The Corrigin Farm Improvement Group lead a revegetation project involving three neighbouring farmers in the Corrigin shire in 2010. This project was funded by the Wheatbelt NRM Soil Conservation Incentives Program. The Larke, Hewett and Guinness families all had previous experience planting trees, but had more areas on their farm that needed revegetating.

Corrigin farmer, Dave Crossland, was invited to take part in a project to trial new legumes.

Four Corrigin farming families planted trees on degraded areas of their farms.

The north-eastern Wheatbelt is characterised by vulnerable soils such as Wodjil sands, which can sometimes result in wind erosion.

Water repellency is a common problem many farmers face this problem across some proportion of their farms.

Barry and Beverley Harrap of Koorda had been awaiting an opportunity to assist them in implementing their farm revegetation plans.

Situated low within the landscape of the Corrigin shire is Wilcurra farm.

As a young child Maria lived in the Doodlakine area on the ‘Nambling Brook’ property, owned by an extended family member.

Situated between Cunderdin, Merredin and Corrigin sit a small town called Ardath.

The Bodallin Catchment Group was formed to bring farmers within the Yilgarn region together to discuss and trial areas of interest.

Reece Boyne comes from a long line of farmers. In recent years the Boyne’s had seen some of the cropping paddocks being battered by the elements. They knew that replanting trees would be necessary to provide protection from further erosion.

Third generation Quairading farmers Bill and Richard Walker have been trying to improve Yacklin Farm’s soils since they took over the family farm 20 years ago.

In May 2012 the Lego’s organised a bus tour to encapsulate all the revegetation projects in the area.

The Pearse’s project stemmed from a conversation with their local nursery manager, discussing revegetation options and potential grants

Avondale, near Beverley, embarked on this project when the Sandalwood Network was looking for a paddock to get a project going. They wanted to see how a system worked together hosts and sandalwood growing in belts with pastures in the alleys.

Large areas of the south west agricultural region, particularly coastal regions and the north-eastern Wheatbelt, are potentially at risk of wind erosion. The incorporation of perennials into these farming systems plays a large role in the stabilisation of fragile soils.

This booklet is designed to help farmer groups, natural resource management (NRM) or catchment groups, individual farmers and advisers to see the benefits of incorporating forage shrubs into mixed farming systems, particularly, but not exclusively, for areas where other perennial plant options are limited.

A lack of green feed during summer and autumn was stopping Western Australian farmer Don Nairn from increasing his stocking rate and farm livestock profitability. However, by introducing forage shrubs Don achieved this without the risk of soil erosion — a potential problem on his sandplain soils. Combined with strip grazing; incorporating the forage shrubs tagasaste, rhagodia and old man saltbush has allowed him to maintain his flock throughout the year and increase profitability.

This project was funded by Meat & Livestock Australia, Australian Wool Innovation and the CSIRO; project code L.LSM.0018 – No More Gaps With Superior Shrub Systems

Rob had received funding in an earlier round from Wheatbelt NRM and was keen to trial this on another part of the farm to see how it went in comparison to the earlier round site.