Cropping farmer Duncan Young in WA does the little things well

In five separate locations across the state, cropping farmer Duncan Young and his team focus on doing the small things really well.

It’s the doing the little things well that have made a big difference for West Australian cropping farmer Duncan Young.

In an operation that is anything but small and with 6000 hectares planned for next year, across five separate locations, making sure each part of the complex cropping program is done well is key to success.

The base of the Youngs farming operation is in 500mm rainfall country near Beverley, on the western edge of Western Australia’s famed wheat belt.

Duncan Young from Beverley, WA.

They grow a mix of crops with barley, wheat, canola and milling oats, but in the first inkling that this is not your everyday operation, there’s also crops atypical for the area in the rotation mix including faba beans, field peas and lupins.

“Pulses are not grown by a lot of people in this area, and I’m not sure why,” Duncan said.

“For us, they offer a break crop to halt diseases, as well as adding nitrogen to the soil.

“Those benefits allow us to have a potentially smaller gross margin per hectare, for that year growing the pulses, because we know we will see the positive effects for years to come.

“It’s why we look at the gross margins across five to seven years – the year we grow a pulse crop might not look as profitable but then the crops grown the following years after them are better because of the pulses and the disease break.

“We play a longer-term game.”

SOIL TRAINING

Training in agricultural science and specialising in agronomy created a penchant for soils, something which has stuck with Duncan as he’s taken on more and more country and worked out ways to manage it.

Such is the diverse nature of his cropping country that it ranges from heavy red brown loams to self-mulching soils, duplex soils, grey clays and even some yellow sand plain country.

And each of these soil types needs its own management strategy to produce the best crops possible.

It’s this deeper understanding of soils that has made Duncan hyper aware of the potential hidden losses from soil borne diseases and nematodes, which can often go unnoticed and potentially strip 6-8 per cent from yields.

Large equipment, including 150 tonne mother bins, are used to improve efficiency on the Youngs' properties near Beverley, WA.

It’s one of the reasons Duncan is a fan of chemical fallow, in terms of getting soil borne diseases as well as weeds under control.

This year, about 980ha has been under chemical fallow, and while there are benefits for soil moisture retention and weed control, it’s soil health and lessening disease risks which are equally, if not more, important.

“Our soils are more porous than over in the eastern states, so our bucket is not as big in terms of storing soil moisture with chemical fallow,” Duncan said.

“But we are able to give the soils a break with the fallow, and to control those soil borne diseases, which makes the process worthwhile.

“You take a financial hit for the chemical fallow but we have found the pay back, in terms of weed control, and increased yields, over the following two to three years more than offsets the cost.”

ROTATION DECISIONS

Overarching the decision-making process for the farming operation are two key factors – one is that the numbers must be right but the second is making sure the farming system is not being put under pressure.

Duncan is not a believer in continuous cereal rotations, or even cereal-canola rotations, primarily because he said it costs more in the long run.

“Continuous cereals can be grown, but in the long term, it takes more inputs and the gross margin falls,” he said.

“I do want to leave our farms in a better state than when we took them over, and we are super conscious of looking after our soils, with regular additions of lime and gypsum to make sure they (the soils) are improving.”

Another of the small things that Duncan is conscious of doing properly is chemical rotations, and this is nothing new to the operation either.

Harvest time at the Youngs properties near Beverley, WA.

The advice of agronomist Bill Roy in the early days of his farming career convinced Duncan to rotate the chemicals he used, right back when it wasn’t a thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to lessen the chance of resistance.

“Bill told us that when we were onto a good thing, don’t stick to it,” Duncan said.

“It’s allowed us to have less resistance that we perhaps would have seen should we have not followed this advice.”

Chemical use is also moderated around the Avon River which the Youngs have frontage to. Given the undulating nature of their farm, they voluntarily choose not to use certain sprays like atrazine and simazine which are more volatile and could end up in their local waterway and ultimately the Swan River.

DOING IT DIFFERENT

There’s a few other things that the Youngs do that are different.

They use green manure and brown manure crops to boost organic matter, alternating between the two depending on how much soil moisture is available. Green manure crops are incorporated into the soil but if it is a dry year, the crop is sprayed and allowed to rot (brown manure).

And they also installed their own desalination plant 14 years ago, and refurbished it two years ago, to provide a high-quality supply of water for spraying.

The cost is not cheap to set it up, but the daily running costs are reasonable (about the same as a reverse cycle air conditioner) and the results are worth it, Duncan said.

It’s here again, where doing the small things right adds to a more successful operation.

Duncan Young runs about 6000ha of cropping across properties near Beverley, WA, on the eastern edge of the WA wheat belt.

Duncan said the efficacy of spraying with high quality water – the water was not overly salty but did contain a lot of minerals and especially iron – was better and estimated the chemicals were up to 10 per cent more effective using the distilled water, which has a pH of 7.1.

“We are lucky in that we have one of only two artesian bores in the wheat belt, and this desalination plant has allowed us to produce 50,000 litres of water a day, and we are able to truck it to a couple of our other farms for use in spraying there too,” Duncan said.

“We don’t have to use sulphate of ammonia or buffers and the chemicals mix well – it was a large investment but it doesn’t take long to pay it back.”

ACROSS THE NUMBERS

Duncan is unashamedly across all his numbers and every decision made has to pay off. There’s no over expenditure on machinery, although next year will see another header added to the inventory purely to shorten the harvest, which already runs from late October to January and would go even longer next year.

And the operation is all about efficiency, from the controlled traffic farming system to the big air cart which can sow 115ha without stopping to refill, to the two 150 tonne mother bins to allow harvest to keep going without stopping, to the staffing, with just Duncan and one other full time staff member doing most of the work during the year, with the addition of casuals at harvest.

“We probably don’t do too much different to others, but we make sure that we do all the things we do well,” he said.

“It’s those 5-10 per cent-ers that you concentrate on, whether that is efficient machinery use, or chemical fallow or quality water to spray with, that add up in the end.”