How Gippsland farmers slashed their urea bill by 90 per cent

Newry dairy farmers Peter Neaves and Kate Mirams have potentially slashed their urea bill by up to 90 per cent.

The Gippsland graziers started an on-farm trial in 2019 as a Dairy Resilience Project case study, aiming to reduce synthetic inputs and maintain high productivity.

Since the trial’s start, they have reduced nitrogen use from 240kg/ha to 20kg/ha without affecting their on-farm productivity.

“The savings are huge,” Kate said.

“What we’re doing now at the current urea price, the difference is $78,000.

“In a normal year our urea savings are somewhere around $44,000, but we have spent that on lime, gypsum and trace elements, especially boron, copper, manganese.”

It comes as they hosted a Soils for Life field day at their Newry property recently.

Kate said they were fully irrigated with some land laser graded before the trial’s start, which affected soil health and caused “very dry” country.

Kate said they gradually improved productivity, milking more cows and producing more milk solids. They currently manage about 320 spring calving cows and reared 100 heifer calves.

“We had to learn like hell to get there,” she said.

“It’s not like you can just turn off the switch and not expect a crash.

“It’s like when you want to get fit and healthy, you have to stop doing a few things and start doing a few things.”

Kate said foliar nutrition was “key”. The trial included six irrigation bays or three pairs, with one in each with perennial rye-grass and white clover, and standard fertiliser inputs, while its adjacent bay would have multispecies pastures.

Their 194ha property, bought in 2003, averaged 600mm rain on a predominant black dermasols and loam to clay soils.

Kate and Peter undertook significant plantings on-farm, introduced multispecies pastures, biological seed treatments, used foliars for mineral requirements, grazing management and “fungi-friendly” management using a humate blend.

They cut back on nitrogen use and incrementally reduced urea applications, and added fulvic acid for efficiency.

“I attribute it to hundreds of farmers who taught us how they farm … We knew farms in the 90s were harvesting 12 tonnes of dry matter per hectare with no nitrogen,” Kate said.

“We had to stop all the practices the microbes don’t like and start practices the microbes do like, we still wanted to grow heaps of feed.”

They ranked in the top 25 per cent for asset return in the 2024-25 Dairy Farm Monitor Project, as a pasture-based dairy farm with moderate supplementary feeding.

“Sometimes adversity is the thing that helps people change,” Kate said. “The droughts in the 80s and 90s, the dairy industry learnt to feed grain.

“Maybe this crisis is going to help farmers harvest the power of soil microbes.”

Soil health educator Joel Williams said there had been significant growing interest in soil health and reducing inputs, particularly during seasonal challenges and rising costs.

“I would say all around the world, the same thing is unfolding,” he said.

“Fertilisers are more expensive, seed and pesticides, freight; all of these costs of production have been going up over the past few years.”

Joel said typical soil health transitions lasted between three to five years on average depending on soil types.

“Some would say it’s a lifelong journey, soils don’t change overnight,” he said.

“There are some small things farmers can do to get started without changing their full system or a huge upheaval.”

He said immediate changes would include adding carbon-based inputs such as molasses, humic substances, kelp or seaweed.

Kate and Peter will now enter a “new phase” to research water dynamics across the paired trial bays.

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Need to cut down your fert use? Precision ag steps can play critical role

 By Gregor Heard | March 27 2026 

Getting better efficiency out of nitrogen this year will be critical. File photo.

The president of the Society of Precision Agriculture Australia (SPAA) has urged growers to consider precision agriculture (PA) techniques to get the most out of an increasingly valuable commodity in fertiliser.

Jon Medway. Wagga Wagga, NSW, said that while a full farm transition to PA took time, there were a range of steps farmers could take to start off in the space, cutting fertiliser usage as a result.

He said understanding what was in the soil was critical in shaping decisions.

"The first step is to understand what is the magnitude of the variability across the paddock, there are a range of ways you can go about that, for someone who has no data sets of their own, you can look at satellite imagery, which is so comprehensive these days," Mr Medway, who works with Charles Sturt University, said.

"For those with yield data, you can find the high and low yielding parts of the paddock under a range of plant available water situations.

"Following that, a soil classification test, doing metre or metre and a half soil profiles would be great, but the key with this is whatever you can do to help understand the landscape is going to help."

Mr Medway said the silver lining to the current uncertainty could be increased motivation for farmers to explore new or different options to manage their crops and soils.

"What we are seeing is an opportunity to utilise capabilities generated by recent investments in tools, research and extension that help growers manage those pressures in regards to inputs," he said.

Mr Medway said concepts such as variable rate application of fertiliser would allow farmers to get more value for money from their limited nitrogen supplies.

"It's likely people may well have less access to less nitrogen than they wanted, so it's important that they make the most of what supplies they do have," he said.

"We've seen really good results with variable rate allowing growers to cut overall nitrogen usage and that is more important than ever this year."

"Previous work reported by the GRDC (Grains Research and Development Corporation) has shown that with appropriate investigation it is not uncommon to identify areas within paddocks where fertiliser rate can be substantially reduced without impact on final yield while other areas can generate returns from increased application rates."

Western Australian grain grower and SPAA committee member Mick Caughey from Merredin said not all growers hold fertiliser reserves, making it even more important to use available inputs strategically in the face of global supply uncertainty.

"Some farmers will have fertiliser in the shed, so when supply chains tighten or prices jump, it really focuses the mind on how well you're using it," Mr Caughey said.

"Variable rate technology lets us move away from a blanket approach and put fertiliser where the crop actually needs it across the paddock.

"It's not just about saving fertiliser - when you match nutrients to the soil and crop conditions properly, you can actually lift yield as well."

SPAA has been working on a GRDC supported national project focused on the adoption of variable rate fertiliser application to improve nutrient use efficiency.

The project is working with growers and consultants across Australia to develop practical variable rate plans, collect input and yield data, and evaluate the economic outcomes of adopting these technologies on farm.

Mr Medway said there were various soil characteristics that impacted on yield and ability for crops to access nutrients.

"You've got water holding capacity, there is pH, there are a lot of things to consider," he said.

"The important bit is that every small step contributes to the big picture - even doing something really basic like cutting the paddock into two zones will be a help.

"The moment you identify low producing areas you can start to either convert those areas into higher yielding environments or make the decision to not spend unnecessarily and cut inputs in that part of the paddock."