Pats on the Back don't pay the Bills.

Wow November already, only 12 harvesting days left of this years harvest.So what's been happening, well we have just harvested our intercropping trial and the results where as I expected, not overly fantastic yield wise,however the soy's didn't really get much of a chance. Still have to see what went on below ground though, still awaiting those results. Our chopper drum trials after some initial results look very promising showing a significant reduction of juice loss during the process of cutting, more results are in the pipeline. Had numerous visitors to our farm to look at the farming system that we have adopted, we had a Brazilian miller who had 4 million tonnes, who brought a professor from his local university to look at farming systems for him to take back and implement on his farms in Brasil.Also had a couple from Zimbabwe visit for the same purpose, they are looking at developing 40,000 Ha of land into sugar cane for ethanol production, so they are wanting to have a low input sustainable farming system. The most interesting visitors though were brought up here by Wilmar Sugar, these girls worked for an international independent environmental accreditation company called "Proforrest".These guys have been commissioned by Nestle to see how the sugar they source, is produced on sugar cane farms,they are looking at environmentally sustainable farming practices amongst other things. Wilmar has seen the value in marketing the clean,green,aspect of the sugar that they produce from people like me.However they can only say that due to the investment ,both in dollar terms, and man ours, that we have put into our farming system. I asked these guys where is the value for me , where is the recognition that they( Wilmar ) can say look we meet certain standards that people like Nestle are looking for,and how does the value if any flow back to the farmer, that made it all possible? These girls were great ,and only doing there job, and were very complementary on our farming practices and the work we have done to get there, however, " Pats on the Back don't Pay the Bills"

Full Circle..

It's been a while since my last post, I have been busy however that has not really been the issue, I have been wondering why I am doing what I am doing and is there a future here for me in Dalbeg?Couple of years ago was not even a question that entered my mind, now I am not so sure, with all the outside influences on me and my future, my wife tells me I think to much so maybe she is right. On the farming system front we have harvested our second crop cycle from the new system ,so we have gone full circle. We are very pleased with the result not only has it been a low input plant crop, it has also yielded a very respectable 160 tph at mill average sugar content, have not done the final numbers yet but are very confident on making good dollars per hectare return. I have attached some picture of the crop as young plant and at time of harvest. Am also including a picture of this years plant cane back into the existing bed that is having it's "FIRST" irrigation since July 2013, just goes to show the value of controlling compaction, residue retention, and minimum tillage ( did'nt get to plant Legumes)the farm adjacent to ours has had multiple irrigations already.Our chopper drum will be trialled against industry standard in the coming weeks, my initial observations have been positive with the chopper drums and the primary extractor housing much drier that the old set up, my assumption is that it is because there is lees juice loss during the cutting action, time will tell. Still getting a steady stream of visitors coming to look at what we are doing even some from another major milling company, I wonder what they think when they drive away, oh to be a fly on the wall.

Men In Suits!

I saw a post on Facebook the other day, it had a picture of farm land, the caption read "Men in Denim (Jackie How blue singlets and Stubbies, here in Australia) built this Land, and Men in Suits are ruining it". I got to say that summed up they I am feeling about the Australian Sugarcane Industry at the moment, we have now had all three major Sugar milling companies, one Singaporean, one Chinese, and the other Thai, all pull out of the Industry run marketing and distribution company. I wish I could say I was surprised ,however I saw this same corporate strategy on my Nuffield Scholarship, people here in this Industry have blinders on, they have continually said "Oh no this can't happen" "We will fight it Blah Blah Blah".So it is true "Men in Suits" sitting in offices around the globe are determining how the sugar cane industry will look in the future. Meanwhile men like me and you who are farmers built this industry,what to do? who to talk to? Well this is how I contribute, I have had over 10,200 page views, I don't know who you are,but I hope you read my thoughts and you gain some insight into the issues modern Sugarcane farmers are dealing with.My only goal is to shed some light and inform people of the possibilities that this crop can deliver for a sustainable future in "food ,fibre, and energy production", because I believe you guys are the ones that can make the difference. Politicians only re-act to public pressure,so my reckoning is convince enough of you guys and things will start to happen (no pressure). Anyway back to what I can have some input into our Harvesting and Farming business, we have installed a new chopper drum design into our harvester the harvest our dual row,it has the potential to produce a better cutting action therefore reducing juice loss at harvest. As with all things new I have experienced a few dramas,basically I don't have enough hydraulic power to power the new cutting action, but like most things it can be overcome and I have ordered some different hydraulic motors with more torque, should solve the problem. I have had numerous visits from farmers,three this week in fact, I must say how honoured I feel that people think enough of what we are doing to travel to come speak with us,I have said to our new research body on numerous occaisions and to numerous people in "leadership" roles how important credibility is to farmers,and how farmers will always learn from other farmers. However they do not take notice, more "Men in Suits". I have put up pictures of the old chopper drums ,and the other photos of the new chopper system.

Where does the time go.

Harvest time is almost here , actually three days time, where does the time go it is June already. My time has been consumed with preparing machinery for the harvest, and some farming in between, we have planted our 2014 plant crop and it is progressing nicely, we have not touched it since planting almost a month ago. Funny what I thought a farmer was when I was a kid, I thought that you only had to work hard and try not to break stuff and if you did you would have to fix it. However now being a farmer means being able to be so many things, for example, I have to be able to understand how the Ice#11 translates back into a dollar per hectare return, and try to understand how much the Aussie currency exchange with the U.S dollar will effect my return for the year.Then there is the whole public perception of what or how a sugar cane farmer grows there crop and are they doing it in a environmentally friendly way, as to not have any adverse effects on the Great Barrier Reef. If you would have asked me when I was a boy following my Dad around helping him with his work if I would one day be doing a television interview with Japanese National television who are filming a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef. Explaining to them how we have changed our farming practices and the benefits that it has for water quality and the surrounding environment, I don't reckon 8 year old me would have even known where Japan was. You see the world is watching and in this 21st century we are all connected it is truly a global world that we live in, and we all have a responsibility to look after the world we live in not only people that live on the land. I reckon 8 year old Bryan's definition of farming is much less complicated. I have posted a photo of the emerging min till cane planted into existing beds, and a pic of me talking with Japanese tv.

The Pursuit of the All Mighty Dollar $$$

It's been a bit hectic around hear lately, machinery preparation for the upcoming crush is almost done, the crush will commence on the 10th of June. In the middle of this we have planted cane, this was an interesting time, if you have seen my blogs you will know that we plant into a minimum till permanent bed, and will also have seen that we also had cyclone that dumped some rain. What is interesting is that we have neighbours that are full on diesel burners (full tillage)and they furiously run up and down trying to get their ground to dry out and get a good enough tilth to plant. Where on the other hand we have one pass with a coulter /ripper which is low horsepower and low fuel consumption and less labour, then we plant with a double disc planter. I have taken some photo's of the "traditional" system and our "min till" controlled traffic system and the soil condition, the two fields are separated by about 50 meters, same soil, the only difference is how the fields are managed, our field has had no heavy cultivation for 8 years, the other one every year and no matched rows to wheel spacings. Old mate told me he burnt 1000 litres of fuel to prepare for planting, I lost count of how many tillage operations they did, but we had finished planting when they had finally finished their tillage.You be the judge!!Had a visit from the guys from Queensland University the other day to take soil samples from where the soy was in the sugar cane crop, they also took soil from the neighbours "traditional" farming practices and from the natural bush land over the fence, it will be interesting to see what little boogers they find living in the different soils.On the "big picture" scale we have had our millers wanting to pull out of our industry run marketing system,(next will be the terminals and port infrastructure) they say that it will be for my benefit, Yeah I am sure that this multi national company really has my best interest at heart,just another challenge to being a farmer these days, lets hope as an Industry we can work together on this most important development so our lively hoods don't get eroded for the benefit of the all mighty dollar.

Seeing Around Corners.

It's been a while since I have posted, have had a lot going on. We had a visit from Canadian Nuffield scholar Kelvin Meadows and his wife Shellie, which was fantastic considering that it was almost a year to the day that we were in Canada spending time with them, it is really very interesting to see peoples perspective of an industry that they have not had anything to do with. It was very helpful to have them share there views about our business and how they saw our futures prospects. Speaking of future prospects our sugar mill owners a Singaporean based multi national company has expressed it's intentions to vertically integrate it's sugar business to now wanting to control the marketing of all sugar that is milled at it's factories. I have to say this doesn't really surprise me,I saw plenty examples of this on my Nuffield study tour, and in fact the model these guys are following, pretty much is a carbon copy of the big grain companies in north America and Canada. At first it will be marketing of sugar ,next it will be the infrastructure for handling and shipping of the sugar you see these guys don't want to be in sugar they want to own it! From paddock to plate if you like. On another note it seems that I have become an unofficial consultant for the research community,having had some visit's to have ideas and concepts run by me, have even been asked for input into some specific types of projects. I, on one hand feel honoured that I am being asked for my opinion, and on the other hand can't help but feel annoyed that this industry don't see the value in the Nuffield Australia farming scholarships,and in fact have not continued funding for 2015, but yet come to me because of the knowledge I have gained from my own Nuffield scholarship. Am still working on getting Industry support for the continuation of Nuffield , I think it is critical to our prosperity as an industry, for where are the next leaders going to come from? We need to get out and understand where we fit in the big picture, this will not be achieved by following the same leadership paradigm that we have now! Farm wise we have been getting through maintenance of our newly acquired machinery, not very exciting but necessary. Oh yeah we have had a cyclone that flattened all our cane, no structural damage.

The Big Picture.

Last week was a busy week, I gave a presentation to the local year 12 business, communication, technology class on Friday morning about the innovation and technology that it being used on today's modern sugar cane farms. It was quite interesting to see there interest, in how the industry that supports the community they live in, has adapted to the pressures of surviving in a global market place. It was also a chance to share some of my Nuffield experiences from around the world, I guess the one thing that I hoped they took from my presentation was the importance of looking outside your area to see new ideas and ways of thinking.I then gave a presentation to a local river catchment advisory group on the importance of soil health, and how the people I met on my Nuffield scholarship where all dealing with the same soil health issues.On the following Tuesday I travelled up the coast 4 1/2 hours to be the dinner speaker for an industry conference. Actually it was a conference that was created by sugar cane farmers for sugar cane farmers, the whole reason for the conference was to bring farmers together to learn from other farmers, pretty cool Huh! This was the 5th one and as usual it was well attended with over 100 attending. My dinner presentation got off to a bit of a hiccup when we couldn't load my presentation, but thanks to Deb we got it up so the guests could see what I was talking about.I talked about the opportunity that Nuffield presented for the sugar cane industry, I have to say because this was really the first time I had presented to farmers I was a little unsure of the reaction I would get.The main point that I wanted to present is really summed up best by a quote that I read painted on a research stations wall in Obregon Nth Mexico. The quote was by Dr Norman E Bourlag who is well known as Noble Prize winner from 1970, and the father of the green revolution he said. "It is very important that farmers get involved to protect research from the vagaries of politics".The first question that I was asked at my conclusion was "why have we not heard from me sooner", I replied that despite my efforts I had not been invited to do so at any forum up until now.I feel for this industry to prosper it is critical for the emerging leaders be exposed to such a program as Nuffield can deliver, there is no better investment in human capital that I have been involved in. On another note the inter cropping trial seems to be picking up , I have attached some photos.

More Machinery.

We have decided to diversify a little, we are starting a new harvesting business this year, another learning from my Nuffield experience.So we have purchased a second hand John Deere cane harvester and another Case IH transporter to haul with, we have been busy in the shed going over them and refurbishing so they will be right for the upcoming harvest. Since my last post we have had 150mm of rain which was over about a week so it all soaked in and gave us a break from irrigating. I have been invited to a couple of speaking events to speak about my Nuffield experience and how we farm, I am looking forward to sharing my stories and experiences from my travels. It is encouraging that the Australian Sugar cane industry has decided to seek some value from my scholarship, and many to come I hope. Also due mainly to my exposure from Nuffield we have had several requests from researchers from both here and from the university of New South Wales, they are wanting to see the difference between our soils that are in a new farming system compared to soils that are still being farmed conventionally. My aim from my speaking engagements is to leave the audience with the curiosity to think about how they farm and to consider how they might be able to improve.I know that after my eye opening experience there are things that I will be doing.

Inter crop update.

It has been a month since I updated my blog , where does the time go? Well I had a bit of time away from the farm and went to visit my mate Ray Vella and his family at there home in Bald Hills.It was good to catch up and it was the first time my wife Sue had been there.It seems that our farming business is continually evolving and we are now venturing into contract sugar cane harvesting, never really anticipated we would be doing this , however circumstances have changed and we need to change with them to be able to remain farming in the Dalbeg area.So there has been much organising of machinery purchases as well as recruiting people to work for us operating the harvester and haulout machines, the up shot for us will be that we will have more time to be better farmers now that we can focus more on our farm management.I have put up a photo of the beans growing in the cane and where the beans have been untouched they seem to be doing quite well, overall the trial seems to be picking up. I have also put up a photo of the cane that was minimum till planted last may it is really powering now and has 6 foot of cane on . Oh I almost forgot we had our first cyclone in the end of January was only category 2 so no damage was done, we have not had much of a wet season so we have been flat chat irrigating as well.

Better late than never.

Finally got to plant soy bean into the last of our fields to be converted to 2 meter permanent bed, probably a bit late, but it is better to have something in the soil to give some ground cover and break the good old monoculture.The planter that we use is "old school" a Nodet vacuum seeder they didn't come out this wide from the factory but we actually, out of 3 old planters made this 9 row unit, it actually does a really good job.There is plenty of sub-soil moisture in the block however 10mm of rain would be perfect, we could irrigate but because the field has been deep ripped to 450mm the amount and time it would take to get down the 650m rows the beans would be water logged. So we have taken the risk , hopefully fingers crossed we will end up with a good crop.The news in our inter cropping trial does not look so good, the wallabies have given the soy beans a complete hiding and as a result the population is very low, what has survived has nodulated as you can see,the problem is there are not enough. The trials and tribulations of farming, just once I would like all the stars to align to see just what I could achieve, here's hoping.

2014.

Well it's a new year, for me the only thing that has changed is the 3 to a 4 at the end of the year. Christmas has been hot and we have not stopped irrigating our crop, we have had quite a few plus 40 degrees centigrade and with the hot dry winds moisture goes real fast. I have been checking on our trial with beans planted in the growing sugar cane crop and unfortunately the native wildlife has taken a real liking to the young soy chewing them off to about 100 mm hopefully they will kick on, where they have not been eaten they are about 300 mm high. Unfortunately there is not anything I can do about it, the joys of agriculture I guess. On a positive note the no till plant cane is really going well with close to one metre of stalk, the crop looks very healthy and reinforces our resolve to keep with the principle of minimum tillage and residue retention. I have attached a photo of my dog "Charlie" after he has been chasing some of the perpetrators of the soy destruction. Also a photo of the no till plant cane that I have documented in past posts. I hope everyone has had a good Christmas and has a prosperous new year.

Beans are coming through.

It's been 10 days since the beans were planted, since the photo's were taken anyway, and I have to say I am a little disappointed with the consistency of the emergence . The problem was that we didn't plant the beans sooner, the way our planter is configured the planting depth control wheel had to run over the cane that is growing, so because the cane was starting to put on stalk this meant that the depth wheel rode over, bringing the seed out of the soil. However we had 35mm of rain just the other day so when we were looking we could see beans germinating in the moist trash.We had a visit from the people from University come and have a look , so the photo's were taken by Susanne Schmidt who is leading the project.Hopefully all is not lost and we will have enough population to have a recordable difference in the treatments.We have three different nitrogen treatments across the field and two different soy seeding rates along the paddock.

Planting our Inter crop of Soybean.

It has taken ten years lots of time and money a Nuffield Scholarship overseas research, a collaboration with the University of Queensland and we have finally planted another inter cropping trial, and I was not there.I was in Brisbane attending a company directors course to be able to have a better understanding of the business of farming, it was some pretty serious stuff I would have rather have been home planting the trial, but this is something that can have as much of an effect on our business as the operational stuff that I usually do. My brother planted the trial and we were very pleased with the way the planter performed as you can see from the picture there is a lot of residue to work through, hopefully next week we will see the beans emerging.We have had 120mm of rain since my last post and are just starting to irrigate again, this time of year is peak growing time so we have irrigate as necessary, makes it hard around Christmas time but when you consider that Cane can grow up to 35mm per day here, good moisture management really pays off in the long run.Have to say even though the week in Brisbane was quite full on it was good to meet new faces and catch up with the old friends.

Irrigation scheduling .

Summer is here in a big way , we have had more than a few days over 40 degrees celcius, with a very strong southerly blowing definitely sucks the moisture out of the crop. This makes irrigation very important for crop growth and for the hip pocket, water is a very precious resource and a major input cost, so putting the right amount on at the right time to maximize returns is critical. The picture is of a evaporation pan which is a very simple device to determine how much moisture is getting pulled out via evapotranspiration and crop growth, so this is dependent on specific varieties and specific soil types so there is some calibration to be done, but once calibrated this is a very simple and cost effective way to manage crop growth. The other photo's are of gypsum being spread and incorporated on the leveled block , and in the new system existing bed, where the crop has been sprayed out and gypsum spread on the bed, because of the trash the gypsum is trapped and doesn't get blown away by wind.

Out with the Old !

Still flat out even though harvest is finished, we have managed to get the cane watered so it looks like cane now. We have come to the last block of "the Traditional" row spacing 5 foot that we have left and it has been rotary hoed out and the block is being laser leveled in preparation for the 2 meter beds to be formed and some soybean to be planted.We are also applying the second application of fertilizer along with cane grub control chemical, we have had some hot days here already and we have cracked 40 degrees already , all of the ratoon blocks have still only been watered once such is the water holding capacity that we have now.

Harvest Video

Don't know if this will work but I will give it a go, this is us harvesting 150tph (60 tpa) dual row!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCXO0SQowA

Check this out !

If you ever wanted to see a great example of the difference between the new permanent bed farming system and traditional tillage farming this is it. Even though we have adopted the new two meter row spacing, to get to that we had to conventionally till the farm to get it over to the new system. Have a look at the two photo's the first is the tilled plant cane that has been irrigated three times, ( it is so dry because we have been harvesting everyday up until now and couldn't get to do it not ideal)and the second photo is the cane that was planted directly into the permanent beds and has only been irrigated twice, this cane was planted within days of each other.

What a month.

Well what a month it has been it has been like my life has been put into "fast forward" after our Brazilian visitors it was a couple more days in the harvester then off to Perth to give my Nuffield presentation , it was great to catch up with my mates from that year who were also presenting, it is like we all saw each other yesterday such is the bond we have from our Nuffield experience. So my presentation went well and now a lot more people realize the importance of the Sugarcane industry. Somehow I lost a day and thought I would return on Saturday but in fact would not get home until Sunday afternoon. After a long sleepless overnight flight , we pretty much traveled across the country diagonally, it was back in the harvester Monday to finish the rest of our crop. We didn't do to bad considering that we had no early plant cane and all of our crop was harvested pre 12 months of age, we averaged 105 tph or in old school 42 tons per acre @ 14.5 ccs. We had Tuesday for maintenance and then we started to harvest our neighbors farms to help them get there crop off and we have been doing that up until yesterday, our farm has suffered but we felt obliged to help our fellow farmers. Oh yeah we had a day off last Friday when we hosted some more international visitors this time from Mauritius, and Tanzania these guys were here to look at how we have adapted industry research into a new farming system and to see first hand the benefits that come from it. I have posted a photo of some of these guys inspecting our min till plant crop that still has only had two irrigation's since planting.

Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Visitors.

We last week hosted a delegation of Brazilian Sugarcane industry people these guys comprised , millers, agronomist, and agricultural engineers,they were at our farm to look at the way we have adopted new techniques to be more cost effective and to improve our production, and overall sustainability. These guys are dealing with the same pressures as we are but on a much larger scale, they are moving into more mechanization of there very large farming enterprises, the big difference with these guys is that they generally own the farms and the mills that crush the sugarcane, and plants that produce ethanol.These guys see the Australian sugarcane farming sector as the benchmark when it comes to the cutting edge of farming systems,and environmental responsibility.I am sure that it won't be long before they surpass us in this area , they seem to value, much more the role research and extension has to play in there businesses future. Once again I have to highlight the irony that I see in Australians own view of research, we have never had a delegation of Australian millers Ag engineers and people at that level of industry ever come to look at what is going on in there own backyard, we have pretty much had more interest from overseas than here in our own country!

Update on No-Till plant cane.

Just a quick update on our 2013 plant cane the new system that was planted back into the existing beds has just had it's second irrigation and the conventionally prepared field has had it's 3rd irrigation.It has been a bit slower to emerge but is really starting to kick on now that the weather is warming up more, we are quite pleased with the results so far but what really matters is what we send to the mill next year and how many dollars per hectare we get to put into our pockets. We are tracking our costs for both fields so will know exactly what the savings will be.