How a young WA farmer slashed fertiliser use in half

Healthy soil is the key to success for a leading WA farmer, who has reduced his fertiliser use by half, while also increasing production.

Jake Ryan, of Three Ryans at Manjimup in Western Australia, has a truly mixed farming operation, growing vegetables, crops, sheep and cattle.

Plant, animal and human health are key priorities for West Australian farmer Jake Ryan.

And he believes the health of all of these start with healthy soil.

Diversification and embracing regenerative agriculture practices have been the main drivers of soil health on his family’s 202ha property at Manjimup.

Jake, along with wife Sang, and parents Gary and Tracey grow cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and kale under the Three Ryans name, alongside sheep, cattle, winter crops for seed and chickens for pasture-raised eggs.

Since coming back to the family farm in 2017, Jake has made significant changes to the diverse farming operation, most notably converting the vegetable growing enterprise from a traditional high cultivation, high fertiliser input crop to one produced with one-pass ground preparation using half the fertiliser, while increasing production.

The Ryan’s farm is a mixed and varied operation. With an annual average rainfall of 700mm, the brassica vegetables are grown for processing and wholesale markets, they run 900 Multi-meat composite ewes, 30-50 heifers, 2500 pasture-raised chickens and grow wheat, barley and oats mostly for seed crops.

Jake said having a diverse farming enterprise allows us to mitigate against market variability.

“By being diverse in our income streams means that if one of our enterprise is receiving low price, another is hopefully receiving good returns. Being diverse like we are also allows us to stack enterprise which means we can have higher returns per hectare as we can have a few different income streams from the same hectare.”

Irrigating vegetables on the Three Ryans property at Manjimup in Western Australia.

“Dad listened to a presentation from Joel Salatin from the US about stacking enterprises, and that is how the chickens started.”

Initially Gary and his brother Ian had about 300 chickens for a trial which grew to 800. Jake and his sister Kayla Bendotti then purchased the chickens and grew the business to 2500 birds.

The chickens are run in two 20ha paddocks, with eggs hand collected, washed and graded at the farm pack house, then trucked to Perth to different retailers and sold as premium pasture raised eggs.

BIG CHANGES

After studying Agribusiness at Curtin University, Jake intended to go and get experience elsewhere, but ultimately decided to go straight back to the farm. He spent his first year back, in 2017, learning everything he could.

Then he said he went down the “regenerative agriculture” rabbit hole and he got hooked.

“In 2018 we started trialling regenerative agriculture and grew a summer cover crop,” Jake said.

“We have a Mediterranean climate, with not much summer rain, but we grew a 5ha crop of sunflowers and grazing maize which the chooks ate and we kept waiting for the sunflowers to die, but they grew and it’s what made us realise regenerative agriculture might work.”

After that initial trial Jake said he started following the work of Alan Savory, and started using electric fences for rotational grazing which includes daily moves and long rest periods.

“Of all the things we have done, rotational grazing has been the biggest change for overall profitability,” Jake said.

The change in grazing management, while using less fertiliser, has allowed them to go from running 600-700 ewes to 900-1000 ewes.

Sheep and cattle grazing on the Three Ryans property.

Before lambing ewes are moved Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and are run in mobs of singles, twins and triplets. During the growing season the 1000 ewes, 1400 lambs and 50 heifers are run in one mob and moved daily.

Jake said the sheep and cattle were run among the chickens when they got to that paddock in the rotation.

They introduced the Multi-meat breed more than 10 years ago, mostly for the Booroola gene, which is known for its high rate of multiple births.

With the introduction of the Booroola gene, the lambing percentage has gone from 110 per cent to 140 per cent.

They have just started crossing the Multi-meat ewes to a more Merino base for better wool.

Lambs are sold direct to processors, with a lot of the smaller framed lambs to live export.

They buy in 30-50 heifers each year, which are then artificially inseminated and sold a pregnancy-tested-in-calf heifers.

“Calving happens in peak vegetable season, so this allows us to have another enterprise but not have to calve them down.”

PERFECTING FERTILISER

Once the grazing management was changed, Jake then started looking at reducing base fertiliser rates.

They initially started using foliar fertiliser and were buying it for about $100/ha.

“I started to think I could make foliar fertilisers from scratch and reduce our costs, it was a four year process of getting it right, but now we have nailed it and costs are down to $18/ha,” Jake said.

Jake said before applying fertiliser they did SAP tests and adjusted the foliar spray based on those results.

“I make up 10 different brews of fertiliser then ground spray a sqm, then after 45 minutes do a Brix test (a measure of sugars in the plant). Depending if the Brix goes up or down, I can then determine what the plant wants.”

It’s meant they have halved their fertiliser usage and cut costs right back.

Jake has also introduced humics, fulvics and microbes, reduced the side dressings of fertiliser and reduced spray droplet size.

Kale crops growing on the Three Ryans property.

“We always put a granular starter in the vegetables and we were using 2.5 tonnes/ha which was quite expensive, so I added 20kg/ha of humic acid and I’ve halved the amount of fertiliser to 1.25 tonnes/ha.”

Always experimenting, Jake is just perfecting a liquid calcium phosphate blend which contains 12 per cent phosphate, 11.5 per cent calcium and 2 per cent potassium.

“It is very unique, it is crystal clear and liquid when it is made correctly. Phosphate and calcium are insoluble, but this is completely liquid.”

The blend is used in fertigation in vegetables and as a foliar spray in cereal crops.

“I started developing this blend because I was having to apply three different blends to get the right amount of each element, but it is now all in the one blend so it cuts costs and time, and I am able to micro-dose this fertiliser and it does 90 per cent of the work for us,” he said.

Selenium and cobalt are also used as a foliar spray or liquid injection.

“We used to be able to buy selenium and cobalt bullets to give to sheep but they stopped making them, but they are essential to good animal and human health and it was a deficiency we used to have, so now we apply it this way onto vegetable and to pastures.”

VEGETABLE SEASON

Vegetable seedlings are bought in at six weeks old from a seedling factory, with the first planting at the end of June and then planting once a week to stagger growth. Usually 30-40ha of vegetables are planted.

Broccoli harvest then starts in September, cabbages, cauliflowers and kale at the end of November, with all harvest finished in May.

To help prevent soil degradation, Jake was the first person to bring a Strip Tiller into Western Australia in 2018 as a trial.

“They were using them in the eastern states but it wasn’t being done here, so we trialled it to huge success and we bought the first one in Western Australia.”

It means the only time the soil is tilled is during planting, which has improved the soil structure, reduced the risk of erosion and increased soil microbe activity.

“In that first season we planted 60 acres of vegetables and it saved us 10,000 litres of diesel, plus hours of machinery and labour hours.”

Vegetables are all hand picked, with workers from the PALM scheme employed during harvest.

“We have had a group of six East Timorese come across each year for the past four years, and we have a good working relationship with them. It has been great for us, it saves on training backpackers each year and means we have a reliable work force.”

Cabbages are generally sold to processors, with the Three Ryans brand supplying a large per cent of the cabbage in coleslaw bags sold at the major chains in Western Australian from November to May.

They sell whole heads of cauliflower and broccoli to different IGA chains.

While insecticides are used in vegetables if they are needed, Jake said they are working on getting the plant health enough to not need them that often.

He is also in the early stages of developing an organic based in-house insecticide spray, while beneficial insects have also been introduced or habitats improved to attract the right ones.

“We manage soil and plant nutrition with foliar sprays and this helps with pest pressure. For example we haven’t had to spray for red legged earth mite since we got the nutrition right in 2018.”

By increasing the Brix levels in the pasture and crops, they haven’t really had to spray any insecticide or fungicide because the plant health makes it impossible for the pests and disease to survive.

Irrigation is done using semipermanent sprinklers. They generally water everyday but at the start and end of the season it may only be once a week if it is raining.

PLANT MIX

The cereal cropping part of the business was added in 10 years ago. It was introduced to reduce the cost of planting mixed species pastures.

“By growing our own seed it means we can greatly reduce the cost of seeding our pastures,” Jake said.

All of the pastures are dry-seeded in March, while cereal crops are sown following vegetables at the end of March or April. All cereal crops are grazed, while some pasture is used to make hay and silage.

Cereal crops are planted after the vegetables to help use any excess nutrients in the soil, they are then grazed in winter and then locked up to produce seed. The seed is then used to reseed pastures or for sheep feed.

Yield can vary as a lot of the species grown are grazing species, so they are generally low yielding. Yields can vary from 1 tonne/ha for rye-grass up to 6 tonne/ha for barley and oat crops.

Jake Ryan uses foliar fertiliser which he mixes himself on his Three Ryans property at Manjimup in Western Australia.

The pasture cover crop is made up of five to 10 species.

Jake said there are a few different reasons why they seed so many species.

“The main ones are for different root exudates. Each plant produces and releases different root exudates that feed different soil microbes.

“Another major reason is animal health. The greater the number of species in a pasture the more animals can consume per day and the more health benefits they get from the pasture.”

Jake is currently building a robot weeding machine which will be able to use green on green technology to spray weeds out of the vegetable crops.

He intends to use small doses of concentrated liquid fertiliser to burn the weeds and therefore save the need for chemical herbicide sprays on vegetables and cereal crops.

“We have the camera built with Guy Coleman and started the process of annotating 40,000 images. The sprayer will be mounted to the back of a tractor and will have 2.5cm accuracy and drive at 4km/hour, which is fast in vegetable growing.”

“The technology will be open source and can be found if you google open weed locator, so anyone can built the camera, but they will have to make their own weed library because crops and soils differ from farm to farm.”

The first trials of the weed machine will happen in February.

FULL PLATE

With a full plate and continually striving to improve, Jake also does agronomy work for a few neighbours and spends time talking and learning with other farmers.

The Three Ryans have one other full time staff member, one part time and four staff to pack eggs.

“We run lean, but wages are a big cost. We do really appreciate the staff we do have.”

Jake is clear on his mission to try and change how farming is done as a whole.

“Regenerative agriculture has changed things and it is nice to have some small part in helping others understand how it can change things.”

“We do all of this to try to look after the environment, but we also have to make a profit, there is no point doing the right thing if you go broke.”

Ultimately he said the goal was to be profitable while doing the right thing by the environment.