DroughtPlan
Managing climate variability

Managers of Australia's grazing lands must cope with our extremely variable climate. DroughtPlan has been developed, with the help of producers, to provide activities and products that integrate climate variability with farm decision making and property management planning.

Included software

• BB-SAFe: Buy, Breed, Sell, Agist, Feed Evaluator to evaluate the economics of tactics used to manage drought.

• Carrying Capacity Evaluator for assessing long-term carrying capacity in south-west Queensland.

• GrazeOn a feed-budgeting approach for assessing short-term stocking rates on Mitchell grass pastures in central and north-west Queensland.

• Pasture Supply and Demand Evaluator to manage the nutrition of beef cattle grazing black speargrass pastures in central Queensland.

• WinGRASP for calculating the grass production from rainfall and assessing the impact of climate on pasture production. (Potential users must attend a workshop in order to obtain a password to operate WinGRASP).

• FEEDMAN enables users to combine biological science with economic inputs and market options to test different management strategies for beef properties in southern and central Queensland.

Workshops

• Assessing Your Livestock Management Options: a workshop to help producers plan for and manage drought.

• Decision Trees: a technique and workshop process to evaluate the key elements of a drought management decision-the uncertain events (e.g. duration of drought), the tactics (sell, agist, feed) and the pay-offs for each event/tactic combination

Cost (including GST)

The software is available for free.

Contact:

Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries
PO Box 102,
Toowoomba 4350
Phone: +61 7 4688 1200
Fax: +61 7 4688 1477

Last updated 9 February 2005