2006/S02 Pastures from Space

Summary

Henry (2002) described the potential of measuring biomass and pasture growth rate (PGR) from satellite imagery and indicated that on-farm applications of the technology include grazing management decisions, strategic fertiliser applications, diagnosing unproductive and unresponsive land, strategic farm planning and benchmarking current pasture performance against past years. The potential to more accurately budget feed and thereby improve pasture utilisation is seen as another key application. Pastures from Space delivers near real-time pasture growth rate information at both a whole farm and paddock level directly to a farm computer on a weekly basis. With its associated software PastureWatch, the program enabled pasture growth rates and pasture production to be assessed from the farm office, comparisonswere made between paddocks (eg. effects of fertiliser applications and rates), and provided objective data for detailed feed budgeting and grazing planning. 
The data that was provided for use with Pastures from Space has been calibrated on annual pastures in Western Australia. Anecdotal evidence from producers using the service in the south east of South Australia suggests that the data is not always accurate for this region because of different pasture species in the sward (eg. more perennials such as phalaris and fescue), and the different and variable soil types in the region (and within a farm). This producer research support project was intended to measure the accuracy and reliability of the Pastures from Space program in the south east of South Australia, and validate the date for typical pasture species in the region.