Balls' Nuffield Trip

Homeward Bound

2010-08-16T13:40:00.000+09:30

I am on the flight home having being woken up at 3:30 by the bus company taxi who picks every one up to get to the bus station on time to catch the bus from Rosario to Buenos Aires. I was booked on the 5:30 bus but they decided to pick me up for the 4:30 one. The bus trip took longer than anticipated as someone threw a rock or brick at the bus and smashed a window. They sent for another bus and ¾ of an hour later we were “back on the road again” thanks Willie. I got off ant the airport at 10 o’clock with four hours to kill. I am glad they had a One World Lounge. The flight left at 1400 and we are following the sun so we have not had any night or sleep time. The main reason that I am writing and dribble is lack of sleep but I just saw Antarctica. There were no clouds we could even see the cracks in the ice. I think we saw the ice shelf around the Argentinean section of Antartica. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

3 Day Congress

2010-08-15T01:10:00.000+09:30

Sponsors Section

What a fantastic conference, 2800 people with a large percentage of farmers. The whole congress was professionally run. With numbers of farmers attending, the agro-companies were out in force. They all had booths and some were very fancy with young models handing out the pamphlets and running competitions for prizes with the company logos on them. They had 3 sessions running concurrently. The topics ranged from crop nutrition to water footprints. They sessions started at 8:30am in the morning and finished between 6:30 and 8:00pm, but they did have a 2 hour lunch break.

Aerial Gymnists

The basics of ZT were not talked about as ZT is now the standard practice. There were a number of good sessions on crop nutrition and the fate of the different elements in the soil. The whole nutrient cycling system was discussed and it really only starts becoming a large component of available N:P:K after 5-7yrs of ZT. In particular Nitrogen can take longer as the now valued residue, along with the micro-organisms tie up quite a lot of this N.

A new area for benchmarking for me, was a ratio of fertilizer : yield. Fernando Garcia talked about the efficiency of crops in terms of kilograms of N:P:K applied compared to what yield was achieved. As an example he said that 1kg of N produces on average (a horrible term) 34 of Wheat where the same kg produces 144 of Maize.

As ZT has minimal disturbance the Movement of P through the profile is very slow with this eing carried out by roots when they grow and then die. This is a very small amount so it is very important to continue putting the Phosphorous in close proximity to the seed. Over time the P will be quite evenly spread through the top 5-7 centimetres as the fertilizer applied P and the P residue will be released whilst it breaks down.

There were a number of workshops on biotechnology, with Round Ready featuring well. The biotech companies are working on a number of the GM crops with drought resistance a key goal. At present a couple of companies had done this. The crops achieve good yields whilst stressed but in a normal type of season do not achieve higher yields.

The Argentinean farming is being squeezed at present by the government as they want agriculture to subsidize other industries . At present if they grow Wheat they get taxed up to an incredible 70%. This is shown as 35% tax on sales of wheat for export and then 35 cents in the peso income tax. Soybeans are not far behind. They are not even allowed to export their beef. As a result the numbers of cattle has dropped dramatically as the price has dropped sharpely.

Santa Fe & Cordoba States

2010-08-12T08:32:00.000+09:30

City Gate for Corral de Bustos

I’ve got 5 days left then home, three will be spent at the AAPRESID congress. I am really looking forward to it. I have had a road trip for a couple of days looking over the area west of Rosario. Even though it has been relatively wet I only say one paddock of lucerne and 2 of wheat. The farmers tell me that they cannot make money on the wheat. The government actually taxes them if it is exported. That may seem a bit screwy but the government may want it internally to feed the population.

I called into another disc seeder manufacturer in Monte Maiz - Agrometal. They make both precision planters and seed drills. They did not have a lot different to the other companies with their current machines, but have some interesting prototypes, which revolves around large machines which fold or swivel for transport. The machines were well built and were typically Argentinean with a coulter then a double disc of identical sizes. All of the Brazilian machines only had coulters as an option, relying on the offset double disc of two sizes. Usually these were 15” & 16”.

Dual Swiveling Drill

For soaking up the local flavours there is a supermarket down the road that sells a lot good wine and a bottle shop 2 minutes walk the other way.It is good here, $4.50 Pesos for a Bottle of Corona ($1.50 Aussie) from the supermarket. They even have a vending machine down stairs with cold beer in it.

In Rosario

2010-08-09T07:25:00.000+09:30

I'm back in Argentina with a bus trip from Buenos Aries to Rosario. It was a far better way to travel than car through the ludicrous traffic and mad drivers. I booked a car on line for a couple of days to do a bit of touring before the conference. On the website they were open all weekend 8-8. Today I went to pick the car up and no show, so I went for an expensive guided tour of Rosario by Taxi looking for other hire cars. I’l try again tomorrow.

Back to Argentina for AAPRESID Congress

2010-08-01T17:58:00.000+09:30

Well, I thanked Nuffield and GRDC a bit too soon for the wonderful opportunity they have given me. With my travels accruing enough frequent flyer points I am off back to Argentina for the No-Till Congress.

My Spanish is not good enough to listen to the speakers, but after chatting with Dwayne Beck and Agustin Bianchini, I have decided to go. Whilst each speaker is doing their talks, they have three power point displays going on the screens in three different languages; Spanish, Portuguese & Australian. They also have on-the-go translators into those three languages as well. So with the expected crowd of 2000 it will be just like the United Nations.

I am really looking forward to it as I leave this Wednesday for 10 days

Family Reunion and Skiing in NZ

2010-07-08T10:22:00.000+09:30

We got to the flight in Concepcion with lots of time to spare. Carlos had his timetable perfect from their many visitors to Chequen Farm. We were very thankful for our great stay. We got into Santiago at 9:30 but our flight out to NZ was not until 23.05 so off to the Qantas One World lounge.
But alas on the one day we need it the most. Sorry we don’t have an agreement for Ruby level Qantas Club members. So we slumped around the airport for 14 hours but we got a fair bit of work done.
We got the flight to NZ and we met the boys, Henry and Sam later in the day and then Megan on Friday. It was great to see them and we were up to 5/6 of the family. It was now off to the snow for a family get together. What a great week no matter what we say about our cousins across the Tasman, they put on a great show of scenery. We have a cabin on Lake Hawea for $140 a night and it would cost $1000 anywhere in Europe a night for the view.

Morning View From Our Balcony
We got up to Cardrona with plenty of snow on show. It only took us 45 minutes. We all got into the skiing and snowboarding for 4 days, all in the sun. We went out to Albert Town for dinner and there was a quiz night and Team Wallabies cleaned up. $50 to help pay for dinner.

Nikki, Henry, Sam & Megan

Travel Companions Enjoying the Sun and Snow

Hoare Frost On The Way Back To Lake Hawea

It is now back to Christchurch for the flight home to return from a fantastic journey. We have met a lot of really nice people and learnt a lot along the way. The people, food and hospitality has been wonderful. Now we need to put some of the learning and practices in place on our farm. Also to open our home for others to visit.

I would like to thank NUFFIELD and GRDC for the opportunity.

Carlos In Chile

2010-07-02T02:46:00.000+09:30

Carlos is one of the few, who can be considered a pioneer of No-Till. He lives in the foothills above Concepcion in Chile a few hours south of the capital Santiago. Nikki and I caught up with Carlos and his wife Doris at their famous Chequen Farm. He runs a modest farm with a large portion of their income coming from eggs from 60,000 chickens (all white). The farm has made a miraculous comeback from devastation at the hand of the plough. He stopped ploughing in 1968 and put in permanent pasture but went back to cropping in 1978 but this time with a disc seeder from Allis Chambers’. He started but it was not without problems;

1. There Were Areas Of Erosion

Same Gully But Looking Down Gully

2. Extremely Poor Fertility.

3. No Adequate Herbicides For Weed Control, Leading to Weed Blowouts

Carlos bought himself a bulldozer and went to work on the area of gully erosion and reclaimed a lot of land. He set up his rotations to include medic and grain legumes for nitrogen fixation and grew large bulky cereal crops to start putting organic matter back into the soil but more importantly to keep residue on top of the soil and he was never going to cultivate or plough the land again.

Carlos had an ace in the hole, as he could access large amounts of chicken manure. As a diversification, Carlos has a large egg laying business. So, all of the manure from the chickens and a small feedlot goes onto the paddocks.

The Hens In The Cages

The soils on the farm are a sandy loam with a strong gravel feel in some areas. The pH is neutral. The phosphorous levels have been lifted from approximately 10 ppm to 70 ppm. He contributes this to both the manure and the rate of cycling of the organic matter by micro-organisms. The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) helps convert inorganic Phosphorous to available plant soluble Phosphorous. Carlos loves his soils and really appreciates how the soil has changed over the years to become more productive. The soil structure has returned and with it the fertility of the soil through increased levels of organic matter as this in turn has increased the Cation exchange capacity. He is always trying to increase his biomass whcig in turn increases the soil organic matter. Both above ground and below ground.

Multiply Years Of Crop Residue = Biomass Above Ground

Excellent Biomas Below Ground

Carlos, now, when asked about his 3 main issues included these;
1. Soil Compaction.
2. Permanent lack of Nitrogen.
3. Loss of Earthworms in some areas.

Hardy Checking Soil Compaction

He has tried doing some delving to break up the compaction in the lower soil profile, but this doesn’t seem to be very effective as we were in the paddock with a steel rod and there was no noticeable difference between the delved and non delved areas. Over time as the nutrient cycling became quicker and the yields improved, Carlos found that he still was short of nitrogen, so he has been using more manure per hectare. He likes to see his soil alive and has recently notice the absence of the once large numbers of earth worms. Carlos think that it may be due to higher levels of poultry manure???.
In their part of the world Carlos and Doris receive 1100 mm of rain per year. It mainly occurs during winter. He has constructed a couple of dams. He says he knows there is going to be runoff and as long as it is not taking soil with he may as well use it. They irrigate Corn on part of their property and it yielded 15t/hectare when reapt early this year. He uses the corn in both his chicken and cattle TMR’s.

Nikki and Hardy

We got around to talking about disc seeders and one of the good parts about being a pioneer and one who is watched by others to learn from is that companies like you to use their products. Both Semeato & Agro-metal have given Carlos seeding machines to use. Brazilian disc machines tend to have a double offset discs which are different diameters to ensure the cutting of the residue and Argentinean machines have triple discs with one coulter and two even discs, where the coulters do most of the cutting. It is an interesting argument about which the better way to go. Carlos had another guest who is a farmer in Southern Chile. Hardy used to work for Semeato for 10 years and is now an agent for Bertini in Chile. You can guess who he favours, but I like their machine as well after a visit to their factory in Rosario. Both Carlos and Hardy thought that the Bertini and Agrometal were the pick of current machines.

Argentina to Chile Across the Andes

2010-06-30T09:35:00.001+09:30

We left Argentina to head to our last South American counrty - Chile and catching up with Carlos Crovetto. But Carlos had to wait as we got to see the Andes. Last time we saw an outline in the dusk, but this time. We only saw a small section of them as they run the entire length of South America.

Simply Awesome and Inspiring

Roads at 18,000 ft

Even Out The Window & Our Camera They Really Are Fantastic to See

AGRO URANGA

2010-06-30T09:18:00.000+09:30

The following day I went South again to see a corporate family farm at San Nicolas and caught up with Frederico Arostegui and Jorge Staffolani. Frederico is the specialist seeds manager and Jorge is the overall farm agronomist/manager. Even though the farm is a family farm it must operate in a hard and fast business way with profits returning to the family shareholders. The farm only owns a few utes and one utility tractor. All of the operations are carried out by contractors who have been regulars over the past years. The farm pays over the award rates for these contractors which ensures that they get to Uranga at the right time. I think this is a good strategy. They also supply the contractors with letters of agreements for future contracting which helps them when buying new machinery and when seeking funding.

The Agrometal Assembly

On this particular day there were 3 different contract seeders there all seeding corn. One Bertini, one Georgio and one Agrometal. The Agrometal certainly looked the biggest and best constructed machine but I thought that the seeding positioning and singulation was not as good as the others.

A New Planter Sowing Horizontal Precision Box

To keep getting a good return the managers and farm company attracts a premium for the crops that it grows in its seed selling role played by Frederico. Some of the seed crops that they grow are popcorn, yellow corn, green peas, chick peas and beans. They like using these crops as they are still classed as a specialty grain and do not attract the same export tax for commodities such as wheat. This is one of the issues the farms have in that even though they are attracting money from overseas, if they grow wheat they have to pay the 30% tax to the government.
As mentioned in the APPRESID visit, there is a lot of problems with soyabean over use as it is an easy cheap crop to grow and most of the land owners want the soy beans as their payment. This means there is too much grown in the rotations in Argentina. At the Moment the specialty crops haven’t attracted this tax although Frederico feels that in the near future they will start to. The best rotations are with green peas, soy then corn or wheat, soy then corn or utilising popcorn instead of the normal yellow corn. At present 70% of the farm is double cropped and they want to have 100% double cropped by 2015. At the moment they are even getting 5 crops in 2 years in some areas. The farm is looking to find a good spring crop replacement for wheat and they feel durum might be an option but not while the US have their subsidies in place.

Back in Rosario at Garden of Flags Monument

Not too Many Flags But Some Good Statues

Bertini's in Action

2010-06-30T08:16:00.000+09:30

Puken Alvares lives south of Rosario and due West of Buenos Aires so we set off early in the morning and went to see a number of the model 32 seeders in action on his farm. The sowing width was just over 8 metres with a seed and fertiliser box along the entire width of the machine. This would mean that for us going from a 2 compartment airseeder box which is filled from one location to needing a movable auger and truck system for loading the combine.

Filling Seeder

When viewing the machine in action it had particularly good cutting (although a bit aggressive) by the coulter through a thick corn residue with a very even sowing depth and distance between seeds. The large wavy coulter was being used and on the soft sandy soils in that area there was too much soil throw.

Definite Path to Show Some Disturbance (No Trick Photography)

Seeder With Marker Arms

The machine has an ideal length and also had a tow hitch on the end to drop the transport width down to 3.5 m. With the assemblies fully lifted it gave an excellent high clearance for transport.

High Lift for Transport

Farm Manager, Enrico Bertini, Puken Alvares, Me (No Name to Balance Manager)

The contractors gave the machines a good recommendation particularly in the area of low maintenance. Their rotation that we saw was corn corn legume legume winter cereal winter cereal. This type of rotation is known as a double stacked rotation. The two corns give a very good control of weeds and produce an excellent amount of biomass. It was good to see the drills in action and it gave me a good idea of what Enrique and Luis had been talking about. We made our way home late at night but the time passed quickly as we had some good discussions regarding disc drill setups.

One area of debate is the setting of the front coulter as to whether it should be set deeper than the double disc seeder unit or if it should be set shallower. As the double disc has the depth control wheels attached I feel that the front coulter should be set 5 – 10 mm shallower than the double seeding discs.

Bertini Disc Drills & Combines

2010-06-30T07:54:00.000+09:30

We had talked to Enrique Bertini via Luis Baima prior to coming to South America as we already had a small research size combine through SANTFA and Jaques Desboiles at AMRDC at uni of SA. The two gentlemen agreed to host us for a couple of days around Rosario which included a tour of their Bertini production plant.

The Bertini Triple Disc

They produce a range of size seeders and for a range of different applications. The sizes range from 4 metres to up to 19 metres and the applications include precision planters, small grains, drills and pasture seeding renovations. The Bertini drills have a triple disc assembly, the unit is attached via a parallelogram, there is a front coulter, a paired double disc with dual depth control wheels, a seed firmer and a slot closer and fluffer. In undulating ground the machine needs between 5 and 5.5 hp per assembly. Enrique and Luis said that they would work with us to create the ideal seeder for us if we choose a Bertini. This flexibility is very appealing.

Lois Showing Off His Metering Wheel and Travel Mode He Designed

We had a good look around their facilities and it was impressive that they made all of their own parts except for the plastics and are always researching, developing and improving the quality and function of their seeders. It is interesting that Bertini don’t use a vacuum delivery system in their precision planters but use a pneumatic air pressure to press the seeds against the singulator wheel.

Precision Planter Singulator

At the moment there is something like 30000 disc machines working in Argentina and they are turned over every 3 years. Ther is approximately 30 disc maufacturers.

Enrique and Luis took Nikki & I out for tea and we enjoyed the Argentinian hospitality and their BBQ meats!!!! with red wine of course.

Scenes around Argentina

2010-06-30T07:18:00.002+09:30

Meat For All Tastes

The BBQ's are great in all of South America. The Brazilian's rotisserie their meats and then do fruits for dessert. The Argentineans grill theirs over coals and the Uruguyans set up a mesh screen over a fire.
The Chileans use a variety of ways.

Mt Vulcun

We have done a little bit of touristy things but the countries are all beautiful once you get out of the cities.
I like the look of the horsemen and the way they control the horses.

Gaucho Family

All the Food Groups - Meat and Veg

AAPRESID

2010-06-30T04:32:00.001+09:30

Rosario is the home of AAPRESID, the Argentinean Direct Seeding Group. They are very large group with members across the country. AAPRESID hold an annual congress and they bring in speakers from all over the world and it is attended by 2500 farmers. It would be a good opportunity to go to this year’s congress in August. They run other smaller workshops and mini conferences throughout Argentina. The group delivers regular newsletters and technical papers.

A new tool for AAPRESID is the Certified Agriculture program. According to Augustine Biachi Certified Agriculture is a quality management system for the productive processes under No Tillage. It has been designed to improve the business management and to optimize the resources-use efficiency. As a result, we obtain greater productivity within an environmentally friendly and energetically sustainable context. It constitutes a key step for the institutional life of AAPRESID.

It is supported by a 20-year experience in No Till practice –a productive system based on the absence of soil tillage, on crop rotation and the coverage of the soil surface with crop residues. This procedure allows farmers to achieve a rational, sustainable and even reparative use of the agro-ecosystem basic resources like soil, water, air and biodiversity. It seems to be a very good program. I feel this will be adopted across a number of countries.

To achieve the CA title farmers need to satisfy AAPRESID in the following areas and show good agricultural practices.
1. No Soil Disturbance / Presence of Soil Residue Cover
2. Crop Rotation
3. Integrated Pest Management
4. Efficient and Responsible Agrochemical Management
5. Strategic Crop Nutrition
6. Stockbreeding Information Management

Farmers are in the process of getting their certification for 90,000 hectares and 1 farmer has just become certified.
When I asked Augustine what the three major issues for farmers were he said:
1. Government tax on exported grain particularly wheat as it is already a low return compared to other crops so a vast percentage of farmers do not plant Wheat or any other winter or spring crops. The diversity of the rotation and maintaining ground cover is best practice, but not if the farmer could lose money or not even break even.
2. Another problem is crop based with most of the rental or lease payments being done in Soybeans. The payment is 1.6 tonne per hectare (8 Bags) per annum. This put pressure on farmers to plant a large amount of Soybeans each year. The price compounds the issue as it is also the highest return. About 85% of warm season crops in Argentina each year are Soybeans and this represents an inadequate rotation with problems like soil residue, chemicals (Glyphosate)
3. Cost of production and if land is leased satisfying owners and their payments

www.aapresid.org.ar/english/index.asp

Horrific Traffic & Bad Day for Young Wallabies

2010-06-27T06:33:00.003+09:30

Nikki and I flew into Buenos Aires from Brazil and got through all of the checks relatively easily. Then we headed out in our new hire car. The traffic was banked up whereever we went and they were just as crazy as their Brazilian neighbours. Only this time they could go 130km/hr legally so I think they were going 145-150 and right up someones arse.

Sunday arvo Traffic Out of Buenos Aires

We headed out to Rosario which is 3 hours north of Buenos Aires. We got there Sunady arvo and settled in to the Hotel Ariston. We found out that it was public holiday on Monday and everyone and everything was closed on Monday. We found out that the World U18 Junior Rugby championships were held in Argentina and the Grand Finals were in Rosario on Monday evening. What a great score!

Springboks vs Red Roses

We bought tickets and saw South Africa give England a touch up so they were 3rd and England 4th. The final was between arch rivals NZ & Australia. The game started and the dreaded Kiwis scored inside the first 2 minutes. Things looked black and I think the organizer went out and got the trophy engraved.

One for the Girls - Winners are Grinners

The All Blacks gave us a pasting. The Wallabies had made it to the grand final which was good but the Kiwi's were just too good.

The Lovely Locals Who Spotted the Only Aussie in the Cheap Seats

The highlights were getting to see the game in the first place and then getting to meet some of the locals. At halftime I went down to the sideline to see the field and they had a womens seven a-side, which was good to watch and their skills were very good. The ground is normally used for soccer and there was big 20 metre mesh fence behind each end but then I looked over the side panels and there was 5 metre deep moat around the ground aswell.

Holiganism at a soccer matches obviously a bit of an issue!!.

Ponta Grossa to Sao Paulo

2010-06-20T05:46:00.001+09:30

Today we drove back to Sao Paulo. Everywhere we looked on the way back we saw plantations of Blue Gums. Our own trees here in Brazil. According to Richard they have them in for fuel for burners and steam turbines. On his farm they plant them in six rows. They are ready to pollard / cut to 1m above ground at six years and then each row is cut yearly.

Blue Gum Plantations

The roads here are crappy at best, a dogs breakfast at worst. Driving was okay until we hit the outskirts of Sao Paulo and the drivers were nuts. They change lanes at the drop of a hat and it was bumper to bumper at 120 km/hr. We took a couple of wrong turns only because we could not change lanes. Amongst all the cars were dozens of motorbikes doing 80 through the cars line up at stops and lights. It was nice to finally get to the Hotel.

RR- Ratshit Roads

Good Integrated Farming

2010-06-20T05:34:00.004+09:30

In the afternoon we went on a farm visit with Richard Dijkstra. This was an excellent visit to see an integrated farm with a positive production model. The farm started with Richards grandfather arriving from Holland on a ship with 40 cows and 1 bull. At one point the bull jumped ship into the water and the boat had to turn around and hoik him out of the water. When his grandfather arrived he was offered 10000 acres as a trade for all of his cattle. Instead he sold 1 cow for 60 acres of land and built up from this. The bull that he bought across from Holland has provided much of the cattle genetics across the state of Parana as after he had finished using him after many years, the bull was then sold to the government and used across the state.

Nikki, Juca & Richard Atop The Effluent Screen

The size of farm is 1500 ha half of which is continuously cropped for grain production and the other half of the farm is utilized to produce feed (mainly silage) for the dairy enterprise. As well as the arable cropping there is a 480 cow dairy, and a 380 sow piggery. All of the dairy and pig effluent is firstly passed through a shit screen where the solids are removed and carted off to a compost pad out in a paddock. In this effluent there is 5% solids and 95% water. The liquid effluent goes through 2 bio digesters . it is 60 -70000 litres of liquid manure and this produces 1500 – 2000 m3 of methane. This methane is used to dry grain and to heat the piggery sheds. Once the liquid waste has passed through the bio digesters it is used for irrigation on the feed production side of the cropping property.

The composted manure is turned on average every 3rd day in winter and daily in the warmer weather. It takes a total of 40 days composting until it is ready to be spread out in the paddocks at a rate of 5-10 t / ha based on soil testing. There can be considerable loss of Nitrogen but to stop this you can apply gypsum at 5% or 50kg/t of raw manure. The compost has a pH of 5.5 -5.8 and as well as giving good N in the form of organic matter it adds .6% phosphorous to the soil as well. When this compost is applied at 5t/ha the soil receives 30 kg of elemental P. Because of the pH of the compost and his production model, lime is added at a rate of .5t -1t/ha every second year.

The Effluent Treatment & Bio-digester Bags

The crops that he grows are corn, barley, soy beans, black oats and millet. These are used as either grain, silage or cover crops. Richard cuts his corn for silage and he averages 12t dm/ha at 12% protein and does a lot of soy bean silage at 6t dm/ha and 24% protein. When these two silages are mixed with some grain and additives they make a very good total mix ration. When he uses a cover crop he seeds straight into the crop which has been given an application of Glyphosate. This was very intersting to see.

Seeding Barley Straight Into Standing Japanese Millet

Whilst we have been in Brazil we have seen a lot of successful co-operatives and I quizzed Richard on his thoughts on co-ops. His plain answer was that they make him money when selling and save him money when buying inputs. So the farmers really benefit greatly from them. The average size of a co-op farmer is 200ha so Richard farms one of the larger areas in his co-op. A number of years ago 3 co-operatives formed the ABC foundation to run the farmers own trials. Each co-op has two farms in their areas that they use for farmer owned and directed research of 45 ha each. To be involved in the foundation it costs farmers R$12.25/ha of trial site so approx R$3300/year. There are 2000 co-op members so the foundation has plenty of funds to run the trials.

Richard, Slim Guy in Blue and Juca Discussing Zero-Till

I asked Richard what problems if any had he encountered when making the shift from conventional till to no till and his major problems were the quality of the machines for cutting through residue, poor herbicide availability at the time and it took about 4 years for some of the nitrogen stored in the residue to become available so during that time he had to increase his N fertiliser rates. After corn he found the remaining residue given the high yields that he was achieving were hard to cut through for any machine. So straight after harvest he utilises a homemade knife roller made out of old discs.

Disc Cutter Bar

Ponta Grossa University

2010-06-20T04:49:00.002+09:30

Entrance to Uni

Professor João Carlos de Moraes Sá. Juca Sa' for short, agreed to meet us at our hotel in the morning. He gave Nikki and I an excellent full day. We firstly went to the State University of Ponto Grossa where he is a Proffesor. They run two separate farms; one for research and one as a commercial operation. The university has 8000 students and 1100 staff. Working on the farm there is 1 manager, 1 agronomist, 3 techs and 10 workers. In the agronomy they have students mainly from Parana State. They also get a number of post graduates from around the world. Each year Juca runs an intensive 2 week program for invited researchers, scientist and agronomist from developing countries. The invitation comes from CIRAD which is a European organization which aids those countries to become more self-sufficient and replace import foodstuffs. The course has a long title like Juca’s name, Organic Management in Cropping Systems for Carbon Sequestration, Soil Quality, Economic and Environmental Quality

Juca was very keen to show us both farms. He purposely went to the research farm firstly and the research they were doing was to look at rotations and the order of crops within them. They grow both warm season and cold season crops and both legumes and cereals, but no oilseeds. Currently they are working in collaboration with a couple of major agribusiness companies researching cover crops, new chemical formulation and other stuff that Juca did not elaborate on. There was all the usual trials by other professors and staff at the University, which sometimes conflicts with the smooth running of this section of the farm.

At the commercial farm all of the work carried out here was industry best practice and new practices that Juca wants to show to farming community. This farm was as Juca promised. The crops that were in the ground were looking excellent and there were some paddocks just seeded and others were brown, not with dirt/soil but with residue. There was no bare ground other than the roadways.

Juca Looking A His Own Residue

As they receive more rain than us, a hell of a lot more 1500 mm/year, they can grow a multitude of crops and at different times to our single season crops. Juca kept on reminding us that organic matter / biomass was the most important component in the system, this comes from growing quality crops with healthy roots and not taking that residue away in the form of straw, burning or cultivating and not exposing the root material to oxygen which accelerates respiration and loss to the atmosphere.

They grow a couple of cash crops a year and slip in a cover crop to increase biomass to a level above 6 tonnes per hectare as this is how much is used in their system. So Juca wants to exceed this to increase the organic matter in the soil. Juca’s favourite mix of cover crops, are Radish and Black Oats and sometimes some vetch.

Juca and That Bloke in Red Again
This mixture is good as each has a different Carbon to Nitrogen ratio. The ratios are important as it gives a very good idea on how long the residue takes to break down. The higher the Nitrogen component, the quicker the residue breaks down. Vetch = 13.5:1, Radish 16:1, Black Oats 32:1. This type of mixture gives a balance of those nutrients over time.

Three Crops Residue

The crops that had just been sown were coming up in a very even manner. Wheat was sown into three different crop residues; Soybeans, Corn and Cover Crop. A lot of the Soybean residue from 12 months ago had already broken down. Whereas the other two still had a lot of residue covering the soil. Juca was quick to point out that these different rotations need to be managed to stop any bare soil being seen and possibly eroded. All of the commercial farm looked very good. The farmers in the area, of which there is roughly 12000, come to the farm for field days and are in regular contact through newsletters etc. After being out in the paddock we went in to see Jucas laboratory and we met Flohan who is a French post graduate. He is working on new methods to evaluate carbon in all of its different forms in the soil. Juca had set up a display of soil graded into the different size particles of organic matter and of water stable aggregates. The 3 sizes that tillage affects the most are >20mm , 8 – 19mm and 4-8mm. It takes a reasonable amount of time to bring these aggregates back from destruction when a tillage operation is used. These are very important as when these are fully water stable the risk of erosion is lowered dramatically.

Organic Matter through to Small Aggregates

I asked Juca the question “what would be your ideal zero till system?” His response was

1. Be able to cut through a large amount of straw without hairpinning

2. Soil needs to be lazer cut with no soil disturbance and no cutting camber.

3. Seed needs to be placed at ideal depth eg 20mm wheat

4. Double offset disc with a single disc coulter on the front.

Having a Discussion About Precision Planting of Crops Other Than Corn, Sorghum & Soybeans

The Farm's Precision Planter - Nothing Flash But It Does A Good Job

As it always seems to happen whilst walking back to the car we met another researcher. Professor Claudio Purissimo is a weed specialist and in his time going from conventional tillage to zero till he has seen a reduction in in-crop grasses and annuals but has seen an increase in perennial weeds.

In Argentina he has seen a growing resistance to post emergent grass herbicides. This is coming into Brazil when farmers trade illegally over the fence/border.

We had a discussion on GMO crops and how the cost to produce them has risen dramatically. At present you have to buy the seed from the seed company each year at R$600/t and then pay a tech fee on top of that at .42/kg so all up a tonne of grain will cost R$850/tonne. The big companies have access to silo records and if you do not pay the tech fee at purchase (ie, seed from over the border) they are charging 2% of total delivered at the silo and they want to increase this another 2% across all farmers if the yield is above 50bags /ha, as they feel that it is the technology giving the higher yields not the farmers good management. This works out to be another R$500 per truckload. These companies appear to have a huge stranglehold over the farmers and appear to be limiting the farmers ability to make a profit to line their own pockets.

I am pro GM however I have some reservations in that I believe policies need to be put in place to stop companies monopolising the whole process.

Kuhn Factory In Passo Fundo

2010-06-18T18:51:00.001+09:30

Elvio Ransolin met me at the gate and took me in for a short talk about the business. The Kuhn company is based in France and has three other factories in France and two in Europe, one in the USA and two in Brazil. Then off we set around the Kuhn factory. A lot of the components are made on the premisis and are cast steel or form work. The only parts that they dont make are the seed & fertiliser tanks which are plastic or fibreglass and they come from the united states. Although they are not as big as Semeato they have a comperable range of seeders. They are also making 3 point linkage boom sprays and 3 ppoint linkage misters.

The Assembly of SDM Was Excellent

The assembly that I was most impressed with was the SDM 2323/31 this machine is designed to be used with coarse grains such as riche and wheat. The difference between this and the Semeato disk assembly was that it had a parrallelogram to connect it to the frame of the seeder. On the rice unit there is an option available for a precision planter attachment. It is not as good as a vacuum planter but will enable course grains to be sown with better precision thatn with a normal airseeder or combine. The unit has a horizontal plate tin the canister rather than a vertical one in a vacuum, this has made me re think my ideal seeder, when you look at the ability to have more control over your seeding rates. Some more investigating of this is warranted.

The Small Precision PlanterBox May Have a Role in Our Seeding System

The Kuhn factory shut at 3.30 pm to let all the workers go home to watch the Brazil soccer match. They employ 450 people from throught the town and area and have regular busses to pickup and deliver the workers each day. The company also supplies lunch for all of the workers. The quality of the combines in particular was very evident and I am going to look into this company and their products a bit more.

Brazil Soccer Nuts

2010-06-18T18:41:00.000+09:30

Over lunch I tried to visit a number of machinery resellers in Passo Fundo and only one of these was open. This is probably due the the whole country shutting down to watch the first match of the world cup whre Brazil played Korea. I was able to chat with the new Holland dealer who had a Kuhn disc seeder in his yeard. Most of the communication was through hand signals. But he told me the Kuhnn were actually manufactured in Passo Fundo and he tee’d up a visit for me. After lunch I found the Kuhn Factory in the industrial estate.

Embrapa - Trigo

2010-06-17T19:27:00.002+09:30

In the afternoon I went out to Embraba – Trigo. Embrapa is the Brazilian Government Research Stations. I met up with Dr José Eloir Denardin and Rainoldo Alberto Kochhann. They are researchers who have done a lot of work with soil charactristics, siol biota and nutrient cyclying in arable soils with differnet tillage practices. There are a lot of research projects around the world, I now wholeheartedly believe that the Zero-Till cropping system is THE way to go system.

There work particularly focused on all of the characteristics of soil that go to making up the term fertile and productive. They had a project with local farmers to improve their productivity and economic viability, through fertlile soils; How to construct a fertile soil and How to maintain one. It came down to production of plant and root biomas higher than the rate of decomposition.

Biomass Above Ground

Biomass Below Ground

It was a very big project, which included macro- and micro-nutrients (positve and toxic levels), pH, bulk density, organic material, porosity and soil organisms from bacteria to earthworms. When the bulk denisty increased due to cultivation the water holding capacity went down. On the other hand when bulk density decreased due to organic matter, the water holding capacity went up. This is very important in our drier climate if we can build biomass.
They have been doing this trial for a number of years and have had some very positive outcomes. Local farmers used to only grow 1 cash crop per year and now some are dabbling with cover crops to build up biomass but this bring no return. The researchers have worked with breeders of corn to get very short season varieties, and are utilising millet, soybeans and brachiaria to now give 3 cash crops in 2 years but also have 2 cover crops which can be grazed. The overall result is 5 diffent crops in 2 years. This has been tried on Embrapa’s farm for a couple of years to refine the sytemand they are ready to take it to the farmers.

I dont think we can grow 5 crops in 2 years, but maybe down the tract we may find another crop that we can grow in spring and summer (not a full warm season crop). We have in the past found the next thing to help us keep ahead of our overseas competitiors. eg Lentils & Oaten Hay.

As each visit goes by every one is helping form a good picture in my head and in my notebooks and it is becoming cleaer what is going on in the soil.

On tuesday I again caught up with Dr José Eloir Denardin, to go through some revision of soil processes that we learnt about at Ag College. It was good to get a refresher course.

Semeato Factory Tour

2010-06-17T19:09:00.000+09:30

On Monday morning I caught up with Tiago Martelli. Who is the Export Manager for Semeato a machinery manufacturer who specialize into disc seeders. Tiago took me out to their head office. He gave me a presentation on the company and the No-Till scene in Rio Grande Do Sul. They are very proud in the quality of their finished products They employ 1500 staff and the company gives the staff lunch each day.

I had met Tiago in Australia at a No-Till Field Day and he was very happy to show me the companies plant where the TDNG range of seeders are made, which look like a very suitable drill for my current needs. They also make some of the precision plants at the particular plant.

1. Twin Disc

2. Seed Tube

3. Depth Control Ring

4.Slot Closer

5. Seed Placement Tube

All of the seeders are manufactured here and every piece except tin work is plasma or laser cut. The discs are cut here and there was a lot of waste between disc. They now sell a range of knives, machetes and pandangs, made from the offal pieces. I will see if I can get my new one back to Riverton.

The seeders utilize a double disc which are different sizes (15.5’ & 17’) and offset to create a better cut action and to stop mud building up on the discs. The depth gauge is a ring on the side of the larger of the two discs. The slot closing device is a cast press wheel on an appropriate angle. Each unit is independent and follow contour very well. The downward pressure is adjusted by two rams which rotate the beams that lower or raise or lower the assemblies (very similar to JD). When they engage the ground the beam can continue to rotate and pressurize spring on the unit. The machine is setup with row spacing of 17cm but this can easily doubled to 34cm or even 51cm by sliding an slide in the cup of the non required rows. The disc will still in contact with soil but not sowing. One negative is that there is currently no seed firmer, either the wheel or wand.

Combine with Towing Wheels in Place

Another option feature is the end towing capacity. The combine is pulled by a 3PL hitch with the combine being pulled in a east west positon. When wanting to transport the drawbar comes apart with the aid of a ram and rotates the seeder north south. The jockey wheels are then lowered and the 3PL is raised.

Semeato in Action

It was very interesting to see them manufactured and to talk with the do the work such as the engineers who have a 12 metre (40 ft) toolbar with a 15000 litre air seeder on the drawing board. After the company is happy with this model they are planning to work on 6, 9 & 15m models. It will interesting to see how they pan out.

Tiago took Nikki and I out to the Grill House for an authentic Brazilian barbeque lunch. All the different meats cooked on coals with rotisseries skewers. Nikki loved the pork ribs and my favourite was the brisket which tender, juicy and full of flavour like slow roasted lamb shanks. Nikki would not try the chicken, but they were the hearts so that’s not too bad.

Flying And Driving

2010-06-17T18:20:00.003+09:30

View Out of Plane Window

We had long flight from Vancouver to Brazil via Mexico City. It took us 15hours flying but with a 3 hour stopover in Mexico. It was a long day in fact it carried over into the following day. We landed in Sao Paulo (Saint Paul) and picked up the car from the airport and headed south. We drove for 4 hours of which 1 ½ hour was taken up going around and around Sao Paulo. They have a lot of new roads and “Ken” the Tom Tom pilot didn’t have a clue where to go, we even went through the same toll booth twice in one direction and were on the other side of the road coming back. Before stopped later that day we went through at least 10 toll booths. I think we were paying for the road upgrade before completion, not after completion. To put it blunt the road was ratshit!! So we have paid for that section of the road and probably should be renamed “Nuffield Avenue”.

Some Quality Road Repair

On the second day of the drive which took us a total of 14 hours drive we made it to Passo Fundo in the southern state of Rio Grande Do Sul.

Components For My Ideal Seeder

2010-06-16T06:25:00.000+09:30

I feel I am getting a good grasp on the design of good disc assemblies. It will need to have:

1. A double offset disc of two differing sizes.
2. Have a small seed firmer wheel.
3. The depth gauge needs to be independent of press wheel ( put on front discs).The depth wheel needs to hold the soil in place as the blade pulls from the soil.
4. Furrow closer e.g. Star or cast wheel.
In addition to this, Dwayne Beck given some comments regarding the assembly attachment style:
A. The JD and similar have radial attachment which means the angle of attack is correct for only one spot in its travel.
B. The parallel (or parallelogram) linkage has the proper angle of attack as long as the frame of the implement is parallel to the soil surface (very level fields).
C. The walking beam attachment has the proper angle of attack at almost all times.

A Couple More Seeders from North America

2010-06-16T06:12:00.000+09:30

The Great Plains seeders have been around for a long time. They are sturdy machine and have in the past created a fair amount of disturbance, particularly with coulter attached. For someone still looking to incorporate pre-sowing herbicides like Trifluralin, these would be okay. There are a few already in Australia and have a lot of maintenance.

In Transport Position

Double Disc (Not Offset) & Seed Firmer With Large Presswheel

Whilst driving with Dwayne through South Dakota, we went past a Tor-Master, after reversing we had a good look over the machine. It was a paired row single disc assembly. The size of the disc was close to 500 mls and was relatively thick. All of the frame was good quality and well engineered. Dwayne stated that they worked well and had good penetration.

The Tor-Master Lying Next to Road

Looking From AbovePair Row Assembvly With Depth Wheel And Seed Tubes

Disc with Depth Wheel and Presswheels

and

Where was the Machine Made ?

In the State That Told Me Disc Do Not Work North Of Border

Disc Seeder's So Far

2010-06-15T19:58:00.000+09:30

Throughout the UK, USA & Canada the bulk of the disc seeders’ have been mainly John Deere single disc for small grains and double disc for precision.

A Green Farmer

JD Disc Assembly with Thompson Wheel

There were a number of different machines at the No-Till Alliance Day in Kent UK.
Weaver Caddy was an English Design with a lot of merit. The assembly was a double disc unit, that were offset with the outside disc semi scalloped. There is also a small scalloped closer.

Weaver Caddy Air Seeder Box (2.5t or 5t)

Weaver Doubl Disc Assembly

Cross Slot in Action

Prairies of Kansas with a 24ft folding Cross Slot drill

The New Zealand Cross Seeder was also there. It is quite a good structured machine. Over engineered would be how I saw it, and it requires a lot of draft.
The Case SDX machine has a single disc unit with a seed firming wheel and them a furrow closure. There are two ranks which can be individually held up to double your row spacing.

A Red Farmer

Disc Assembley od SDX

I would like to see this with a double disc assembly.

Sunshine Combine

Disc Assembly With Stubble Holders to Aid Cutting

The Sunshine combine is manufactured in Kansas near the Palen’s farm at Glen Elder. I was a good design machine but would off liked to see it a bit sturdier.

Animals We Saw in North America

2010-06-14T20:24:00.002+09:30

Bison

Gopher

Pheasant

Skunk

Deer

Moose

Racoon

Nikki With Mountie

The Canadian Rockies

2010-06-14T20:10:00.001+09:30

Elevators Are Still Part of The Landscape

We left Three Hills to travel to Vancouver through Canadian Rockies. As usual the rain was with us all the way. It would have been beautiful scenery except for the mist and showers.

Great Shot Nikki

We Were On The Plains And The Rockies Just Shoot Straight Up In Front Of You

Lake Louise On A Bad Day

What It Sometimes Looks Like

Animal Walkovers toAllow Animals Cross The Highways

A Quick Reprieve at Lake Wapash

Steve And Vanessa Larocque

2010-06-14T19:29:00.001+09:30

Steve Larocque is a farmer & agronomist who lives in Three Hills with his wife, Vanessa and children Ava and Wyatt. They run a small farm but the bulk of his time is taken running a successful consulting company. He is also a Canadian Nuffield Scholar.
http://www.beyondagronomy.com/index.htm
He has a number of large clients with very sizeable acreages including a Huddderite colony. For these customers, he gives a multitude of services – planning, paddock inspections, machinery decisions, chemical acquisitions and soil & tissue testing.etc. For his paddock inspections he utilises a quad bike and can cover large area fairly quickly. While in the paddock he will report on seeding depth, emergence, growth stage, weed no’s type and growth stage, recommendations for both chemicals and macro and micro nutrients.

Steve in His Mobile Office

We met with the Stoller rep who gave Steve some growth stimulant products (Gibbrelic Acid & Cytokines) with micro nutrients included. Steve wants to test these products to see if it can quicken the plants move to the vegetative stage very quickly and then slow the reproductive phase to slow down ripening. In large areas across the Canadian prairies their growing season is only 100 days. Ours in the Lower North of SA is double that at 200 days. The days are longer and there is more light intensity but they can suffer from frost at both ends of the season.
http://www.stoller.com/stoller2/index.php
Each week Steve and Vanessa put out a newsletter called “Beyond Agronomy” which goes to all his clients and others who pay a small service fee. They are a very good source of information. Vanessa is the Editor in Chief. Other projects they are involved with are bio-fuels and methane digestion.

Lethbidge Research Centre - Bob Blackshaw & Newton Lupwayi

2010-06-14T19:20:00.001+09:30

Bob, Newton and I

We caught up with Bob & Newton at the Lethbridge Agricultural Research Centre. They are looking after the long term no-till trials. A very interesting note from Newton was that they have found the organic matter is broken down a lot quicker in conventional tilled soils than No-Till, but that was faster than in Zero-till as the turning of the soil allows oxygen to enter the soil. Respiration occurs at high rates when oxygen is plentiful.

The soils, when they are initially tilled, give a large release of nitrogen and very little during the season. On the other hand No-till and progressively Zero-Till give a more even distribution of Nitrogen and other nutrients release during the season. This would be good for crops in higher rainfall areas where growth is needed to be moderated to maximise grain yield rather than early vegetative growth.

Gopher Trap - They Make a Mess of Trials

A very interesting couple of trials were the Scalping and the Trucking ones. The scalping trials were a series of plots that had the top soil removed and then had to be remediated. A number of treatments were used. The top treatment was cattle manure from feedlots and the second was inorganic fertilizer. Both of these gave a lot of nutrients which allow for large amounts of biomass to be produced and therefore added tosoil. Trucking was an extra trial on top of the scalping one. The top soil was removed and then replaced with all types of soils from around Canada. These were put on the scalped ones. The trial was to see the outcome of having different soils but the same climate. The trials are being written up at the moment. They have been conducted over 40 years.

Another project Bob ran, was based around inputs. He looked at the inputs farmers can use. It firstly ran for 4 years with treatments of High critical inputs (Full chemical use) vs. Low inputs (Knockdowns only). High yielding varieties vs. Low yielding varieties. High seeding rates vs. Low seeding & Tall genetics vs. Dwarf genetics. In the first and second years there were no problems and the trials showed no clear choices, but in the 3rd and 4th years some of the systems collapsed namely the ones with no fertiliser and not full weed control. In the 5th year what really showed out were the plots good genetics, robust seeding rates with full weed control and the best fertility. I think this is a no brainer. The results were put through an economic model and it showed that it is best for the farmer to spend his money on weed control firstly and secondly on fertiliser.

Bob has had some farmers who viewed the end results ask him to now see how long in time and in money it would take to bring these plots back into good health. I feel this would benefit farmers to assess some land they may want to buy or rent. It also gives them a guide to help them if there is a cash squeeze for a year or two.

Newton has been following the trial and assessing biomass numbers. When high rates of Nitrogen were applied the biomass numbers was a negative effect for a short period. The reverse happened when the herbicides were applied at label rates. He said he would send on a full report.

In all of their trial work they have found that Canola has the highest need for Nitrogen. (Yields of 5-6t are not uncommon). They are trialling at a number of sites across the Canadian prairies to test canola after a number of different legumes, cereals and even Canola. The treatment overlayed is different Nitrogen fertilizer rates of 0,25,50,75,100 kg N/ha. They are doing a replicate of this with Wheat. Newton is looking at the effect these treatments have on the biomass of the soil.

Tourism Alberta Style

2010-06-14T19:12:00.001+09:30

The Japanese Garden

The World's Biggest Tressle Bridge

A Must Do Stop for Every Trekkie

Nikki's New Career

The USS Enterprise

Alberta Agriculture

2010-06-14T18:52:00.000+09:30

Lethbridge is one of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s farm research groups. They have 50 scientists & 300 other staff conducting research on a number of farming properties, 1050 hectares in an around Lethbridge for arable and irrigation cropping Research. There is an additional 17,000 hectares south west of Lethbridge for rangeland grazing research. The research centre opened in 1906.

The area has mainly Brown and dark brown Chernozome soils with a pH of 7 – 8.5. There were soil test taken when the farm was first used and they used to have 5.5-6% organic matter. Testing had shown that over the next 20 years the OM % had dropped by half and this declined was stopped in the early 80’s and has climbed back from 2% to 2.5% due to the introduction of no-till on the research farm.

During the 80’s on the prairies the farmers were still in a wheat-fallow rotation. There some work on no-till by some farmers such as the Hilton’s at Strathmore in South Central Alberta. They were using a disc drill from the USA to sow their crops. It took a long time for it to catch on with other farmers but now it accounts for 75% of farming in the drier regions of South Alberta and South West of Saskatoon.

Eight Feet Wide and Weighs a Couple of Tonne

Hilton's Double Offset Disc Drill

On to Medicine Hat via Saskatoon

2010-06-07T01:49:00.002+09:30

We left Indian Head to head for Saskatoon to catch up with Geoff Schoenau who is the professor of soil science at Saskatchuwan University. We took longer to get there than aticipated and Geoff had told me he would be at the office in the morning. Cut a long story short. We only had a short time with him. We set off for Medicine Hat. It had added an extra 3 hours drive time for a 45 minute chat. Hopefully my only blunder. The trip to Medicine Hat was in a very cool car.

Canadian Badlands

We arrived in Medicine Hat with State Track and Field finals & year 12 graduation, we finally found a good little hotel to stay in. We have been shacked up for the weekend to do some work.

Worlds Biggest Teepee Erected for the 2010 Olympics

Fair in Medicine - There Were Colours to Suit All Farmers

Today It's Off to the Lethbridge Research Centre and the worlds biggest tressel bridge or something like that.

Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation - Guy Lafond

2010-06-07T01:21:00.001+09:30

Catching up with Guy was very good. We had caught up a few times since 2000. Guy is the senior researcher and manager of Indian Head Research Farm. Guy’s work mainly revolves around crop agronomy and the interaction between crops and soils. He has been working with Jim Halford of Conserva-Pak fame to see the effect of No-Till on prairie soils, degraded soil and 20 year no-till farmed soil.

All the soils in the trial have a sandy loam texture with the unfarmed prairie soils having high organic matter but with structure. Simce Jim has been no-till for twenty years he has bought his soil back to the equivalent of native prairie soils. The highly degraded soils are paddocks that Jim had recently purchased which had been conventionally farmed. This soil had less than 1% organic matter.

Guy has been looking at the amount of nitrogen that still has an economical response from the application on the soils of the trial. The long term no-till soils do not respond to an increase in nitrogen fertilisers above 40kg N/ha. This is showing that the nutrients are cycling quickly and is readily used by the plant.

Sandy Loam with High Organic Matter & Dark Colour

Guy’s work with other trials shows that organic matter has lots of benefits on the soils and is easily summarised by:
• Organic matter is a slow release form of nitrogen, phosphorous and sulphur for plant nutrition and microbial growth.
• Organic matter has considerable water holding capacity, therefore helps to hold water in the soil.
• Organic matter buffers against changes in pH or acidity of a soil.
• The dark colour of organic matter enhances absorption of energy from the sun and helps heat the soil.
• Organic materials are cement that holds clay and silt particles together, thus contribution to the granular or crumb structure of the soil, resulting in a more porous soil, with higher infiltration of water, a greater resistance to erosion.
• Organic matter binds nutrient ions (K, Ca, Mg) in the soil that otherwise might be leached or lost from surface horizons.
• Organic constituents in the humus may act as plant growth stimulants

At Indian Head farm they have a sizeable chunk of land, so they can do trials from single row right up to paddock (farmer) size. Alos it is big enough to find new land each year upon which a trial has not be done for 5 years. The farm produce can all be sold and put into new equipment and infra structure.

Farm Worker on New Header

Replica of Ranchers Barn With Gun Holes for Injuns!

We went for a drive out to Qu'Appelle Valley dinner in the valley at Lake Katepwu. Guy and Enid have bought a block of land out there.

Lake Katepwu with Guy and The Fat Bloke in Red

Manitoba Zero Till Research Farm

2010-06-06T13:08:00.000+09:30

Lindsay Coulthard is the manager at MZTRA. This farm was set up through a land grant to promote sustainable agricultural systems. The farm has a board of 15 made up of 8 farmers, 3 research personel from the university and a number from government agencies such as Nicole Rabe from Assiniboine Community College. An interesting sponsor is Ducks Unlimited (top right hand of sign) It is an American group that sponsor farming practices that look after habitat that is used by ducks and other birdlife. They do this in order to have lots of birds for their members (hunters) to have birds nthat fly south in the winter.

The MZTRA has concentrated on no-till throughout its cropping program since it’s inception in the 90’s. Lindsay and the board are looking at creating efficiencies with lower energy systems. One area of this is precision agriculture. They have mapped the soil over the farm done to 1:5000 which gives them very detailed soil zones. Nicole is working with Lindsay to create VRT maps to use their inputs more efficiently such as using more fertiliser on higher yielding areas and vice versa on low yielding ones.

Also in this area they are utilising modern military knowledge to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) in the form of a toy radio controlled plane to fly over paddocks to take infrared photos. They are then using these to look at crop densities for the need to apply fungicides. This technology could also be used to map nitrogen levels in crop.

Lindsay and one of his summer students have been trialling cell grazing in lucerne pastures compared to native prairies. They are in the second year of this and will use the cell grazing for one more year then will crop those paddocks for a number of years. The aim is to again look at the low energy input that the lucerne has contributed in the form of nitrogen. The returns will be examined in $/ha and the energy inputs and outputs.

Summer Students with Cattle in Cell Grazing Trial

Cindy Grant & Alan Moulin Agriculture and Agrifood Canada

2010-06-06T12:37:00.000+09:30

Large Numbers of Oil Rigs Scattered Across The Prairies

Cindy & Alan are running some joint projects looking at carbon in long term trials throughout Manitoba & saskatuan. In these trials looking at rotations with conventional tillage, zero till and prairies (long term perennial pasture). Overall there were small incremental increases in carbon in the zero till soils over the conventional. The main differences were more of a function of Nitrogen so as there is an increase of nitrogen applied , this has the effect of increasing biomass and therefore increasing carbon. The degraded soils with low stability had the highest potential for increasing carbon.

Another trial was focused on high input , low input and organic. The difference in the inputs was based on energy input where the high input plots had high cultivation so needed more chemicals and fertilisers also. The organic system failed quickly as the weeds took over the plots and more cultivations were needed but in crop with multiple germinations they could not be controlled. Cindy said that the organic may work under a long term lucerne rotation. For example: three years of lucerne with grazing, then one year of crop. The decision for the following year to grow another cash crop would be based on weed populations.

In the trials the microrhizal colonisation was greater in the zero till plots, and combined with the increase in carbon this improved the soil stabilization and structure. This was one of the main findings.

AMF's Hyphae Invading Corn Root

Looking at the overall performance of retaining stubble it has the effect of increasing both carbon and nitrogen that will feed the microbes but this needs to be regularly replenished as although the levels are more in flux, the overall better yields will remove these from the soil and need to be replenished. The rate of decomposition has a direct relation to the percentage of nitrogen. The higher the nitrogen the quicker the decomposition.

Manitoba - Centre of the Canada

2010-06-06T12:12:00.000+09:30

Land Under Water Outside Winnipeg

Next day we drove to Brandon where we met Scott & Ann Day who have stayed with us in the past. Scott is the Diversification Specialist with Manitoba Ag, Food and Rural Initiatives. He runs the research program out of Melita Manitoba. Scott has been to Australia where he spoke at a number of conferences including SANTFA’s Annual Conference.
Scott’s group run a multitude of sites across South Western Manitoba. All of the trials are sown under No-Till conditions. Each year they run variety evaluation trials of the normal range of crops such as Wheat, Canola and Legumes. Over the last year they also included trials into new crops such as Hemp. They now have a hemp processing plant in the area. Other crops they are trying include short season Maize, Hairy vetch and Canedula for oil.

Scott Spraying Some Plots

Scott runs his own farm as well in the district. No-till has allowed him to do both jobs as the time input is a lot lower than conventional methods. It has enabled to get his crop in a lot earlier than before, which has been a good way this year as we seem to have again bought the rain with us. Since we arrived in New Jersey a month ago, it rains just about every second day. Throughout the two days in Manitoba so far there has been up to 200mm or 8”.

Huge Precision Planter

Scot, Ann and Alex their daughter were great to visit and gave us a good look around South Western Manitoba. Scott's mate, Keith took us out to his hunting shack in the scrub (Woods). They had a monuted deer head. But not your normal one, this one had two deer killed with one bullet. The deer were fighting and got stuck together.

Great Trophy if This is Your Thing

USA to Canada

2010-06-06T09:28:00.002+09:30

Today was the last in the USA. Off to Canada. We left Mandan to head for Grand Forks. We had hired one car for the USA and then a bus trip over the border and picked another one in Winnipeg. We are going in one direction so they wanted $6,800 for Kansas City to Vancouver, but by doing the bus bit we saved over $US 4000.It was good to send one back without a scratch this time. The bus was 1 hour late so we didn’t leave till 5. Drove along very hungry so we ate a bag of our Lindt gift chocolates! We got to the Canadian border and all had to be checked. We went in to the office and got asked all these questions. Just like on border watch. They called us back to the counter after checking us out. The guard said he thought it was funny to see someone who farms rabbits. These police checks are thorough! No he just googled us!

Canadian Border

One of the guys on the bus had been done once before for drug possession so of course he got the full search and 3rd degree. I'm not sure if it was a full cavity as well. Which took an extra hour. Oh well. We arrived at Winnipeg airport/bus station at 9.30. picked up our new hire car. This time a Toyota corolla matrix. It seems better than the last Chevy cobalt. Holds the road better. Not as many features though. Both bloody tired so we pulled up at the first dodgy motel we could find. Still $99 for the night. Walked down and got some Chinese takeaway home bed by 11.30.

Kris Nicholls

2010-06-06T09:15:00.000+09:30

Kris is a researcher at the USDA facility at Mandan in North Dakota. Her main field of study is Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) and Glomalin which is found on the hyphae of these AMF”s. Kris has also been responsible for a crop rotation /sequence project which has looked at 100 different rotations and the results can be found on the USDA website. They are currently doing trials on cover crops looking at 19 different combinations of crops as well as looking at single cover crops and at the end of the year they will overlay this with 4 different cash crops. Her main area is working with the AMF and their hyphae which produces glomalin and its affect on soil structure, decomposition of organic matter, microorganisms and water holding capacity.

Glomalin

Properties:

• Formed by Arbuscular Mychrrhizal Fungi

o Beneficial to most crop plants

o Found in all soils

• Produced in large amounts

• Extremely “tough”

o Does not dissolve in water

o Resistant to decay.

Function

• Protects Hyphae from nutrient loss

• Glues together soil aggregates

• Stabilises aggregates

o Reduces soil erosion

o Increases water infiltration

o Increases water retention near roots

o Improves nutrient cycling

o Improves carbon storage

o Improves root penetration by reducing compaction

What can you do to increase glomalin?

• Minimum or no-till to reduce disruption of hyphal network

• Reduced inputs, minimum P fertiliser

• Cover crops to maintain living roots

• Nonmycorrhizal crops (canola, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower) equal no glomalin production.

Over all the AMF’s help build resilience in the soils. Talking with Kris about residue, its benefits include covering the soil and armouring it against crusting and erosion, but she feels that 80% of the respiration of this stubble respires as CO2 in the first year and only 0.01% goes to the long term increase of organic matter. The main source of carbon comes from the photosynthetic carbon coming from root exudates. The residue eaters of the microorganisms are like piranhas and are very voracious eaters with the loss of the carbon into the atmosphere. The residue with high carbon low nitrogen breaks down slower than stubble with low carbon and high nitrogen which breaks down quicker. Normally in the growing plants the more vegetation there is above ground the more carbon is found below ground. This was a really interesting visit and we caught up with Kris that night for tea to continue our discussions.

North Dakota

2010-06-06T09:01:00.000+09:30

Mike's Seeding Rig

Mike Zoot is a zero- till farmer in the Beach area of Western North Dakota. He grows a variety of crops in an area considered too dry in the past. This area was traditionally a wheat fallow area, but now Mike successfully grows corn, wheat (spring & winter), alfalfa, durum and cranbee (oilseed). His growing season is very short at 100 days which is half of our mid north SA growing season. He sows over 10000 acres each year with the range of crops. About a third of this land is rented and the rest owned. He has been zero tilling this land for nearly 20 years. He started with an average of 2.8% organic matter and has some now in the range of 5% organic matter. Mike is finding that his microbial activity is working exceptionally well and is finding it hard to maintain full stubble cover as the residue is breaking down too quickly and he is losing some of the soil moisture through evaporation.

Some of His Macro-Organisms at Work

He works hard to ensure that there is a crop or stubble cover on all paddocks at all times. He is currently doing some work with precision agriculture on a small percentage of his farm to see how he may be able to make the systems work. In the last few years he is seeing a reduction in the amount of fungicides applied as more farmers in his area have taken up zero till practices on their farms.

Mike's JD Assembly with Spacer to Increase Spring Tension

These Are on Tynes Behind the Wheels

Mike has grid soil tested a number of his paddocks down to 2 ha blocks and he is changing his nitrogen fertiliser applications to get yield potential dependent on the rain and the soil zones.

Mike maintains a number of areas on his farm for wildlife habitats and even plants corn and alfalfa in some areas for them so that the birds and animals have some feed through the winter months.

Ring Neck Pheasant

Dakota Badlands and Mt Rushmore

2010-06-06T02:42:00.000+09:30

After leaving Pierre pronounced Pier by the locals we headed west to the Badlands. Its just a pile of massive sand hills quickly eroding away in the weather. Good to look at though. It was a massive area.

At the Badlands

Conventional Tillage Gone Wrong

Dinosaur Fossil Area

After leaving the Badlands we continued west. All the way along the side of the road were signs advertising a town called Wall and they have a drug store that has now become a tourist spot with 20,000 visitors a day in summer. They suck you in with free iced water and 5 cent coffee.

We went into Wall Drug and saw a big tourist destination but not a lot of substance. West Ho! roll those wagons and off to Mt Rushmore.

Mt Rushmore From Carpark

In the local town of Keystone we found a musuem which honours the scuptor, Gutzon Borglum who created the wonderful monument. The story behind Mt Rushmore is just as good as the Mount. he made a small model which was about 20 feet tall and was very detailed showing all of the presidents down to waist height. He ran out of money and died before the project was finished. He was going to make a stone vault as a time capsule aswell. That was not done either. After doing our tourist bit it was time to move on. Heading north we stopped at Spearifh for the night.

Dakota Lakes Research Farm

2010-06-06T01:56:00.000+09:30

Dwayne Beck is seen as the No-Till master in the US. His experience and expertise and research in the area are unsurpassed by anyone we have met.

Dwayne is now a professor of Plant Science at South Dakota State Uni. He is the research manager of Dakota Lakes Research Farm. The research farm has a carter to create conditions appropriate for research scientists from the South Dakota State Uni and VSDA. To accommodate this Dwayne has set up three rotations:

- Winter Wheat – Corn – Broadleaf

- Spring Wheat- Winter Wheat – Corn – Broadleaf

- Winter Wheat- Broadleaf – Corn - Broadleaf

Seeding Through Corn Silage

The broadleaf crops grown prior to winter wheat have to be a cool season one eg peas , canola & linseed.

Peas Sown at Uniform Depth

Where the broadleaf crop sown prior to spring wheat or corn can be either cool or warm season species. Eg. Soybeans and sunflowers. These different rotations give a great deal of diversity in creating differing condition for testing treatments. All of the work is sown with his own seeder which is a conglomerate of home brand parts with some well known parts.

A JD Single Disc With New Depth Wheels, a Seed Packer and Furrow Closer Stars

Dwayne stated that most research is focused on very short term goals with little attention being given to long term changes. These rotations have 25% , 33% and 50% low residue. There is a definite difference between the rotations in terms of the amount of surface residue that can be maintained. The good performance of those rotations with more residue has been significant.

Dwayne regards tillage and burning as two very large sins. Tillage is used to cover a multitude of sins, such as poor weed control prior to seeding therefore the need to cultivate. This helps to break down soil stability and structure. It also breaks up micro and macro point. The burning of stubble should not be carried out as a large amount of nutrients are lost as seen below.

Excerpt from Dwayne Becks’ notes

An Emphasis on Rotations

Determining what to grow as rotational crops and how they will be sequenced can be a complex process. There are however some general guidelines that can be extremely helpful in beginning the process. Consider this to be Beck’s TOP 10 LIST . The order they appear does not denote importance.

1. Reduced and no-till systems favour the inclusion of alternative crops. Tilled systems may not.

2. A two season interval between growing a given crop or crop type is preferred. Some broadleaf crops require more time.

3. Chemical fallow is not as effective at breaking weed, disease, and insect cycles as are black fallow, green fallow or production of a properly chosen crop.

4. Rotations should be sequenced to make it easy to prevent volunteer plants of the previous crop from becoming a weed problem.

5. Producers with livestock enterprises find it less difficult to introduce diversity into rotations.

a. Use of forage or flexible forage/grain crops and green fallow enhance the ability to tailor rotational intensity.

6. Crops destined for direct human food use pose the highest risk and offer the highest potential returns.

7. The desire to increase diversity and intensity needs to be balanced with profitability.

8. Soil moisture storage is affected by surface residue amounts, inter-crop period, snow catch ability of stubble, rooting depth characteristics, soil characteristics, precipitation patterns, and other factors.

9. Seedbed conditions at the desired seeding time can be controlled through use of crops with differing characteristics in regard to residue colour, level, distribution and architecture.

10. Rotations that are not consistent in either crop sequence or crop interval guard against pest species shifts and minimize thee probability of developing resistant, tolerant or adapted pest species.

Dwayne is currently working with a South American machinery company to produce a new disc seeder. It will have a walking beam to flow over terrain better, offset double disc's, seed firmer and furrow closer stars.

Original Machine

New Assembly in Production

During the afternoon we visited two farmers who were directors on the board of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm. Both Dan Forgey and Ralph Horowitz were full zero-tillers. They used either the JD Max Emerge Planters or JD disc airseeders. Dan and Ralph both agreed that you need disc’s to make Zero-till work with full stubble retention and you had to do both in order to make the system work. You cannot do one without the other.

Dan & Dwayne

South Dakota

2010-06-03T10:23:00.001+09:30

An Excellent Crop of Winter Wheat

Brad Karlin was our first visit on Sunday. He and his brother farm 26000 acres of prairie and hill country. Half of this is cropped and the other half is used for fattening cattle. Brad utilises the full zero till cropping system with disc seeding and full stubble retention. It has only been in recent years that a lot of the old prairie sod land has been brought into crop. He uses a multitude of crops which include peas, lentils, wheat, corn and soybeans.

Peas Sown Into Corn Stubble

Brad and his brother also have a few weather/wind towers to trial for their suitability for erecting wind farm generators.

So far all of the farmers we have seen have a very good approach to natural resources, whether it was increase native vegetation or leaving areas of corn un harvested to help animals get through winter. There is a large number birds and a lot of deer.

Bart & Lynne Ruth - Nebraska

2010-06-03T10:09:00.003+09:30

Bart & Lynne Ruth farm near Rising City in Nebraska. We met Bart & Lynne at the Nuffield Scholars Contemporary Conference in Washington in March. He is an Eisenhower Fellow. They farm 2300acres of which 1000 is setup for irrigation. Bart and his son Jeff have been no tilling for 7 years and have really seen an improvement in their crops. Bart feels that the main reasons behind this are - timeliness of sowing
-lower fuel costs

-ability to get back on the ground quicker after rain because the water infiltrates the soil more quickly

-the overall water holding capacity has increased.

Bart & Jeff finished sowing their soybeans the day before we arrived. They had trialled three different disc seeders. A JD Maxemerge planter, a JD 1990 single disc and a JD 1535 double disc seeder. It will be interesting to follow the results of these seeders particularly with emergence, crop health and finally yield.

Nikki and Bart Inspecting Crops

One of Bart’s neighbours runs a 5000 cow dairy. They have a good deal worked out regarding the dairy effluent. Bart is able to irrigate 700 acres with the treated dairy effluent water. This gives them an extra 8 – 10 inches of irrigation per year as well as the nutrients from the shit. They also get 160 acres of slurry injected into their paddocks. This is a great way to get what is essentially free fertiliser as the Dairy has to get rid of in an environmentally sound way. And they have a lot to get rid of!!

Dairy Efflluent Treatment

Irrigation Set Up For Dairy Water

Management Of Cows Was Excellent

They use a consultant for their agronomy information. It costs $6 per acre per year. For this they have their paddocks monitored weekly and recommendations are given. The consultant takes the soil samples as well and sends them off on their behalf.

We left Nebraska to head to the Dakotas and Dwayne Beck had organized a number of farm visits for us along the way. Saturday night we stopped in Chamberlain as it sounded like an old tractor that we once had. It was a dark and stormy night, the toilet light was dim...... the tornado season was in full swing. We watched the weather channel (riveting stuff) and saw yet more tornadoes heading towards us. Once again though the storm passed quickly and the tornadoes skirted around us.

Ray Ward – Ward Laboratories. Kearney Nebraska

2010-06-03T09:47:00.002+09:30

Ray has been testing soil for farmers since 1983 and this has expanded to include tissue testing, feed testing and manure testing. He now does over 215,000 soil tests each year. His soil test prices were at least half the price of Australian tests. A lot of the No Till on the Plains farmers utilise his testing service. They are working on soil biological activity testing but thinks this is a while away.

It was interesting that Ray commented on the recent issues arising from the use of Roundup over a period of time and the build up in soil and the affects that this will have now and in the near future on soil health.

Ray likes to talk about soil on its productivity basis rather than fertility as this could just be a function of artificial fertilisers. Ray used to have a turn around time of one day for soil tests but now due to the number he takes 2 days. All results are emailed out to the clients if the farmer has email!!

An interesting note is that a number of his clients and in areas across the plain have lost three feet of topsoil. He feels it will take 10 years to rebuild the soil structure using the no till system in the top 50cm and lower down it will take hundreds of years.

Big Ball Of Twine

2010-06-03T09:45:00.000+09:30

Kansas is famous for a couple of things. The Big Ball of Twine and the Geodetic Centre of the USA

K-State

2010-06-03T09:39:00.000+09:30

Kansas State University or K State is in Manhattan. We caught up with Scott Staggenborg who is the Associate Professor in Agronomy. Scott has been looking at disc seeding system and their use in Kansas. He has been looking at soil parameters and has found there has been an increase in organic matter on average of 0.2 % per year. This gives hope to make a viable increase to help our soil better.

In long term trials and in farmer’s paddocks there is a definite trend in the speed which the stubble is breaking down. This is due to the increase of biological activity in the soil particularly those ravenous piranha like organisms, which are the first stage decomposers. Farmers are now looking at their rotations to have quick decomposed crops alongside those that resist decomposition.

Scott in his work has listed crops from quick decomposition to very slow ones.

Wheat→Barley→Soyabeans→Sorghum→Corn .

The corn still have leafs that break down relatively quickly, but the stalks and kernels last a lot longer. Now that corn has been engineered with the BT gene (Bacillus Thiregenisis) the corn stubble is taking an even longer time to decompose. All of this information is used by farmers to maintain enough stubble cover on their paddocks.

Asking Scott about the yield achieved by the farmers and their stubble loads; we had to convert everything from bushels per acre to tonnes per hectare. For wheat they achieve around 3.5-3.7 t/ha with a harvest index of 0.4: 1 and therefore get a stubble cover of 9 t/ha.

One area of interest is the role that our pesticides are having on the colonies of macro and micro-organisms in the soil particularly the soil fungi. We are currently using a fungicide treated fertilizer for our wheat production. This practice is very detrimental to those good fungal strains such as Arbuscular Myccorhizal Fungi (AMF) according to Scott. He stated that it would be better to only coat the seed and therefore only affect those that come in contact with the seed and plant. The fertilizer type creates more of a dead zone. *More Info Needed*

An area that he and Charles Rice are working on is to quantify the benefits of Carbon is having by keeping it in the system (sequestration) not only for a minor payment in the green payments, but the value it gives to the soil and the crops grown upon it. I think these guys would be good for Alistair to visit.

Professor Charles Rice - University Distinguished Professor Kansas State University.

Charles is working on carbon and nitrogen cycling and looking at the soil fertility of long term trials with various rotations which includes treatments of manures and different nitrogenous fertilisers. The system which had the best increase in fertility was the rotation that had corn and manures. The second best was the rotation which contained corn and nitrogen fertiliser in the form of 32:0:0. During these trials the water holding capacity increased but was only a gradual process with small incremental improvements. The increased water availability came from having stubble retained which had the effect of lowering of evaporation.

Other work Charles has conducted was looking at the difference between standing stubble versus stubble laying flat on the ground. The standing stubble was useful to help catch snow and was easier to sow through. The laying stubble had more effect in lowering evaporation but allowed for snow to be blown across the paddocks and not trapped to allow for melting for future plant use. The laying stubble had the effect of keeping the soil cool which at the start of the prairie season slowed germination and emergence. Charles thought that this would be beneficial for us in Australia as the full stubble cover would keep some of the temperatures noticeably lower and this would mean that microbial activity would continue through our hot summers.

We had an interesting discussion regarding some recent findings in trials where Glyphosate is building up in some soils and causing problems with some micro organisms.

Keith Thompson

2010-06-03T09:34:00.000+09:30

The Thompson’s farm in the Osage area of Kansas. They run a 2500 acre continuous cropping operation with the addition of a cow/calf unit on permanent pasture.

Keith and his son Ben use a JD 1890 single disc seeder. They have added residue managers on the front to remove a thin strip of the stubble to enable them to plant into soil for a couple of reasons: no hair pinning & better germination with small grains. They utilise a number of crops; Maize, Sorghum, Sunflowers, Soyabeans, Wheat & Rye in their cropping program.

Like the majority of farmers, they used to have a Wheat:Fallow rotation. They moved to no-till 18 years ago and have not looked back. Keith stated that they have all but stopped this. But have still got a long way to go to repair the damage that the old practices caused. Working with soil scientist Ray Ward from Kearney Nebraska, they have discovered areas of the property that have all of the “A” horizon completely gone.

Both Keith and Ben agreed that they have lowered overall erosion, increased water infiltration, improved soil structure and improved trafficability. Also all of this has a very positive effective on profitability.

Thompson Wheel (star) and Row Packer

Some of the problems that they have encountered include slot not closing so he designed the Thompson wheel to crumb the side of the trench. Also problems with Nitrogen tie up in the first year years of zero tillage and full stubble retention.

Since We Got to The US It Has Rained

Corn Still Growing

Doug & Tracey Palin Glen Elder Kansas 19/5/2010

2010-05-25T14:47:00.005+09:30

JD Disc are the Most Common Machines on the Prairies

After meeting Doug & Tracey Palin at Keith Thompsons farm on the weekend we were off to Glen Elder to visit their farm. Doug took over the farm from his father and has built up a sizable operation with a large percentatge either rented (leased) or sharefarmed. All of their farm is now seeded with a zero till JD 1890 single disc seeder. The corn is seeded with a JD precision planter. Traditionally the farm grew only wheat and now Doug uses a number of crops susch as corn, milo, soyabeans, sunflower, and winter wheat, and is still looking for other crops so he can have a more diverse rotation. A diverse rotation is needed to keep weeds and pests guessing.
Doug and I went down the shed with a couple of beers to discuss the mechanics of the disc seeding assembly, he feels that the different operations carried out by the assembly all need to be independent of each other. The disc needs to cut through the residue and create a slot for the seed, the depth wheel must work in tandem with the disc to accurately place the seed. A seed firmer is a good idea as it makes sure the seed is placed at the bottom of the slot. The press wheel should stand alone with the sold job of firming the soil around the seed. It shouldn’t be used as a depth control as this would add too much pressure above the seed and cause germination problems. It can also have the effect of making the disc come out of the ground and leave the seed stranded on top when used on undulating ground. The Thompson wheel is the final part of the assembly and this helps to crumble the wall of the slot to create an ideal seed bed. This star wheel should not have interaction with the soil and stubble greater than the width of the depth wheel as it will reduce the effectiveness of the closing function if it is hit by passing stalks & stubble.

Good Penetration and Seed Placement

An amazing chat we had was about the price of machinery in America compared to Australia. For a JD 9770 CTS header /combine the price was US $ 250000 and the comparable unit in Australia was $450000 for a second hand unit with 600 hours on it.

Both Doug and I found that there is a large gap in our knowledge regarding the processes that occour below the ground. Whether that is interaction between micro & macro organisms or soil colloids and elements. Another area in interest is the functioning of hair roots and the exudates they produce to attract hyphae and the role it plays in extracting nutrients for the plant.

Josh Lloyd - Kansas Tuesday 18th May 2010

2010-05-25T14:45:00.002+09:30

Josh With His Beloved Residue

Josh runs a continuous no till cropping enterprise at Clay Centre Kansas. His rotations include Corn , soyabeans, sunflowers, Milo and Winter wheat. This year Josh is using a John Deere 1890 single disc seeder to plant all of his crops, including the warm season ones. These row crops eg. Corn, are normally done with a precision planter by a contractor. Josh believes that the quality of his JD disc seeder will now allow him to plant all his crops himself without using a contractor. After visiting Australia Josh has been slowly implementing controlled traffic on his property. Which he believes is a good companion to zero till.

Single Disc JD with Thompson Wheel Furrow Crumbler

In large areas of Kansas the farms were forced by government regulations to put terraces (ie Contour banks) over their farms for conservation measures to stop erosion. We noticed that many of these were on land with a relatively low sloping gradient. This makes them fairly useless but makes the paddocks a pain in the arse to work. Josh has found over time utilizing zero till seeding and systems of stubble retention etc. The contour banks are no longer required but he is not allowed to remove them by law.

Good Corn Kansas Style

After getting the new seeder he changed the furrow crumbler behind the seeding disc to a Thompson wheel which he feels works better at making sure the furrow is closed over with friable soil. The Thompson wheel has more pronounced teeth and is a bit more aggressive than the original part. As usual when you are replacing a genuine part they are very costly. Josh has got onto a supplier of after market parts for the press wheels and depth gauge wheels which are half the price of the John Deere lot. A couple of hours well spent with Josh.

One problem that we have encountered is the discrepancies in the no till terminologies and definitions used by farmers and researchers. We have found that many use the term no till each with their own different meanings. For example some interpret no till to mean the continuous use of minimal disturbance disc seeders with full stubble retention where others use it to mean knife point usage and others use no till to describe their occasional use of no till equipment, however they still cultivate the soil at some point in their rotation.

I feel that this needs to be straightened out worldwide and a standardization of terminology agreed upon amongst all no till groups to help to clarify what people are doing on their properties and this would be a good project to add to my study. Today has got my brain humming along.

Brian & Jana Lindley - No Till on the Plains

2010-05-25T14:41:00.003+09:30

Brian & Yana run the No Till on the Plains Farmers group which is a group that services the needs of no till farmers from Kansas , Nebraska , North & South Dakota and a few from Colorado. This is a huge area. They run an annual Winter Conference in Salina KS each January which attracts approx 1200 farmers/ They also have other events such as crop walks/field days and bus trips. No Till on the Plains has about 3000 attendees for the year. They also have interstate and overseas trips for the group. No till on the Plains have a board made up of farmers and a prominent research fellow. They don’t currently have a formal membership but are looking into getting this tidied up. Some of the past presidents include Keith Thompson, Josh Lloyd, Doug Palin, & Mike Zoot.
No-Till on the Plains

Comparisons in New York

2010-05-25T14:36:00.005+09:30

Surviving Bronze Ball from WTC

2010-05-25T14:20:00.005+09:30

Exit England - Enter USA

2010-05-25T14:16:00.001+09:30

Well the volcano erupted again and closed airports in Scotland so we decided to make a quick exit from England while we could rather than being stranded there if the ash from the volcano got worse. David & Joan, Im sure, were delightedly devastated to see us go after such a short stay. We had such fun with them it was a shame to have to rush off so quickly. Ah well we'll be back!! We changed our flights and flew out of Heathrow on Thursday 6th and headed off to New Jersey. A quick 7 hour flight. saw 2 more movies. Arrived in USA at about 6pm and stayed with our good friends Jono & Natasha Meek and their 3 kids Harrison, Eloise & James.
We had a great week there. Went to Princeton Uni - fantastic buildings, saw an exhibition of the early maps of the world which was facinating. Did a trip to New York with the Meeks on Saturday. Went across on the Stanton Island ferry and sailed past the Statue of Liberty. Toured around Wall St, Ground Zero etc etc. it was good. Had a couple of rest days which was nice. Balls & I went back into New York on Wednesday on the train, in drizzly weather. Went to time square and near central park. got all the required touristy bits. Food shops and restaurants are just amazing in the US. Everything is so BIG. Just walking through a supermarket explains so much!!! and there are so many fast food places. Its tragic really. Everyone has big ovens. maybe to fit the turkey's in...? There is no water conservation. Even the loo's, as badly as they flush, look like they use about 20 litres of H20 and then the bowl fills up again!!. Heaps of lawn areas around all the houses and streets. Beautiful area in Jersey though. very green lots of trees. no one has any fences around their houses which seems a bit odd but all the houses look the same. Cookie cutter stuff really. all the light switches are upside down and its tricky to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Other than all that we could be in Oz!! Sad to be leaving Jersey but on Friday 14th we headed off to Kansas for the next farming bit of the trip. Posted by Nikki

No Till Alliance Conference Wednesday 5th may 2010

2010-05-25T09:02:00.000+09:30

The day was well attended with over 200 farmers coming from across Great Britain and a couple of French men. Simon Childs & Will Scale were the main organizers. There were 4 speakers on the day. I spoke on No Till farming in Australia and disk seeding systems. Joel Williams spoke on soil Biology. Simon Childs talked abou t his experiences as he has converted over to no till. He purchased a second hand JD disc seeder and has been using that for the last five years. He gave 4 advantages 1. Improved soil structure 2. Reduced costs of establishment. 3 Improved timeliness 4. Increased Yield. He also spoke of some of the fears of reduced yield, increased slug numbers, and high residues that needed handling. To overcome his fears in the first couple of years he increased the seeding rate and put on extra nitrogen.

His work started at harvest with stubble management. He found keeping the stubble long and standing was the better way to handle the large amount of residue. He looked at Soil Structure and there was a large hard pan which the mulboard plough had created. He was told that he should use a chisel plough to break this up before commencing no till. Simon did half and half in his first paddock and found there was no need as the roots were good enough over time to get through the hard pan. He used press wheels followed by gutler wheel at rear to create loose soil over the seed. With this system he feels he needs to have more diverse crop rotations. Diverse rotations are needed to keep weeds & pests “guessing” and therefore not give them an opportunity to create problems and then resistance.

John Landers - Brazil.
Started with Direct drill/ no till in 70’s in Brazil and has seen a widespread adoption of this system throughout Brazil and other South American countries. He put the benefits of increased yields and sustainability to the following reasons. Decreased erosion, decreased runoff and increased CO2

No-Till on the Fens

2010-05-21T09:50:00.000+09:30

After seeing Nick at Lincoln we headed south to catch up with Tony Reynolds at Milton Mowbray down in an area known as The Fen’s. We were driving towards Tony’s farm when we first noticed stubble standing up in a crop, so we knew we must have been near to Thurlby Grange Farm.

Good Healthy Wheat Crop Sown into Standing Stubble

Tony runs Thurlby Grange Farm, 1250 hectares, with his 3 family members and 1 full time worker. It is a relatively flat area which is below the river levels as it was reclaimed from marshes and swamps. The soils range from organic peats to mixtures of silt and clay.

Healthly Soil Showing Good Earthworm Activity

They grow a number of crops including Wheat, Beans, Canola, Peas & Linseed. Six years ago they started experimenting with no-till, using a selection of disc combines. 3 years later they decided to go 100% No-Till.

They sold all of the existing tillage equipment and have not looked back. They now have a zero-till combine. When they converted over to no-till they also purchased a stripper front. They now sow straight into the standing stubble.

Tony With His Purest No-Till Canola Crop

Tony has done a trial this year by reaping the wheat with the stripper front. He has bought and mounted an automatic broadcaster which was filled with canola. The canola was effectively broadcast as he reapt with good coverage and did not require harrowing or anything to bury the seeds. Tony called this the purest form of no-till.

Autocast Spreader on his Stripper Front

Tony is trialling a new airseeder made by Weaving Machinery.

Weaver Manufacturing Caddy Seeder

Tony is known as “The Barometer” as he sometimes writes for the Farmers Weekly in the United Kingdom. This visit showed that the No-Till or Zero-Till system can work in the United Kingdom.

Up to Lincoln to see Nick Ward

2010-05-18T05:41:00.000+09:30

Nick with an Excellent Canola crop (Oilseed Rape)

Nick and Barbara run the family farm in Lincolnshire with a continuous cropping program. The crops they grow include Wheat, Beans, Oilseed Rape, Corn & others. They use a modified disc machine to sow all of their crops.

A Vaaderstaad Disc Seeder

The seeder had too much soil throw for what I am looking for in a zero-till capacity. A major problem that Nick and other farmers in the area face is waterlogging through out the year. During the fifties when the UK was sponsoring agriculture this area of England was drained using tile drains with ceramic piping at about 1 metre deep. This is effective but it needs maintanance

Tile Drainage

The high precipitation causes not only waterlogging problems but also problems at harvest with high moisture content of the grain. Nick has to dry all of his grain. He has room for about 4000 tonnes in the drying sheds and more normal storage. With his driers he can change the temperature of the grain and the levels of moisture. This achieved with blowing normal air through the grain pile or heating the air with gas burners.

A Wooden Floor With Underfloor Ventilation & Perforated Tin Channels

Dried Grain

Nicks crops that he grows were very good and the finished product ready for delivery had the right specification for the end user.

Historic Right of Way

All across UK there are historic right of ways which anyone can walk along so the farmers like Nick have to keep these designated areas tidy and accessible. It is a real pain in the arse. Nick told us that some walkers still walk anywhere over his crops.

A Nice Bean Crop

Worcester - Weddings, Beef & Asparagus

2010-05-11T08:05:00.001+09:30

Currdine Farm

We left green Wales to go up to Worcestershire. We caught up with John Ballard at Curradine Farm at Shrawley. They have converted a barn over to a Wedding Venue. The farm is like a lot of English farms in that it is relatively small. The extract from their website http://www.weddingvenues.com/

"Charming restored barns in beautiful countryside easily accessible from all major towns in the south Midlands. This delightful venue has been imaginatively and artistically restored to the highest possible standards. The L-shaped barns are located on a working farm, close to the church, and centred round a charming, flower-filled Courtyard that is perfect for a drinks reception. The atmosphere is friendly and supportive. The owners go out of their way to make you welcome and their inspiration, vision and style has created a truly exceptional, natural venue. It just gets prettier every day! Licensed for Civil Ceremonies.

With underfloor heating and air conditioning, this venue is ideal for both Summer and Winter weddings."

Wedding Courtyard

John and his partner have added a new section with bridal suite and full changing facitlities for the bridal party.

The Farm Dog

Curradine Farm has roughly 3 weddings per week and keeps them busy. This is an excellent addition to the Angus Stud and asparagus farm. John gave us directions up the road to catch up with Richard Colwell at Dingle Farm, Little Witley. Richard was a 1997 Nuffield Scholar

Richard is a vegetable grower with his brother. They have about 70 acres of asparagus. Richard set up WAG which is the Western Asparagus Growers. WAG has 11 growers with 600 acres of asparagus.

Asparagus Shoots

The asparagus plant is sown as a crown 1ft deep. It is allowed to grow for the first year which builds up the root reserves. The shoots are then harvested during the second season. The asparagus grows fresh shoots each day and grow at approximately 6-8 inches per day.

Richard picks asparagus for two months each year. He has 18 young pickers who work for 8 hours a day for Sunday to Friday. These are mainly from Eastern Europe.

Picked Asparagus

All of the members of the group send the produce each day to a central location and they are sorted by thickness and colour. It is then cut to length and packed.

The Aparagus Eating Dog

Catch-up with Will

2010-05-11T06:01:00.000+09:30

We travelled to Haverfordwest Wales to catch up with Will Scale another Nuffield scholar. Will grows a number of crops including winter wheats and other winter cereals with potatoes as a main stay. He sows his crops using no-till methods. He has been utilizing these methods for a while and is seeing the benefits of this system.

A No-Till Crop with Good Emergence

One of the hardest aspects to overcome with no-till is the fact of the sprayed out seedbed and the new crop comes up and does not look as good as a traditionally sown crops. The photo above shows a crop with excellent emergence, but is partly hidden by the stubble.

Will is looking for options to complement his current farming program to allow for more profitability by 2013 when the current Common Agricultural Policy is reviewed. So far all of the farmers we have talked to consider subsidies/grants or whatever the name, find them wrong but are not willing to give them back.

Some Nice Crops Overlooking Haverfordwest.

One of Will's and others farmer's problem weeds is Black Grass. It is resistant to a number chemicals already. The traditional cultivation systems have still got the same problems. A number of chemical options open to us in Australia are not available in the UK. These include Grammoxone, Simmazine and Sprayseed.
There is no longer a double knock option to help control Black Grass and other weeds.

When we left Will In St David we had a Captain Cook around St David's Cathedral. It is the smallest city in UK. (A city in UK must have a Cathedral).

St David's Cathedral (Patron Saint of Wales)

Louvres Made of Slate

Alvis Brothers

2010-05-11T03:10:00.001+09:30

We headed off to Bristol to catch up with our first Nuffield Scholar and his family. John & Pauline Alvis and their two sons, Peter and Johnny. They live south of Bristol at a little village called Redhill. They are dairy farmers with a great model of circular integration.

Lye Cross Farmshop

Home of

West Country Farmhouse Cheeses

The company of Alvis Brothers runs a number of other identities which all integrate well. They currently run three dairies in the area with 1 being organic. The milk is all delivered to the cheese factory behind the shop complex and is made into a range of hard cheeses. The bi-product of the cheese making progress is whey which is further separated into protein powder and lactose syrup. This is pumped up to the companies piggery and utilised there. The pigs are sold with some coming into the butcher shop as part of The Farm Shop produce.

Cleaning Manure from Dairy

The manure and waste from the piggery is spread onto the paddocks as is the dairy waste. The cows are housed for six months and for the rest of the year are outdoors on the paddocks grazing ryegrass and clover based pasture. The farmland gets spread with manure every third year.
All of the paddock work including spreading manure, seeding and spraying is carried out by a contract company in which Alvis Bros have a 1/2 share. The contracting company uses Moore disc seeder.

A Moore Disc Assembly

The Farm Shop is a key component to the Alvis Bros. The hard cheeses that they produce are sold in the shop which goes well as there is a large amount of passing traffic. Now that the farm shop also has a butcher shop and fresh produce including veggies, they have customers who travel especially to buy from them.

Alvis Bros supply Sainsbury's with the range of Cheddar's and other cheeses. Currently they sell 3 out of every 4 kilograms of Organic cheese sold in Britain. They make three types of Cheddar; Hard, Mature & Vintage. They also make Red Leicester, Cheshire,Caerphilly and Blue Stilton.

To be able to use the Cheddar name the cheese must be hand turned during the process. It also helps being in the Cheddar region.

Slackness

2010-05-06T22:57:00.002+09:30

I have finally gotten around to updating my blog. Nikki and I have been in the UK for 11 days and have seen a fair part of the country. We would have seen more if it was not for the bloody hedges. They tend to keep them in good order as part of the CAP requires them to do so.

We have stayed some of the time with some relatives which was good as I have not seen them for a long time. To settle in to England we had a tour of Kent and went to a manor house.

Just the Dog House

View from Manor House Tower

England

2010-05-06T03:19:00.000+09:30

Posted by Nikki
well we are just about to launch out of England early just in case the volcano ash changes direction and heads back to heathrow. We fly out to New York tomorrow to catch up with Jono & Nat which will be lots of fun.
we have toured lots of England and done over 900 miles after our visit to wales we travelled to Worcester and spent the day there with John Ballard - Sue Wheal's brother and then had a look at an asparagus farm which was interesting. then we zipped off to Lincoln where we stayed with Nick & Barbara Ward. balls will write about all the farming stuff.... eventually. We then toured down to see Tony Reynolds on his property just above Bourne. We stayed with Balls' cousin Ian Monday night and then on Tuesday popped into visit the other Rellies in Newmarket and then headed back home to David & Joans in West Malling.
Balls has been speaking at a no till conference in Edenvale today and I have been doing a bit of touring.
English election tomorrow. should be close

Wales

2010-04-30T20:19:00.000+09:30

Thursday 29th April
Posted by Nikki
Set off for Wales in the morning from Bristol. It only took us 3 hours to drive there and we got to the bottom South West corner in a town called Haverfordwest just after lunch time. Had lunch in a pub in the town, tried to find some free wireless internet but couldn't. Headed out in the rain to see Will Scales on his property. and had a bit of a tour around before tea. Staying in a great little cottage on their property. Nice place for a holilday getaway

Alvis Brothers

2010-04-30T20:11:00.004+09:30

Tuesday 27th & Wednesday 28th April 2010
Posted by Nikki
We set off for a place called Redhill near Bristol which is in the south West of England. We stayed with John & Pauline Alvis who run Alvis brothers. They have two sons Johnny and Peter who are also involved in their business along with about 120 other employees. It is a business that has lots of arms but essentially their philosophy is that they have land on which they grow grass, the grass feeds the cows who give the milk to make the cheese and they feed the whey from the cheese making process back to the pigs whos’ manure they spread on the paddocks for fertiliser. So its circular integration as each part of their business benefits another part. They also have a shop front in which they sell all of their cheese and pork products and also may other products from other local farm businesses. From oils, to yoghurts to vegies to even other peoples cheeses.

Peter gave us a tour through the cheese factory. It is a mammoth operation and produces a huge amount of hard cheeses. They currently have nearly 3000 tonnes of cheese in storage. We did a vertical tasting of different aged cheeses and the difference was very clear. The business appears to be very well structured and managed, with excellent staff retention rates which is a credit to their people management skills, which is something that often bigger businesses lack.

Nick Green gave us a tour around the farms, they have three separate dairies and a number of properties scattered through the villages. The roads through these little country villages are horrifyingly narrow and they have those awful hedges lining all the roads. Not only do they make driving dangerous but you cant see through them into the countryside which I find very annoying. The hedges are now protected though so that the badgers (that carry TB to infect the cattle, are now also protected) and other little animals can have somewhere to live. I think they are terrible but the locals don’t seem to mind them at all.

2010-04-30T20:02:00.002+09:30

Monday 26th April 2010
Posted by Nikki
When we hired a car. Had the offer of an upgrade to a BMW for only 50pounds extra per day!!! Forced to decline. Set off in lovely sunny weather to West Malling where Balls’ rellies David & Joan Mitchem live.
It was great to catch up with them after 22 years. I stayed with them on my last trip to England. We went for a wander down the High Street and bought a local phone card to save on some costs. . David & Joan then took us out to see the National trust listed Ightham Mote which was a magnificent building. Very early to bed. think I have a bit of jet lag.

Ball's Study Trip - Trip No.2

2010-04-30T19:36:00.001+09:30

Posted by Nikki:
Sunday 25th April 2010
Balls & I flew out from Adelaide to Melbourne and then went from Melbourne to Singapore arriving there at 9.15pm local time. There were a few nervous moments at the airport when we were told that our tickets on to London were just standby tickets and we would be lucky to fly out of there in the next few days. Luckily the girl didn't know what she was talking about and we flew out as scheduled at midnight to London. We arrived 13 hours later having had a half decent sleep and some remarkably good airline food. Zipped through the airport in 45 minutes and picked up our hire car.

Super Frango

2010-04-23T10:08:00.000+09:30

Great Doormat

Next we were off to a chicken farm / processor called Super Frango. They have been in processing for 19 years and they process on average 220,000 / day.Currently they buy day old chicks.The day old chicks are sourced from 5 separate states of Brazil. These are sent directly to the contract growers. All of the feed is mixed and sent out in bulk to these growers and they go through 1000 t/day, made up of Corn and SoyabeanThe trucks delivering the grain are all automatically sampled.

Will We See These at ABB or AWB?

The contract growers supply the shed and the labour, plus the water and electricity. He / she invests $300,000 per shed with a turn over every 55 days. 45 days for growing and 10 for cleaning and sanatizing the shed. Super Frango supply the chicks and feed. The company also picks up the chickens at 45 days old. The farmer is paid on a weight basis after the birds are processed. The animals range from 2.4 kgs to 3.2 kgs dressed weight. The chickens have a dressing percentage of 80% and meat yield is 40%. The feed conversion ratio is 1.75:1, which is very good.

Super Frango export only 10% of the final product with the rest consumed in Brazil. It is in their business plan to start growing their own chicks which it will have a number of benefits. They vertically intergrating the whole business.

Sugar & Ethanol

2010-04-22T08:24:00.000+09:30

We continue to see a lot of sugar cane in the area, interspersed with soyabean. We were off to see a Sugar Cane growing and Ethanol plant. The company rents 14,000 hectares of land from 200 farmers. The company then does all of the work and the farmers are paid on the sugar produced off that piece of land.

The Truck Arriving with New Cane for Hand Planting

The company processes an average 55% of the crop for ethanol and 40% for raw sugar. The production from this farm is 1,000,000 tonnes. In comparison Australia’s total production is only 5 million tones. They average 72 t/ha but are aiming for 85 t/ha.

Cane Pieces Laid In Trenches And Then Covered By Hand With Hoes

The ethanol plant was having a maintenance refit was we were unable to go in, so we went out to the field and looked at replanting of cane. 2000 ha are replanted each year. The paddock is worked up using a offset disc and then a trencher is used to put three trenches 400 mm deep. This is all done with tractors. That is where the mechanization stops. The precut cane is then laid out by hand in the trenches nand covered over by hand with a hoe. This seemed very archaic. 2000 works are employed each year to manually harvest the cane crop.

A Cane Cutter and His Tool

When the crop is sown it receives a dose of NPK fertilizer with 40 units of Nitrogen, 120 units of Phosphorous and 80 units of Potassium. This then topped up after harvest with 40 units of Nitrogen and 60 units of Potassium.

The ethanol that is produced each year has to be sold to a fuel company. They currently are extracting 85 litres of ethanol per tonne of sugar cane. With last year’s crop they produced 4 500,000 litres. As a bi-product from the ethanol production, stillage is a water product. This is used to irrigate some of the corn and puts on 300mm over a 1000 ha.

Foremans Car

Daterra Coffee Bean Producer for the Queen

2010-04-22T07:43:00.000+09:30

Now we were ready to start our tour of some of Brazil’s fabulous agriculture. The first stop was a coffee plantation. Daterra is located in the central area of Brazil. It is 1100 metres above sea level and receives 1800 – 2000 mm per year. The rainfall comes for six months in sum and is dry for the other six.

Daterra with all their Accreditations

The farm is setup with the following land uses;

• Coffee - 2640 Ha.

• Corridors of Native Vegetation linking blocks of legal reservation - 400 Ha.

• Legal Reservation as part of the 20% required by law – 1826 Ha.

• Permanent Vegetation along creeks and rivers – 626 Ha.

• Native vegetation being regenerated – 1113 Ha.

• Administration & Buildings etc. – 36 Ha.

• Total – 6646 Ha

Daterra produce 100 million tonnes of coffee beans each year. The company employs 220 full time and 150 part timers. These are involved mainly in the field and in the factory. They used to employ 1200 hand pickers but they have been directly swapped over for 15 tractor drivers. Now 85% of the harvest is picked by machine.

Coffee comes from a tree which is pruned to make new growth. The plants come into production 2 ½ years after planting. They have their beans on second year wood and they tend to be biennial with a 70:30 split. The critical time is just before flowering when there must be sufficient moisture available to allow full flowering and this sets next years seed set.

The beans are picked when the “cupper” says it is ready. The cupper is a key person in the coffee business. It is their job to collect beans from the trees to taste them. He has to firstly dry them and then roast to get them ready for the tasting process. It is similar to wine tasting.

The Cupper Doing his Tasting

He has a number of criteria to assess the beans, firstly he puts the ground beans in the cup and smell them and then tastes them by slurping to draw air and coffee across your palate. He judges such as aroma, acidity, depth of character & finish. After tasting he decides which plots are ready for harvest. He continues the cupping during harvest and the drying process.

The ripe beans are firstly picked by a harvester similar to grape machines, with rotating beaters which remove about 75 – 85% of the crop. Then a circular rotating brush is which remove most of the remaining beans. These are then swept up with a vacuum harvester.

Coffee Harvester

The beans are taken to the factory and clean & washed to remove the outer shell / covering. The beans need drying down from 65% to 11% moisture. This must done slowly to retain the oil and flavour. This drying process is the bottle neck for the farm as they only have 6 dryers which take 2 days to dry a load. Once they have come down to 11% they are put into large wooden vats which hold 50000 tonne. The coffee beans are stored for about 40 days and then cupped again after which the cupper assign them a quality. Reserve is their premium label. At present they sell their beans to a roaster, who then sells them to the public. Daterra is looking to value add it bean sale with roasting and selling to the public but later on have their set on some coffee shops. They already supply, Queen Elizabeth’s coffee roaster.

The Queen's Coffee Vault

Daterra have a good social conscience as they are involved with a lot for their labour force and communities.They currently;

• Supply breakfast each day for staff.

• Give family loans from the company.

• Bring schools on for tour but not only factory and plantation. They have camps to investigate the habitat and environment of native vegetation areas for plants and animals.

• Scholarships for staff to educate and better themselves.

• Support childcare facilities in area.

• Have family festival at the plantation

As I don’t drink coffee I haven’t added it until now, but the cupper put us through a testing of the coffee. Rob and Rowan picked the three grades in the right order.

The current issue of the drying process is going to be addressed in the near future, with some more drying kilns and the labour with some union issues. Supply of high end coffee has increased dramatically. For the coffee aficionados we saw a pack of Weasel Coffee or Kopi Luwak. It has been picked by the Civet Cat and has passed through the intestines of the Palm Civet.

Internet Note; Planters soon discovered that the coffee bean itself was not digested by the palm civet and so clusters of beans appeared in their droppings. Some enterprising person tried washing and brewing the beans rather than waste them – and Kopi Luwak or Weasel Coffee was born. When news spread to the West, the unique rich flavour of this brew plus the sheer gross novelty of drinking coffee that had passed through an animal’s intestines created unprecedented demand. It is now such a hot gourmet coffee that it sells for $1000 per kilo. It is not your average barista coffee! There are reports of gourmet coffee houses selling it for $50 per cup. Reports from coffee –lovers who have tried it are generally favourable to rave reviews. The enzymes in the civet’s stomach apparently take away some of the coffee’s bitterness yet enhances the flavour and aroma, producing a unique cup.

This was a very good visit.

Bus Trip from Hell

2010-04-22T06:45:00.000+09:30

We flew out the follow morning onto Ribeirão Preto.

We were met at the airport by Richardo. We were soon on the road with our new bus driving mate, heading north. It was a flash looking little bus until it was driven, then it shock the beejebbers out of everyone and everything. We later found out that the bus had airbags suspension, but the bags were stuffed. We overnighted at Ribeirão Preto.

Stuffed Suspension

The early start today was needed as we had to drive 300km to Uberlandia. It was a fairly good road from Ribeirão but the bus was rat shit. We got to Uberlandia in reasonable time and met our guide for the next few days, Milton Suzuki. We had a reasonable night sleep but a few of us needed chiro’s.

On to Brazil

2010-04-12T19:25:00.000+09:30

Yeh !!! Brazil at last but no, another lost bag. Rowan was left with only his back pack again. He had his Aussie flag board shorts. They should do. Off to our hotel and put our feet up for the rest of the day. Sao Paulo has 20+ million people and they are crammed in. I went in search of a post office and spent an hour walking around and half an hour trying to tell them what I wanted. In the end it was all sorted out. . It has a better feel about it than Mexico City, but it is hard to tell from one day.

Rowan Contemplating His Lost Bag

We had a good night’s sleep and it was go for the Brazil leg of the GFP. We went to the Austrade Office in Sao Paulo to meet the Consul General and the head of Austrade in Brazil. Greg Wallis gave us a good heads with Brazil and the current economic, social and agricultural climate.

Brazil is a huge country with 4 million square kilometres. The country has the 8th largest economy with $1.7 trillion GDP. It per capita GDP is $8200. It’s inflation is a little bit high, with 4.4%. The population of Brazil is close to 200 million.

As far as agriculture goes this country is a power house. It is the world’s producer of products;

• 1st for Sugar, Coffee and Orange Juice.

• 1st for Beef and Chicken exports.

• 2nd for Soy production and Ethanol production.

With mining, they are the largest producer of iron ore and 5th for copper.

As for Australian imports they are 22nd for value to us. Greg also stated that over the last few year there has been an average of 22,000 Brazilian student studying in Australia. Tania -------- who is the Business Development Manager at Austrade said there are currently opportunities in some of the high end agricultural products, such as fine cheese,dairy products, Olive Oil, fine biscuits and chocolate. This was quite interesting in this selection and both Greg and Tania told us that Brazil had come through the GFC very well and there are a large number of people in the ‘A’ category with lots of disposable income to spend on high value goods. All of the demographers use a pyramid shape to describe the people of Brazil. The catergories A B C D E are based on your income and assets.

It is not easy to import your product and be competitive. The government has tariffs on imported goods ranging from 14-20%. A bottle of the humble Jacobs Creek wine sells for $54 Real. This converts to around $34 Aussie. There were a number of $20 bottles back home in the range of $70 - $80 Real. Real is the Brazilian dollar with a conversion of $Aus1 to $Bra1.60.

A $10 Aussie Bottle of Good BBQ Red

We met Andy Duff from Rabobank and he gave us a banks perspective on Brazilian agriculture. They have 12 branches spread mainly across the central region and central west of Brazil. He gave us a SWOT analysis of Brazilian agriculture and the main weakness of the system was the lack of infrastructure. It creates huge bottle necks

We had an afternoon tour of Sao Paulo with Rosanna. The Markets were excellent

An Amazing Cheese and Smallgoods Selection

Great Fresh Fruit That We Missed In Other Countries

Day 28 -Aztec Pyramids

2010-04-12T19:00:00.000+09:30

In the afternoon we had a tour of the Aztec Pyramids at Teothihuacan. We shop at a workshop/shop near the pyramids that gave us a little bit of history of them and how they used the Aloe Vera plant for needles & thread for weaving and sewing, paper and how to dye the thread for different colour for making rugs etc. He gave a demonstration of all the carving and tool making that the people used to do.

Aztec Tools and Idols

The guide told us that they used to make alcohol from this and other sources.He gave us three shots of the different spirits. The one from the Aloe was sweet and peachy. The second was made from some fruit?, that tasted like marzipan-not good. The third was a tradional Tequila and everyone knows how that tastes.

Salud!!

He then took us into his shop to look at the good there were some really nice sculptures and idols. The rugs that the women made were full of great colours and blends. It was a little expensive, maybe that was why he gave us a drink first.

Nice Rugs

Next stop was the pyramids. There were two of these. One for the Sun and one for the Moon. To those people the sun and moon represented the man and the women. One heated and angry and the other, cool and calm. So maybe it isn’t Mars and Venus.

View from Luna Pyramid Back to Sun Pyramid

There were fantastic, just fantastic. There were number of other buildings around which were fairly impressive. The long two kilometre was known as “The Walk of the Dead” stretched from the Luna Pyramid passed the Sol Pyramid and off into the distance.

The Walk of the Dead Path

Dave & Rowan Atop Sun Pyramid with Luna in the Back.

This was a great day!!

Day 28 - CIMMYT El Batan

2010-04-03T21:55:00.001+10:30

We had a number of meetings throughout the day. Peter Cosina was the manager of this centre. He gave us an overview. CIMMYT is now a member of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research – CGIAR. These are 15 centres around the world and they will coordinate 9 mega projects.

Trials at El Batan

The projects for CIMMYT are based around Wheat & Maize

• High yielding varieties to feed increase population.

• More productive and sustainable farming systems.

• Conservation and utilization of Wheat and Maize genetics worldwide.

o 140,000 Wheat varieties

o 28,000 Maize varieties

o Not only these but ancestral lines such as Teocintle (Thought to be parent of all Maize).

Dr Thomas Lumpkin who is the Director of CIMMYT wants to get CIMMYT back on the edge of research with activities such as GM varieties of various crops with modification for not only herbicide resistance, but also with benefits for consumers with health (increased Folate) and for the farmers with drought tolerance and frost resistance. He also had a broad range of questions for us as farmers. I think it was more to find the depth of our knowledge. He gave an overview of where CIMMYT has helped third world and developing countries. As an example the 2 of the top three varieties for Wheat production in the Sub Continent came straight from CIMMYT and the third one had some parental genetics as well.

Next up we had a meeting with the stats man (picture brown suit and pocket pen protector). His group runs all of the statistical analysis for the research and scientist. They help with the design of the project to get maximum value so the results can useful and meaningful. By doing this and on a regular basis it is efficient of time and the researcher more time for his/her project.

Thomas gave us tour of the gene bank that CIMMYT have at El Batan. They have an excellent storage facility with the ability to house the grain at near zero in the ground floor and below zero underground. He is also in charge of the collection of parental lines of the grasses that were the ancestors of wheat.

Paernatal Wheat Grasses

As honour guests we were given the royal treatment for luch with a three courses meal in the Hacienda at El Batan.

Day 26 & 27 CIMMYT @ Obregon

2010-04-03T02:47:00.002+10:30

The GFP A Team

We spent the afternoon looking at Wheat trials with the focus on breeding & physiology. The current traits for the breeding program are;

• Yield (#1)

• Water use efficiency

• Nutrient efficiency

• Disease resistance with a push for Ug99.

The breeding program is conducted under irrigation and with low rainfall the site ideally situated to test the varieties under perfect or drought conditions. Some of the lines that are in the later testing phase are looking very good in the low water years. The breeders are also conducting synthetic breeding where they are going back along the ancestral trails to the wild grasses that first gave us wheat to introduce new genetics and characteristics that have been lost. They are looking for traits such drought hardiness and pest resistance.

Roelfs Released in 2007 and Well Adapted Throughout the World

A real interesting section of the trials was the Physiology section where Hector & Marta were working. They are looking at which particular traits of the wheat plant contribute to yield. This information is gathered and given to the breeders to help about types and characteristics of lines of wheat to get the whole package right. They will be able to give models of idea plants for different environments. There were varieties with huge tillering %, ones with extremely large flag leaves. They were working with different varieties and looking at the temperature in the canopy. If the temperature was lower it showed an increase in yield. With these varieties they are looking at leaf architecture with stomata, shading by awns and colour of the leaf. This was a particularly good visit.

Alistair with a Double Dwarf Vaiety and Good Heads

Wheat with Inch Head

Our bags turned up, so that was a relief. All showered and shave with clean clothes down to the bar for a drink. We caught up with a number of Aussie’s who were visiting Obregon or worked at CIMMYT. Ky Matthews is the GRDC liaison between CIMMYT and breeders in Australia and coordinates the transfer of genetic (seed) material. Bert Collard was also there and he is a Durum Wheat breeder. We gave him a list of wishes: drought and crown rot resistance & frost resistance and of course high yielding. Off down the street and found a good steak house. Huge steak with only a little veg.

Yesterday was a focus on breeding and physiology. Today was going to about agronomy. We were lucky to catch Ken Sayre as he is retired but came back for the naming day of the CIMMYT at Obregon to the “Dr Norman Borlaug Centre”. Ken’s replacement was with us as well, Bram Govaerts. They both talked about the pillars of their research work;

• Pillar 1 – Zero till machinery and conservation methods.

• Pillar 2 – Strategic allocation of resources.

• Pillar 3 – Extension with hub trials and farmer days.

Bram with Trial Information

One of the trials they are conducting trials into conventional vs zero till and stubble retention vs stubble removal. This system has been tried in Australia, but it was mix of crops that we don’t at present farm. It aims were to show farmers what can be achieved with new systems and it was based around;

• Tillage reduction

• Rational residue management

• Viable rotation

• Economic benefit early on.

Trial Results Over 16 Years

The trial has shown that for the system to work, which it has over a number of years, you cannot use either zero till without stubble retention or stubble retention without zero till. When using tillage with no retention the yields have declined quite a lot over time.

Some interesting notes that came our way were;

• Only put a cover crop in “if” it is done for a major reason as the economics at this stage are not there.

• In Mexico at this site if everything is perfect, the best seeding rate has been 25 kg/ha.

• A good system to use under irrigation is to sow the next crop e.g. Sorghum in tandem with the last irrigation of the Wheat crop.

• They have been looking around for zero till seeders with a low cost and buy the machine for trial work. Then get a local manufacturer to make them. This is so the technology is available for the poorer farms to access.

Seeding Module made by Local Engineering Company

We spent the afternoon looking around the area and got a good feel for the state of agriculture in Sonora. We saw a range of crops of different crops being grown such as Chillies, Capsicum, Prickly pear. We saw some carrots being harvested and the saying “They are the best tasting, when come straight from the ground” and it was true. Sweet and crisp.

Ken took us to Los Chinos across the road to have some Carnitas. They are a Sonorian delicacy which is pig meat cooked in its own fat and comes out extremely tender. You have it in Wheat or Maize Burritos with the addition of Avocadoes, Red Onions, pickled veggies and Chilli paste. You eat with some good Mexican Beer.

Grame Eating a Carnita

After Eating We Went Out Back to See How it All Done.

Not a Good Idea!!

Day 25 - Mexico

2010-04-02T23:12:00.000+10:30

Mexico By Graeme

Hermisillo is the capital of Sonora State. We were based in Oregon in the north. The major land use in the state is beef which accounts for 85% of the available land. The arable agricultural of which Wheat is a large component covers 700,000 ha and it produces 1.45million tonnes. The other major crops grown are Maize, Safflower and some vegetables. Of the Wheat grown in Sonora 66% is exported, 19% is used as feed grain and 15% is used for industry such as baking and pasta. Of the total hectares, Durum has overtaken Bread Wheat to become 75% of the total crop.

As the average rain in Sonora is 300mm all of the crops are irrigated. The traditional way of irrigation was to use ponds around a small area. This was replaced with flood irrigation and later in raised bed. The more progressive farmers are now using underground drip lines.

AOASS
Our first meeting in Mexico was with the farmer group South of Sonora Association of Organism AC. This anachronism loses something in translation as it is the AOASS.

AOASS was started in1963. There were 7 regional organisations which mainly catered for the areas and commodities, and it was decided that to gain the most benefit the farmers wanted to have an over arching body that could coordinate the selling of grain and buying of seed and other inputs. To access these services each farmer pays a levy. The other organizations still exist.

The grain produced is still put into bulk storage which is owned by the regional groups, but it is marketed by AOASS in joint venture with Cargill.

Other activities conducted by AOASS are insurance and financing (loans and overdrafts). Also liaising with government, industry and with research institutions.

The main issues concerning their members include;

• Aquifer levels lowering

• Youth moving to cities

• Economies of scale

• Only allowed to own 100 ha. You need to rent / lease more if want to increase acreage.

The Mexican farmer growing farmers do not have straight subsides, but the crops that they grown have a minimum floor price, so they receive an assured value which will underpin their livelihood.

The Agricultural Research and Experimentation Board of the State of Sonora

PIEAES was our second meeting in Obregon. Manuel Rafael Valenzuela Gallegos is the Chairman of this group. It is again a farmer organisation, but the difference was that this group had a practical outlook with the foundation looking at promoting and researching good management practices and new varieties from CIMMYT and other research bodies.

1943 Dr Norman Borlaug came from the USA with the aid of a Rockefeller Grant to improve the production of the Mexican farmers.

1964 The Agricultural Research & Experimental Board of the State of Sonora was formed. The land was lent to CIMMYT and the PIEAES Foundation was formed. There is a voluntary levy of $1.25 / $1000/ha.

Now all of the land and building are owned by the farmers of Sonora State and gives an annual of support to CIMMYT of $US 325,000. Since the start of CIMMYT at Obregon the farmers have put into the Foundation and CIMMYT $US 10.5 Million.

PIEAES has a governing role to make sure the farmers money is being well spent. Their current focus;

• Input Efficiency

• Soil Health

• Pest Control

• New Varieties

o Drought Hardiness

o Frost Resistance

o Disease Resistance eg UG99 Rust

Each year the foundation has farmer days similar to ours. The researcher, scientist and agronomists all turn out to give the good information to farmers.

Day 24 California / Mexico

2010-03-29T10:47:00.000+10:30

Brock drove us to San Francisco where toured the Burkely Farmers Market. There was one of Superior Farms clients there selling lamb. After some settled in to the hotel, some went for look down town. We were up at 4.30 am to catch the plane down to Mexico. We had to fly into Mexico City and get a connection to Obregon. We got on that connection okay and we saw all the baggage being sorted and put on the plane.
In hind sight we should of been worried.

5 Lots of Missing Luggage

We left the airport and with Skipper Dave in charge for the day turned up to Hotel in notes but no they didn't have any reservations. Luckily I found a new hotel to find in our notes from one of Jim's emails and yes we were supposed to be there. Another taxi ride and the day finished withy a good shower and bed.

Day 23 California

2010-03-29T10:30:00.001+10:30

Dussen Dairy

57 A-side Dairy

Mark Vander Dussen was our last stop for the day. He runs a 6000 milking cow dairy. As with the other dairies that we had visited in the USA, Mark’s cows were all housed in feedlots. He milks the 6000 cows in a 57 a side dairy.

Mark along with 55 staff run the dairy and all of it various enterprises. Each enterprise is run by a manager with support staff beneath them. The farm is set up 2500 acres. The arable group look after all the paddock work and supply all of the hay, grain and silage for the feedlot. There is a group catering to all of the needs of the cow’s nutrition and the calves once born and removed in the first day. They also do custom calf rearing for other farmers in the area. The breeding program is all done in the feedlot with the breeding manager who works with Mark to set the future of the herd.

The Cows Are Fed a TMR in the Feedlot

The farm works on a 30% replacement in the herd. 30 - 40 calves are born each day. They currently have 3000 calves on the place. They sell the non required heifers to other farmers. All of the bull calves are grown out to 150 kg’s and then sold onto a feedlot.

Calf Pens

The cows were all in very good condition. The feeding and management program was doing an excellent job to keep the cows in good shape and achieve good milk numbers and a calving interval of 12.8 – 13 months.

Currently they are being paid $12 / 100 lbs (44kgs). This is too close to the cost of production as Mark said that they are not as efficient as Aussie or Kiwi farmers. The main problem with his current situation is the better priced product, fresh milk only 15% and 85% for cheese and milk powder which give lower returns. Also the value of wages and inputs are steadily climbing If the return gets to $10 / 100 lbs (44 kg’s) he will shut up shop.

University of California Davis

An interesting visit was to UC Davis. Davis is called a land grant uni. This was put in place by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War. He knew that the country had exhausted their food supplies and they were going to need more food to feed the expanding nation. He grant national land to set up universities across the county to teach people to become farmers and better educate those who were already farmers.

We had a number of meetings with researchers and scientists. Dr James Oltjen works with a lot of cow and calf units to maximize production efficiencies. He uses computer modelling with different classes of stock for animal growth and nutrition.

• Beef models of energy systems for laying down fat.

• Dairy models for milk production which is partly based on good liver model.

• Grass fed system models to make more money by conserving fodder.

Another researcher, J Stu Pettygrove was utilizing satellite imagery to be able see the changing levels of soils over time. This can help determinate whether the ground water reserves were being fully recharge or not.

Finally we met someone involved with the aquaculture industry. Fred gave us a run down on the state of California’s industry. It is worth $US 100 million per year. They have grown a number of species including Trout, Telapia & Abalone. They cannot compete with the rest of the US for eating product but do well selling into the live market and for sports fishing.

They currently have some trials working with Sturgeon of the caviar fame. It is showing good potential as they now have been able to get the fish to complete its total life cycle in fresh water tanks. The other enterprise which is going well is Aquaponics where the farmers are using the water recycled through glasshouses with lettuces in hydroponic growth mediums.

Superior Farms

Shane Mackenzie gave us look around the abattoir owned by Superior Farms and their employees. Shane did an “apprenticeship” in Australia at Hyden. He runs the abattoir which kills 1,400 lambs per day. The company at a number of sites slaughters 25 million stock per year with 380 employees. They supply both the East and West Coast.

The key note on the running of the shed is cleanliness, low stress animals and employee motivation.

They go above the standards set in USA, and are very close to ours for cleanliness, something he learnt in Australia. There are no dogs allowed in the loading of dogs on farm and none in the abattoir. They use Judas sheep which are trained to show the way for other animals. They are also trained to do things by whistle.

The Superior Farms have an Employee Share Option Program (ESOP). This is where the employee earns shares in the company over the time spent in the company. They can only access the value after they have worked for 5 years. Then value is given to them in instalments such as our superannuation. The amount of shares you get each year is dependent on the length of time with the company and the job level. Shane said the mainly Mexican work force did not like it nor understand it. Until an employee retired after considerable time and then received his payments now they all love it. They are very well motivated as each person on the lines think of the next person who receives the carcass as a customer, even if they are standing next to each other. They have pride in their work and want to see the company go well. They return early from mishaps and are quite happy to stick labels on packs etc. if they cannot do their normal job yet. It was a very happy workplace and was well run.

Interesting Notes. Shane stated that the cream for their enterprise was selling the offal. If he made his money back for the meat then he could still make reasonable profit from the offal. They have meat inspectors on the line and they remove the head before the inspector views the carcass so they use the calcification of the lower shank joint to class wether it is a lamb of hogget. The carcass sizes they look for is 40kg dressed weight. Their size made them look more like pigs than lambs and they have very limited fat deposition.

Day 22 California

2010-03-25T14:16:00.000+10:30

Salinas Valley

Aerial Veiw of the Salinas Valley

The Salinas Valley in the north of California is called the fruit bowl of California and made up of lots of “Truck Farmers”. These are smaller acreage farmers who are similar to our market gardeners who specialize in a few crops. We stayed in the town of Monterey which is a fairly swank area with about 250,000 people. The area is semi arid with 14 inch rainfall

Monterey Bay

There are three aquifers beneath the valley and too much water has been taken out without enough recharge (does this sound familiar). These aquifers are stratified and join the sea. The problem with so much extraction is that there now salt water intrusion.

Salt Water Intrusion

MRWPCA

We visited the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency to see their water purification plant. Karen Harris was our guide who was very good. The plant has been setup to return water to Salinas Valley farmers. The project was started in the 1980’s with a 5 year study to investigate the use of reclaimed water to irrigate vegetables. The plant was built in the in the 90’s and starting operating in 1998. The cost was $75 million and was paid for by grants and local councils and some federal loans.

There are three stages to the cleaning process. The primary cleaning separates the solids from the liquids by sedimentation. The secondary cleaning is biological in nature where the good microbes further break down and use up the filtrates. The final tertiary is through a carbon filter and chemically disinfected with bleach. The gas given off goes to a co-generation power plant and the bio-solids go to the local landfill and is used as cover material.

The plant treats 80 million litres per day and this water helps irrigate 12,000 acres. A lot of crops are grown by these truck farmers such as Lettuce, Brassicas, Strawberries and Artichokes and these Artichokes are 61% of the USA’s total production.

Salinas Valley Produce

We talked about the issues facing the farmers and asked why they are not pumping this water down into the aquifer to further clean it as done in Salisbury Sth Aussie. It would stop the sea water intrusion. At the moment the current program is only slowing it by 30-50%. Karen said there is a perception problem.

Bio-EASI
Next stop was to catch up with Brock’s mates Rich, who runs a company called Bio-EASI – Biodiesel Energy Alternative System. They have set up a pilot plant that utilizes “Yellow Grease” which recycled oil and fat waste from restaurants.

The product is put through the unit and liquid settles out first, then the glyceride and the oil on top. They use potassium salt as a catalyst to remove the impurities and end up with methanol and glycerine which can be used in perfumes, and soaps etc. The process takes about 6 hours, but if they built a horizontal centrifuge they could cut down the process down to 45 minute. Currently they need 3kg of grease to produce 4 litres of biodiesel.

I am not sure if the above info is totally correct as I had to fight hard to stop from nodding off. The speakers were fine but it was one of those days. What really woke me up was, when a little bloody Chihuahua came to the room and pissed on the carpet next to my foot. I used my foot to move him on.

I tried to concentrate from then on. Rich told us that they could produce about 10,000 litres in one day with an 8 hour shift. To move to a bigger plant is just not viable if you want to get your money back. He and his partner are looking at growing algae with tanks in glasshouses. The algae are looking promising and the benefit of these plants is the time between growth and harvest time is only 28 days. The drawback is the algae lose their “oil” if they die before processing. They have got this problem just about nutted out.

On a finishing note, Rich asked us to guess how much fuel California uses in one year?

Answer: 20 Billion litres of fuel (petrol and diesel) each year.

Something either needs to be found or the biofuel’s systems need to be refined even more.

Rich took us out to his favourite spot for lunch. It was up alley and there stood a fairly ordinary looking butcher shop. But inside was a little shop with great products. The meats all looked good and after chatting to the boss she asked if wanted to see the products and stuff out back. It was a real professional outfit. They made a product called Tri Tips which was a cross between corned beef and sashimi. It was excellent and had a god smoked taste and flavour. Everyone had a good selection of their products in huge rolls. This place is now on Brock’s tour list.

Day 21 California

2010-03-25T13:53:00.000+10:30

Ryan & Tim Fraser

Tim and his son Ryan run a mixed farm with sheep, cherries and cropping. The sheep are a composite breed of a maternal white faced line and a black faced terminal sire. They are currently running around 6000 ewes and are achieving 135% lambing. The lambs are all finished on stubble of a variety of crop residues around the San Joachim Valley, tomatoes, melons and lucerne after hay cuts. The lambs dress out between 36 – 40 kilograms. They are all very lean. We are going to see Superior Lamb Abattoir where they get their lambs killed. The enterprise is currently running with 6 to 7 full time equivalents. Here again we see that the cheap labour is underpinning the agricultural economy. As good as some subsidies.

Ryan's Rams

Ryan's Chewrries in Blossom with Snow Peaks

California Agriculture

The size and scale of the agriculture here continues to amaze me and our next was no different. At the bottom of the valley is a large lake delta system, or there was. Now runs a series of large canals for irrigation.

Drain Boswell

JG Boswell

JG Boswell Company is a family company started in 1920 who farm 103,000 of this country. The original Boswell has a book written about him, “The King of California”. There was a dry year and Boswell stared farming around the edges and kept doing so and reclaimed large areas during summer with banks and levies.

Now there are four quarters around a central aqueduct. There are four managers who oversee the operations for those. The farm specialises in only a few crops and this year will plant;

• Cotton 53,000 acres

• Tomatoes 30,000 acres

• Lucerne Hay 10,000 acres

• Safflower 10,000 acres

The Tomato Seeder Coming Closer

6 Row Planter

Senorita Planting Tomatoes

Coming Along Behind to Fill Holes

Finished Tomatoes

The lucerne and safflower are grown where they wish to reclaim the land. This is the lowest point of the valley and they get high water tables and this brings salt up with

They have an allocation & storage for 500,000 acre feet of water. This equates to roughly 500,000 meg’s and in a normal year they usually use about 350,000 megs, so they sell the rest for market price of $75. (Do the math)!!They will only sell to other farmers and not the government or the environmentalists. They are extremely worried about the environmental lobby as it is gaining strength. I think they should be proactive and work with them.

They have two paste making plants and produce over ½ million tonnes of paste. The paste is stored in 3’ x3’ bags in large wooden crates and shipped all over USA and exported.

All of the water that is extracted in the process is put through a primary cleaner and then utilised through centre pivots. All of the tomato is planted by contractors and takes 75 days to complete. We were lucky enough to see it in action. The tomatoes are irrigated by underground drip lines. They last close to eight years and maybe pulled up and relayed elsewhere. Most of the other crop are flood irrigated or with pivots.

They have a complete workshop which does all the servicing of the machinery and rebuilds etc. They also have their own spare parts department. The engineering shop which design new machinery and modifications has 12 people working in it.

Field Service Truck with all Required Lubes and Fuels

I must say that it was a very impressive farming business.

Emerald Energy

We went out to the back blocks and visited Ray Allen who has a Doctorate in Plant Science. He has perfecting a way to graft roots or plants utilizing amino acids as a way of transfer the DNA. He has worked on a number of plant species, but the ones we saw, was a cross between Pawlonia and Black Locust.

Powlonia x Black Locust Trees

Ray commented on why he decided on these two varieties

• Root grafting very simply (once you have right amino acid mix).

• Establish relatively easily

• Get a lot of root growth to graft more plants

Roots From 4 Months Growth

• Black Locusts leaves are quick small and Pawlonias are very large. Resultant leaf midsized.

• Rapid growth.

• Very high bio-fuel matter /acre (100tonnes / hectare)

Ray told us he has orders for 500,000 for a number of countries including South Africa, Kenya and Indonesia. The plant material goes through a gasification process and enters the generator to produce 1.8 Mw/ hour. The current planting is only small size but he is planning to plant a further 110 hectares. The increased sized of the plantings and new generator will be able to generate enough power to 1800 homes for all their needs.

A couple of spinoffs he is looking into is the plants deterrent to both flies and mosquitoes with a neutralising effect of malaria. I am not sure about this but it would be nice.

Beautiful & Sweet Smelling Flower

The whole meeting had an air of just another new enterprise with a slick pusher, I hope I am wrong

Day 20 California

2010-03-24T10:24:00.024+10:30

After finishing in Washington and Gettysburg, the GFP “A” team next stop was California. We had gained a new member - Steve Neumann. He is a veggy grower from the Adelaide so his input was great. Our guide for the week was Brock Taylor an agronomist of some renown as he liked to say.

California Map with Mountains (Brown) and Valleys (Blue)

The state of California has two major mountain ranges running roughly north and south. One is along the coastal side and the other along the border with Nevada. The San Joachim Valley with Fresno in the centre has two distinct soil type and water. The east side has granitic soil with large amounts of underground water. The west side has very deep sandy soils with little water and get the water from reservoirs and channels. None of the underground water is regulated with volumetric controls. They are having trouble with the environmental movement. The valley has an average of 175mm (7”) rainfall.

Terranova Range

Manager Don Cameron gave us an insight into the cropping production on the 5000 acre property. Counting both perennial and annual they produce 26 crops. Onions, processing tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and garlic are some of the annuals they grow. Some of these are gown under organic status. The perennial crop grown is lucerne. There is large range of tree crops include pistaccio, raisins, walnuts, grapes and olives.

Their land is worth $4000 / acre which comes with the water entitlement. This varied over properties that we have seen so far. A lot of labour used here is based on the local Mexican population, who are now USA citizens and those who come up from Mexico each year for 6 – 9 months. The value of this labour underpins a lot the lower cost of production. The base wage is $8.50 - $9.00 / hr with no overtime. Don from Terranova had upped his wages this year and increased his retention rate by 50%

Tomato Harvester

The processing tomatoes are now being grown on underground drippers. The other crops are being irrigated by overhead sprinklers in the form of centre pivots, lateral move or semi permanent.

A unique piece of machinery is the Organic Cotton Dessicator. It runs with propane gas and does the same job as Grammoxone or Sprayseed. It was an experimental model for the UC Davis Fresno Campus.

Row Crop Tractor

Cherry Orchard

Red Rock Ranch

John Deinam runs a large family operation, specializing in fruit such as Oranges & Tangellos and vegetables such as lettuces. Also they grow some crops for breaks such as wheat, safflower and lucerne. This soil on the property has a high of salinity and uses the safflower and lucerne to lower the perched water table.

Flood Irrigation

John is trialling some saline water interception techniques. One is put the water through brine tanks and growing brine shrimp. He has a small desalination plant or as they call it a R O unit (reserves osmosis unit). The mineral collected are going to glass making factories and other operations.

Brine Shrimp Production

The climate in California is good for growing vegetables as the season work against the pests, as they have trouble living through the year. John said the winters have low temperatures but with high humidity and the summer are hot and with low humidity don’t give the right conditions for a sustained pest problem.

Fancy Lettuce Production

John and his business have a large percentage of the crop in lettuces with two crops per year. The Fresno area have 10,000 lettuces coming in each day. John Deinam has 35% of this market.

Harris and Wolf Almonds.

This is a collaborative model where two prominent families who grew almonds worked together to build a processing plant. The almonds are knocked off the trees and allowed to dry out on the ground and then bought in to the factory. The almonds are firstly de husked and then either deshelled or sent straight to the cleaning section. This is done as they have a market in Spain and India for almonds still in the shell. The deshelled are put though a number of cleaning machines. The clean almonds are then graded again into cleans, scuffed and broken.

Almond Plant

Dave in Disguise

The company processes 20 million kilograms of their own almonds. This equates to 3.4% of the total Californian almond industry. All of the Californian harvest represents 100% of USA production and 80% of the world’s almonds.

Finished Clean Almonds

They are now starting to process other grower’s almonds and are paying in a pool system. They are paid 50% on the processed almonds and the second 50% in a pool when all the almonds are sold for that season.

Tepanyaki
For dinner we tried something new. It was something else to tick off the list.

Starting the Prawn Entre

Whats a Good Tepanyaki Without Fire

Day 19 Chicago

2010-03-24T10:05:00.000+10:30

After leaving Washington we a day stop over in Chicago to see the Chicago Board of Trade. Chicago was a bloody cold and windy place. There was a frantic pace with everthing and everyone moving quickly. We got to CBOT in time for the start of business and it was flat out yelling at each other and lots of gesticulating.
The pace went flat for about 10 mins. It slowed down was a lot of manual trades had been done and it had established a price for the commidity. We were watching wheat and the price wasn't good for thge future.
We toured all the different commidity sections. When the pace settled there was a lot of action on the computers where traders from around the world were conducting electronic trading.

Last day in Wales

2010-03-21T13:29:00.003+10:30

After our billetting we joined back with all the 'A'team in Welshpool. We met and parted ways with all the Welsh people who were great hosts. Our destination was Heathrow. On the way we had a couple of stops to make. There was a purpose built sheep and cattle sale yards. They were all under cover. The animals are sold in the facility and the commissions go to the company that owns them. They do not have stock agents.
Good or Not!

Pop
All of the animals are weigh. The sheep in pen loads and the cattle individually.

The cattle are lead through this selling yard.

After leaving the yards and the Welsh sheep and cows, we were on our way to a machinery yard to kick some tyres and smell the diesel. maybe a chance to see some no-till equipment or even better a zero-till disc machine.

But to no avail. I think the best way to describe this seeder was a "dirt confuser".

There was one small disc seeder

A Visit to Innovis

2010-03-21T12:06:00.000+10:30

Today we had a visit to Dewi Jones' farm. He is a Nuffield Scholar and runs a breeding project & service. He breeds Mule ewes and terminal rams with high fecundity. He sells the ewes and leases out the rams to his customers. All of the progeny are sold as prime lambs so over time he has good repeat business for the purchase of ewes. The lamb breeders sell all of the stock in to the EU and dressed in the way of french rump which shows an exstra muscled rump.

The lambs look good with the skin on and off.

2010-03-20T15:32:00.002+10:30

Day 8 Meet the Locals

2010-03-20T14:44:00.010+10:30

John Yoemen is the Welsh President of Nuffield. He had organised the week for us here in Wales. As a final fling in Wales he organised a dinner for a number of farmers mainly Nuffields to meet us. The dinner was held at Gregynog. We had a tour of John's farm. John and his family run a sheep and beef cattle operation. His cattle were Limousin and were very good cow and calf units. The cattleman amongst us were very impressed. His sheep were of equal quality.

We wer billeted out to a number farmers. Marty and I were billeted with Nigel and Karen Elgar. We went with Nigel. He and Karen farm high in the uplands. The counrty was very picturesque at this time of the year, but we could seen what it would be like in winter

Day 8 Meet the Locals

2010-03-20T14:44:00.001+10:30

Day 8 Trip to Tesco's

2010-03-20T13:52:00.006+10:30

Tesco's are a big supermarket chain throughout the UK. This store in Welshpool had only opened the previous week. The manager of the Welsh chain came up from Cardiff to see us. They gave us a run down of how the shop was set up. The entrance draws you past the flowers and chocolates then into the "Power Isle" which is all the major event items such as Mothers Day and Easter. The shopper is then free to tour the store for the rest of the shopping.
They are buying local goods and will continue to do as long as they sell at better than 10 units per week. As an example local free range is already 45% of the total eggs sale.
The company is looking at other towns to put supermarkets in. They have started in a town 1/2 hour away. They are currently are running a free bus from this town to allow people to get used to buying at Tesco's so when the new supermarket opens they have a ready supply of Tesco shoppers.

Rob and Dave with the 9 pound dinner for two. You get entre, main course, dessert and a bottle of wine.

Marty checking out the fish section.

Montgomery Castle

2010-03-20T13:33:00.004+10:30

You have got to see the sights even if the castles are in ruin.

Day 8 Court Calmore Farms

2010-03-20T13:17:00.006+10:30

Maurice Jones runs a big family farm with diary as the main enterprise and lesser ones of beef, sheep, arable (cropping) and equine. The business is split into the units with a family member owning and running an enterprise.
All the feed required is produced on the properties is utilised through the dairy. The cows are locked inside all year round and fed a TMR. The cows have feet problems being kept this way and are regularly inspected for dermatitis and footrot. The hoofs are trimmed three times per year.
All of the milk is sold to a cooperative which is locally based. To grow the farm has been slowly buying land and entitlements. The entitlements come from the previous owners as historical payments. The Jones family are moving forward to continue expanding for when the grants or subsidies are revued in 2013 and the size of the enterprises will need to be sufficient to be profitable as a standalone business.

Maurice showing us around

Foot treatment of cows

Day 8

2010-03-17T13:53:00.006+10:30

British Wool Board
The Welsh wool is based on very coarse fibre wool. The farmers have the sheep shorn and place all the fleeces in an open top sack called an envelope. They are not skirted and the envelope is not pressed. The envelopes are picked by the Wool Board. The fleeces are weighed and the envelopes are emptied back at the store and sorted. The wool from one farmer who has 500 sheep may have up to 30 different lines.
The wool is then priced up and bulked in with all of the other clips, pressed in orange plastic bales and double dumped.

Day 7 IBERS

2010-03-17T13:52:00.001+10:30

Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences (IBERS)
We looked the Oat & Legume breeding facility with the plant breeders. The program was designed to enhance Welsh food security through crop breeding, increase self sufficiency & to breed better legumes to decrease the reliance of nitrogen fertilizers.
They are doing a lot of work on White clover as it is the most important temperate pasture species. The breeding goals are to increase N production efficiency, Increase yield with particular aim of increasing DM %, Winter hardiness, Seed yield, Early spring growth & Compatibility with grasses.
They are also breeding other legumes to complete mixed pastures with different growth patterns which will deliver good yields over a longer season. These include Caucasian & Red Clover, Trefoil. The current red clovers are producing excellent yields of 15t/Ha, but they have a very small growing point or crown which can be a problem if over grazed.
The Oat breeding program is working with both Winter & Spring Oats which can be either Husked or Naked. 80% of the Oat varieties are bred here and have the prefix of “Aber”, after the local town Aberystwyth. They are breeding a couple of new lines which will go into Muesli Bars. Currently 750,000 tonnes are used in the UK for these bars.
The Naked Oat program is aimed at producing feed for the monogastric animals with protein levels similar to Wheat @ 11-13 % and with good amino acid profiles. A new variety has 14.5% protein, 13.6% oil and 16 Mj of total metabolizable energy.
They are also breeding grass species with a new line taking 12 years to be released. They are using new gene technology with genetic markers to select, P & N efficiency and drought resistance. Other traits that they are chasing include;
• High water soluble carbohydrate
• Increased palatability and digestibility
• Improved use of herbage nitrogen.
An interest side breeding objective is alcohol production with “Abermagic” producing 5000 litres/Ha/yr.

Day 7 More Welsh Countryside

2010-03-17T13:41:00.003+10:30

Day 7 Farmers Union of Wales (FUW)

2010-03-17T13:38:00.000+10:30

Farmers Union of Wales (FUW)
This is the 2nd union that services the farmers of Wales. It has 12 county branches with over 10,000 members. The FUW has an insurance arm which underpins it’s funding. This is not only for the members, it can be used by anyone in Wales.
Their major issues for the members are;
• Grants / Subsidy. The WAG has agreed to the EU’s target of lowering the grants by 3% pa.
• TB and how it is going to able to be controlled with or without the badgers\.
• Getting young people in the industry. While there is no profit in the industry, it is extremely hard.
• As the farming population changes over to the next generation the young farmers are not relying on joining the FUW, as they get information from other form of communication. The web, social network sites & agricultural blogs.
• Legislation and compliance.
The FUW has a tiered scale for subscription based on acreage. They produce a monthly newspaper and hold regular meeting throughout Wales.
This morning I set fire to the toaster as I wanted croissants but they got stuck

Day 7 Haby Cuy Cymru

2010-03-17T13:34:00.002+10:30

Haby Cuy Cumry (HCC)is the Welsh red meat promoter which is very similar to MLA. HCC is fully owned by the Welsh Assembly Government. Welsh meat is nearly all export as only 4% lamb and 5% beef is eaten in Wales.
The strategic aims of HCC is to
• Understand market trends that influence customer behaviour.
• Innovation and improve supply chain relationships
• Improve business performance.
• Diversify these products into non traditional markets.
• To position Welsh lamb, beef and pork as premium brands
A problem for the HCC is that nearly all Welsh Lamb is ready for consumption from July to December. So there is six months where supply is limited and consumers are having to brand substitute.
The programs that the HCC are currently running are to:
• To promote health benefits
• Teaching the young how to cook
• Influence the influencers (celeb chefs etc)
• Increasing brand awareness
• Putting a face to Welsh meat (farmers pictures utilized in advertising).
The HHC have programs that help improve production for farmers. Some of the current projects aimed at helping farmers include
• Increasing feed conversion ratios
• Role of forages
• Rumen function
• Increasing levels of beneficial fatty acids

HCC’s sees it 4 main roles as
• Technology transfer
• Rural Development
• Benchmarking across the supply chain
• Genetic improvement

Day 6 Piccy's

2010-03-17T02:35:00.003+10:30

Silage pits for over wintering.

Day 6 Piccy's

2010-03-17T02:27:00.004+10:30

Huw's sheep which are mules. These are ewes from the uplands mateds to Blue Faced Leicesters

Day 6

2010-03-15T11:54:00.003+10:30

Hugh Davies is a farmer in the Welsh midlands as a tenant farmer. The owner of the land is the National Trust. Hugh farms 280 acres and is the director of the Dalcouthi National Trust Lamb Group. All of the tenant farmers in this valley formed the group to market their own lamb. The target market for the lamb meat is the member of the National Trust of which there is 4 million. These members are typically 65 years old and buy a lot of meat.
Hugh is not only selling Welsh lamb but also the environment. If there were no subsidies Hugh agreed that the production unit that 1 farmer would need would be the whole valley. This would result in one farming family replacing eight.
The Dalcouthi group has the aims of producing a quality product, commitment to the project for the good of the valley and giving the consumer an opportunity to continue their relationship with the National Trust.

Day 5

2010-03-08T12:28:00.001+10:30

There was a stinker of a frost and our Queenslander after seeing it, can cross that off his list now.
We headed to Llanybydder to tour Danbia Abattoir. Danbia are owned by two Irish brothers and they own 10 sites across Britain and France. The company employs 3000 people. At Llanybydder they employ 500 people from all over the EU.They are the biggest lamb processor and 2nd for cattle.
The Welsh lamb season is from July to December.The lambs are sourced from 3500 farmers across UK. After this they import mainly NZ & some Australia lamb. These are chilled vac packed. They remove the lamb and cut it to the specifications of the sellers. They supply all of the Sainsbury’s Supermarkets meat.

Day 4 St David’s Day - Welsh Patron Saint.

2010-03-08T12:05:00.001+10:30

We were in the Welsh Assembly Building and the WAG has 60 members with just 3 farmers. Mike Bates who is an MP and farmer from Mid-Wales gave us the WAG’s side of the agricultural programs. He stated that the EU’s CAP was protectionism. He told us the “grants” were given to help farmers to stay in the rural areas and therefore keep the rural communities alive. They have been working with the Welsh Development Program to promote Welsh Pride. The program is working to develop opportunities along the food chain. They promote Welsh Black Beef & Welsh Lamb.
Mick introduced us to Wynfford James, from Welsh Assembly Government’s Food, Fisheries and Market Development Director. He ran through the True Taste Brand for Welsh products post farm gate. I have a book on True Taste and a good Welsh cookbook if interested. The photo shows the WAG an it’s big wooden funnel which takes all of the hot air out of the building
We headed next door to a magnificent building: The Welsh Millennium Centre. It was a beautiful building which hoses the Welsh Arts, from opera to cultural dancing, from art shows to drama workshops for disadvantaged & disabled. The slate for the walls, were from 7 mines across Wales and the 7 different timbers for the inside. The architect went to town on the whole place. It is up there with the Sydney Opera House but not quite.
Next port of call was the Food Science Industry Centre at University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. It was a facility for extension and knowledge transfer for the food sciences. It is there to train people in the industry such as bakers & butchers. Companies can come to help develop new products such as non stick chewing gum. They have staff and the facilities to make small batches for start up companies who have none. Once they have the product they can do taste testing in full lab conditions.
The facility can test how good instructions are on labels as they have a room made up with 6 kitchens and mums and dads can follow them to see if the end product turns out properly. The victims/consumers are monitored with CC TV.
I enjoyed this visit and they have someone working on gluten free puff pastry.
The low light of my day was the cancellation of the tour of Millennium Stadium and the WRC shop. It may of had something to do with St David’s Day.
We headed North West to Cross Hands for the night. We met Will Scale who was a Nuffield Scholar in 2006 from Pembrokeshire. He is a no-till farmer and someone who I hope to visit again during my private study.

2010-03-08T11:59:00.004+10:30

Day 4 St David’s Day - Welsh Patron Saint.

2010-03-08T11:44:00.003+10:30

We all slept with varying degree of success. It was a tie & collar day and we were going to the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) for a number of meetings. Huw Thomas from the National Farmers Union gave us an over view of the NFU and the roles they have for the farmers of England and Wales. They have 22,000 members.
There are 3 main issues Huw feels the farmers are faced with:
1. Glastia. This a new program where the farmers grants are going to be linked with environmental outcomes. (Green Wales). The WAG are pushing this program with weight coming from pressure from the green movement.
2. Tuberculosis. TB is a big problem in Wales where there are lots of Badgers which are a vectre for it. Last year 22000 head of cattle were destroyed. Again the green movement are pushing for the wildlife to be left alone. There is a trial badger culling program planned for this summer in the South West of Wales and it results will be monitored.
3. CAP. It is being dropped by 10% per annum and the program is up for review in 2013. The French and German farmers hold a lot of power in the EU. Their payments are based on size and production. The NFU feel that the future grants, subsidies or payments are going to be based on land size which will discriminate against intensive farmers (pigs & dairies etc).
Huw thought other issues included, getting young farmers into agriculture and food labelling which he felt was very poor and with no back up by legislation.