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2020 Vision Industry Tour to South Australia

BCG’s 2020 Vision

In 1998 BCG formed the 2020 Vision group to provide social, educational and motivational support to young farmers (18 to 35 years) across the Mallee-Wimmera region. The aim of the group is to provide participants with opportunties to discuss the future of agricultural and regional development, expose young farmers to some of the relevant issues pertaining to agriculture and regional development via guest speakers and study tours, and bring together young farmers from across regional Victoria who share similar interests and concerns in a forum that encourages and motivates them to stay passionate about agriculture and work together to build rural communities. This group over the last four years has initiated the highly successul "Who's the Boss" and "Who's the Boss now?" succession planning series and a comedy debate “That Farming is better than Sex”.

Thank-you to GRDC for providing the funding to support the 2008, 2020 Vision Industry Trip to South Australia. The significant amount of financial assistance provided by GRDC was used to cover the cost of travel, accomodation and meals.

2008 Participants List:
Claire Browne – BCG tour leader
Mick Brady – Agronomic consultant in Ouyen
Rachel Boyle – Agribusiness representative in Swan Hill – Rabobank
Josh Pearse – Farmer from Donald
Lee Lanyon – Farmer from Boort
Karl Hooke – Farmer from Serpentine
Lynk McClelland – Farm Manager at Culgoa and Advisory Committee Member
Adam Roll – Farmer from Rainbow

The following comments have been compiled from notes taken during the BCG Study Tour to South Australia in August 2008.

The group ready to board the plane L-R: Rachel Boyle, Adam Roll, Josh Pearse, Mick Brady, Lee Lanyon, Lynk McClelland, Karl Hooke, and Claire Browne.  

Summary
What were your key learning’s from the week?

•  Cell grazing can stock 4000 DSE on arable land
•  Must keep ryegrass resistance to an absolute minimum
•  Deep ripping could be an option to improve soil structure
•  Fishing is great fun
•  How they are improving their soils at Kimba by delving for lighter soils
•  Peaola is a great idea where canola and Kaspa peas are planted together in the one paddock. This enables the peas to stay upright by growing up the canola stem.
•  Better understanding of beer making
•  How tuna farming occurs
•  New varieties were very interesting such as Axe – a short season wheat that could be a good risk management wheat in years, that have an early finish like 2007
•  That you can crop a paddock to health
•  Learnt about non-wetting sands
•  Inspirational week
•  Grain marketing is difficult as they are located eight hours from Adelaide and ABB owns all the silos in the area
•  Although Port Lincoln has great yields, they also have high input costs due to the amount of fertiliser required to replace lost nitrogen and phosphorus
•  The best rotation at Kimba is wheat, after wheat, after wheat
•  That it is great to talk to other farmers from other regions to discover what they are doing

An idea/concept that you may apply to your own farm

•  Trials on farm such as growing different varieties
•  Consider cell grazing on unproductive cropping land
•  Be proactive and start implementing strategies to avoid herbicide resistance and soil constraints
•  Axe wheat in more marginal country in the NSW Riverina as it would only need two decent rain events and would still provide a yield
• Reassess the role of livestock on my farm

An idea/concept that we could apply at BCG

•  The Minnipa Agricultural Centre had a trial where a paddock was separated into different sections with the owners of each section (Farmers, researchers, agronomists and district practice) competing against each other. It is a competition to see who could make the most money and creates a really good talking point. BCG already has the Flexible Farming System site which is similar but on a much larger scale comparing farming systems.
•  A pasture cropping trial which BCG will be conducting in 2009
•  More sheep trials

Itinerary
Sunday 24^th August
- Meet at Birchip Airfield and board charter plane
- Land in Adelaide
- Have tea and stay the night in Adelaide

Monday 25^th August
- Waite Institute to visit:
- Australian Centre Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG)
- Sean Mason (phosphorus testing)
- Dr Allan Mackay (Root Disease Testing)
- Travel to Coopers Brewery for a guided tour
- Catch plane to Port Lincoln and stay the night

Tuesday 26^th August
- Catch a charter boat to go fishing and see tuna being harvested
- Farm visits with the Lower Eyre Agricultural Development Association (LEADA)
- Stay the night in Port Lincoln

Wednesday 27^th August
- Catch plane to Kimba
- Meet Leigh Fitzpatrick – the president of the Buckleboo Farm Improvement Group (BFIG)
- Farm Visits around Kimba and Buckleboo

Thursday 28^th August
- Fly to Wudinna
- Drive to Minnipa Agricultural Centre (MAC) and visit various trial sites

Friday 29^th August
- Fly home

Australian Centre Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG)
Monday 25^th August - Adelaide
Claire Browne
The ACPFG is working to improve the resistance of wheat and barley to hostile environmental conditions, using functional genomics technologies. Currently they are focusing on stresses that impact agriculture in Australia, including drought, salinity, high or low temperatures and mineral deficiencies or toxicities. These stresses, known as abiotic stresses, are a major cause of cereal crop yield and quality loss throughout the world.

Besides trying to identify drought tolerance traits for a number of different crop species, the scientists at ACPFG are attempting to map the Barley Genome. Once the genes have been identified, they can then be passed on to the breeders who will produce new crop varieties. 10-15% of the Barley genome should be released by the middle of next year however it will be five to ten years before this information is available to farmers.

Sean Mason - P Testing
Monday 25^th August – Adelaide
Claire Browne
Sean highlighted the fact that it is important to continue conducting soil tests regularly so as to have a good understanding of what is occurring in each paddock. A control strip in a paddock while sowing (turning off the fertiliser for a run) is well worth doing, as the results from these strips will help to validate the DGT test. The DGT test is a new test being developed by Sean with GRDC support for Phosphorus testing which has a different sampling technique, and will hopefully be available to farmers for the 2010 growing season. Generally in the Wimmera/Mallee region the Phosphorous levels are quite good. www.fluidfertilisers.com.au is a good site which has a cost comparison calculator for different fertiliser products.

Dr Allan McKay – Root Disease Testing
Monday 25^th August – Adelaide
Claire Browne

Dr. Allan emphasised the importance of using the predicta B tests, which extracts DNA from a soil sample and predicts the disease risk for that paddock for particular soil root diseases. It is important as farmers to use the strategies available to minimise root diseases such as altering time of sowing, steering away from cereals (try pea and canola in the rotation). New developments in farming systems, such as no-till farming are helping to decrease the level of Rhizoctonia risk. The retail price of the test is around $230. Although this is expensive per paddock it isn’t necessary every year. Recently disease has not been a huge problem in Australia due to the run of dry seasons. Dr. Allan also warned us to beware of new cereal varieties without CCN resistance because it is expensive to put the trait in and test for it.

Above: Dr Allan Mackay talking to the eager group about  the glasshouse trials

Coopers Brewery
Monday 25^th August
Mick Brady
Monday afternoon the 2020 Vision Industry group visited Cooper’s brewery in Adelaide which was a very informative guided tour. The group toured through the whole brewing process from the unloading of the grain into the silo, the making of the malt, the brewing process and to the bottling of the product. Coopers is unique in the fact that they produce Conditioned Ales, Lagers, Home Brew and Malt Extract all out of the one brewery. At the end of the tour, the group was invited to taste some of the fine products of Cooper’s brewery. There were some nice tasting ales, stouts and draughts but there were also beers that wouldn’t be tried again in a hurry.

The key message from the tour was that the specific specifications at the silo influence the quality of the beer. Many farmers are aware of how to achieve malt barley but now our group is also aware of why those specifications are so particular. For instance, the number of dark tipped grains will alter the colour of the beer. Essentially, consumption needs to continue to increase which therefore will increase the demand for malt barley, which ultimately will benefit farmers.

Storyboard from Coopers explaining the brewing process

Charter Boat - Fishing Trip
Tuesday 26^th August – Port Lincoln
Adam Roll
Having arrived in Port Lincoln on Monday evening, we were given a taste of the harbour view, staying at the Marina Hotel on the foreshore. Early Tuesday morning, everyone was eager to take to the water.

The group was split into two groups and boarded two fishing boats to travel some 40kms out to sea to drop a line. On the way out to the fishing spot, we were taken to see tuna harvesting at an ocean tuna farm. This was very interesting as we were fortunate to see the tuna being herded into a small area and hauled aboard a boat by two divers who steered the tuna one by one to the boat. The tuna were between one and two metres in length. The tuna ring farm held approximately 1500 tuna. They have been fed a pellet mix that is air blasted out over the ring twice a day. Once aboard, the tuna were quickly and humanely killed and bled before being taken ashore for processing.

Above: Tuna harvesting boat at Port Lincoln Left: The group waiting for their charter boat to arrive.  L to R:- Adam, Lynk, Rachel, Mick, Lee, Karl and Josh

Following this, we continued out to try some fishing. A few good size whiting were landed, but due to the dodge tide, the fishing was generally very quiet. We returned to shore at 12.30 after a most enjoyable morning’s boating.

Lower Eyre Agricultural Development Association (LEADA)
Farm Visits
Tuesday 26^th August – Port Lincoln
Rachel Boyle

David Gidding’s Farm

• David’s farm is North West of Port Lincoln, near the town of Cummins.
• The soil has an Acidic Ph of 4.2, and of CaCl: 5.0
• The average rainfall is 450 mm which normally falls in the growing season. So far this year they have had 11 inches
• David uses 40 units of N with Sulphate Ammonia, depending on the year and rainfall.
• Land worth around $2,000 - $3,000 an acre
• David is in the process of delving his soil which he believes is worthwhile as delving helps to hold the moisture and is a better top soil for the plants to grow in. It costs around $60/ha and he can achieve roughly one acre an hour depending on the soil type
• The soils around Cummins are sand over clay therefore they have a high amount of leaching, resulting in the soils being low in nutrients and therefore their input costs can be quite high as they have to constantly apply fertiliser
• David currently uses Knockdown, Treflan, Round-Up and Dual 2L, then sows straight away
• The majority of his farm is broad-acre cropping however David has intensified his sheep numbers by moving into cell grazing in the last few years
• David has set up a Cell grazing unit on 600 acres of his arable semi-saline land, that he was unable to crop. He can now run 4000 sheep DSE on 600 acres. David has set up 25 paddocks (15ha each) and moves the sheep every 2 days. He has a 3 wire electric fence and trough in-between each cell
• This highlights the fact that there is profit to be made in an area which was potentially not very productive to producing cereals
  

  The total cost of the cell grazing unit is around $1,600 to set up the system which includes all fencing wire, droppers, troughs and poly David says Phalaris is the best sheep feed but it runs out by the summer and then you use the sub clover and ryegrass He finds the cell grazing reduces weeds and he has no problems with worms because the sheep are always being moved onto new fresh grass and you end up with feed all the time

  Above: Karl & Josh inspecting canola at Cummins

• David sells his sheep to the Dublin (near Adelaide) sale and makes about $78 average per lamb
• The adoption of no-till farming in this area has really turned the country around, and been good for disease control
• The acidic non-wetting sands means that they do not do any dry sowing, instead opting to wait for an opening break. Clay is spread in this area to help the soil wet up quicker.
• Most of their profit is derived from wheat as barley is not as good in a wet year and as he can’t grow malt barley anyway he considers it a waste of his time. However in the last couple of years they have included a bit more Barley in their rotations
• David’s current cropping cycle consists of Canola, Wheat, and Lupins. Canola is a good break crop for Wheat, and cleans up a lot of disease while increasing subsequent wheat yields
• David is waiting for Round-Up ready Canola to be available in SA. Currently he can produce 2 -3 t/ha of canola and expects it may improve with Round-Up ready canola
• David likes to use Sulphate Ammonia because it is cheaper and it has around the same amount of ammonia as urea by the time urea has been moved around and transported, it leaches through the soil and volatilises into the atmosphere
• David can get Sulphate Ammonia for $220/t landed in Port Lincoln and there is a Gypsum pit 55kms away that he can get for $16/t
• One basin supply’s the whole Eyre Peninsular with their water. Could be a problem if there more constant dry years.

Jordan & Randall Wilksch’s Farm

• The Wilksch’s Farm is just north of Cummins. They have recently increased their property by purchasing a large amount of land
• 400mm of rainfall on average
• Their soil type is an alkaline soil with a ph of 8.5. They also have a heavy clay soil, with a sandy top soil
• The majority of their crops are on 12 inch row spacing, with a high seeding rate converting into over 200 plants per square meter. They average 3t for wheat and last year averaged just over 1 tonne and lost money. They have to make more than a tonne to cover their cropping expenses
• They want to get debt down for the future - were chasing yields 5t/ha now with limited financial capital they are targeting 3t/ha.
• Crop Rotation includes - Wheat, Canola, Malt barley, feed barley, and a pulse.
  
  
  Cummins - Jordan & Randall Wilksch's property - inspecting their wheat crop that was just coming out in head (front centre - Kieran Wauchope, LEADA)

• Their cost of production is around $250/ha
• Use Urea in the Granule form not UAN which costs around $1250 - $4000/ha.
• They also lease a lot of land for $100 - $150 /ha
• Spent $30,000 on a new spreader with a 33ft boom spray and is currently just throwing out snail bait.
• 12 month old Case IH Header, worth around $400,000
• 18 month old Case IH Tractor worth around $300,000
• They have been continuously cropping for at 48 years and direct drilling for at least 30 years
• A possible option for these farmers would be cutting for hay or using a chaff cart, but due to current management and succession planning issues this is not an option. It is very important that we learn from this so that we have the ability to avoid this happening in the future
• They have no livestock, and got out of sheep in 1985. They have nearly finished pulling all their fences down to increase their cropping efficiency and have stored the wire in the shearing shed.
• One particular paddock is having a large ryegrass problem so this year the paddock is being cropped to Lupins and has been sprayed with Select at 1L/ha. However this has had no effect upon the ryegrass
• They also have a major problem with snails as they like the alkaline soil
• They also wish to investigate Variable rating of P, Control traffic and looking at liquid fertiliser but equipment not set up for it.
• Jordon is an innovator and his get rich quick scheme was planting Pomegranates down a row near the driveway to see how they will go.

Buckleboo Farmer Improvement Group (BFIG)
Wednesday 27^th August - Kimba
Lynk McClelland and Karl Hooke

• The area has an average soil pH of 6 – 8.5
• 13 inch average rainfall with many soil types, deep sands, red loams, grey flats, lime rises and non wetting sands surrounding the Kimba area.
• Soils have high P tie up due to the sand over clay so relatively high P input each year, (60-70kg 32:9 or less N each year after poor crops).
• Frosts are a major issue, and farmers can expect to loose a minimum of at least 200 acres/year but it can get up to 1500 acres.
• Using Lexone on wheat up to 180g/ha
• 100L/ha of water used with Midas proves to be the most successful
• Favourite wheat produced in Kimba is Wyalkatchem, some Westonia, Gladius, Axe and Yitpi
• There is no favourite Barely and not much is grown in the Kimba area however the little bit of area sown to barley consists of Mundah, Maritime, Sloop SA and Fleet
• Few Canola and Peas are grown due to the risk of frost
• Kimba farmers are focused on a continuous wheat rotation until weeds such as ryegrass, brome and barely grass pose a big problem. Once this occurs, Clearfield stiletto is planted and used tidy up the paddock.
• There is a limited number of sheep in the area and hardly any chemical fallow
• CCN doesn’t appear to be a problem with continuous susceptible varieties
• The local farmers believe it is possible to crop a paddock back to health
• The new wheat variety, Axe, is a 90 day wheat which maybe a good option in dry finishes as it is a short season wheat.
• Currently trialling Peaoala (Kaspa 80kg/ha and Canola 2kg/ha mix) however peas appear to be too thick. Will now be some harvest ability issues with the peas. It would be great to trial with TT Canola as this would enable control of the broad leaf weeds

Above: Inspecting the Peaola crop - a mixture of canola and peas

There was a paddock of wheat where the crop was a mix of Clearfield STL and Wyalkatchem. This was a mistake made at sowing as the grower had left some wheat in the bottom of the silo and forgotten about it. It had been sprayed with Midas 3 months ago and the Midas had almost killed all/if not slowed to a crawl the Wyalkatchem (as you would expect).

The Mundah Barley we visited was very impressive. The owners reported that it is a very early spring feed variety, very hardy, with big/plump grain, thrashes well and always seems to yield well. It was sown at 65kg/ha with 42 kg/ha of dap/ammonium sulphate blend. It would be great to trial Mundah barley in our area.

Another paddock that we visited had been delved and it was remarkable how much it had improved the soil structure by bringing the clay to the top. However it is a very costly exercise, costing $60 an acre which is then followed up with two passes with a roller and two workings. However once it has been completed, it lasts forever. Regardless, the group was glad that we don’t need to do it! After viewing this, we journeyed to some of their trial sites which all looked good and were interesting. At all trial sites, the short season, early maturing wheat variety called Axe looked very impressive and appeared to be the clear leader if the season should shut down early as it did in 2007. A member from the group believes “Axe could be used as a good risk management variety. Sowing 30% of your wheat crop as Axe would guarantee a better harvest in years like 2007.”

A major problem posed for the farmers in the Kimba region, is a competitive grain market as they are located eight hours from Adelaide and ABB owns all the silos in the region.

Near the end of the day, the group visited a farmer’s machinery shed and sowing equipment which included a cart that travels behind the header to collect any rye grass or foreign seeds. The farmer will then pile this into a heap and burn it all in an attempt to minimise rye grass resistance. We then looked at the groups sowing implement for their trial work which was very impressive.

Minnipa Agricultural Centre (MAC)
Thursday 28^th August - Minnipa
Lee Lanyon

In the recent drier years, MAC has been looking into responsive farming methods, so as to maintain a profit level. The lighter sandy loam has proven to be beneficial in the dry years. The soils are highly calcareous with similar subsoil constraints to the Birchip area, with Boron and Salt being a problem.

Early sown crops in this area are surviving well and proving that it is worth getting the crops in early.

After lunch we were taken out to look at some trials that the Ag centre had set up to test row spacing - 12’ to 24’ taking the tine out, leaving it in and not sowing with it. So far the best looking trial was the one sown with 12’ row spacing with every second tine disconnected from the seeder. The result seemed to be that there was more stored moisture for the crop. This may have been helped by a press wheel.

There was a trial comparing sowing direction (east west and north south). Half the trials were either on standing stubble or the stubble had been burnt. Looking at the crops at this stage the standing stubble was doing a lot better.

The Minnipa Farming Systems Competition has four paddocks that are run by four different groups. They are local farmers, the Minnipa researchers, agronomists from Adelaide and the other paddock is district practice. There is a lot of competition between all the different groups. It is similar to the BCG Flexible Farming Systems site but on a much smaller scale.

The pea and canola trials were a failure because of the lack of rain. They have a NVT (National Variety Trial) of wheat and barley. In the wheat the most impressive variety there at that stage was Axe - it’s a short season variety that was mentioned earlier. This may be the variety of the future. Of the barley varieties, Hindmarsh stood out, looking a lot more impressive than Sloop or Sloop Vic. They are hoping that it will go malt.

They were doing a trial on crop recovery after grazing. There were two crops sown next to each other - barley and canola. The canola wasn’t looking very good even where the sheep haven’t been. So far it’s just not the year for it over there. The barley on the other hand has recovered well, where the sheep have been removed and it will be interesting to see final paddock yields.

It was interesting to look at some lambs that have been mulesed with clips. I had never seen lambs like this before and from what the farm manager said then it is probably a good thing if I never do. The clips in the trial didn’t work and they would either fall off too soon or wouldn’t fall of at all. As a result the lamb were getting fly struck which ultimately was defeating the purpose of the clips. They did recommend the use of pain relief as it heals up the wound from mulesing much sooner and also aids the lamb’s subsequent growth rate.

The lookout from the top of MAC's farm.  L to R:- Josh, Karl, Lee, Mick and Lynk