Farmers find opportunities
Adapting to conditions is the key to success for the Muller family at their diverse cropping and cattle operation in Central Queensland.
Opportunity croppers is the nickname Scott and Krystal Muller have coined themselves.
The couple who farm at Biloela in central Queensland grow irrigated and dryland summer and winter crops and trade cattle when the market suits.
Their philosophy is to adapt. Scott, a fourth-generation farmer, jokingly talks about his 15ha trial paddock that allows him to experiment with different inputs and farming techniques. He has thrown many different things at that paddock in order to try and get a result.
The Mullers also keep an open mind about inputs. He gives it a go if it means trialling a small-scale product from a retail shop, or something from a new ag retailer. If the season is conducive, he will double-crop and consider every economy of scale.
The Mullers farm 1600ha with 500mm of annual rain, most of which falls in summer.
Biloela has received more than 200mm of rain since harvest last year.
The property has self-mulching black soil through to heavy types with red scrub soil and alluvial creek flat soil.
“We have a mix of everything; it can take a magician to manage it at times,” Scott said.
The farm ran dairy cows from the early 1950s and over the years has converted to a minimum and zero-till cropping enterprise.
“I also at times do minimal till because it is the one thing we can use without chemistry to combat resistant weeds,” Scott said.
He has supplementary irrigation from bores but doesn’t call himself an irrigator.
“I still like to plant after rain if I can; if we have the opportunity to give it a drink and we have allocations, we will use irrigation,” he said.
CROP FLEXIBILITY
Keeping to a set rotation can be a “right-royal mission”, according to Scott.
“I admit, we can struggle with rotation,” he said. But, a degree of flexibility comes with not setting down rigid rotational patterns.
The Mullers grow wheat, barley, chick peas, sorghum and mung beans; cotton is grown occasionally.
“We grow cotton if water is available and the price is OK,” he said. However, it really depends on the season.
Chick peas follow wheat and then barley. “We are opportunity takers when it comes to rotations,” Scott said.
Wheat and barley are the key winter crops in volume, and sorghum is the largest summer crop.
“We use the three-quarter profile rule, if the timing is right and the moisture is there we plant, this has allowed us in past years to double crop out of a winter crop into a summer rotation,” Scott said.
There has been a constant assessment of nutrients and finding the best ways to incorporate nitrogen and other nutrients into the soil.
Scott explains that they were initially “floating along” and using nitrogen at maintenance rates in the early days.
Initially pre-drilling urea and before planting was the standard practice.
Scott now uses soil and tissue samples to help evaluate the required input levels.
He doesn’t call himself a biological farmer but has incorporated biological inputs into the program.
“Everything is trial and error … I was buying products from Bunnings to try,” he said.
Scott said he remembers receiving seaweed in demo packs to try on his trial paddock.
“I believe there’s some great products out there that we have access to and should have no fear in trying something new,” he said.
“When urea prices went through the roof, it was even more important to look at our inputs and assess what we were doing,” he said.
For many years, he has been tinkering with biologicals and alternative products and regularly used liquid fertilisers.
Looking back in history, he said his grandfather’s ledger book shows that they were making not a lot less on sorghum compared to the current return.
“Here we are more than 20 years later, and our inputs are astronomical, and we have multimillion-dollar pieces of machinery … the margins are falling,” he said.
Diversification into different products that are more cost-effective and equally capable of adding nutrients to the soil has been a goal.
Scott applies a granular fertiliser, Gran-Am that is 20.2 per cent nitrogen and 24 per cent sulphur. He said it has been helpful in boosting nitrogen in the soil and also giving it a hit of sulphur.
It is applied a few months before sowing.
“When drilling urea in, it could take up to two weeks to get across the country. Gran-Am it can be done in a few days with our 36-metre spreader, which is also a considerable fuel and time saver.
“We also use base liquids at planting where we can adjust the micronutrients if needed,” he said.
Gran-Am can also be applied three to four months before sowing.
SEASONAL VARIABILITY
The central Queensland property experiences a range of weather from frosts in winter to 40C days in summer.
“We have been wiped out by frosts, floods and droughts many times before, that’s just farming,” Scott said.
Rolling hill country right down to creek flats provides plenty of diversity.
Scott said they have nearly all of the different soil types, it can change up to five times within the one paddock.
To make the most of the seasons and pasture growth, they will assess the cattle markets and determine whether livestock is lucrative for that particular time.
Depending on the market, they can run zero to 300 cattle. The cattle graze on pastures and scrub country. However, Scott said the native pastures respond well to rain.
Irrigation for crops comes from underground bore water.
For farming to be lucrative, it’s a juggling act with costs of production.
“You have electricity with the pumping of water, and then there’s the nutrients like fertiliser to consider,” he said.
Costs are a constant challenge. In addition, accounting for man-hours is essential.
Scott, a qualified diesel mechanic, said even being taken away from farming due to breakdowns or upgrading machinery was a time factor to consider.
He said that if you spend more than $1000 a tonne on nutrients, it is nearly impossible to make a profit.
“In 2022, urea hit $1500 a tonne.”
Now, the Mullers incorporate 100kg/ha of fertiliser. If the past couple of years are to be a guide, the fertiliser cost was around $650/tonne.
“Insurance costs and electricity have become almost scary, and machinery replacement is almost out of control.”
Scott said in the past, winter cropping was the staple. However, the ratio between summer and winter production is now closer to 50:50.
“We have managed to do double cropping and plant summer and winter crops in the same 12 months, and that is cheeky opportunity farming, in my opinion,” he said.
PLANTING POTENTIAL
The aim is to have chick peas and barley planted around Anzac Day (April) each year and hopefully be finished by the end of May.
Harvesting starts in October and is usually complete by the start of November.
“For the most part, we are on a 12-metre controlled traffic farming system,” Scott said. He has both a disc and a tyne planter.
The paddocks are sown using a 12-metre configuration with three-metre tram tracks.
“We have been on the 12-metre system for six years; before that, we were on 9-metre (row spacing),” he said.
Although the Mullers tend to use a disc planter and keep paddocks on a zero-till system, he has also reconfigured a zero-till tyne planter.
“This lets us incorporate different residuals at planting to help in the control of weeds in the crop,” he said.
He uses an Austil single-disc planter, with winter crops sown on 15-inches and summer crops on a 30-inch row space.
“We still have our old-school conventional planters and double disc for cotton or precision sorghum,” he said.
Pressure from fall armyworm has been a challenge for sorghum crops this season, and wheat in 2022 had some fusarium head blight.
AT THE SILO
The Mullers can harvest up to 5 tonnes/ha for sorghum, barley and wheat, that is a common for the area, in a good year.
The chick peas tend to yield around 2 tonnes to 2.5 tonnes/ha, and mung beans have had similar results.
Dryland cotton yielded eight bales a hectare in 2022.
Scott said having on farm storage is vital to be able to make on-the-go decisions with grain marketing and also keep harvesters in the field longer.
“We have the ability to dry grain and also clean grain which helps for timely access to market if needed.”
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