Lots Happening!

It has been a busy couple of weeks, lots going on farm wise as well as attending the Nuffield spring tour held in Toowoomba this past weekend, in fact I have'nt made it home yet Iam in Townsville 150k's from home.I had the great privelage of representing my sponsor Sugar Research and Development Corporation to present the Nuffield Scholarship for the Sugarcae Industry for 2013, and it was awarded to a well deserving farmer from Oakenden near Mackay Joe Muscat.It was a great opportunitty to catch up with the guys from my year and watch them present there study findings, I will be presenting next September as I could not tour due to the Cane Harvest this year.I can not believe that we have not seen each other for almost a year , it seemed like it was only yesterday,even our old mate from Canada Crosby Devitt made the trip. It was a bit of a juggling act to get to the Nuffield tour as this s the busiest time for us on the farm,as well as Harvesting this years crop, we have applied some liquid fertiliser on the plant cane in he form of Liquid One Shot ( a by product of producing ethanol from molasses). Then we did a light zonal cultivation to incorporate it and also get rid of the new weeds that have emerged. Irrigation of ratoons has also commeneced,this is the first irrigation since harvet in July!this fact really highlights the combined benefits of the farming system that we have adopted, the soil because of our management now has the capacity to retain much more moisture.That is an important fact because water is our highest imput cost and obviously an important resource. I will end today with a quote from my mate Ray Vella. "Live life like you will die tommorrow but farm like you will farm forever"

Technology ?

We have finished the liquid fertiliser applicator, the fabrication was the easy bit! Technology is a fantastic thing when it works , and we now have it working but man what a pain it has been to understand how this system likes to work, it has very fine tolerances for error, and running two separate operations has seen some issues arise that have not been foreseen by programmers. This highlights a problem in Agriculture that being that the on ground end users are far removed from the actual programmers,and things that work fine in theory don't necessarily work in the field.However with persistence and patientence from all involved (and a few more GREY hairs)success!! On another note I gave my first presentation about my Nuffeild experience so far, it seemed to go Ok and people asked questions so I assume they enjoyed my story.Whilst preparing I went back through my notes and it seems like ages ago that I travelled, I came across something that a image consultant in London had said "80% of people are followers, 10% of people are optimists, 10% of people are pessimists" It made me think, where do you fit ?

Weed Control!!!!

This is one of the major reasons we try not to spring plant, weed control becomes very important with only short windows of opportunity to get on top of the population. Man the grass always seems to grow faster than cane, and we really have to make sure we get effective use from the chemicals applied. This is where the system my brother Terry installed really comes into it's own and coupled to the shielded spray unit allows us to use less expensive knock-down chemicals under the shields.This has two major advantages, firstly it reduces the use of residual herbicides that are more expensive, and drastically reduces the chance of off site impacts.For example we save 35% of the more expensive selective herbicide compared to using a conventional flat boom. Also using the GPS controlled system we are able to spray at two different rates with two different chemicals in one operation. It also has the benefit of precise control of where, and the amount applied, for example : if the tractor speed slows towards the end of the rows the system still applies the correct litres of spray per Hectare, and the spray system will only spray within the boundary of the field automatically turning off as it cross the field boundary. Cool stuff !!