Research interests

Dr Zull is employed with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) as an agricultural- and bio-economist. Having completed his PhD on the “Management of woody weeds in the Australian rangelands: a bioeconomic approach”, which used a framework based on population dynamics and stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) to improve woody-weed control decisions for rangeland grazing systems. This research was supported by WeedsCRC, University of New England, and CSIRO. His professional interests are in improving stakeholders’ decisions using a cross-disciplinary approach at multiple spatial scales from the paddock, whole-farm, regional, industry and national level, with a focus on the short- to long-term outcomes. The expertise that he brings to teams is an understanding of system dynamics, modelling, resource-economics, bio-economics, stochastic analysis and optimisation. Recent projects include Grain & Graze II (which focused on farm practice changes with respect to improving profitability and risk management) and lead the developed of C-Farm Options, Northern Diagnostic Agronomy project (which developed a tool for constraints to agricultural productivity for wheat and chickpea in the Northern Region) and conceptualised and developed the BOERA (back of the envelope risk analyse) model to help farmers make rational amelioration decisions in risky environments. This tool was adopted nationally. He also led the Climate-Q: Economic project which used bio-economics to investigate the climatic risk to Qld producers. He is currently working on projects from horticulture, deep-placement of phosphorus, AG-margins and other projects.

Professional memberships

Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, and the Australian Agronomy Society