NSW grain property smashes canola yield record

A cropping farm in NSW has produced a record-breaking canola crop. Here’s how they did it.

Path to success: The record canola crop at the Oberon operation.

A NSW farm has produced a record-breaking canola crop thanks to good growing conditions for its dual purpose cropping system.

The crop, grown on 32ha in a mixed farming operation at Oberon, NSW, reached a massive 7.16 tonnes/ha, which beats the previous Australian record made in Tasmania in 2017 of 6.17 tonnes.

Peter Brooks who manages the Mayfield farm owned by the Hawkins family at Oberon, said it was the result of more than a decade of working closely with CSIRO — backed by Grains Research and Development Corporation investment — to develop the dual-purpose canola cropping system.

“Over the past 14 years we were early adopters of the dual-purpose cropping system technique,” Mr Brooks said.

“Basically it has evolved from grazing the canola during the vegetating state and then locking it up for harvest.”

Mr Brooks said the benefits of the system was its flexibility.

“During our dry years in 2017, 2018, 2019 we grew really good vegetative canola crops, then we realised in August that we didn’t have enough water,” he said.

“We already made a good return out of the lambs so we sprayed those crops out and let them fallow for the following year for the wheat.”

Last year’s crop was sown in February, with grazing starting in April and going until July.

“We have had 16 to 20 lambs to the hectare on those crops with weight gains of plus 300 grams a day,” Mr Brooks said.

While this method of farming was widespread in the industry, Mr Brooks said the bumper yields this season could be attributed to a good amount of rain, good temperatures, a lot of sunlight hours as well and the plants having “more than adequate” nitrogen in their growing phase.

Delta Agribusiness farm agronomist James Cheetham, who consulted with Mr Brooks, said dual-purpose crops helped farms to manage their operations during times of drought, due to the extra winter feed which forms a significant part of farm revenue.

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