Hinkley Farming: Work being done in the office and on the farm

IF FARMING is a numbers game, Matthew and Rachel Hinkley have it well and truly figured out.

Makes cents: Economics and agronomics go hand in hand for Matthew and Rachel Hinkley, and their children William, 9, Thomas, 8, and Joel, 6 in Victoria’s Western District.

IF FARMING is a numbers game, Matthew and Rachel Hinkley have it well and truly figured out.

Just 13 years after becoming farmers, the former agronomists from Derrinallum, in Victoria’s Western District, have pulled off a dramatic increase in scale, efficiency, yields and profits, which has placed them at the pointy end of the industry.

They have grown the size of their mostly cropping operation by 400 per cent, boosted their return on assets to an impressive 10 per cent and lifted crop yields to rival the best in the nation.

2017 CROPPING FARMER OF THE YEAR WINNER

HINKLEY FARMING

Matthew and Rachel Hinkley

DERRINALLUM, VIC

And the couple are far from finished.

Working on a simple rationale that it makes no sense if it makes no cents, the Hinkleys plan to keep growing their business and have their eyes fixed firmly on hitting the magical 10 tonnes/ha mark with their crops.

The key to the Hinkleys’ operation is a targeted approach of buying and leasing land, a scientific-based fertiliser and chemical program and “reverse irrigation” — growing crops on raised beds, which drain water away and prevent losses during wet periods such as those experienced last year.

It is something they cleverly adopted from a five-year stint working as agronomists around major northern NSW cotton centre Moree in the late 1990s.

Since returning to the Western District in 2004 — where they have since grown their operation to 1620 hectares of owned and leased land on which they grow wheat, canola and barley — the Hinkleys have invested heavily in farm machinery to improve efficiencies.

They have also built their own weighbridge and testing station to objectively assess the quality of their grain, and put together about 3000 tonnes of grain storage capacity on-farm, which allows them to employ futures and hedge contracts to take advantage of market highs.

Not that any investment decision has been made lightly. Matthew, 44, and Rachel, 41, are firm believers in thinking with their heads and not their hearts.

“We are very much driven by economics,” Matthew said. “I believe there is as much done in here (in the farm office) as there is out there (in the paddock).”

It’s this attention to detail, and constant quest for success, that makes Matthew and Rachel Hinkley deserving winners of The Weekly Times Coles 2017 Cropping Farmer of the Year.