Anne Williams receives scholarship
Anne started work in February on her GRDC funded post-graduate studies with PIIC. She will study the effects of soil amendments on cropping soils in the Central West of NSW. Anne’s supervisors are Assoc. Prof. Heiko Daniel, Dr Kathy King and Prof. Bob Martin.
Anne and husband Ray own a 1,420-hectare property “Magomadine”, 24 kilometres east of Coonamble, where they decided to go no-till farming after witnessing the damage done to soil by cultivation during the 1994 drought.
The focus of Anne’s studies is to understand why, after 12 years of no-till farming, soil biological tests are showing low levels of activity. Similar results have been reported in Queensland.
Anne intends to collect data on soil physical, chemical and biological activity on the soils of a range of farms in the Central West of NSW. Anne is a member of the Central West Conservation Farmers’ Association (CWCFA) and is encouraging members to be part of the study. The study will involve around 20 paired comparisons between farmed and natural systems. This will enable her to determine the changes that have occurred since clearing and which systems are the most resilient or beneficial to retaining healthy soil biological activity.
Anne will also establish a field experiment on “Magomadine” to determine if addition of soil amendments can improve the biological activity in the no-tillage system. One of the problems in a sub-tropical climate is that crop residues, composts and manures, the food for soil biota, disappear rapidly. So once the food is depleted we would expect biological activity to decline.
One possibility to enhance and prolong the biological activity is to convert some of the organic additions to biochar. Biochar is porous with large surface area and is thought to provide a place for soil microbes to live. Biochar is also an option for long-term sequestration of carbon. Other “enhancers” that Anne is considering include zeolite (to capture and reduce soil nutrient losses). Anne is also going to include a wild card, blue metal dust from the quarry on Magomadine. No one knows what blue metal dust actually does but why not give it a go?
Anne is a very focussed mature-age student. She is a UNE science graduate and taught school to supplement the farm income from 1990-2000. The increased income from the no-tillage venture eventually allowed Anne to give up teaching.
With all that spare time on her hands Anne went back to study and completed a Bachelor of Applied Science in Agriculture as well as a Graduate Diploma with Charles Sturt University. This motivated Anne to further her studies to understand more about the soil biological processes operating in the farming system.
“I’d like to look at the theory that we need to put good organisms including fungi, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes and micro-arthropods back into the soil because some farming practices damage them. By doing that we should be able to lower nitrate levels on which weeds depend and increase ammonium levels which benefit crop production.”
Anne’s husband Ray is an essential part of the team and often the one left to work out how put theory into practice. This guarantees a built-in reality check. We wish Anne (and Ray) all the best in this exciting new project.