Nuffield scholar Jarrod Amery makes his own way in farming
Jarrod Amery’s progression in agriculture has not followed the traditional path, writes James Wagstaff.
JARROD Amery recalls the conversation as if it happened yesterday.
“When I was 11 I remember Dad said to me, ‘Jarrod, you’ll never get given my farm’ … he’d gone through a pretty tough succession himself and he didn’t want that for us.
“And I thought to myself ‘OK, if that is the case I’m going to have to get my own’ and that was my goal,” says the now 38-year-old who crops more than 2400ha across four properties at Forbes in NSW and this year was awarded a Nuffield farming scholarship.
Jarrod’s rise to farming success did not chart the traditional course. Growing up on dairy and irrigation farms at Tongala and Nathalia in northern Victoria, he was always passionate about agriculture. As a teenager when he was not at school, he was working at the local Nathalia supermarket, earning money to help realise his farming dream.
At the end of Year 10 he left school to take a full-time position at the supermarket, rising up through the ranks to assistant manager.
“Dad said, ‘you’re never going to work on my farm until you work for another boss’,” Jarrod said. “I learned so many skills — skills of how to work with people, how cashflow works — virtually buying goods in and selling them before they pay for them, the complete opposite to agriculture.”
Later Jarrod worked for his dad while studying a certificate three in agriculture through Bendigo TAFE, which he completed in 2003 and was named student of the year. About the same time, aged just 20, he realised his ownership with the purchase of 24ha of irrigation country at Nathalia, thanks to $40,000 he’d managed to squirrel away.
Three years later Jarrod married wife Emma and they bought 162ha of fairly tough country between Forbes and West Wyalong in NSW while he worked as a shearer and Emma a schoolteacher.
In 2013, after coming to the conclusion that “less is more”, they paid $360,000 for 121ha of better cropping land next to Emma’s parents’ farm southeast of Forbes.
GROW FOR IT
THE Amerys added to their portfolio three years ago when they took on a nearby extra 540ha under a 12-month lease-to-buy arrangement.
The property was worth $1.6 million and Jarrod admitted “we didn’t have anything like that ... but it gave us 12 months to come up with the money”.
“We were praying for a good harvest that next year, we got that and we just scraped enough together,” he said.
Since then the Amerys have bought another 688ha nearby in addition to 1214ha of lease country.
The country ranges from “beautiful red sandy loam and clay soils” to “heavy grey soils — almost self-mulching clay” on the leased block, which “when it gets wet, gets really wet”. The properties receive about 525mm of rain a year and the Amerys said they had enjoyed a remarkable turnaround in seasons following successive years of drought.
So far this year they have measured more than 370mm of rain, already more than double the 154mm during the whole of last year.
Cropping is the main game for the family, with 100 per cent of the farms sown down to winter crops. This year’s program comprises 1300ha of wheat, 600ha of barley and 450ha of canola with sowing kicking off at the end of February with 170ha of grazing wheat, which Jarrod said had “gone berserk” with the improved seasonal conditions.
The Amerys work on a two-year rotation of wheat or barley, “which has been kind during drought” followed by canola. Crops are sown by direct-drill methods, to conserve precious soil moisture, on 300mm spacings. The Amerys run on the John Deere Green Star RDK 2cm-accuracy steering program and Jarrod said he aimed to sow in furrow, except for when the remaining straw was too thick.
“The reason I try to sow furrow is for the past 12 months the water has run there, the nutrition band is there and there is more root mass and organic matter in that spot, which makes the soil nicer for the seeds to germinate in. It is not as cloddy as trying to sow it on top of the hill,” he said.
RATINGS PERIOD
CANOLA is planted at a rate of about 2.5kg of seed/ha, with wheat going in at about 45-50kg/ha.
Soil testing conducted before sowing this year showed plenty of nitrogen, which means fertiliser applications have been minimal — just 40-60kg/ha of MAP compared with an average 70-90kg/ha.
“Most of my paddocks have got enough nitrogen in the soil to achieve five tonnes to the hectare or more at 11.5 per cent protein in the grain or more,” Jarrod said.
“There is only one paddock that is going to require urea if it looks like it is going to yield more than four tonnes to the hectare. That has never happened before.
“The way that has been achieved has been two years of virtually not getting any crop but fertilising, and mineralisation as well.”
Jarrod said he was someone that wanted to achieve “good yields, good results, I am not reducing my urea inputs to try and save money ... it’s just I don’t need to.”
In recent years, the Amerys have ventured down the value-adding path by ramping up their sheep trading enterprise, buying stock on AuctionsPlus and grazing early sown, or in recent drought years, failed crops.
At the height of the drought they bought 1000 young crossbred and Merino ewes on to graze failed crops and deliver cash flow for when the season turned. Last month they sold the crossbred portion for $421 a head, while the best of the Merinos fetched $327.
Jarrod said the sheep enterprise was a direct response to stagnating grain prices.
“Seven years ago canola was $450-$500 a tonne. At the moment it is about $530 a tonne,” he said.
“In that time lamb prices have doubled, sheep prices have almost doubled and wool prices had doubled, but they’ve come back again (due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
I really want to step this sheep trading up more and more because if you can sell a store lamb for the price of a tonne of barley, it just doesn’t stack up.”
Jarrod said his policy was to buy in sheep in January and February — “the hotter the weather, the cheaper the sheep” — and turn them all off by the end of July to allow the crops to realise their grain potential. He said the aim was to trade 5000-10,000 lambs annually in the coming years.
HARVEST BOUNTY
HARVEST kicks off with canola in the first week of November, with wheat following around November 14. While windrowing the canola Jarrod applies Roundup to help clean up residual weeds.
Harvest is usually wrapped up by mid-December with average yields of about 3.5-4 tonnes/ha for wheat and 1.5-2.3 tonnes/ha for canola.
“Yes we do get our 2.5 tonnes/ha canola and we do get our five tonnes/ha for wheat, but you’d be foolish to budget on those numbers,” Jarrod said.
Jarrod and his father, about 30km away, share machinery.
“It means we don’t have two lots of rubbish plant equipment ... combine it. One good seeder, one good boomspray, one good header ... and it works well,” he said.
The grain is marketed either on-farm, through GrainCorp Forbes or Grenfell Commodities. This year, Jarrod is considering buying a grain bagger given the potential for lower barley prices at harvest due to China’s 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley.
“I don’t want to be caught being a forced seller and I haven’t got the funds to put up 3000 tonnes of grain storage so I’m considering spending $28,000 on a new bagger and storing that barley on-farm if I have to,” Jarrod said.
This year, he has forward-contracted 1000 tonnes of wheat at $272 a tonne delivered to GrainCorp — the equivalent of $314 a tonne port — and 300 tonnes of monola to Cargill at $612 a tonne port.
Looking forward, after completing his COVID-interrupted Nuffield scholarship on building and maintaining a successful business, Jarrod said he aimed to intensify then diversify his family operation.
“In the short-term, we don’t want to increase our land size, but increase the profitability of the land that we already have by intensifying, by still growing crops, but to ramp up the sheep trading side of the business, because I reckon there’s room for us to achieve a better operational return,” he said.
“Then we want to build an off-farm business. Still in the agriculture space, but It has got to be something that produces profitability in drought times.”
It’s a plan that makes dollars and sense.
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