Lucinda Corrigan

Lucinda Corrigan is Farmers for Climate Action’s chair and a climate-smart farmer. Read on to find out what she’s up to on-farm.

Can you tell us about your property?

We have a family business, with 4 family members and 4 full time and 2 part time employees

We have temperate pastures with 5 main land categories, native, lucerne, grazing crops, perennial pastures and annual rotations. All up we have 4,000ha on 8 properties with 3,500 cattle.

The Rennylea Mission is to create a dynamic, family based agribusiness which is a stimulating and satisfying workplace with positive environmental outcomes. We use evidence-based decision making.

Our vision is Rennylea Angus are a package of genes designed to lower cost of production and increase net profit per hectare and turning off a product that meets high quality market specifications.

How has climate change impacted on your farm business?

We have more unreliable autumns and increasingly variable springs, shorter growing seasons, lower annual rainfall with changing distribution.

What are some of the climate-smart strategies you’ve been employing and how successful have they been?

These include:

• Genetics – cumulative and permanent productivity effects, improved growth pathways,  improved meat quality – verified through the value chain

• Sustainable intensification – weaning yards to protect pastures especially in autumn, installing a pivot irrigation system to grow feed for replacement heifers

• Pastures and trees – a range of perennial pastures and trees.

• Changes in machinery to protect ground cover and minimise disturbance preserve and retain water in the landscape with perennial pastures

Our next major change will be to change to all spring calving from an autumn and spring calving herd.

Since this Q&A, Lucinda and her family have decided to work towards becoming carbon neutral. Read more about this here.