Susan Findlay Tickner
Region: Wimmera, western Victoria
Commodity: Wheat, lentils, chickpeas, barley, beans, fodder
Farming area: 3000 hectares
Rainfall: 400 mm average rainfall per year
Email: susan.findlay@dpi.vic.gov.au
Phone: 03 5381 0762
We choose to be grain growers for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that we expect to make good returns and grow our business in the long term. Climate change is one of the many factors influencing us achieving our goals. We need to understand how climate variability impacts on our enterprise and manage this impact to maintain economic sustainability.
See what Susan has to say about:
- Measuring soil moisture
- Optimising fertiliser use
- Planting new crop varieties
- Farming with no till and retaining stubble
- Using inter-row sowing
- Increasing on-farm grain storage to aid marketing
- Considering emissions trading
Measuring soil moisture
Our agronomic strategy is to know exactly where we are at the start of each season before we put the crop in. We’re continually getting smarter about the things we can control – what mix of crops we put in and what nutrients we apply to maximise our productivity.
Working with what we can control lets us mitigate negative impacts from things we can’t control such as rainfall and temperature.
We measure soil moisture rather than relying on gut feel. I think there is a lot to be gained by making decisions based on legitimate information. It’s not rocket science but it gives us a solid base from which to plan the season.
This year for example, when we did the soil tests we discovered that despite high spring and summer rainfall, we still had low levels of plant available water. This is a result of the length of the previous dry. It appears it will take some time (and good rainfall) to replenish soil moisture levels. As such, we wound back our yield targets for 2010.
Optimising fertiliser use
Up till ten years ago we always sowed our crop with the same amount of fertiliser - what was deemed to be the amount needed to grow that crop.
We’d sow the crop after the first break with what now seems like a high amount of fertiliser. The crop would come out of the ground with a bang and grow aggressively for much of the season.
But during the late nineties and 2000s we often hit dry or hot periods during the spring. The plants were fertilised to achieve high yields but would hay off due to a lack of moisture. This reduced our grain yield and quality, and ultimately, our financial returns.
We now measure nutrient levels with a plan to start with low fertiliser rates and feed the crop as needed throughout the growing season.
Soil tests and modelling software such as Yield Prophet help us achieve realistic yields for the season’s rainfall without applying excessive and unnecessary levels of fertiliser.
Nutrition management is now one of our key risk management tools.
Planting new crop varieties
Like most farmers we look to new varieties to maximise farm performance.
Over recent seasons we have shifted to shorter season varieties to improve yields in dry seasons. We have refined this process and now we’re prepared to change our program depending on summer rainfall and the timing of the break.
This year with an early and strong break most of our barley is the longer season Gairdner malt variety. With a later break we would substitute this with the short season Hindmarsh.
Again we’re aiming to reduce risk and maximise returns.
Farming with no till and retaining stubble
We aim to retain soil moisture, keep our soils healthy and build organic matter levels. Stubble retention and no till help us do that.
A decade ago we’d cultivate to control summer weeds and mulch stubbles. Now we use a knife point press wheel system with 30 cm row spacing to sow the crop with minimum soil disturbance.
We’ve been really interested to see the increased use of zero till disc seeders in our region. We’re keen to see if productivity increases offered by this technology outweigh the additional capital investment.
Using inter-row sowing
One of the newer practices in our industry is using high accuracy GPS technology to guide seeders to sow seeds between last year’s standing stubble.
2010 is our 10th year using GPS systems, and we feel they provide many benefits to our business, from data acquisition such as yield mapping, to broad efficiency gains such as less overlap of inputs and reduced operator fatigue.
We can sow lentils in between last year’s wheat stubble, and the stubble provides a natural trellis for the lentils to climb which assists plant growth and makes the lentils easier to harvest. The standing stubble also reduces moisture evaporation from the soil. This is all about increasing production while maintaining a strong focus on costs.
I get excited by these changes in farming practices. I don’t think we have to be really renegade and go off being innovative and new. It’s stuff that makes common sense and you can see how something like that is just very sensible to do.
But what may stop people adopting this new practice – which probably isn’t so cutting edge anymore, it’s probably something that a lot of people are doing – is the sheer cost of setting your equipment up to do inter row sowing.
You’d probably put $50,000 worth of technology into your tractor to enable that to happen, and to many people they may not see that as a worthwhile investment. So cost can be a barrier to entry to a system such as that.
Each business must understand its own costs, returns and level of capital investment so they can make appropriate business decision. Good knowledge is vital.
Increasing on-farm grain storage to aid marketing
Over the last few years we have added to our on-farm storage. We now have around 8,000 tons of silo storage.
At harvest we cart directly from the paddock to our silos and rarely spend time waiting at the traditional bulk handling system.
This gives us the flexibility to market the grain when it suits us to maximise returns.
There is significant investment in developing this system however in the long run we believe it significantly improves our overall profitability.
We also understand that this system means we take on the marketing risk which was traditionally taken on by pool providers such as the Australia Wheat Board.
The greater returns I believe this system provides can mean more irregular income flows throughout the year which must also be managed.
Considering emissions trading
Something we expect to have to deal with in the next ten years is emissions trading. So we’re trying to understand the impact that that will have on our enterprise.
I think emissions trading is quite a scary term and it’s very easy to fear something that’s been in the media so much. But I think it’s something we can expect to impact on our enterprise and we need to come up with strategies for how we’re going to incorporate that into our production system.
Emissions trading is a very complex area and I think the fact that we don’t have any clear guidance from the government as to what it’s going to look like, how it’s going to impact on agriculture and the additional cost to our production, makes it very difficult for us to even start coming up with strategies.