Adventures in agronomy: highlights and relevance of farming systems across South America, Canada, US and Europe

| Date: 16 Mar 2011

Adventures in agronomy: highlights and relevance of farming systems across South America, Canada, US & Europe

Dr John Kirkegaard, CSIRO

Dr John Kirkegaard has been a farming systems agronomist with CSIRO since 1990 and has been active in several areas of research in southern NSW including crop rotations, tillage and stubble management, subsoil constraints and water-use efficiency.

The common thread of his research has been to focus on innovations that can increase farm productivity in sustainable ways. The challenge to maintain agricultural productivity both in Australia and worldwide is back on the agenda (for some it always was!) and remains a key focus of CSIROs National Sustainable Agriculture Flagship.

Recently John was supported by a CSIRO Newton-Turner Award to travel to a range of International research centres in South America, USA, Canada and Europe to investigate some of the approaches to agricultural productivity research in those countries and to consider their relevance in the Australian context.

John will share some of the highlights of those visits and some of the insights from his travels including the South American no-till "revolution" and mixed farming systems, the remarkable productivity gains in US maize systems, aspects of research to improve the water and nutrient-use efficiency in a range of diverse farming systems, and other interesting observations made during his travels.



Contact John Kirkegaard
Email John.Kirkegaard@csiro.au