E.J. Holtsbaum Agricultural Research Station

The Holtsbaum Research Station was established in 2003 following the gift by Mr E.J. Holtsbaum to the University of his property, ‘Nowley’. Mr Holtsbaum, whose family owned Nowley since 1964, made the gift with the view that the farm would continue to prosper under the University’s stewardship, and serve as a centre on the Liverpool Plains for the creation and dissemination of innovative technology for agricultural production and natural resource management. Surplus profits from the operation of Nowley are to be allocated for scholarships to help students fund their studies, and to encourage in recipients a sense of giving something back to the land through their degree, should they have the opportunity to do so.

Nowley is located in one of the most versatile and reliable winter and summer dryland cropping regions of Australia, in the Spring Ridge district on the central/north west slopes of NSW. The property is run as a successful mixed farming enterprise centred around crops of wheat, barley and canola in winter, sorghum and sunflower in summer, and a cattle herd of breeders, replacement heifers and bulls. Nowley has mostly fertile basaltic soils, an average annual rainfall of about 600 mm with a relatively even summer and winter distribution, and is close to good regional infrastructure. The variation in soil types and parent materials, and the proximity of a large, natural water body (Lake Goran), means that the property offers unique opportunities to study the impacts of parent material and topography on soil type, and consequently on agricultural opportunities. Nowley will give students a strong sense of the interaction of landscape and agriculture. Stands of remnant native forest on sections of the property will provide invaluable undisturbed reference sites for comparative studies of agricultural and native ecosytems, and the influence of human impacts.