Mental health and innovation vital for Lismore cropping farmer

NICK Shady sees innovation as a perfect reaction to the challenges he faces in farming, writes DANNIKA BONSER.

Ingenious idea: Nick Shady is trying to engineer a disk seeder that won’t get clogged by burn-off stubble. Picture: Andy Rogers

SMOKE rising from his stubble paddocks in autumn is a frustrating sight for Nick Shady.

The farmer from Lismore, in Victoria’s Western District, has spent considerable time and money troubleshooting a perennial problem for croppers in southwest Victoria: how to avoid burning off but still be able to sow a break crop into heavy stubble.

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But the one-time banker isn’t afraid to think outside the square.

Each year he puts in 800ha of crop — half wheat with the balance made up of canola, barley and linseed.

Despite the widespread practice of burning off in his district, in the past few years Nick has chosen to only burn when absolutely required, to ensure no machinery blockages at next seeding.

“I look at the days where the wind is blowing ash and dust off the paddocks, and I think that’s got to be detrimental to the soil,” he said.

Working with 660mm of annual rainfall, getting autumn pulse crops such as faba beans into the ground before winter strikes is the linchpin of Nick’s conundrum.

“The burning time doesn’t match the sowing time anymore,” he said.

“The current option is for people to burn and wait for the ash to blow off in the wind, and then plant their beans in early April. But that means you’ve got to burn in March, which is often difficult to get a permit to do.

“It’s very hard to plant your crops before you’ve burned the stubble, and agronomists are pushing for very early sowing, which means, how do you manage the stubble load? That’s something that as an industry in southwest Victoria we’ve got to work out.”

NICK SHADY

LISMORE

GROWS 800ha of wheat, canola, barley and linseed

ONLY burns stubble when absolutely required

CONSIDERING including sheep in his annual program

ALSO wants to experiment with planting summer crops

CHANGE MAKER

NOT satisfied with the status quo, the backyard engineer has taken the problem into his own hands.

Sitting in one of his sheds is a prototype of a disk seeder he’s altered to allow for thick stubble to pass freely through when seeding.

There are still a few roadblocks before it can hit the paddock — like being able to detect a blockage at night — but he’s undeterred.

“I’m going to modify another machine, I need to work out a few extra things to improve that system before it’ll be ready to use properly.”

Since buying the property at Lismore 10 years ago, Nick has ripped out fences and reinvigorated paddocks trampled by a century’s worth of livestock.

The soil type varies from heavy grey clay to red sandy banks, offering the opportunity to crop across several seasons.

Last year too much early winter rain saw him forego planting the regular winter crops of wheat, barley and canola.

He made the call to save on fertiliser and chemical, instead planting a spring crop of feed rape.

This saw him heading back to the saleyards at Ballarat for the first time in 10 years to buy sucker lambs which were turned over six months later for a tidy profit.

Important insight: Nick Shady also sees mental health as an important issue among farmers.

SHEEP SHAPE

INCLUDING sheep in his annual plan is now something Nick is thinking about.

“I’m interested in how the natural biological system works — I want to be a low-cost operator,” he said.

“I hate the way agronomy is going where you have to put on that much fertiliser, which increases the acidity of the soils and then having to put lime back out to counteract that. It seems like a pointless circle of expenses.”

To get off the merry-go-around Nick wants to experiment with planting summer crops into canola stubble after it’s harvested in September. Then if summer rain comes, they can either be cut for hay or used as summer feed to fatten lambs, while also improving the soil profile.

In previous years he’s also experimented with companion cropping peas and canola.

Initially a happy accident at his Lismore property, the practice is used by Canadian grain farmers, where lentils are sown with linseed and use it as a truss to grow up off the ground making for easy harvesting.

“I’m interested in how peas put nitrogen back into the system, and how to develop a system where I don’t have to use urea to grow a paddock of field peas or faba beans that often haven’t been profitable,” Nick said.

Cleaning the two grains hasn’t been a problem but recent wet winters and poor field pea prices of less than $450 a tonne have put the brakes on this companion cropping program for now.

Because his farm is too acidic to grow lentils and chickpeas, this has left Nick even more determined to engineer a solution to sowing into thick stubble.

MENTAL HEALTH

WHILE being a self-described “financial nerd” — Nick’s first job out of school was as at a bank in Skipton — he is also in touch with his emotional side.

He’s volunteered as a phone counsellor for struggling farmers, and sometimes gives talks on mental health in the bush — most recently at the South Australian No-Till conference.

“They didn’t all run to the door which was good, but there’s a lot of crossed arms, and a lot of people looking around and not at you,” he said.

“The issue is how do you get the men to talk? Because the reason why people don’t want to discuss what’s going on is they don’t want to be a burden on people.”

“Blokes think they’re too tough to talk, but I actually think people are unsure of the steps. First they’ve got to identify if they don’t feel OK — most farmers will only go to the doctor if their hand is falling off.”

Nick also sees self criticism as a common mental health hang-up, and says it comes at the peril of innovating on farm.

“If you make 200 good decisions a year and one bad one, that’s the one you dwell on. And that holds you back from trying new things because you do what you know works,” he said.

After several rain-drenched years at Lismore, maintaining his mental health is one reason the father of two recently moved off-farm to Ballarat.

“I don’t really enjoy cold wet days and seeing the crops die, and then the hot windy days and seeing your crops die,” he said.

BALANCING ACT

ACCORDING to recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data, one in four farmers puts in 50-plus hours a week — a statistic Nick doesn’t want to become.

“I did it for my sanity. For me I just enjoy staying at home with my son for the day, and I don’t have to be looking out the window at all the jobs I could — not should — be doing,” he said.

“We’ve used technology to increase our productivity but it hasn’t really given us any extra time, and something you can’t replace in life is time.”

Nearly 1000 copies of the book Who Gets The Farm? Nick authored in 2015 have found their way onto country kitchen tables.

While he never wanted to be a succession planner, he wrote the book to help others open up the conversation after having a tricky time working out the future of his own family farm.

The chapters cover topics like sudden deaths, new daughter-in-laws, and divorce.

What has he discovered since writing the book? People still don’t want to talk about it.

“I might as well have written a book about assisted dying,” he said.

“If you ask 90 per cent of farmers do they have a succession plan they would say ‘yes’, and then if you ask what does it look like they say ‘well I haven’t got it written down’, which is hard if there’s other people involved in the business.”