Clay family hits pay dirt by going organic
A shift to organic dairy farming has led to big cost savings for Western District farmers.
ON the foothills of Mt Leura in western Victoria, you’d be forgiven for thinking pastures adjacent to the landmark scoria cone would take care of itself.
But you’d be wrong.
Camperdown dairy farmers Graham and Melissa Clay have been farming in the shadow of the 130m-high inactive volcano for decades, but only in the past five years have they operated as an entirely organic farm.
The Western District couple are one of three families who represent the Organic Milk Co — an offshoot of Australian Consolidated Milk.
While geography and topography have assisted with the shift from conventional to organic dairying, plenty of elbow grease hasn’t gone astray.
“We’re right in the crater of Mt Leura. It’s more minerally dense to start off with but that doesn’t mean you don’t still add nutrients when required,” Graham says.
“What we generally do is match our nutrient load with our animal draw, so whatever goes off the farm in milk or meat or whatever, it’s actually matched to the nutrient going back into the system so we’re not draining the system of any nutrients.
“If we want to value-add, then we aim to put more nutrients on and build soil carbon and increase its water-holding capability and its nutrient-holding capability.”
HOME GROWN
THE 240ha farm is located on undulating land and split into reasonably uniform paddocks. The Clay family farm has become self-sufficient during the shift to organic with input costs presenting an incentive to grow at home.
“We try to graze paddocks for a maximum of three days, because once three days is up the grass starts growing again, regardless of what time of year it is,” Graham says.
“We always try to stick to that three-day rule. We’ve got plenty of silage and hay on hand at the moment, all on homegrown dry matter — as an organic farmer, our aim is to grow as much homegrown dry matter as we can.
“I think the district average is five to six tonnes of dry matter to the hectare and we’ve been producing up to 13 tonnes of dry matter to the hectare. So we don’t try to buy any feed through the gate at all.
“If anything, we buy grain, but it’s too dear at the moment.
“Our grain for an organic system is about $830 a tonne and at 70 cents a litre for our milk, it doesn’t add up, we’d be losing money (if dependent on outside grain).”
This season, the Camperdown farm has introduced corn to the diet of the 280-strong herd.
“It was all about getting some starch into the diet. We managed nine tonne of dry matter to the hectare — on a non-irrigated crop under organic management, we got double cobbing,” Graham says.
While the inaugural maize crop turned out well, climatic conditions didn’t get off to a favourable start.
“It was on the edge there for a bit because we had a lot of rain when we planted it,” he says. “Then we didn’t have a lot of rain when we needed it but we were lucky enough to strike a thunderstorm and got a couple of inches and that carried the crop through.”
NATURAL INSTINCT
THE Clays started shifting towards more sustainable production nearly 20 years ago, with Graham and Melissa reading mountains of written material on the subject.
“I had to retrain myself, basically. All my reading led me to believe that it was in the biology. There’s three pillars to the soil is what we always say: most people do the physical structure of the soil, the chemical composition of the soil, but they don’t do the biological composition of the soil. Since we’ve started putting those microbes into it, our homegrown dry matter has increased probably twofold on where we were (a decade ago).”
Graham is almost evangelical about the benefits of compost to fertilise pastures and the need for the wider agricultural sector to get stuck in.
“On television the other night, there was a report on food waste in Australia, how we’re one of the worst (nations) for throwing out food. That’s all organic matter that can be broken down and turned into humus (soil) that can go back into pastures and build up water-holding capability. It’s so easy to do if you do it properly. There is a cost but there’s a reward at the end of it.”
While many landholders would be envious of being located on rich volcanic soil, Graham said he only tapped into the potential of Mt Leura’s soil after going organic.
“Under our old conventional system, we had areas where water would lay in and we’d still pug paddocks. Mismanagement is a major cause of the issues associated with pugging paddocks and not allowing the water to get through. The way I look at it, the ground should be like a sponge — you should be able to absorb as much moisture and hold it. And then we should be able to draw it back and push the shoulders of our season out — so we get an earlier start and a later finish.”
Several building blocks have contributed to the Clays’ organic success. Melissa undertook a horticulture course, which provided insights that could be applied on farm. Graham says much of the credit also goes to farm consultant Kevin Beecroft.
Kevin and his wife, Leisa, have operated a South Gippsland dairy farm for two decades and joined forces with the Clays to form the BioLink-Probiotics for Plants enterprise.
The insights provided by the Beecrofts as well as the Clays’ own research has paid significant dividends.
“I wouldn’t say we were doing the wrong thing (under the conventional method), it was best practice at the time but I could see cracks appearing in our system, unhealthy cows, and when we got to the point of feeding low-level antibiotics in the cow feed, I thought we were doing something horribly wrong as a farmer.
“I kid you not, our vet bills were probably $20,000 (per annum before going organic). Now, we might have the vet out for one or two calvings per year, at most.”
The Clay farm spreadsheets have highlighted how input costs have sharply declined since the 2015 transition to organic.
“The way I look at it — conventional milk prices are 50 cents a litre and a cow does 10,000 litres, she makes you $5000 for the year.
“Our cows are doing $4.50 to $4.80 milk solids, consistently over the herd, so that means that our cows are, at $10 a milk solid, actually making us $4800 — so we’re $200 behind in the financial but we have no grain costs and a very low input system and we’re finding we’re making more money this way than we were.”
FAMILY TIES
FARMING has been in Graham’s blood for generations.
His grandfather was a market gardener in the southeast Melbourne suburb of Bentleigh.
“My parents were originally from Melbourne, they moved out to the country in 1964, to this farm. (My family) had a choice of two farms; one down in the Simpson area and one near Camperdown and I think they just liked the idea of being closer to town.”
While the pastures may have changed a great deal as part of the organic revolution, the Camperdown district’s seasonal conditions have remained as conducive to dairy as when the Clay family moved to the region in the profitable 1960s.
“This year’s been a ripper,” Graham says.
“Last spring was a beautiful spring but prior to that, with autumn (2019) it was hard going everywhere, but that was one out of the bag for the Camperdown area.
“Having said that, this autumn in 2020 is also an unusual one, for the right reasons — we haven’t seen an autumn like this in quite a few years.”
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