Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part one Medic and other systems
- Part two The Projects
- Part three Institutions, agencies, local farmers and technicians
- 9 Institutions, agencies and medic - 1950–80
- 10 Institutions, agencies and medic - 1980–93
- 11 On the farms in Tunisia
- 12 On the farms in Algeria
- 13 On the farms in Morocco
- 14 The future for medic
- References
- Index
14 - The future for medic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part one Medic and other systems
- Part two The Projects
- Part three Institutions, agencies, local farmers and technicians
- 9 Institutions, agencies and medic - 1950–80
- 10 Institutions, agencies and medic - 1980–93
- 11 On the farms in Tunisia
- 12 On the farms in Algeria
- 13 On the farms in Morocco
- 14 The future for medic
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Between 1974 and 1983 Australians grew medic pastures either alone or in a continuous rotation with cereals in conditions as diverse as the arid rangeland of Libya and the cold cereal zone of Iraq. Some knowledge of the value of medic pastures as a replacement for bare fallow now exists in institutes and agencies outside of Australia but the farming operations that turn it into a farming system are not yet sufficiently understood and this has prevented its widespread adoption onto farms.
Local technicians responsible for persuading farmers to incorporate medic pastures into their farming systems have found it impossible to achieve success. They remain baffled about what they are to say to farmers to persuade them to stop doing what they now do, and adopt the operations and management used in a medic system. The attraction of the low cost of the medic system to farmers is not appreciated within the various agencies whose active participation in agricultural development enables them to either block or facilitate new programs and access to new resources. Yet the system evolved and became widely used in Australia because cash-poor farmers coping with poor soil and a semi-arid climate could only continue farming if they discovered a simple, cheap and efficient farming system. The medic system fulfils all these criteria. It flourishes best in dry conditions, it costs little and it allows flexibility in response to seasonal conditions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sustainable Dryland FarmingCombining Farmer Innovation and Medic Pasture in a Mediterranean Climate, pp. 307 - 315Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996