MSF Spring e-update

Spring wrap-up with Ron!

I've been saying to my family “We’ve waited two years for it to rain, and now it won’t stop!!” We should not complain about harvest rain as long as we can keep it in our soils for next season.

Thanks to the widespread rain, crops across the MSF region are looking fantastic. Wheat crops are doing well in the area and the late season rains have made late sown crops financially viable.

Whilst we are not complaining about this late rain, it certainly has made the hay season frustrating. We have managed to bale and shed between the rains, but it has certainly been tricky.

We have started harvesting barley this past week, a Spartacus crop that was infested with rye grass. After chemically treating the crop we have managed to come away with a peak harvest of 4.2t to the hectare and an average of 2.5t to the hectare. Many wheat crops this season should hopefully harvest around 2t to the hectare. Barley prices have been an under pressure mainly because of china’s earlier tariffs but early signs don’t look absolutely disastrous. When we get a la-nina many other grain producers suffer from drought, that seems to be happening again across the world, with wheat prices gaining some ground.

Last week the board held their first face to face meeting since February thanks to Covid-19 and tough border restrictions. It was great to finally catch up in person and get all of our business completed.

Happy harvesting to all our MSF members,
Ron Hards
MSF Treasurer

SA Field Day Snapshot Videos

We had two fantastic days of field days in South Australia early September. With over 100 attendees across both days, an impressive line-up of speakers, delicious lunch and snack packs and then finishing the day with an icy cold beer or two - we reckon the driving field days were a big success! Massive thanks to our sponsors and partners as well as everyone who attended for supporting our field days.

Miss out on attending our SA Driving Field Days in September?

Got a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out)? Don’t worry! We have put together a series of short videos featuring highlights from both days at various sites from Lameroo to Bowhill and Loxton to Taplan.

Topics include - hay varieties, n fixation and inoculation, legumes on sands, dryland legume pasture systems, improving non-wetting sands, Mallee seeps.

These videos certainly don’t beat the takeaways, networking and learning that comes from being at our field days in person, but we hope you can take a few key messages away with you after watching these videos. Enjoy!

Watch SA Field Day Snapshot Videos here

From sand to gold at Warranganga

Meet Ben Pollard! Ben is a member of MSF and is pictured standing in one of his paddocks on his family property called “Warrananga” which is located north west of Wentworth, NSW.

Only a year ago this paddock was severely impacted by drift sand with mounds and barely had a blade of ground cover.

It took Ben and his family blood, sweat and tears to rehabilitate the paddock just prior to opening rains gratefully received in April 2020. Excellent germination was achieved not long after. However, it didn’t rain again until August... but check out Ben's Scepter Wheat crop now! What a terrific result!

"The mood amongst our NSW farmers at our driving field day on Wednesday 30 September was much more optimistic than last year amidst unrelenting drought. It is fantastic to see hard work paying off for farmers in the region," commented Daniel Linklater, MSF Chair.

"All of the crops looked super on average or less rainfall. A credit to the quality farmers and advisors in the district as well as the early work MSF have carried out in previous years," added NSW Farmer and MSF Director, Gavin Howely.

WE HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU VICTORIA!

Here’s one for all the Vics in Lockdown….

Introducing the Vic Lockdown Lowdown Spring Video Series!

Despite COVID19 the show goes on for MSF Victorian Field Days – but it’s going to be a little different this year.

There’s nothing better than attending field days in the flesh.

MSF enjoy networking at field days with members, farmers, Agri professionals and researchers while sharing new findings and enjoying a cold drink at the end of the day.

However, due to COVID19 and restrictions in Victoria at this time of the year when we would normally run our field days, a virtual field day is the next best thing to communicate our findings and key takeaways from MSF’s Victorian trials this year.

In lieu of Victorian Field Days due to COVID19, MSF are presenting a series of videos focusing on various trials, results and project findings undertaken in the Victorian Mallee region as part of MSF’s ‘Vic Lockdown Lowdown Video Series’.

In the first video released in October as part of MSF’s Vic Lockdown Lowdown series, Michael Moodie from Frontier Farming Systems provides a summary of an innovative trial undertaken by Kenton Porker and his team from SARDI at a trial site in the Victorian Mallee.

The video provides a run-down of this trial which was to investigate management strategies to reap the benefits of early sown wheat along with mitigating risk of sowing early as the season progresses. Michael explains choosing varieties that adapt best to low rainfall environments and he also highlighted in this trial how they slowed wheat phenology through simulated grazing for a later flowing time.

Further videos will be released in this series over the coming weeks covering trials and topics such as deep ripping, legume break crops, frost, time of sowing, pulses and pastures plus more!

This project is supported by the Mallee Catchment Management Authority (CMA), through funding from the Australian Government's National Landcare Program.

WATCH Video 1: Innovative SARDI trial looking at early flowering wheat

In the last e-update MSF announced it’s official partnership with AWI through a project that will investigate the feed value of a range of low rainfall crops and pastures.

Over two years this project will sample the feed value and mineral content of the following low rainfall crops and pastures - vetch, peas, lentils, serradella, lucerne, veldt grass, medic pasture, barley, canola and oats.

Sampling is already underway this year with pastures and crops sampled in the Vic Mallee. First year results should be ready to share in late autumn next year.

Hamish Dickson, AgriPartner Consulting joins Tegan Buckley in a podcast episode talking about the project and what benefits it will bring to low rainfall mixed farmers.

Listen to the podcast here

Small block owners rely heavy on the application of glyphosate to control weeds within vineyards. There is less focus on alternating strategies for weed control in vineyards as the aim is to remove all weeds as they become a nuisance for operations and harvesting rather than compete with the crop for water and nutrients. This is a high-risk scenario for the development of resistance within weed populations and from dispersal of weed seeds from survivors as farmers are motivated to repeatedly use broad spectrum, cheaper herbicide options such as glyphosate.

This trial will investigate alternative herbicide options to prevent seed set and/or control surviving weeds of glyphosate application in a vineyard. The principle weeds of interest are ryegrass and fleabane, however weeds such as milk thistle and marshmallow were also noted.

Herbicide resistance testing will be done to identify which herbicides will have the greatest efficacy as well as genotyping to work out how far the plants are spreading in across an area.

2. Non-phenoxy options for use with optical sprayer in summer fallow

As fleabane is a hard to control summer growing weed in broadacre cropping paddocks. The best control is normally achieved through a combination of non-selective herbicide such as glyphosate in conjunction with a selective phenoxy herbicide. However, phenoxy herbicides are at high risk of causing off-site damage to susceptible crops like horticulture, therefore Sunraysia farmers are extremely cautious when using such herbicides which impacts on effective fleabane control.

Modern Optical Spot Spray Technology (OSST) only applies herbicide when and where a weed is identified and therefore offers an opportunity for growers to control fleabane using alternative herbicides and herbicide mixes that would otherwise not be cost effective to apply on a broadacre scale.

This trial will determine how effective alternative herbicides to phenoxy products registered for optical sprayers are at controlling fleabane in broadacre summer fallow paddocks in the Sunraysia region.

3. Strategies for spraying summer weeds in hot conditions

Off-site damage from summer spraying activities is a huge concern where broadacre cropping borders the sensitive horticultural region. Broadacre farms are also very large and the summer climate is very hot, and this provides further complexities for broadacre farmers who are seeking to complete summer spraying activities in a narrow window when spraying conditions are suitable.

In recent times there has been a shift towards farmers completing spraying activities early in the morning when temperatures are still cool, and the delta T is favourable. However recent industry guidelines show that this is also the highest risk time of day for the presence of inversions. Inversions are bad news as they can prevent fine droplets from reaching the ground and move these over vast distances where they can potentially impact sensitive crops.

Recent regulation changes now prevent farmers spraying when an inversion is present, however there is almost always and inversion present early in the morning. Therefore, farmers may be forced to spray later in the day when conditions are less favourable for herbicide efficacy and this will impact on their ability to control hard to kill summer weeds such as fleabane.

This project will trial a range of spray application factors that contribute to herbicide efficacy over a range of daily temperatures typically experienced in Sunraysia over the duration of a summer day.

Frontier Farming Systems and MSF will be working with local growers in horticultural crops and broadacre to investigate improved options for fleabane control to try and achieve area wide management across industries.

SAVE THE DATE – An MSF Area Wide Management of Weeds spray application and herbicide resistance forum will be held in the Sunraysia region Tuesday 2nd and 3rd of Feb for broadacre and horticultural growers with weed scientist Chris Preston, Adelaide University and Field Development Officer David Keetch, NuFarm.

Our sheep tech group is all about helping our mixed farmers investigate and implement new technologies in the sheep operations. Moving to electronic ear tags and data management has been a big part of this group, whether you are a beginner and trying to work out which tags are best or if you have been collecting data for a while and looking to make production based decisions with the data you have captured.

Our first hands on session was held October 8th at the Lameroo Hotel where we had a great presentation on data management from Elise Bowen, Sheep Data Management. Elise was able to work with our grower’s spreadsheets and demonstrate how the data can be collated quickly and simply and how it can be used for decision making.

Elise is based in Wagga Wagga but is available to help others understand and sort their data at a reasonable price.

For more info contact Elise:
Email - sheepdatamanagement@gmail.com
Web - sheepdatamanagement.com

Save the date - Our next group meeting will be held in conjunction with the PIRSA Sheep Tech Expo that will take place Tuesday 9th March at Karoonda Football Club rooms. This event will promote the latest and greatest in sheep tech and give you the opportunity to talk to different tech companies about their products and services. All are welcome to attend the Expo – more details to come soon.

Despite COVID-19 restrictions MSF together with Murraylands and Riverland Landscapes Board ran a mixed cover cropping field day. The day was to view the Lowbank trial and hear from the program leaders Greg Butler (SANTFA) and Mark Farrell (CSIRO). The majority of attendees were advisors from various extension or state government organisations. The landowner, Alan Buckley, was on hand to give the grower perspective of the trials and achievements.

The Lowbank trial is situated 15 km south of Waikerie on Alan Buckley's property. The trial landscape is rising ground with very light textured soil - fragile loamy sand. Waikerie is one of the lowest rainfall sites in the program - being lowest rainfall cereal growing areas of South Australia.

Aided by near average rainfall in season 2020 the growth has been a vast improvement on previous years. In 2020 the replicated trial was sown by Jeremy Nelson (Murraylands and Riverland Landscapes Board) with small plot trials equipment. Each year of the program there are three treatments - a single species (cereal rye), a chemical fallow and a mixed species treatment. The mixed species plots in 2020 included a mix of legumes, cereals and a brassica - Chickpeas, Vetch, Cereal rye, Lupins, Lentils and Canola.

The field day discussion included the visual benefits to the roots systems of diversified planting. Greg Butler highlighted the significant difference in root ball mass where different plant roots were closely intertwined.

There was also discussion of the role of tillage radish and the benefits of sowing a species that could potentially 'open' up the ground to break hard pan layers, improve aeration, foster different soil microorganisms. The tillage radish present was a carryover from the summer trials. Tillage radish has the capacity to develop a very large 'radish-type' root and seed prolifically. There was some discussion about the potential for tillage radish, like its close relative Wild Radish, to develop into a significant crop weed and develop herbicide resistance in the same manner.

Discussion also included the role of mixed species over summer and their role in changing the soil rhizosphere through the fostering and proliferation of a wide host of beneficial microorganisms.

The mixed cover cropping program is a radical program with some serious potential benefits to even very low rainfall cropping country. One of the local growers is now experimenting on a paddock sized scale with his own pasture mixture, which includes tillage radish and vetch.

Does mixed cover cropping in winter have a place in the low rainfall Mallee? is a new fact sheet developed by Richard Saunders, Pinion Advisory.

Click here to read fact sheet

Richard has been working on the mixed cover crops project in the Mallee region on behalf of MSF since 2019 and in partnership with Murraylands and Riverland Landscapes Board.