Ash Teasdale is a sixth generation farmer. He farms with his father Peter and brother Brad at Rupanyup. A member of the Rupanyup GAPP young farmer’s group, Ash has embraced technology and is always seeking new ways to improve production, profitability and the sustainability of the family farm.
A farming career
My brother and I are sixth generation farmers. It wasn’t hard to get involved in farming. From a young age I was always interested in what was going on. I guess that’s where my passion for cropping began.
After school, I attended Longerenong Agricultural College and attained an Advanced Diploma of Agriculture and a Diploma of Agronomy. After finishing my study, I returned home. Apart from six months in Canada, I’ve been here ever since.
Passion
I just love watching crops grow. I like that we grow a product from scratch. We are the foundation of an entire industry and for the most part by we do it by ourselves.
I get satisfaction from trying to improve efficiencies and inspiration from the rate at which new technologies are developing, particularly in the grains industry.
Essentially, we croppers are just big kids. We still get excited about new toys, although they are worth a lot more now!
I’m passionate about farming because there are a lot of opportunities ahead. Population growth means there are going to be more mouths to feed and, with the right tools, we’re in a prime position to do that.
Challenges
A massive challenge we face is the perception of farming outside of the industry. Some people in the city are now two or three generations away from even seeing a farm. There are also more people who oppose some of the things we do as broadacre farmers. They are skilled at spreading their beliefs and engaging with urban people.
I also find it challenging to maintain good agronomic practices in poorer seasons. There is pressure to salvage as much as possible from a drought, even when that may have longer term costs.
We’re trying to set our farm up to focus on growing something in the dry years, which is already making a difference. We had similar seasons to the last couple in the early 2000’s and we’ve got a lot better at producing grain in low rainfall years.
The GAPP concept
The GAPP concept is fantastic. Any opportunity to get together with your peers is always beneficial. Focusing on younger people in ag is great. It allows younger people to open up and ask honest questions that they might be more reluctant to ask when more experienced farmers are present.
New technologies
Since I’ve been farming, technology has come a long way. It started with two centimetre accurate RTK steering, which was a game changer as far as inter-row sowing our legumes.
Modern machinery has allowed us to direct drill. There has been a huge leap forward in conserving moisture in dryer years because of this.
We’ve been keeping yield maps since 2002 but are only now starting to use them. Our new seeder is variable rate (VR) ready. This year, we are looking at applying a replacement rate of phosphorous (P) fertiliser and we have the ability to vary the nitrogen (N) we apply during the year.
VR is difficult to implement in our area. Most of our inputs are in the ground before we know what the season holds. In our soils the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts of the paddocks seem to change every second year.
One of the best new technologies we use is social media. We are more connected and are able to learn from what other farmers are doing across the world. I can see new spraying or harvesting machinery in North America or Eastern Europe while I’m on the tractor sowing in Rupanyup.
Practice change
Since leaving school, a lot has changed on our farm. When I was finishing Year 12, we began no-till farming and introduced RTK steering to inter-row sow. Since then we have moved to controlled traffic farming (CTF), which was a longer transition.
We’ve been continuous cropping for 10 years, now with a focus on maintaining ground cover and crop residue to preserve moisture.
More recently we have trialled disc seeding and tracked machinery to reduce soil disturbance and the effect of heavy machinery on the soil.
We’ve moved to using a liquid fertiliser system on our seeder. This has resulted in better establishment after more marginal breaks.
The future
I predict we’ll see bigger farms, more automation, more monitoring of crops on a much larger scale and more ways to measure performance. This will create a lot of data.
Farming will involve more time in front of a computer or tablet, and, unfortunately, less time in the paddocks. But we need to be more efficient at what we do to be sustainable.
What will revolutionise the ag industry in the future?
Automation and ‘driverless’ technology will change what it means to be a farmer. However, I think a better understanding of soil biology has potential to revolutionise grain production.
Being able to maintain and improve our soils and crops with limited rain will be the challenge.
