Be prepared, stick to what you know and have a balanced program – these were three messages aired at the annual Birchip Cropping Group Review Day at Birchip on Friday.
Highlight of the morning session was the farmer review of the 2017 season - “what was the learning?”
Sam Eastwood, Kaniva, crops about 1350 hectares mainly for grain and small percentage for hay.
Terry Kiley, Nandaly, farms aloong with two sons about 9000ha and has been continuous cropping for 15 years with 50:50 cereals and legumes.
Mr Eastwood said the challenge in his business, after a reasonable year in 2016, was shifting the rotation to 50 percent cereal with the balance lentils and canola.
Both the lentils and canola were “a risk” but provided a happy medium between risk and reward.
He said the 2017 season had been challenging, but his take home message was “be organised and prepared” to take advantage of spray windows in particular.
Mr Kiley said he believed in “sticking to what you know you can grow”. The rotation was 50:50 cereals and legumes after dropping canola from the program.
He said relating to the mice situation, farmers needed to “be on the ball”.
A one-stop weather shop
Providing the right information, when the farmer wanted it was the message from Jaclyn Brown, CSIRO.
Dr Brown said there was no one, single app currently available that did everything.
The aim of the project was to make sure the information was specific for grain growers.
Currently the message from farmers was that information was “too general” and often the information was forecasting what was not going to happen.
She said the new one stop shop would be just for the grower, providing information at a level of skill, or risk, that growers were willing to tolerate.
The system would need to develop a level of trust, or “believability” so growers could have confidence in the number and what the number actually meant – true and authentic information.
