Final pass.

The final pass probably for at least a couple of crop cycles, this is why we have had to put so much effort into getting soil into a fine enough tilth to be able to form the right profile.Even though it looks a bit rough now after irrigation the soil will settle and after the first pass with the harvester the profile will be complete, and subsequent crops will be harvested with little to no disturbance to the bed.Man it is slow going though it has taken me a week to get to this point and I have still got another two thirds of the paddock to go.Ideally we would irrigate and get the crop up a bit more so I could move faster through the crop, however we have already had storms building and as yet have not had any rain, so we can't risk not having the row profile formed for harvest.Another reason why we try to avoid spring planting, Man I have probably got another 3 or 4 days in the tractor, hopefully before any rain.

Compaction and Soil Structure.

Hows this for a real life example of just how compaction effects soil structure, and soil moisture holding capacity. The photo shows the areas where the tractors have run (six passes spraying and cultivating)the soil is quite dry, by comparison in between the two rows of cane which has had no traffic at all is still very moist. The irrigation was down the wheel tracks so that is where it was most concentrated but due to compaction it could not hold the same moisture as the uncompacted soil between the cane rows. This effect is from relatively light machinery so it is very easy to see why a 30 plus tonne machine does so much damage to soil structure. We are applying the top up of nitrogen and canegrub control both 150mm under the soil surface, and I am preparing the paddock for one more final pass, to form the row profile to match our harvester.

Summer is here.

The weather seems to be back to it's old pattern, hot days, and storms building in the afternoon's. It was 37 degrees Celsius in the house at 3 o'clock today(smoko time) and we are only just into summer, lets hope the storms go around us for the next three weeks at least, we are scheduled to finish the crush on the 7th of December.We have once again had to spray our plant cane to manage the weed population, the cane is growing pretty well considering,we used our shielded sprayer with Shirquat under all the shields and between rows, this is a knock-down chemical with no residual it simply burns off the grass.Other than that it has been full on irrigation , with the high temperatures and the wind we are losing 12mm per day out of our evaporation pans. It is when we have hot dry conditions like this that you can really see the benefits of our trash retention and the whole farming system. Our neighbours who don't retain trash and are not on controlled traffic usually irrigate three times to our one, we will this year be looking at measuring just how much moisture we can now hold in our permanent beds.I have some pictures of the plant cane after spraying and some of the ratoons at different stages of growth.

Local Radio Interview.

Only three weeks of the harvest to go, man where has the year gone!Have been harvesting ,setting up irrigation, and irrigating ratoons, doesn't sound like much but it has been keeping me busy.The highlight of the last couple of weeks has been an interview at the Invicta sugar mill with the Queensland branch of the Australian Broadcasting Commission country hour. I was asked about my Nuffield experience so far, and how what I saw overseas has changed how I think about the Australian Sugarcane Industry. It was a good experience and the interview went pretty well, it was a great chance to share my experiences with a bigger audience.

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!

We had the guys from our research organisation, BSES up the other day to measure harvesting losses. They have developed a very robust testing system that lets the harvester operator,(in this case Me)know how to minimize the losses from the harvester.I won't go into the whole process, basically they pick up all the residue from where the harvester has passed in a given area I think it was a couple of square metres back to bare soil, it is then mulched , and a portion is mixed with water and blended, then it is put in a press and the juice is then tested for a brix reading and that is correlated back to a tonnes of sugar per hectare basis.Our results were on par with industry standard but I did learn a few ways to tweak the forward speed and extractor fan speed to suit the crop. It appears that the larger the crop the more important it is to have correct harvester set-up. When you think about it, this harvesting operation is where the rubber hits the road so to speak, this is where we generate the income for the year.At the end of the day it all comes back to the numbers,and in our case we are quite happy to receive this advice and change the set-up a little, after all this is research that we have paid for!

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 ?