Australia's agricultural emissions occur in the beef, sheep and grains industries, which also dominate agricultural land use. The emissions intensity of the grains industry in particular is highly sensitive to the inclusion of LULUCF activities. While large uncertainties surround emissions and sequestration from LULUCF activities, there are indications that the effect of LULUCF on emissions has changed considerably over time. We conclude it is preferable not to rely solely on one framework or one reporting metric. We highlight that more research is needed to lessen uncertainties surrounding LULUCF activities by agricultural industries.

This note describes the temporal and spatial changes in Australia's grains industry and the implications for its supply chains. The role and importance of ensuring that Australia maintains cost‐effective and reliable grain supply chains is outlined. How those supply chains might be further improved and the likelihood of their improvement are also briefly discussed.

Honouring society’s need for affordable, nutritious food, produced safely and sustainably, will be an increasing challenge. A globally growing demand for food is being driven by population growth and rising per capita incomes. Yet producing more food needs to occur against the backdrop of projected adverse climate change in some key agricultural exporting regions of the world. This chapter highlights the main trends and issues that face the sustainability of agriculture and food production and highlights the main facts that educators should emphasize in their teaching programs on sustainability.

This study enhances our comprehension of the performance of farm businesses in Western Australia by estimating persistent and transient technical efficiency measures in the presence of firm‐level effects. The analysis is based on a balanced panel data set of 54 farm businesses from the years 2002 to 2011. We employ Kumbhakar et al.'s (2014, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 41, 321) model to estimate persistent efficiency and firm effects separately, as well as Kumbhakar's and Heshmati's (1995, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 77, 660) model where these two factors are confounded. Furthermore, we investigate the factors that influence transient and persistent technical efficiency. Our findings reveal that failing to differentiate between persistent technical efficiency and firm effects underestimates the estimates of persistent and overall technical efficiency. This underestimation may result in misguided policy recommendations for improving the technical performance of farm businesses. We also find that persistent efficiency dominates overall technical efficiency. The significant determinants of persistent overall technical efficiency include the regional rainfall zone where a farm business is located, the managerial competency of the farm operator denoted by their age and off‐farm activities. Off‐farm income plays a crucial role in determining transient technical efficiency.

Context: Soil acidity constrains crop production in Australia. The practice of liming can reduce soil acidity but produces greenhouse gas emissions. Aims: By examining land use sequences over three decades at a range of locations in Western Australia, this study aims to identify firstly where and when liming might boost farm profits and secondly, what emissions and land use management flexibilities are generated by liming. Methods: Bioeconomic simulation modelling is used to identify the gross margins and emissions associated with liming in land use sequences at 14 locations in Western Australia. Three intensities of cropping and three different rotational sequences are considered. The simulations account for price and weather–year variations across a 30-year period of analysis. Key results: Liming is profitable at almost all locations and across all rotation sequences examined. Where problematic soil acidity is a feature or is poised to soon become a problem at a location, liming is a profitable ameliorative practice that enables greater diversity in land use. For most situations assessed, liming increases emissions. The exceptions are at locations where liming prevents a switch away from a crop-dominant system, due to soil acidity reducing crop yields, into additional sheep production that increases emissions. Conclusions: Liming is profitable in most acidic soil situations and preserves land use flexibility, although additional greenhouse gas emissions are often generated. Implications: Liming acidic soils bolsters land use profitability and helps sustain biologically diverse land use sequences, despite often increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Farm businesses often use debt to finance the purchase inputs and meet operational costs. Selected studies have investigated the impact of debt use on farm performance as measured using technical efficiency. However, no prior studies in agriculture have considered treating the debt repayment obligation created as a by‐product of production when benchmarking farm performance. This study employs nonparametric directional distance function models to quantify the impact of debt repayment as a by‐product of input use purchased on credit on farm‐level partial inefficiency using a panel data of 54 mixed enterprise broadacre farms in Western Australia from 2002 to 2011. The study finds that omitting repayment obligations created in the production process in analysis results in underestimating partial inefficiency scores. Farm size, production diversification and rainfall zone are significant drivers of partial inefficiency. The implication of the study's findings is that failure to account for repayment obligations created in the production process may result in erroneous policy suggestions that undermine the efforts of farm businesses to minimise or avoid financial stress.

Context: Australia is renowned for its climate variation, featuring years with drought and years with floods, which result in significant production and profit variability. Accordingly, to maximise profitability, dryland farming systems need to be dynamically managed in response to unfolding weather conditions. Aims: The aim of this study is to identify and quantify optimal tactical livestock management for different weather-years. Methods: This study employed a whole-farm optimisation model to analyse a representative mixed enterprise farm located in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. Using this model, we investigated the economic significance of five key livestock management tactics. These included timing of sheep sales, pasture-area adjustments, rotational grazing, crop grazing and sheep nutrition adjustments. Key results: The results showed that, on the modelled dryland mixed-enterprise farm in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, short-term adjustments to the overall farm strategy in response to unfolding weather conditions increased expected profit by approximately 16%. Each tactic boosted profit by between A$7704 and A$53,171. However, we outline several complexities that farmers must consider when implementing tactics. Conclusions: The financial gains from short-term tactical management highlighted their importance and farmers’ need to develop and apply those skills. The tactical skills promote business resilience and adaptability in the face of climate uncertainties. Implications: The study highlighted the economic value of dynamic livestock management in response to climate variations, offering farmers in the Great Southern region the means to underpin profitable and sustainable farm practices.

Context: Australian grain producers may need to report their farm greenhouse emissions. Accordingly, nitrogen fertiliser application strategies will need to include consideration of their environmental as well as economic impacts. Aims: We aim to identify the nitrogen application strategies suited to dryland cropping in Western Australia that are highly profitable and that generate lower emissions. Methods: Simulation modelling is used to examine the gross margins and emissions associated with four broadly different nitrogen strategies at 14 locations in the grainbelt of Western Australia for different frequencies of cropping. Key results: Strategies that generate high gross margins and moderate emissions often focus on maximising the gross margin of crop production, and apply a decile 5 view of unfolding seasonal conditions. A similarly useful strategy applies nitrogen in a fixed ratio where a tonne of expected cereal receives 45 units of nitrogen from various sources, and a tonne of expected canola receives 70 units of nitrogen from various sources. Where a farmer prefers to apply a constant rate of nitrogen, then exceedingly high or low rates of application should mostly be avoided, either for economic or for environmental reasons, with the better option at many locations being to apply 50 or 75 kg N/crop ha. Conclusions: A few preferred nitrogen application strategies are suggested to be applicable to dryland cropping in the study region. The strategies achieve high profits and generate moderate or low emissions. Implications: Selection of highly profitable and lower emission nitrogen application strategies across the study region can deliver sizeable economic and environmental benefits.

Context: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an increasing priority for Australian grain producers. Could substituting lupins for canola, as a rotational break crop, enable farmers to reduce their emissions by less use of nitrogenous fertilisers? Aim: This study aims to identify if replacing canola with lupins in rotations at a range of locations in Western Australia’s grainbelt is environmentally and economically attractive. Methods: Bio-economic simulation modelling is used to examine the gross margins and emissions associated with replacement of canola by lupins at 14 locations in the grainbelt of Western Australia in various land use sequences. Key results: Replacing canola with lupins unambiguously leads to reduced emissions in crop sequences at all locations considered. However, the higher gross margins from canola production cause lupins to only be a preferred break crop option at 4 of the 14 locations. Even with various plausible incentives to favour lupins, they remain economically unattractive at most locations other than those where lupins are well adapted to the environment. Conclusions: Lupins’ current lack of commercial attractiveness for farmers limits its role in emissions reduction in the region’s farming systems. Implications: The profitability of lupins needs to increase if lupins are to be widely readopted. This requires developing higher yielding lupin varieties, grain quality improvements, and policy changes to reward lower emission cereals. However, this study shows these changes, apart from yield improvement, are unlikely in the short term. At locations with suitable soils alternative pulse crops may offer higher gross margins whilst delivering emission reductions.