A pasture demonstration site in Walla Walla is being used as an education tool for farmers and agriculture students to learn which are suitable for local soil types and rainfall levels.
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Nutrien Ag Solution's agronomist Alex Tier planted a variety of seeds in a plot provided by St Paul's College on the school's farm as part of a collaborative trial to assess how different pastures grow in the district.
Mr Tier said the research findings would be relevant for cropping and grazing farms between Holbrook, Wagga Wagga, Rand and Albury.
"We're just hoping with this we'll give students and growers in the area a bit of insight into pasture productivity and what we can do to improve it in the area," he said.
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"It's important to show the advancements recently in ag' and how productive pastures can be, especially the new blends compared to the older blends.
"We've got all sorts of things in here from low rainfall mixes to high rainfall mixes."
This demonstration has more than 30 different varieties on site including lucerne, medics, sub clovers, white clover, balansa, persian, ryegrasses, brassicas, forage cereals, phalaris and blends.
St Paul's agriculture teacher Courtney Hutchings said the project allowed students to learn from the latest agricultural findings and participate in the research themselves.
"If we don't modernise we fall behind," she said.
"To modernise we need to get in partnerships with these guys and actually get in the table with all the students and talk about all the new things that are happening and so our students realise that agriculture is not just farming.
"There's so many more different opportunities for them, they could be developing these varieties."
Ms Hutchings said demostration site was an innovative education option.
"A lot of our students have come in here and gone 'we've got this and this and this' and the ones that are growing these varieties are going 'oh, dad grows this variety, but how come this one is doing better?'" she said.
"The town students come in and they can now go 'that's what lucerne looks like'."
"It's the best learning tool we could have."
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