Anthony Gordon
Region: Forbes, central west New South Wales
Commodity: Wheat, barley, canola, chick peas, field peas, lupins
Farming area: 400 hectare family farm and 17,000 hectare cropping system which Anthony manages
Rainfall: 475-525 mm rainfall per year
Email: agordon@agmangroup.com.au
Phone: 0458 561156
After we introduced our moisture-retention systems on a farmer’s property, a neighboring farmer said that in the short time that we’d adopted these systems he was getting nowhere near the amount of run off that he used to get into his adjoining dams. Instances like this put a smile on your face as you know your water is staying on your land.
See what Anthony has to say about:
- Switching on and off costs depending on the seasonal outlook
- Combining production data with the seasonal forecast to predict yield
- Keeping my water on my land
- Giving local contractors long-term security across variable seasons
Switching on and off costs depending on the seasonal outlook
My wife and I run a small family property of 400 hectares. I’m also the Managing Director of the Agman Group – an agricultural asset management and consultancy business which manages a 17,000 hectare large-scale cropping system for Wyalong Rural Investments.
The farming systems that we adopt on our family farm are consistent with a number of principles and strategies that we employ in the Agman Group.
We operate a no-till, conservation-farming system where we make our management decisions on how much soil moisture we have available at sowing time.
From 2000 to 2010 it’s been dry, but we’ve had dry decades in the past.
The long-term climate projection for this area suggests more variable rainfall and warmer temperatures, but these conditions can be good. The major concern for local farmers is an increase in hotter days, especially around spring when we are finishing our winter crops.
Like most farmers in this area we have learnt to adapt and have been managing these warmer and variable conditions for a number of years.
For us the challenge is establishing an annual production system that allows us to switch on and switch off our costs, depending on what the season looks like.
There are very few farmers out there who would not be interested in sitting down and talking about what they can do to make more informed decisions about their annual production. And that’s not talking about climate change, that’s just talking about managing the key variable that we have: seasonal variability.
Anthony talks about the importance of making informed decisions in farming
Combining production data with the seasonal forecast to predict yield
It’s very hard to model agriculture, especially in a changing climate.
When forecasting our inputs, our water-use efficiency and our expected yields, we use a model based on the very simple French Schultz Water Use Efficiency model.
While the model can tell us a lot about potential yields and how best to manage our inputs, it will only work if we have data – data on where the crop’s at, how much moisture we have in our soil, and what the forecast is.
We use PAM to capture all our production data. It allows us to do all our production analysis, water-use-efficiency analysis, and gross-margin analysis on a paddock-by-paddock basis.
For example, in our main operation, we know the exact soil moisture status in every paddock (100+) prior to sowing because we constantly probe and test each paddock with penetrometers.
With our soil-moisture data and our seasonal forecast, we then decide what to sow in which paddock, for the greatest return on the water we had and the rainfall we expect during the season.
While the model can be very useful, you have to remember that other variables can have a sudden impact on your outcomes; for example, disease, pests and market variability.
This is why it is important to combine this model with your seasonal forecast so you can foresee how an increase or decrease in rainfall and temperature will affect your yield and your timing.
Keeping my water on my land
We apply a no-till, controlled-traffic farming system with full stubble retention on all of our dryland properties. This has improved our soils ability to soak up water and keep it from evaporating.
A farmer recently told me in the short time we’d introduced our moisture-retention systems onto his neighbour’s properties, he was getting nowhere near the amount of run off that he used to get into his adjoining dams. Instances like this put a smile on your face as you know your water is staying on your land.
To help improve our soil structure we’ve aligned all our sowing, spraying, and harvesting machinery onto 3-metre tramlines (controlled traffic) to limit compaction.
We predominantly use tine seeders – 1 fixed tine and 3 parallelogram tine machines ¬– and call in disc machines to complete specific tasks. Tine machines help us condition the soil so we can get the infiltration rates up and get the moisture in.
We’re also looking at alternative types of fertilisers, different strategies to promote early plant growth and strategies to manage canopy development within crops. We don’t want crops that get too big too early and then run out of moisture later in the season when it’s predicted to be far warmer and stressful.
Giving local contractors long-term security across variable seasons
Wyalong Rural Investments has 6 permanent staff, and up to 15 casuals who work at peak times during the year. We use contractors to do the majority of the farming, such as the sowing, spraying and harvesting.
All the contractors we use are local producers or local farmers who still have their own farms or have made the transition to being full-time contractors.
For many of them, the drought has affected their own farm’s profitability, so they need to cover themselves financially. Being local, they all have a linkage to the land, and they all bring their own local knowledge.
We’ve taken out long-term relationships with contractors to allow them to invest in sustainable machinery and technologies and to develop their expertise.
We see this security and expertise development as fundamental in the production system. Our contactors know there’s always going to be work for them, no matter how variable the season will be.
On a grander scale, these long-term relationships also help keep the community afloat during lean years, and keep people and their skills in the area. This will be an ever-growing concern for a lot of rural centres with a warmer drier climate predicted to make family farms less viable in the future.
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Interview date: 31 May 2010