
Farm Table says:
The take home messages from this GRDC funded research are below. Please access the full paper via the link below for methodology, references, acknowledgements and discussion.
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- Cropping intensity had a significant effect on labour requirements
- Diverse rotations may create higher labour demand and peak demands that may limit the adoption of diversified crop rotations in some farm businesses
- In moderate and lower rainfall environments, crop sequences with higher intensity may yield lower returns per unit of labour (i.e., more than 38% less) than those with lower crop intensities
- Cropping intensity is a critical determinant of labour organisation in the northern grain growing zone, more so than cropping diversity.
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Figure 4. Mean GM returns per unit of labour as influenced by diversified crop sequences at (a) Pampas (b) Goondiwindi, and (c) Mungindi. Error bars represent the standard deviations. Letters on top of the bars represent High intensity (HI), Moderate Intensity (MI), Low Intensity (LI), High diversity (HD), and Low Diversity (LD).