The Agriculture Victoria event saw more than 40 growers hear from experts on managing pear and apple orchards after wet weather in order to make farms resilient to the impact of extreme wet weather events.
Agronomists and researchers spoke about changes in farming methods to control disease after wet summers.
A recurring theme was for farmers to mulch and clear their orchards earlier than usual and apply urea to hasten organic matter breakdown.
The day ended with a large storm that damaged marquees and threatened the research and training facility’s orchards.
Darren Cribbes from Connexus Global told farmers of the impact of recent flooding on soil composition and suggested sowing cover crops to help in soil recovery.
“Soil compaction and pH are the biggest challenges in the Goulburn Valley,” Mr Cribbes said.
Dr Mark O’Connell from Agriculture Victoria said that future orchards would become adapted to climate change by using new technology and practices such as precision horticulture.
Dr O’Connell described the future role of agriculture as the “fourth agricultural revolution” and emphasised the importance of accounting for a farm’s carbon footprint.
“In Germany, food products in supermarkets are required to show on their labels the greenhouse gas equivalent,” Dr O’Connell said.
Dr O’Connell also described the use of “fruiting walls”, in which orchards are planted in narrower rows and the tree canopies shaped to be only 30cm thick.
“The advantages of a fruiting wall include better harvesting and management methods,” he said.
Seasonal risk agronomist Dale Grey spoke about new advances in climate modelling technology.
Mr Grey said climate models were relied upon for forecasting weather beyond one week.
“After day eight, the weather forecast does not provide much useful information,” he said.
“It’s the climate models that provide information after that.
“Some of the new models have only been out for the last 12 months.”
Mr Grey said autumn was typically a difficult time of year to predict the year’s climate due to transitions between La Niña and El Niño.
“Autumn is always the trickiest time because the oceans will always return to neutral at this time of year and they will or won’t have shown any hand as to what they will do in the coming season,” he said.
“And the climate models are most useful when there is a climate driver in action such as El Niño and La Niña or the Indian Ocean Dipole.
“When they are active, then the climate models are much more useful.
“When there’s nothing going on in the tropical oceans it’s very much harder for those climate models.”
Mr Grey said the Bureau of Meteorology currently had significant evidence for the possibility of El Niño this year.
“The three La Niña we have had have built up a large amount of warm water in the western Pacific and that’s going to be very prone in the coming few months to be pushed underneath over to South America and to pop up warm on the other side.
“But what determines that will be completely random weather that occurs in the western Pacific around the Solomon Islands.
“And some of that will be unpredictable.”
Mr Grey said farmers were becoming more receptive to climate forecasting.
“I was sceptical myself when I started 17 years ago, thinking El Niño is only useful for forecasting in Queensland.
“But when you look at the historical data you can see there’s clearly years when they have affected us.”
Shockwave cannons were activated toward the end of the day to ward off hail as a large storm descended on the area.
Surrounding orchards were severely affected by hail from the storm.
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