Phil Holmes, BSc(Vet), BVSc, MACVSc, Grad Dip ApplFinInvest

PhD Candidate

Madsen Building (F09), Room 454
Phone: +61 2 9351 5989
Fax: +61 2 9351 3644
Email:

Supervisor
A/Prof Deirdre Dragovich

Associate Supervisors
Dr David Chapman
Dr M Stafford-Smith (CSIRO CAZR Alice Springs)

Phil's PhD will attempt to determine if long term environmental and economic sustainability is possible for pastoralism in the arid rangelands. This will be done by determining if individual pastoral holdings in Australian arid rangelands have the capacity to preserve their operating environment whilst concurrently increasing productivity at a rate sufficient to achieve and maintain a standard of living comparable to other regions in rural Australia.

A long term approach is needed in rangelands because the rate of change is slower than in higher rainfall regions. For the purpose of this research, long term is taken to be thirty years because:

• It is long enough to experience the full range of economic and climatic volatility.
• It allows sufficient time to detect environmental stability.
• It represents the average tenure of a generation of management/ownership.
• It is not too long to have the term heavily biased by a significant change in markets or production technology.

The data, analysis and conclusions will be drawn from seven specialist beef producing stations in the Southern Alice Springs Pastoral Region comprising a total of 27,296 sq. km. and approximately 22,000 breeding cows. Production and financial data will be collected from the stations each year for at least five years to identify the key performance indicators, productivity drivers and profit drivers. The average herd from this group of stations will be modelled, and the productivity drivers identified as having the biggest impact on profit will be evaluated. As far as possible, this will be validated with trial data. Environmental assessment will be done through a combination of local site monitoring and remote sensing.