David Smith
Region: Birchip, southern Mallee, western Victoria (330 km north-west of Melbourne)
Commodity: Cereal crops, pulses, and canola in the wet years
Farming area: 2800 hectares
Rainfall: 350 mm average rainfall per year, 250 mm in the growing season
Email: dnb@activ8.net.au
Phone: 03 5399 0536
One of the things that climate change has taught us is that we’ve got to be more adaptable and versatile in what we do with our farm and our land.
There’s only one rule in farming and that is: there are no rules.
See what David has to say about:
- Realising that the climate has changed
- Planning for the long term but staying flexible
- Using Yield Prophet®
- Direct drilling
- Retaining stubble, mulching and fallowing
- Using weather forecasts and seasonal outlooks
Realising that the climate has changed
I work in partnership with my brother. We try to keep our enterprise mix as diverse as we can, just to make sure we’ve got a few marketing and production options.
Until 2009, we’d never grown hay as a crop, but it’s been quite successful.
Growing hay is one of the things that the weather has forced upon us and we’ve sort of landed on our feet with it. We took the gamble and said: ‘Well, we don’t think it’s going to rain for 3 more weeks. So we’re better off to get a return for what we’ve got there now rather than let it shrivel up and die’.
In 2007 we grew canola because we had a wet start. Then it started looking dry and we ended up cutting our canola for hay. That was a very good move economically. The hay was good quality and we managed to get a good price for it, so that was a good return.
In 2009 we cut failing cereal crops and it was our best gross margin by far.
We grew legumes for 4 or 5 years but we’ve stopped sowing them almost completely because the climate is drier. We weren’t able to get a good yield or profit out of them.
I kept saying: ‘We’ve had a dry year last year so it should be wetter than average next year’ and ‘it’s got to get better’. Now I’ve come to the realisation that the climate’s changed.
We now try to run a low risk enterprise sowing predominantly wheat and barley.
We have about 900 first-cross ewes. Some farmers in this area have concentrated on cropping but we’ve chosen to keep sheep in our enterprise mix. It’s just another option up our sleeves.
Planning for the long term but staying flexible
When we plan our enterprise mix, we try to work out what we’re going to grow in the long term. We usually plan a 6-year rotation.
In the past, I planned to have fallow, canola, wheat, barley lentils and another cereal, but by about the third or fourth year the technology’s changed, the weather’s changed, the rain’s changed.
Although we don’t get through these rotations, we still plan for them because we’re not just farming for one year. For instance, if we grew all wheat this year then we’d restrict your options for next year.
We’re finetuning our plan all the time now, but 10 or 15 years ago we’d plan a rotation and we’d stick with that. In those days our inability to change was probably to our detriment.
Now we try to be more flexible and work with the seasons. We try to consider what the season’s going to do and whether there are any real marketing or price signals.
Using Yield Prophet®
We often change our enterprise mix according to Yield Prophet®. The program tells us our chances of making a good return on a crop.
We use it to work out whether we should be sowing barley, wheat, hay or leaving it fallow.
Every year we test our soils to find out the soil type and nutrient status. Yield Prophet® uses the soil type and the last 100 years’ of rainfall data to tell us what crop variety would be best to grow.
For example, it might say: ‘You’ve got a 50% chance of growing x tonnes of wheat and a 70% chance of growing x tonnes of barley’.
We sow our crop a lot earlier, compared to a couple of years ago, because Yield Prophet® tells us the opportune time to sow wheat in this area based on the rainfall we get.
Yield Prophet® has given us the confidence to say: ‘Just stick to minimal inputs, because we have a fairly low chance of growing a big crop this year’.
The challenge will be when we get a wet year and it says: ‘Spend $100,000 on nitrogen’ and whether I’ve got the guts to do that, or whether it’s going to be too big a risk.
Direct drilling
Our farm is heading towards minimum till and direct drill. We certainly think it’s worth doing because it reduces soil and wind erosion, it’s better for the soil structure and it conserves moisture.
We thought you could only direct drill in sandy areas, not in our heavier soil types. But for the past 10 years we’ve been doing test strips—a little bit of a paddock was direct drilled and a little bit was cultivated—and the results made us feel more confident about direct drilling.
We’ve been fortunate enough to have the BCG (Birchip Cropping Group) main trials on our place for 2 years.
They did a direct-drilling trial where the crop grew just as well as where I had cultivated alongside. Until then I had said direct drilling didn’t work here. But when you see the trials on your own farm you can’t say: ‘Well, he can do that because he’s got good land’ or ‘It rains more in that area’.
This year we’ll direct drill about 70% of the total farm. It’s been slow progress but we hope that we can go to a 100% direct-drill situation over time.
At the moment we’re making do with the equipment we’ve got. We use a flexi-coil bar with 7” spacings and we’ve got 3” points on. We tow a coil packer behind but we don’t have any press wheels yet.
David discusses direct drilling
Retaining stubble, mulching and fallowing
We practice full stubble retention and minimal cultivation.
If we need to reduce the stubble load, which is rare because we haven’t had any big stubbles for about 8 or 10 years, we use stock and mulching.
We mow and chop the stubble into smaller pieces, about an inch or two long. At that size, the stubble can flow in between the tines much quicker and so we get a lot less blockages.
Fallowing is quite a good tool to use because it gives you a bank of moisture that you can use for the next year’s crop.
We try and leave a fine seal of mulch on the top so that not too much moisture evaporates.
In the past 5 years we’ve been predominantly chemical fallowing. Sometimes we’ve chemically fallowed then immediately mechanically fallowed.
Using weather forecasts and seasonal outlooks
I watch the Bureau of Meteorology 7-day forecasts religiously. I like to check what sort of rain or weather is coming in the next week.
We take some notice of the seasonal projections if they say it’s going to be extremely wet or extremely dry. But apart from that we just expect it to be about average.
I’ve got a theory that if you don’t like the weather forecast you’re hearing, just keep listening and someone will tell you one you want to hear!
Interview date: 20 May 2010
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