‘Best year in a long time’ for standout dairy farmer Matt Grant
For award-winning southwest Victorian dairy farmer Matt Grant, the greatest wisdom came not from family tradition but a willingness to listen.
WHILE 2020 has been Australia’s toughest year in living memory — coronavirus, bushfires and now a recession — the sentiment isn’t nationwide.
Farmers in southwest Victoria have clocked up a golden eight months of the calendar year so far with a solid season both climatically and financially.
Matt Grant included.
“This has been the best year we’ve had in a long time,” the Timboon district dairy farmer said.
“It’s having the dry July and the dry August off the back of an early and wet autumn break.
“But we copped 120-130mm last weekend (August 22-23), so we’re sort of back to normal. But we’ve got grass cover, so the farm’s looking the best it’s ever looked for this time of year. Everyone around that I’ve chatted to seems to be in the same boat.”
The Cowleys Creek farmer has more than good weather to celebrate. Earlier this month, Matt was named as winner of the Young Dairy Leader category at the Great South West Dairy Awards.
Judges noted his community work, such as being actively involved in his local dairy discussion group, a member of the Fonterra Supply Board as well as the Timboon Demons football club, Scotts Creek CFA and local recreation reserve committee.
Given he’s reached the top of the pops in southwest Victoria’s dairy sector, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Matt’s dairy pedigree goes back generations. But his now-retired parents Kelvin and Beth grant shifted from sheep to dairy only in the late 1980s just before Matt started primary school. “(My parents’ farm) just grew bit by bit,” Matt said.
TURBO CHARGED
“I DON’T think prime lamb was going that well at the time. After a number of years of struggling along they just switched to dairy and grew with the industry. Obviously, over the past five or six years, sheep and beef have just been rocketing along — well the last couple of years for beef, but sheep especially.”
After finishing high school, Matt went into the family business, a 250ha farm at Cowleys Creek — about 10km southeast of Timboon and 60km southeast of Warrnambool.
He worked for his parents for five or six years before working with another dairy farmer near Warrnambool for three years.
“Working for someone else, you get to see how different things operate,” Matt said. “It’s an important step — experiencing different management styles, techniques. Some of it you’ll bring home, do things differently to the family, other things you’ll go, well the family did it better. But either way, that experience off-farm gives you a different perspective.”
Matt started share farming with his parents in 2009 and took over the reins five years ago when they retired. Apart from the 240ha family property, he owns 120ha near the home farm which is designated for young stock.
“I don’t push things to top level, so I’ve a got a lot more conservative stocking rate,” he said. “The plan was to milk 270-plus young stock on 600 acres (240 hectares) and I think we were up to 300 when I was running 730 acres (295 hectares), I think I we were at 330 on 700 acres plus young stock.
“The idea is to try to be self-sufficient on fodder with the exception of grain. We produce all our own hay and silage and do summer crops. Now, there’s been years when we’ve had to (bring in off-farm fodder), so we’re trying to avoid that. Because usually any time we need it, someone else needs it and it’s worth a fortune. So the last couple of years have been good — the last couple of harvests we’ve put away a fair bit in reserve. Last year I probably made two years worth of silage and hay, just a bumper season.”
NUMBERS COUNT
MATT has a simple philosophy to herd management — adjust numbers to suit seasonal and market conditions.
“When the milk prices dropped, we made some big changes. We dropped grain and dropped the stocking rate — now it’s flipped the other way,” he said.
“We dropped our grain feeding rate from eight kilos down to three kilos — 60 per cent drop in grain. We also cut the herd size by 20 per cent but it only cost us about 10 per cent of our milk (volume).
“So you get less dead wood and the top performers were getting a better crack at the green grass.
“We ended up getting really good margins based on that.”
In a region famed for its rainfall frequency and subsequent soggy pastures, Matt said paddock rotation was key.
“So once we hit the autumn break, it’s all about trying to get to that 50-day mark and really getting the grass hitting that two-and-a-half/three leaf stage, if we can hold that for as long as we can into winter so when the paddocks start getting too wet to have multiple grazings, we can let that rotation unwind a bit, and it might get as tight as 30-odd days by the tail end of winter.”
When it comes to fodder, sorghum has been a winning factor for Matt in recent times.
“Grass, silage and hay are the main things we do. We do about 25 per cent of the farm in crop every year — summer crop — because obviously I’ve got cows calving in January, so they do well on the summer crop.
“Plus the young stock, I’ve been doing crops for them over the past few years and they’ve managed to put on some really good growth rates on pretty much sorghum, which takes pressure off the silage. Sorghum seems the easiest thing to manage the heifers on, I’ll use rape and other crops from time to time but sorghum’s my favourite anyway. I can put it in a bit later and still get a good crop.”
ALL EARS
QUALITY over quantity is a maxim Matt lives by. He’s not too focused on squeezing those extra litres out of his stock, more on adding elasticity to his margins.
“Electricity’s creeping up there but I’d say fertiliser is still the big one. But I’m happy to spend on the fertiliser — making sure we feed the soil so it feeds the cows. I’m a pretty heavy user of urea but it’s all about regular applications. From autumn through to spring, we’ll put out urea with every grazing, just the rate might vary a bit depending on the length of rotation.”
While power and fertiliser bills add to the financial outgoings, export heifers balance the ledger somewhat. “We’re at three times a year calving (on my farm),” Matt said.
“We’ve got three, six week joinings spread across the year.
“For the most part it’s AI. Sometimes I use sexed semen and sometimes I don’t — depends what’s happening. I’ll sell a few export heifers — that’s been a pretty handy revenue scheme.”
Recently joining the Fonterra Supplier Council, Matt’s advice to farmers entering the dairy sector is to seek a broad range of information.
“Listen to everyone. It’s worth checking out what the high-end guys are doing as well as the low input guys and everyone in between.
“Find out what makes them tick and you might find out what makes you tick as well. For me, it’s about piecing together bits of information and finding out what works for you.”
• Matt has been nominated for The Weekly Times Coles 2020 Farmer of the Year. Use the form below to nominate a farmer
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