Profitable farming in South Australia using Hi-Tech equipment

Mark Branson

B. App. Sc (Agric), NSch

Hi. I’m Mark Branson a farmer from South Australia and I would like to thank the organizers of the 14th Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair.

The Branson Family Farm is 1200ha in size at Stockport in the Lower North of South Australia. Its annual rainfall is between 425mm and 525mm, which fall predominantly in the winter months. It operates under a dryland farming system with no irrigation available.

The family who I work with, are, my parents, my wife Nola who is here today, and a full time worker, I also have two boys, Sam (aged 9) and William (aged 7).

My farm is situated in South Australia. South Australia is a state situated in the South of Australia in the middle. Stockport is 80km to the north of the capital city, Adelaide, and is about an hour’s drive from the centre of Adelaide.

The history of the Branson farm.

• Stockport was first settled in the 1850s.
• Bransons first settled in the Barossa Valley in 1848, migrating from England.
• Bransons moved to the Alma Hills, where I farm today, in 1864.
• I am a 4^th generation farmer on our land.
• Settlement was on 36 ha blocks for cropping blocks and 200ha for grazing blocks.
• This was seen as a size large enough to run a family.

The home farm is “Clifton”. We own 790 ha in this block and the average rainfall is between 425 to 500mm.

The second farm is at “Giles Corner”. This farm is 12km from the home farm, and is 435ha in size, and the rainfall is between 500 to 525mm on average.

As you can see from the following rainfall chart, the green bars represent the average rainfall for Clifton and most of the rainfall falls from April to November. The red bars represent this year’s rainfall with an excellent early start to the year, but the months of August and September have been very dry months and at time of writing this paper, the crops were under severe moisture stress.

Eighty percent of the land goes to crops through a rotation system.

The crops that I grow are:

• Durum and Bread Wheat
• Malting Barley
• Canola
• Faba Beans
• Field Peas
• And Pasture Seeds.

Bread Wheat

       Bread wheat is a relatively easy and safe crop to grow, is widely adaptable to wet and dry seasons. Its market is mostly export based, but there is a small domestic market, which can put a floor in the market. Price risk management involves selling some crop forward using Chicago Board of Trade as a price setting mechanism, but selling most of the crop at harvest.

The Management of Bread Wheat

1. Summer    Spray summer weeds if they are present.
2. August             Spray Glyphosate one month prior to the expected sowing date.
3. May          Spray Paraquat, + Pre-Sowing herbicides on the day of sowing.
4. May          Sow crop around the 15^th May aiming for 180 plants per square meter +         a Phosphorus based fertilizer.
5. 3^rd to 5^th Leaf    Spray early broadleaf weeds.
6. 3^rd Leaf     Put out N Rich Strip, 150kg/ha of nitrogen is applied in small strips

across the paddocks.

7. GS 25              Apply 1^st Nitrogen if needed, according to the N Rich recommendation.
8. GS 31              Spray Plant Growth Regulator, Cycocel ?.
9. GS 32              Apply main Nitrogen, according to the N Rich Strip recommendation.
10. GS 32              Spray 2-4D amine plus 1^st fungicide if rust is present. The 2-4D amine is

sprayed to control later germinating broadleaf weeds, and to stop escaping weeds from the first spray setting seed.

11. GS 39              Apply last Nitrogen is the season and crop looks good. The rate is

determined by gut feel.

12. GS 49              Spray 2^nd fungicide if rust is present.
13. December  Harvest crop when grain moisture falls below 12%.
14. December  Deliver grain to local silo which is 30 minutes away.
15. December  Sell crop to either the Australian Wheat board, who holds the single

desk, or the highest domestic marketer.

Durum Wheat

Essentially the same management as for bread wheat but it requires higher rates of Nitrogen to achieve 13% protein in the grain. It is used for Pasta production, and we have a pasta manufacturer in South Australia, which puts a floor in the market. Durum is very susceptible to yielding poorly in droughts and is a risky crop to grow.

Malting Barley

Here is a very good crop of malting barley grown 3 years ago. It is the safest crop to grow, but requires close management to achieve the malting specification. Nitrogen management is a key with it being very easy to over-fertilize and push the protein in the grain too high which makes the grain fall into the feed grade at a reduced price.

Canola

As you can see canola when in full flower is a very spectacular crop. It is the first crop to be sown for it yields best when maturing in cool moist conditions. The way to achieve maximum yield in my area is to delay nitrogen inputs until flowering to stop the crop getting too big and bulky, and aim the nitrogen at flowering and seed maturity. Research has shown that the longer we can keep the leaves on the plant the higher the potential yield will be.

I use Clearfield herbicide tolerant hybrid varieties for the Clearfield system gives me the best options against weeds and it is some of the highest yielding varieties available. We don’t have access to GM technology as our governments have banned their use.

We windrow our canola when the majority of seeds have reached maturity. This is when 60% of the seeds in the pods have turned black, and the pods are leathery. Windrowing is cutting the crop and placing the crop in rows on the ground. This is done to protect the pods from shaking in high winds when the pods are dry and brittle.

Faba Beans

Faba beans are a grain legume, which means they set and store nitrogen in their roots. The seeds are harvested when they dry down to less than 14%. They are an excellent protein source and are mostly exported to Egypt.

They are very prone to leaf diseases and an extensive fungicide protection programme is undertaken from the first pod setting to maturity.

They are a slightly risky crop to grow as they do not like hot dry weather where crop failures can occur. This year is one of those years.

Field Peas

Field peas are a grain legume as well. They are a protein source as well, and are predominantly exported to India. There is also a strong domestic market where peas are a favored source of protein in animal feedstuffs.

Harvest is a little more difficult and needs a special front to pick up the vine and pods off of the ground into the harvester or combine.

They get a bad fungal disease called black spot and the main control is to space the crops at least six years apart.

They require less fungicide than Faba beans, and are a safer crop to grow, but profits are not as high as faba beans in good years.

Sheep run on clover and dual purpose cereal pasture on 20% of the farm area.

I run two enterprises, a “Self Replacing Merino Flock” and a “Prime Lamb Flock”. The sheep enterprise is an alternative to winter crops being very different in its management, especially on the herbicide resistant ryegrass. It helps me make money out of the herbicide resistant ryegrass.

The Self Replacing Merino Flock has 1000 breeding ewes producing wool at 20 microns as an adult.

The Prime lamb flock uses the Cast for Age sheep at 4.5 years old, which usually number 300, and they are put over a Poll Dorset Meat Ram to produce a first cross lamb. These lambs are sold directly to the supermarket when they reach 40kg liveweight. This usually occurs from 13 weeks to about 20 weeks. They are grown out on green feed straight off their mothers.

My farm runs on a yearly rotation system where crops and pastures are rotated annually to maximize profits, and to reduce the risk of crop and price failure by spreading the risk.

The typical rotation I adopt on my farm is as follows:

Pasture, Pasture, Pasture, Canola, Bread Wheat, Malting Barley, Faba Beans, Durum Wheat, Malting Barley, Peas, Bread Wheat, Malting Barley, and it depends upon what the herbicide resistant ryegrass is doing as to where the rotation goes from there.

Bread Wheat and Malting Barley are the most stable and profitable crops in the rotation and it are the aim of the rotation to maximize these two crops on my farm.

The rotation is affected by the following root diseases: Cereal Cyst Nematode (CCN), Rhizoctonia and Haydie. These root diseases need break crops to break the diseases and hence the grain legumes and Canola are in the rotation.

The rotation is affected by the following leaf diseases: Stripe Rust, Leaf Rust, Stem Rust, Yellow Leaf Spot, Septoria, Black Spot in Peas, Downy and Powdery Mildew in Peas, Ascochyta Blight in Beans and Chocolate Spot in Beans. Some of these diseases are controlled by fungicide, and others require a break of about 6 years before that crop should be grown again, this goes especially for the Pea and Faba Bean crops.

The Rotation is also used to control the herbicide resistant ryegrass where different management practices on each crop are able to control the ryegrass population. Different group herbicides are rotated throughout the rotation. The pasture phase in the rotation is essential in controlling the ryegrass for different management practices are used in this phase.

Precision Agriculture on our farm,

The Major Soil Types

1. Red Brown Earths.
1. Poor A Horizon, very good B Horizon.
2. Neutral pH to Acidic pH.
3. Can be Sodic, which requires Gypsum to be added to the soil to overcome the sodicity.
4. Grows ryegrass easily; is where the resistant ryegrass is a problem.

2. Self – Mulching Clays
1. Very good soil, good water holding capacity.
2. Very deep clay soil
3. Alkaline pH
4. Doesn’t give up water in dry years
5. Can be low in Phosphorus.

Undulating land – affecting water flow across the land.

Some Soil Constraints on my land

1.       Shallow Topsoils

2.       Rocky Outcrops

3.       Sodic Subsoils

4.       Boron in Subsoils

5.       Acidity.

My Farming System

No Till

       I have been using one pass sowing on and off for about 20 years, but in 2002 I purchased a seeding drill that allows No Till across the whole farm.

Controlled Traffic

       I have been utilising it on and off since 1997 but with the purchase on an accurate GPS system in 2004 I have set up pre-determined roadways across my fields which I drive on.

Precision Agriculture

       I have been yield mapping since 1997 and have used this information to Variable Rate Phosphorus for the last two years, as well as use the maps for other tools to improve my efficiencies.

Autosteer – Real-time Kinematic (RTK) 2cm Guidance.

       Since the purchase of the very accurate GPS, RTK network on my farm I have connected it to my main tractor and self propelled sprayer which autosteers it to 2cm accuracy from one year to the next on the predetermined lines in my fields. This is amazing technology.

Controlled Traffic – It’s about matching machinery operating widths.

I operate my controlled traffic system in undulating land, although other farmers have thought it too difficult to run a Controlled Traffic System in this landscape.

I first started by matching my spray tractor with my boomspray by adjusting my tractor wheel widths out to 2.2m in 1997 to spray fungicides in the beans.

Now I run a self propelled-sprayer, a Hardi 4100 Alpha Plus.

It is a 4 wheel drive, 4 wheel steer, high clearance sprayer.

It has a 39m aluminum boom.

It runs two computer controllers, one for the RTK Autosteer, autosection cutoff, which is electronic cutting off the boom sections when they cross a previously sprayed line, and the other controller to operate a Variable Rate Programme.

This sprayer is ideal