Hi all
Some years ago I worked on a research project in South Australia
investigating the reasons for a perceived decline in pasture persistence in
the cereal -livestock belt. These ley pastures had their heyday during the
1950s and 60s, and since then farmers were reporting that their pastures
weren't what they used to be.
One factor I looked at was the weather, in particular the timing of the
break and rainfall distribution. In the end it worked out that the main
reasons why the pastures weren't persisting were management related,
however the rainfall during those two decades (1950s and 60s) had been
quite favourable for annual pasture growth.
I'm not disputing the possibility that our weather is changing, but the
lesson I learned from that project was that you need to look at the
weather for periods much longer than a couple of decades. I suspect that
you won't get the whole picture even looking back over a hundred years
(there were devastating droughts back in the late 1800's).
Local records of the weather are a wonderful resource and fascinating to
research, but be cautious about drawing too many conclusions about
long-term weather pattern changes from relatively short-term records.
Here's to an early break and a kind weather pattern for 2006!
Cheers
JO
Jo Crosby
Sub Project Manager, Dairy SW
Department of Primary Industries
78 Henna Street
Warrnambool 3280
VICTORIA
Ph 03 5561 9911
Fax 03 5561 9988
Mobile 0428 576 596
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 07 2006 - 02:38:03 EST