Kangaroo Island cropping farmers reaping reward for crossing the water
A single cropping operation bridges island and mainland.
A HOP, skip and a jump from the mainland to Kangaroo Island almost two decades ago has paid dividends for fifth-generation South Australian farmers Grant and Ben Pontifex.
Particularly in years like this with large swathes of southeast Australia reeling from dry conditions.
Grant and Ben run Pontifex Farming, a 6800ha cropping operation split between Paskeville on the Yorke Peninsula and Vivonne Bay and American River on Kangaroo Island – land the business purchased in 2001 when the options to expand locally proved few and far between, not to mention cost prohibitive.
“We were talking $2960 a hectare compared to $990 a hectare on Kangaroo Island,” Grant said.
“Effectively you were getting three for one for higher-rainfall country.
“But you obviously have to then factor the freight and logistics in to the equation.
“It works well in seasons like this when it is not as good here. It can get too wet on KI occasionally and the crops suffer through waterlogging. But it is a good complement to this farm, if one is dry the other is usually pretty good and if one is wet the other is usually pretty good. It also allows us to grow different crop types which helps with commodity price cycles.”
Grant is responsible for the Paskeville operations, home to 2400ha of an even split of wheat, barley and pulses — namely lentils and chickpeas — while Ben is in charge on Kangaroo Island, where the family has 4400ha of mostly canola and wheat, but also barley and broadbeans.
Pontifex Farming is run as the one business and thus shares machinery, which Grant admits can prove a logistical challenge at times.
“This year it will work quite well, we’ll be able to finish here and get everything over there and be there for the start of when everything is ready,” he said last month. “Normally it doesn’t work that way … usually as soon as we’ve done lentils here, we send one combine over to get started on canola and then we do the cereals here and send another two over.”
SOLID FOUNDATION
GRANT, 43, has been home on the Paskeville farm, which has been in the family since 1887, for the past 23 years and has been manager since 2001.
Ben, who is five years younger, has been solely responsible for the Kangaroo Island operation since 2006.
The properties vary in both soil types and rainfall.
Grant said the soils on Kangaroo Island were gravel on sand over clay, and quite acidic, and not as good as the Yorke Peninsula’s alkaline clay loam over limestone “which hold a lot of moisture”.
The Paskeville farm averages 400mm of rain annually but this year has been tracking well below average with just 200mm falling so far. “It’s not high rainfall at Paskeville but generally pretty reliable,” Grant said.
The Kangaroo Island properties receive about 650mm and will likely reach that this year. Grant said the saving grace at Paskeville this year was that all that rain fell during the growing season, meaning “we were still very lucky to harvest what we have”. “This is the worst year we’ve had since 2006,” Grant said. “In 2006 there was lower rainfall and lower yields, but this is one of about three in the past 25 years that I can remember being this bad.”
The Pontifex operation is solely cropping with the annual program getting under way at Paskeville each April with the spreading of 6000 tonnes of chicken manure, sourced from poultry sheds at nearby Port Wakefield, on their paddocks. Grant said the manure had been spread for the past 13 years at a rate of about 2.5 tonnes/ha and had great results with “much better resilience in the system for these dry years and tight finishes and hot spells and frosts”.
“It is a slow-release, organic-type fertiliser so the crop only uses what it needs to … it is not force fed,” said Grant, who completed a Nuffield scholarship last year on improving soil health through manure and cover cropping.
“There is better structure in the soil and we’re certainly growing more kilograms of grain per millimetre (of rain) than we were before we started using manure.”
ALL SYSTEMS GO
PLANTING on both the Yorke Peninsula and Kangaroo Island starts around Anzac Day. At Paskeville, seeding rates average about 90kg/ha for wheat, 70kg/ha for barley, 50kg/ha for lentils and 100kg/ha for chickpeas. The Pontifexs also grow some oaten hay which has a seeding rate of about 120kg/ha.
On Kangaroo Island, canola is sown at a rate of about 2kg/ha, wheat 100kg/ha, barley 70kg/ha and broad beans about 180kg/ha.
Paskeville has operated on no-till principles, on 30.5cm or 12-inch spacings, since 2001.
The Pontifexs have used a K-Hart disc seeder for the past three years which they plan to upgrade this year to Gent disc openers to reduce spacings to 25.5cm or 10-inch and “to go back to a more zero-till machine … the K-Hart still disturbs a bit of soil”.
On Kangaroo Island, they use a Tobin bullet single disc and for the past few years have been sowing a lot of crops from their own plane. The seed is spread by air and then a Kelly disc-chain is used to work it in the soil.
Grant said the aerial approach meant they could cover a lot more country quickly and resulted in better seed utilisation with effectively “zero row spacings”. At Paskeville, urea applications are based on rainfall with “very little applied in years like this”. During the growing season, they generally spray 50 litres/ha of UAN or a liquid nitrogen-calcium brew to complement the chicken manure. On Kangaroo Island about 100kg/ha of fertiliser and up to 200kg/ha of urea supplements the canola.
REAP THE REWARDS
HARVEST usually gets under way at Paskeville in mid-November and, depending on the season, wraps up on Kangaroo Island between late January and late February. There are three full-time staff working with Ben on Kangaroo Island and two full-time staff with Grant at Paskeville.
When The Weekly Times caught up with Grant last month harvest at Paskeville had just wrapped up — “usually we’d only just be starting about now, but we’re done” — and yields were down across the board.
Barley averaged about 3.5 tonnes/ha (“I was quite happy with that”) but wheat yielded just 2.5 tonnes/ha (compared to an average four tonnes/ha). Pulse yields were down by about half with chickpeas yielding 0.9 tonnes/ha and lentils returning 1.2 tonnes/ha.
On the flip side, the Kangaroo Island operation is on truck for a bumper season.
“It is not too wet … the beans are still green and the wheat and canola should be ready in the next week to 10 days,” Grant said.
This year the Pontifexs are banking on five tonnes/ha for their cereal crops, 2.5 tonnes/ha for canola and two tonnes/ha for their beans.
Grant and Ben are directors and shareholders of Kangaroo Island Pure Grain, which markets, packs and sells its own grain from the island.
Their father, Neil, was a founder of KING and served as its managing director until last year.
Soft wheat from Kangaroo Island goes to Arnott’s biscuits while broadbeans go to Indonesia as a snackfood and canola are destined for Japan.
From Paskeville, all the pulses are sold to a packer in Adelaide while the wheat and barley is sold for export.
As for what direction the business will take in the future? “You just never know,” Grant said. “If opportunities present, we’ll continue to expand.”
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