David Drage
Region: Warracknabeal, Wimmera, north-western Victoria
Commodity: Wheat, barley, pulses, prime lamb and wool
Farming area: 1400 hectares
Rainfall: 300-350 mm average rainfall per year
Email: dndrage@bigpond.com
Phone: 03 5399 1247
It’s become extremely apparent in this district that it’s a lot harder to build yourself back up from a failure than it is to accept a lower return and not have that failure in the first place.
Farming today is completely different to what it was 10 years ago and those changes and challenges are what keep it interesting.
See what David has to say about:
- 4 generations of farming in the Wimmera
- Adapting to a more extreme climate
- Being flexible: making the most of the good years
- Risk-management and climate variability: increasing profits by cropping less
- Conserving soil moisture in an increasingly dry climate
- Retaining stubble to conserve moisture
- Factors other than climate: competing in an international market
- Keeping on top of the carbon debate
- Using seasonal forecasts
- Being a member of the Climate Champion program
- Embracing the challenge of farming
4 generations of farming in the Wimmera
Our family-run property has been in my family for 4 generations and we’re going through a transition from my father managing the farm to me being the manager.
It’s a mixture of owned land and share-farmed land. We have a mix of cropping and livestock, and about two-thirds of the farm is cropped.
The soil is loam over clay: that’s clay subsoil and loam on top.
The climate that we’ve been experiencing in the Wimmera over the last 10 years is very different to what we’ve had previously.
Adapting to a more extreme climate
We used to get about 350 mm of rainfall a year, but over the last 10 years it’s dropped to around 300 mm.
For 10 years now we haven’t had a traditional season break, so now there’s a real skill in deciding when to plant a crop, given that throughout May/June we’re only getting showers. We don’t really get that signal that says, ‘now it’s wet enough for a crop to grow’.
We’re also not getting a reasonable spring rainfall at the other end of the season, so a lot of the crops are failing to finish.
We’ve also had a higher occurrence of frosts in the flowering period. I try to use a number of different varieties of cereals, and to have a spread of flowering times so that I don’t lose the whole crop if I get a severe frost one morning.
In addition to dealing with frost, we also have to deal with heat. We’ve had a few 40°C days in October which, until a couple of years ago, we’d never had before.
I’ve stopped planting crops that are most likely to be harmed by a 40°C day, mostly pulse crops. But apart from that, there’s not much you can do to prepare for a 40°C day.
So, all in all, it’s becoming extremely difficult to get a crop through the last 6 weeks of its life to harvest.
We try to find trends by looking at 110 years of recorded history, but the climate has been changing for thousands of years.
In 100 years we’ll know whether what we’re going through now is a cyclical change, or whether this is something we’ll have to live with. But the bottom line is that we have to work with what we’re being dealt.
David discusses the changing climate of the Wimmera
Being flexible: making the most of the good years
Because of the seasonal climate we’re having at the moment, it’s extremely important that we remain flexible.
You can’t afford to lock yourself into saying, ‘I’m going to run 500 sheep and crop so many hectares’, because it might have been achievable this year—but next year, who knows?
A flexible farming system has been extremely beneficial for us in the last 10 years.
The two key things that drive me are being flexible and – it probably sounds very negative – aiming low.
If you’re aiming for average or below-average yields, only run a small number of sheep, and the enterprise is making a profit at that level, just do that—don’t try for that ‘big year’. Don’t try to push for higher yields and greater income, because you open yourself to higher risk of failure.
It’s become extremely apparent in this district that it’s a lot harder to build yourself back up from a failure than it is to accept a lower return and not have that failure in the first place.
No-till farming has helped us to remain flexible because we don’t have to make planting decisions up-front.
Quite often in late April my cropping plan could be to plant between 400 and 1500 hectares. We can now sit back until the 11th hour and decide that, yes, we can go for a full cropping program because we’ve had some good rainfall and things are looking good. These strategies have really helped us to make the most of the good years, and minimise losses in the bad years.
Risk-management and climate variability: increasing profits by cropping less
It’s a lot easier to avoid a loss than it is to try and make back the money that you lost. A large part of our business approach has been reducing the risk of losing money.
In the late 1990s I was cropping 80-85% of the farm every year, but now I’m down to about 60%.
I’m farming less than I was 10-15 years ago, but we’re probably better off financially because we’ve tried to eliminate the places where we lose money. I’ve become very reluctant to plant any crops where I think that the chance of growing a good crop is marginal.
I’ve certainly increased the size of the prime lamb enterprise on the farm and I’ve altered the mix of crops over the last 10 years to deal with a changing climate. The only pulse crop I plant now is vetch, which will either be cut for hay and baled, or grazed off by sheep.
Removing those risks of losses from the business is extremely important these days because of the changes in the weather patterns.
Conserving soil moisture in an increasingly dry climate
We’re extremely dependent on conserved soil moisture to get us through the season. These days it’s become even drier due to less rainfall and warmer temperatures.
I’m doing less soil moisture testing than I used to do—I don’t think you need someone to tell you it’s dry when you can clearly see that it is. I’ve compromised doing soil moisture tests to improve the bottom line, which seems wrong when soil moisture is so important these days.
In the past, weeds like heliotropes and melons were allowed to grow or were controlled with cultivation. But these days we’ve just got a zero-tolerance approach to summer weeds.
I leave a few test strips in the paddocks where I drive a bit wide with the boom spray. The following year at harvest time I can clearly see that where weeds grew, they took out a lot of moisture.
Retaining stubble to conserve moisture
I’m not backward in putting a fire break around something and burning it if there’s a weed or disease problem. But the value of stubble cover for moisture conservation is extremely important.
I think it would be 10 years now since I’ve actually had to burn stubble because we’ve not had those problems.
A couple of years ago when hay prices were extremely high, I had some reasonably heavy stubbles and I was able to bale them and sell the straw into the feed market.
I made myself about an extra $60 to $80 an acre at the time by selling that straw. But I lost the same amount of money out of the following crop because the soil moisture just wasn’t there with the stubble cover gone.
With more hotter days and less rainfall, soil moisture could become more of an issue into the future.
So it’s just another one of those learning exercises that you go through—if you don’t do things like that, you don’t learn.
Factors other than climate: competing in an international market
Besides climate variability, international commodity prices have a huge effect on our profitability.
For example, international grain marketing still has a bigger effect on my bottom line than whether I get 300 or 350 mm of rain this season.
And I think it’s an extremely big risk, in these times of changing climate, to focus on what’s happening within our boundary fence. We must keep looking beyond the farm gate at all the other influences on us, because European and United States export policies can have a larger effect on my business than 20 or 40 mm of rain.
Keeping on top of the carbon debate
Travelling the world as a Nuffield scholar in 2009 is probably one of the most valuable things I’ve done personally in the last couple of years.
I looked at what threats and opportunities emissions trading schemes present for agriculture.
The whole climate change and carbon debate is something that isn’t going to go away. While I can’t see myself profiting from any carbon tax or any carbon sequestration schemes that may come into existence, it certainly is a topic that, as farmers and carbon-cycle managers, we’re going to have to keep on top of.
We need to make sure that we have a presence in any discussion that goes on, because the politics of climate change could end up having a much greater effect on my business than the actual change in the climate.
It’s extremely important that we don’t lose track of the issues past the farm gate. We really need to look at the whole picture, beyond just our production.
At the end of the day we’re trying to manage the land, manage the carbon cycle, manage the weather to produce food and fibre, and we’ve got to do it in a fashion that’s sustainable to make sure that we’re here to do the same thing next year.
And, most importantly, we have to do it because we enjoy it.
Using seasonal forecasts
The internet is a fantastic tool; if you look hard enough you can find whatever you want.
Websites like the Victorian DPI and The Break newsletter give a good run-down, and they save me a lot of time on the internet. I use the climate-risk data, and look at the monthly newsletter and see how that compares when I look out the kitchen window.
I don’t plan my whole business around what I’ve read on the internet, but it does help with my day-to-day decision making. It comes back to you needing to make decisions that you are comfortable with, as far as modifying your exposure to risk.
Protecting remnant vegetation from the changing climate
The family farm and the majority of the land that I’ve bought on top of that has all had about 10 per cent remnant vegetation.
Over the last 10 to 12 years, as the climate has been getting drier, it’s been very noticeable in that remnant vegetation that the trees are suffering and a lot of the understorey vegetation is under threat.
I’d hate to see the remnant vegetation that we’ve got disappear, so I’m doing whatever I can to try and protect it.
We’ve fenced off virtually all our remnant vegetation now and we’re not grazing it. All the native herbage and native grasses are starting to return. Just by fencing it off and making sure that it regenerates in a natural sense is enough to keep it going.
Knowing what land protection grants are available from the state and federal governments and through Landcare is useful. You can’t make your farm profitable from grant income, but it certainly helps to give a bit of extra money to do some environmentally good work on the farm.
Being a member of the Climate Champion program
I want to live in my community for the next 40-odd years and I don’t want to be the only person left, so it’s in my own interest to make sure that all the other farmers in the district are still profitable and sustainable so that we’re all here into the future.
I hope that through the Climate Champion program I can pass on some of the experiences I’ve had and the things that I’ve learnt about adapting, both during my travels and while farming under a changing climate on my own farm.
I hope that in sharing my knowledge and experiences, other farmers can improve their businesses. Climate change is a problem which is affecting all of us.
Embracing the challenge of farming
I have to admit that when you look strictly at rainfall and climate data, the future probably doesn’t look that good for us. But I’m up for the challenge.
We’ve made a number of management changes in the last 10 years. We’re getting water-use efficiencies now that are phenomenal and would have been unheard of 10 to 15 years ago. There are also a lot of new technologies out there.
Farming today is completely different to what it was 10 years ago, and those changes and challenges are what keeps farming interesting. I think I’m more interested and keen to keep farming given the changes that are upon us now, rather than if things were still how they were 15 years ago.
The challenge is one of those things that keeps me getting up each morning and going out there to do the work that needs to be done.
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Interview date: 19 May 2010