What is Pasture Cropping?

• Pasture cropping is a technique of sowing crops into living perennial (usually native) pastures and having these crops grow symbiotically with the existing pastures.
• Cropping and grazing are combined into a single technique and each enterprise enhances the other economically and environmentally.
• It is working with nature, encouraging ecological function and maintaining one hundred percent ground cover one hundred percent of the time.
• Invented by Colin Seis and Daryl Cluff in 1993 near Gulgong, New South Wales,  Australia.   Since that time Colin Seis has spent much of his time perfecting this technique, on his property “Winona”, and shown it is possible to grow many different types of winter and summer growing crops, without destroying the perennial pasture base.
• Pasture Cropping has dramatic results on water and nutrient cycles by lifting the organic matter and humus within the soil.  At all times living plants are present within the fields allowing biological processes to continue.
• While current cropping practices such as direct drilling have been a great step forward they are very reliant upon chemical applications and high inputs of chemical fertiliser.
• This is similar to traditional tillage methods- just replacing the plough with chemical applications.  These approaches haven’t addressed most of the soil health and ecological problems that are showing up in agriculture today.
• Pasture Cropping restores natural ecological functions, yields commercial crops and restores grasslands at the same time.  A true ‘win-win’ technique.