Climate, land & water

Western Australia’s agriculture sector needs access to productive soil and water resources for growth and profit. However, the sector must compete with increasing resource demands from all sectors of the community, and the pressures of a changing climate. The Agriculture and Food division of the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development supports agriculture by providing long-term management solutions, practical risk management strategies and tools to maintain and improve resource conditions, to meet the needs of industry and stakeholders. Agriculture and Food is also pioneering soil and water investigation of the state’s undeveloped areas to establish new irrigated agricultural industries.

Articles

  • Confident identification of soil compaction to restrict crop or pasture growth uses diagnosis combining visual symptoms of plant, root and soil features.

  • Establishing common guidance runlines for all machinery operations will help minimise compaction and assist collecting good quality data for precision agriculture applications such as yield mapping

  • The only way to diagnose soil acidity is to sample the soil and test the pH.

  • Soil acidification is an inevitable and ongoing consequence of productive agriculture.

  • Liming to recover an acidic soil to an appropriate pH can result in significant production benefits, however a response to liming indicates that previous production has been lost due to an acidic t

  • The rate of soil acidification due to agriculture can be reduced but not eliminated. Liming will always be needed to prevent the soil from becoming too acidic.

  • Soil acidification occurs naturally very slowly as soil is weathered, but this process is accelerated by productive agriculture.

  • A small decrease in soil pH represents a large increase in soil acidity.

  • Agricultural lime is any product that is used to increase the pH of soil. In Western Australia, the three main sources are limesand, limestone and dolomitic lime.

  • Aluminium toxicity in the subsurface is the major problem associated with soil acidity in Western Australia.

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