Kym Fromm
Region: Orroroo, South Australia
Commodity: Wheat and sheep
Farming area: 2050 hectares
Rainfall: 350 mm
Email: fromms@bigpond.com
Phone: 08 8658 1183
There are a lot of similarities between gambling and farming in a low-rainfall district. The worst thing that can happen to a gambler is if they have one big win and then they spend all those years trying to get that next big win.
See what Kym has to say about:
- Cereal cropping on Goyder’s Line in South Australia
- Shorter growing seasons as hot northerly winds and temperature increases
- No-till farming on erosive soils
- Going into ‘survival mode’ after a string of bad years
- Splitting rotations into three to reduce cropping and grazing risk
- Learning from other low-rainfall producers through networks
Cereal cropping on Goyder’s Line in South Australia
Orroroo is in the southern Flinders Ranges about 260 kilometres directly north of Adelaide. It’s where Goyder’s Line is, right on the edge of where agricultural country is considered to end and the pastoral country starts.
I live a mile south of Goyder’s Line.
Goyder, who was a surveyor general, marked out a change in the vegetation. He determined where the more reliable cropping country was and where, outside that, the pastoral country was.
In the past—especially when things are a bit tough, like now—that line really shows up. You can have stark differences in rainfall within a relatively short distance and see the changes in vegetation very easily.
Our farm area originally started down in Pekina, which is about 10 kilometres south of Orroroo. We have 566 hectares down there. We bought this property in 1977, and there are about 364 hectares here. Since then I’ve bought a pastoral property north of Orroroo in about 11-inch-rainfall country (280 mm) and another one over at Willowie, which is about 13-inch-country (330 mm). It’s about 2000 hectares all together, so we have a variety of country.
On our farm we grow mainly wheat and barley, because they are the only crops that we can make money out of. Being on Goyder’s Line, we’re very sensitive to any sort of climate-change scenario because that will have a big impact.
Shorter growing seasons as hot northerly winds and temperature increases
One of the things that we ask ourselves now is: ‘Is what’s happening to us the normal variation of climate, or is it climate change and something that we’re going to have to get used to?’
Because we’re on the edge of the pastoral country, any rise in temperature is very important to us because our growing season ends when the hot north winds come down from off the pastoral country. So if temperatures become 1 or 2°C hotter and we have more chance of those hot north winds ending our season, then that will be a worry.
In the past it’s generally been considered a reliable area—at one stage people used to say we’d never get 2 bad years in a row. Well, we’ve been getting 4 bad years in a row in the last 10 or 15 years. That’s really shaken a lot of people up.
There is talk about moving Goyder’s Line, and there are a few old guys around here who get very upset about that. They say ‘it’s always been there and it always stays there’. But I think the spirit of it is if we do have climate change, then Goyder’s Line—if you consider it to be where the edge of the cropping country is—could retreat south.
No-till farming on erosive soils
Because we’re in hilly terrain, we get erosion, and it would make sense not to cultivate our soil and go to a no-till system. I’ve been no-tilling with narrow points for about 7 or 8 years now. With our erosive country, I find that it is best. Before, we used to work the soil a couple of times before seeding.
Our area has an interesting history with soil erosion. Because we are at the bottom edge of the Lake Eyre basin, the water runs north out of the Pekina valley toward Orroroo. In the early 1900s the Pekina Reservoir was built just south of Orroroo, on Pekina Creek. The water was then piped to irrigation properties just north of Orroroo—where the soil was good, but the rainfall insufficient to grow reliable crops.
During World War II, farmers in the Pekina valley had a fallow/wheat rotation to maximise production, but drought and severe floods caused massive soil erosion. By the mid-1940s, half the capacity of the Pekina Reservoir was filled with silt!
A study was done in the early 1970s which showed that due to farmers changing their practices and incorporating more pasture and fewer fallows, the level of silt had only marginally increased. So on our hilly terrain, a minimum of tillage creates less erosion.
I noticed a very rapid improvement in soil structure within a few years when we were no-tilling. Because we have heavy red soils, they have a lower water-infiltration rate. So anything we can do to increase that infiltration rate and allow more water to soak into the ground, the better. I think that’s where no-till farming helps.
I know that each time you turn over your soil, you lose a certain amount of your soil moisture by evaporation, because it’s wet on top and then that water’s lost.
From a sustainability point of view, I’m sticking with the no-till because I can see that that system is more likely to succeed in the long run.
Going into ‘survival mode’ after a string of bad years
We’re very much in ‘survival mode’ at the moment. We had 4 bad years from 1996–99. 2000 was a really bad locust year. Any crops outside Goyder’s Line didn’t yield very well.
I had a 10-bag average for wheat, so that was good for me, and then 2001 was a fantastic year. We had good prices and good yields. So that got people back on kilter, but since then, 2002–04 were all droughts. 2005 was alright, but the grain price was terrible so no-one made any money. Then 2006–08 were droughts.
Last year, 2009, was looking really good and then we had record high temperatures in November.
The hot north winds came and that—as far as I’m aware—was the hottest November heatwave ever recorded. Then we had about 40 mm of rain straight after, and that downgraded the grain that was there. So we went from having the possibility of having 15-bag wheat crops to 9 bags of damaged grain.
We just can’t seem to crack that decent year, and cropping is an expensive prospect. I always said that if I could get a decent year I’d like to go back to a sheep-oriented, lower risk scenario where I can control my ground cover a lot better. But the good year never came, so I’ve got to keep rolling the dice with the cropping.
Splitting rotations into three to reduce cropping and grazing risk
The ‘holy grail’ of low-rainfall farming is to make the most of the good years and minimise the impact of the bad years.
I heard of a rotation where farmers had one-third their main crop, one-third pasture, and then one-third could be either pasture or crop.
So you’d sow it all and you might put your sheep on it. Then, if it looked it like being a good year, you’d take the sheep off and reap that third. That way at least you’ve got two-thirds for farming crop. If it’s a bad year, you’ve virtually got two-thirds pasture.
I like the flexibility of those sorts of rotations, and that’s what I’ve virtually got now. In a good year like last year I ended up producing a heap of barley.
You’re forever juggling risk. I think handling risk is probably the thing that I’ve learnt the most about over the years.
Learning from other low-rainfall producers through networks
When I was inaugural chairman of the Upper North Farming Systems Group, it struck me that we have a number of regions on the edge of the cropping country that are all dealing with exactly the same problems.
We link in with other low-rainfall groups like the Central West (with Condobolin), and then we’ve got the Mallee sustainable farming system, Birchip and Eyre Peninsula. All those groups every year get together and we coordinate our research.
It’s really good to be able to see low-rainfall farmers in other districts, and it’s amazing how many of the same things come up. But you can have different solutions. Seeing different research gives you a bit of enthusiasm to say, ‘Well, perhaps I could try this on my place.’
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Original interview date: June 2010; Updated August 2012