Fine tuning around rain and stored moisture the key

The ability to manage crops around stored moisture and rainfall is giving the Holland family the edge at their 5000ha southern NSW farms.

Cropping is all about the numbers for the Holland family from the NSW southwest slopes.

While the 10 tonnes a hectare wheat crops in their area are now an achievable goal, third generation Broden Holland said they had a different figure in mind to assess their success.

And it all centres around water use efficiency.

That figure is a minimum of 10kg wheat for every 1mm of moisture, whether that is rainfall in the calendar year or stored moisture in the soil profile.

It’s this which drives many of the management decisions on the Hollands properties, built up from an initial 65ha block in the first generation to 5000ha now.

The main base for the operation, all on country they own, is Young, NSW, but stretches from Bribbaree to Greenthorpe, NSW and includes soil types from sandy clay loam to some areas of black heavy clays and granite soils.

Broden Holland is one of his canola crops at Young in NSW, which contributed to the 4300 tonnes of canola they produced this year, which is grown along with wheat and faba beans.

Broden returned to the family farming operation in 2016 after studying agricultural business at Charles Sturt University and a stint in Canada harvesting.

He came home, he said, with a degree that “teaches you how to learn” and he’s put it into practice in the cropping operation, whether that’s variable rate spreading, protein monitors on the header or green on green spraying.

SETTING GOALS

Broden is a realist, though, and recognises that despite the most whiz bang technology and up-to-date machinery is fine, but it needs to be used in conjunction with the biggest controlling factor of success – and that is moisture management.

There are soil moisture probes on some of the properties the Hollands farm which were installed from 2016 to 2022 and at the start of each season, they know exactly how much stored soil moisture the crop has to call on.

Then all sowing and fertiliser decisions centre around a combination of the stored moisture and what they anticipate will be the rainfall for the coming year.

“At the start of this year, we knew we had 150mm of stored moisture and we looked at the Elders monthly rainfall which was projecting about 300mm in the growing season, or a total of 450mm,” Broden said.

“Going on our goal of 10kg of wheat for every 1mm of available water means we based our other agronomy decisions around the projected yield of 4.5 tonnes – with 150mm of stored moisture and 300mm rainfall in the growing season. (450mm by 10kg of grain = 4.5 tonnes/hectare).”

Deep N tests are taken in each paddock prior to or after sowing to get a baseline level of available nitrogen for the year.

There has also been a broader scale change that the Hollands have embarked on regardless of the season, and ironically it is because their soils are sometimes too fertile for the spring finishes they receive.

“The challenge for us is managing tillers, especially in a year like this,” Broden said.

“But we know that nine times out of ten, we are going to have a dry spring so we changed our sowing rates to manage our tiller count.

“There is no point having a huge biomass and then the crop going backwards in a dry spring.”

In the past, the sowing rate for wheat had been 70kg of wheat per hectare, but this has been scaled back to 50kg.

Lower plant density has not affected potential yields though, if the return per millimetre of moisture is used as the gauge.

“This year was a lesson for me,” he said.

“Don’t worry about low tiller/headcounts – if it has got the nitrogen and the water, it will do its thing.

“In one part of a paddock, there were 280 heads per square metre but in another area, a higher tiller count in the same paddock was doing 500-700kg/ha less – the 280 heads per metre just had a lot of big plump grains.”

The Holland family averaged 4.7 tonnes a hectare for their wheat this year.

TRICKY YEAR

Managing the crop for moisture has been tricky this year with El Nino projections.

“We were never aiming for 10 tonnes/hectare this year but maximising how much wheat we could grow for the stored rainfall and the projected rainfall,” he said.

The wash-up from harvest showed the operation produced 11,000 tonnes of wheat, 4300 tonnes of canola and 270 tonnes of faba beans, with the latter included into the rotation to boost nitrogen.

Broden’s not sold yet on the bean inclusion, and the history of using two years of Lucerne to boost nitrogen is one that he said stacks up financially and agronomically.

It also can be utilised by the operation’s 6000 Merino wethers, which add cash flow as well as grazing options for stubbles. The Lucerne is sprayed out after two years and put back into the cropping program, with the rotation usually wheat and canola. This year, the program included 2300ha of wheat, 2000ha of canola and 700ha of pasture and beans.

Back to the wheat, and the crops this year averaged 4.7 tonnes a hectare, beating their goal of 10kg of grain per millimetre of rainfall (200mm was received from April 1 to November 10, plus 170mm of stored water).

And not only that, it came in at 12 per cent protein, enough to gain an average, H2 classification and earn a return of $416 a tonne, or a rough gross average return of almost $2000/ha.

Those figures look impressive, and naturally there is little luck and plenty of hard work and management in the process.

The Holland family and staff have clocked up 50,070ha of tractor driving and 258 rotor hours per header, to bring in the harvest.

PROTEIN PUSH

The high protein is partially to do with variety choice, but mainly the nitrogen strategy, with Scepter the main wheat sown.

Almost all of the wheat fell into H2 or above, something Broden said was directly related to the installation of a protein monitor in the headers to allow variable rate fertilising.

“In the past, we noticed that there were big variations in protein levels across paddocks,” he said.

“The protein was varying up to 6 per cent in different parts, and the yield was varying up to four tonnes/ha.”

This has been brought down to just 2 per cent variation in protein and two tonnes/ha thanks to the strategic application of urea.

“We still get the yield maps from the header and look at them then put them in the top drawer – they are interesting but they are not the main game for us,” Broden said.

“We are highly focused on our protein maps though.

“If an area has low protein and another has high protein, usually the only thing that is differing here is the amount of nitrogen the wheat is getting.

“It has evened up our paddocks so much that we can’t and don’t need to blend grain anymore as the grain quality is so even.”

Not only has protein evened up but overall yields have increased, with Broden estimating the variable rate has earned them another one tonne a hectare.

The process is simple, he said, with protein maps loaded into an Australian app known as N-Gauge, which then generates a map to spread urea. In the space of a few minutes on his phone, Broden can then apply urea in a way that not only boosts protein but yields.

He said it was important to consider advances in technology not as a money saving tool but as income boosting.

“Pre 2020, we used to spread about 300 tonnes of urea a year, but in the past four years, we have spread 1100 tonnes a year,” Broden said.

“What we have done is produce consistently high yields, and we are also ensuring that we are building up a bank of nitrogen in the soil.

“In a year where we might not have a full soil moisture profile, and we are only budgeting on two tonnes/ha, we may not even need to apply any urea at all.”

Being so tuned into every aspect of growing crops keeps Broden thinking, and one thing that crossed his mind this year was whether he should be aiming for a lower yielding crop, to leave some moisture in the soil for next year.

The argument that won, he said, was that this shouldn’t be an option in many years.

“Commodity prices were so high this year that we decided to use up what moisture we had, and not leave any,” Broden said.

“We don’t want to get a flood or big rainfall and not be able to store it and I guess we decided there is no point looking at next year when the potential is there to use it this year.”

With 50,070ha of tractor driving under their belt and 258 rotor hours per header, it’s a big program for the Holland family and their staff, but Broden is just as eager to tackle next year’s program as ever.

“We farm like we want to be here a long time, and at the same time, we will grow the most amount of food that we can per hectare,” he said.