As the cost of land continues to skyrocket, limiting the opportunity for graziers to expand the scale of their operations, many are looking inside the wire in an effort to increase profitability.
For John and Kate Scott, Allandale, Roma, their decision-making is based on the motto that increasing profitability comes via increased productivity and capital efficiency.
With a focus on holistic management by embracing regenerative grazing which promotes a healthy ecosystem, the Scott family has been able to increase the carrying capacity of their 2830 hectare property and daily weight gain capabilities in their paddocks.
Purchasing the property in 2013, Mrs Scott said they quickly recognised the lack of nitrogen availability and cost of declining pasture productivity.
"The buffel was yellowing, stunted and clumping," she said.
"With declining pasture productivity goes a decline in animal performance, and therefore has a large economic impact on overall business performance.
"The environmental impacts of losing ground cover and beginning of land degradation, or erosion, were obvious to us.
"We looked at the long term picture and realised we needed to invest in improving our land."
The Scotts were determined to cover all of their bases, engaging specialists to do soil and dung tests, find any deficiencies, and then set out to correct them by using mineral supplementation.
"We saw that whilst buffel grass is king for the beef producer, it also wasn't healthy to have a monoculture," Mrs Scott said.
"We planted improved pastures which was an expensive initial outlay, but paid off so well with weight gains and increased soil health.
"When we bought the place, the carrying capacity would have been one to 12, but after development we estimate the carrying capacity to be one to six all year round.
"On our fertilised pastures, it is even better."
For the past few years, the Scotts have focused on backgrounding cattle.
"We concentrate on the buy price and quality of the cattle," Mrs Scott said.
"We forward sell as much as we can to alleviate risk and to know our cash flows.
"To us, it's all about opportunity - we always have a paddock ready for the next mob, we never eat all our grass, and we maintain a good cover of organic matter no matter what.
"We are destocked at the moment because of this."
Fertilised pastures double carrying capacity
The Scott's ability to double the carrying capacity at Allandale came from the belief that soil health was all about water infiltration, moisture retention, growing best-quality pastures and improving soil biology.
"We had a lot of regrowth to address and used a blade plough for about one-third of the place, as well as heavy duty offsets," Mr Scott said.
"We aerial seeded a mixture of improved pasture seed onto this, including a Desmanthus legume called Progardes which is a specialist, long-term nitrogen-fixer, as well as great cattle feed.
"We then wait for it to set seed before grazing it, and also rely on faecal spreading to establish it elsewhere."
Using a rotational grazing method, the Scotts have been able to build organic matter and therefore soil, sequester carbon and capture moisture.
"Like most of Queensland, we had soil test results of nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium deficiencies," Mr Scott said.
"We'd observed positive returns on investment in fertilising pastures down south and thought why not, why couldn't we do it here.
"We couldn't find an appropriate machine to deep rip fertiliser as it had to go through tight, clumped pastures, so we had one made with Gessner in Toowoomba.
"Big Buck has a dual purpose of renovating country via deep ripping, encouraging water penetration, and addressing mineral depletion by fertiliser application."
The Scotts initially chose two paddocks, which were lacking in nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium due to being heavily grazed over the last 50 years, to renovate
"We used a custom blend of 30 per cent phosphorus, 20pc Starter Z and 50pc urea.
"We put it on at a rate of 250kg per hectare, and anticipate application every five to eight years depending on soil tests."