Soil Moisture Monitoring Field Day

A group of 20 of the vegetable growers from East Gippsland, Wellington and Baw Baw Shires, service providers and stakeholders met up in Boisdale in early May to hear an update from the soil moisture monitoring trial hosted by Farm Express Salads that has been in place since October 2021.

The trial, funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund & delivered by Food & Fibre Gippsland and VegNET Gippsland, has identified key decision points critical to implementing and adopting soil moisture monitors in short-cycle vegetable crops.

The project has been guided by a reference group of industry reps and service providers, including:

• Noel Jansz from Elders

• Danielle Park from AUSVEG

• Local representatives from Agriculture Victoria and the West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority.

Presentations covered EnviroVeg and Gippsland’s regional report, the West Gippsland CMA & Agriculture Victoria’s Sustainable Irrigation Program, and setting expectations for soil moisture monitoring.

One of the key points raised by Marek Matuszek from Ag Logic is that installing a soil moisture monitoring system is not about giving you automation - it’s about gaining a greater understanding of what trends are emerging with soil moisture levels, therefore learning more about what impacts plant growth and condition.

VegNET Gippsland RDO Bonnie Dawson was pleased with the positive feedback.

“The growers in attendance are all at different stages of adopting this agtech, but all of them were really positive about what they heard on the day. I hope what they learnt can be easily applied to their own production systems”.

VegNET Gippsland will continue to work with growers and stakeholders to integrate soil moisture monitoring as well as other agtech into their production systems.

At the trial site in Boisdale