Case study: Gregor Knight
Location: ‘Golden Wattle’ Quambatook
Farming mix: 75% cropping, 25% sheep
A FARMING CAREER
I grew up on the family farm so I’ve been involved with farming since I was a child. After finishing school then completing a Bachelor of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne, I returned at the end of 2014 and started farming full time.
I farm with my dad, Malcolm, and my mum, Janet. We have an employee Mark and my sisters do casual work during the busy times.
Our farming mix is 75% cropping and 25% sheep. We grow wheat, barley, canola, vetch and have fallow too. We also breed first cross lambs with Border Leicester Rams over Merino ewes.
INSPIRATION
I am passionate about finding and exploring changes in our business that will improve our profitably. All farms have different enterprise mixes and business structures and I am keen to find our right balance between cropping and livestock. Both our cropping and livestock enterprises are profitable in their own right but they need different and sometimes opposing things including time and nutrients from our overall farming system.
Out in the field, I like trying ideas that might work even if conventional district practice would suggest it won’t. In 2016, we got a good sheep gross margin by grazing barley but our soil tests said we didn’t get the residual nitrogen benefits we were hoping for, like in our fallow or vetch This year we’ve been adjusting our cropping rotation slightly by,growing a pasture mix of barley and vetch during the break phase of the rotation. This will provide enough biomass for sheep feed (with the barley) as well as a nitrogen ‘kick’ to the subsequent crops through the vetch.
CHALLENGES
Timing is key in farming. Being able to manage time and be organised to have everything done on time is a constant challenge for us. We don’t struggle to get the bigger tasks done at key times like sowing and harvest, but it’s the little jobs that can get forgotten. To address this, we communicate among workers through a cloud-based app with a ‘to-do’ list that highlights those smaller jobs.
We’ve just got AgWorld, an integrated farming software up and running too, and it’s working well so far.
Climate variability is obviously a massive challenge too. The changes in rainfall, such as more summer rain means we have to adapt to long term changes.
NEW PRACTICES AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES
We have adopted electronic identification (eID) in our sheep and have installed an autodraft machine, all within the last five years. This allows us to individually trace animals and make more effective management decisions. We pregnancy test our ewes and separate them accordingly. If they haven’t lambed in the last two years we will cull them.
THE GAPP CONCEPT
The GAPP group is great because it allows a range of younger farmers, who are at different stages in their careers or succession, to meet and talk about similar problems and learn about new ideas. The informal nature of the meetings allows us to freely discuss and ask questions.
GAPP has given me different ideas on varying challenges in our business. Constantly questioning what you are doing keeps you moving forward.
Recently we had a talk from Julia Hausler, a farmer and former grain marketer, who was great because she had a range of experiences andskills, having worked within the grain industry before coming back to the farm.
FUTURE FARMING
I see farming continuing down the path of producing more from less, particularly in Australia where farm trends are changing to bigger farms and less reliable rainfall. Growers will continue to increase their knowledge of our soils and how to get the best out of them. Continual globalistation of commodities may lead to the Mallee growing more niche crops, like lentils, to capatalise onhigher prices.
I think we will see a demand for robots and autonomous vehicles as farming becomes more of a business and office job. It is hard to attract then retain staff so moving to robotics means less labour costs and more timely applications for farmers in the future.
