Foliar nutrition workshop with Joel Williams

Thirty people gathered in Perenjori on March 7th for the Foliar Nutrition for Broadacre Farming Workshop, facilitated by Joel Williams. 

Most of the participants in the room were farmers and out of those, most with mixed cropping and livestock enterprises.  

The day was organised by Yarra Yarra Catchment Management Group and supported by RegenWA as part of Perth NRM’s Restoration Impact Framework project. This project is funded by Lotterywest and Commonland. Find out more about the project here. 

The day was an opportunity for the farmers to take practical information back to the farm and trial new methods in their systems.  

The key topics farmers wanted Joel to cover included soil water, soil carbon, the chemistry of foliar nutrition, biology and low fertility sands.  

Joel delved into the fundamentals of photosynthesis and the importance of macro and micro nutrients in this process to facilitate building sugars and secondary metabolites.  

Some of the feedback from the day included: 

• “Going to trial a foliar N program” 
• “Very keen on companion cropping and cover crops” 
• “Thank you Yarra Yarra Catchment and RegenWA – a great workshop, well organised!” 
• “Monitor water quality which is used for spraying” 
• “The ‘why’ of foliar urea and the plant processes behind it’ 
• “Be good to see a trial looking at foliar urea rates vs timing trial for final grain protein in the WA Wheatbelt” 
• “Keep experimenting with slow release foliars” 
• “Top day. Good bloke. Should have been 100 in attendance” 
• “Refine blending techniques and equipment” 
• “incorporate use of citric acid to foliars and use clean sources of water to go out with foliars” 
• “Trace elements are important!” 
• “Want to look at how to implement economically in our low rainfall zone” 
• “Am happy that Joel promotes soil biology not a product, not bias with products” 
• “Plant tissue testing and sap testing” 

If you missed the workshop but want to know more about what Joel talked about, you can listen to this Soils for Life podcast featuring Joel here:  https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soils-for-life/episodes/Small-steps-for-big-change-in-cropping–with-Joel-Williams-e2flqmc/a-aav2q2o  

It was a fantastic day, with great interaction & discussion in the room. 

This Regenerative Agriculture event is made possible thanks to RegenWA and funding from Lotterywest. RegenWA is powered by the Perth NRM Restoration Impact Framework project with funding from Lotterywest, and Commonland.