Peter Holding
Region: ‘Sunnyside’, Harden, south-east New South Wales
Commodity: Wheat, canola, legumes, merino sheep, lambs
Farming area: 600 hectares
Rainfall: 200–600 mm per year
Email: peter.holding@bigpond.com
Phone: 02 6386 2020, 0409 049 477
When I think about our successes in climate-related decisions, I think there is no silver bullet. I think the way forward is to keep trying new practices, keep your eyes open, look at all the research and have a go.
See what Peter has to say about:
- Drier winters and springs
- From waterlogged to water-limited
- Minimising inputs and cutting tractor time
- Integrating sheep and crops to give flexibility
- Using rotations to manage climate change
- Monitoring soil moisture
- Budgeting based on forecast rainfall and temperature
- Managing heatwaves
- Direct drilling, cell grazing and stubble retention
- Using weather forecasts
Drier winters and springs
We run a mixed cropping and merino-sheep operation. We crop wheat, canola and legumes (faba beans and broadleaf lupins at the moment). Our sheep are a self-replacing merino flock and we also produce White Suffolk x merino lambs.
Our farm size is average to small. Most people in our region crop about 30–60% of their farms and run livestock.
There’s no irrigation here – we rely on rainfall. We have a bore, good dams and access to the town-water supply if worst comes to worst.
This is south-west slopes country. Normally we have a mild spring, but winters are cold and we get a lot of frosts.
I think climate change is affecting this region and, unfortunately, we’ve had a drought on top of that. We’re definitely seeing climate change in the form of drier winters and springs, and generally more extreme weather.
Rainfall used to be spread evenly throughout the year but in the last 8 years (2003–10), the consistency has disappeared. It’s become drier in winter and spring and we’ve only had 200 mm of rain instead of 600 mm. The wettest months now are usually January and July.
I think climate change is an issue and farmers are starting to seriously think about it. There will be major challenges with food production if we don’t start managing it early enough.
The reason we need to start now is because it takes time to make changes. It has taken us 20 years to refine our management techniques and practices such as direct drilling and stubble retention.
What we can do is help speed up people’s search for information on how to manage climate change in their area. For example, the Climate Kelpie website will explain terms and lead you to more information about what other farmers are doing to manage their farms in a changing climate. Then you can make up your own mind about it.
From waterlogged to water-limited
We used to be a high rainfall, high cost, high input area, but that’s changed in the 30 or 40 years that I’ve been farming.
10 years ago, waterlogging was the biggest issue in winter. But 8 years of drought has made us realise that water is the limiting factor here.
My farming philosophy now is based around being low cost, flexible and integrated.
Minimising inputs and cutting tractor time
We’ve cut our inputs by working out how much nutrient we have to put back into the soil.
If we grow a tonne of wheat, we have to replace 3 kilograms of nitrogen. In the last couple of years we’ve grown 3 tonnes of wheat, so we put 9 kilograms of nitrogen back into the ground (per hectare). Doing that has lowered our costs a lot.
Direct drilling has cut out about 80% of the time we used to be on the tractor in the paddocks. Now we run over the paddocks with the harrow bar to knock the straw down. Spending a lot less time on the tractor cuts our costs too.
Integrating sheep and crops to give flexibility
To remain flexible we try to integrate our sheep and our cropping enterprises. That means we grow a lot of grazing cereals, wheat and canola. And, because half our wheat is grazing wheat, if I need to I can take the sheep off the pastures and put them on that wheat.
A lot of people are getting rid of their stock at the moment, but I think it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket with cropping. You still need to be flexible.
For example, we class some of our merinos into a ‘top’ mob which we join to merinos for replacements, and some into a ‘bottom’ mob which we use for meat production. This allows us to quickly reduce our sheep numbers if the season requires it.
It’s now hard to say what is sheep country and what is cropping country, because of how integrated we are. We try to use as much grain as we can in the feedlot and take the lambs off the pastures early.
We’re also trying to insulate ourselves from climate changes by building an indoor lamb feedlot.
As our climate changes here, we’ll have hotter summers – over 35-degree heat. And even though our winters are generally getting drier, in our wet month of July, it will still be too wet and miserable to feed 300 lambs outdoors. The lambs stop eating when either of those things happen, so an indoor feedlot will be useful in both winter and summer.
Using rotations to manage climate change
We’ve moved our sowing times back a bit to account for the climate change we’re seeing here.
We have a fairly detailed rotation and try to stick to it as much as the climate allows. It also helps us to control disease.
We grow a cereal, canola and a legume in rotation, usually over a 5- to 7-year cycle, followed by the same number of years of pasture. We adjust our rotations according to climate and nutrient factors.
Monitoring soil moisture
We have soil moisture meters to tell us exactly what’s going on in the ground. The spear method of testing doesn’t tell us how much moisture there is, which is why we use the soil moisture meters.
They tell us how much moisture is used per day, and that helps us decide later in the season whether it’s worthwhile putting nitrogen on, for example.
Budgeting based on forecast rainfall and temperature
Seasonal outlooks can give us a realistic view of what our production ought to be for a season. I’ve found that about half of our yield is determined by the rainfall we get. Once I have a realistic idea of a normal year’s production, I build budgets around that approximate return for the season that’s predicted.
In our case, with careful summer chemical fallowing and reasonable summer rainfall we can have a full soil-moisture profile at sowing time. Having that can almost guarantee us a 2.5 to 3-tonne wheat yield. These higher yields are very much reliant on the in-crop rainfall, especially in spring.
So, we budget for a yield of about 3 tonnes and add nitrogen as the crop develops. It’s important for us to keep an eye on seasonal forecasts for the spring—especially for temperature—because that largely determines the final result.
Managing heatwaves
Heatwaves in the late spring here over-ripen our crops. The heat stress shortens the growing season and severely impacts our yield.
We try to manage it by bringing our cropping program forward about 10 days. This could increase our frost risk, but it’s the lesser of two evils. Frosts don’t worry us as much because they can reduce the number of pest insects.
Direct drilling, cell grazing and stubble retention
When I think about our successes in climate-related decisions, I think there is no silver bullet. We’ve tried a lot of things. Some have worked and a lot of things have failed. Nothing has failed catastrophically yet, so we’re still here.
The biggest changes we’ve made are direct drilling with long points, using press wheels and trying to retain crop stubble.
Time-controlled grazing of sheep (or cell grazing) has been a benefit. That’s where we graze paddocks with big mobs for short periods and then let them rest for long periods. It has required some serious management changes.
We’ve still got issues with seed placement and with blockages caused by very heavy stubbles. For instance, we can handle a stubble residue of below 3 tonnes per hectare, but usually end up having 8–10 tonnes per hectare.
The sheep and the stubble harrows help reduce the stubble to a manageable level but we are still having trouble. I don’t like burning it – we need all the stubble we can get to improve the soil.
I think the way forward is to keep trying new practices, keep your eyes open, look at all the research and have a go. If we sit back and wait for the answer to be found, we’ll be well and truly buried by the time that happens.
Most farmers today are experimenting with better systems to some degree. Being involved in farming groups allows me to learn new ideas from all the other farmers.
Using weather forecasts
We use a lot of weather-forecasting tools.
The Bureau of Meteorology is pretty accurate with its 4-day forecasts now. We look at the radar when we’re harvesting – it tells us within half an hour if it’s going to rain here.
I always look at the Bureau’s 6-day forecast.
And I look at the Indian Ocean dipole outlook. BoM has released a new Indian Ocean Dipole webpage that has helped me understand how it works. That’s important to me because most of our good winter and spring rain comes across from Broome.
There are a lot of weather tools now that weren’t available 20 years ago. The most useful forecasting tool I’m looking forward to is an idea of seasonal temperatures 3 months in advance, especially the number of days we can expect over 28 degrees.
Interview date: 22 July 2010
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