AgVic Talk Season 3

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

If I told you I knew a dairy farmer who has moved 2,000 kilometres south over three separate moves, all because he's chasing more favorable conditions, you'd probably think I'm winding you up.

Drew Radford:

G'day. I'm Drew Radford. And this is actually a true story. And it began in Queensland's Darling Downs. And so far, it ends in Gippsland. It's perhaps a story that best illustrates this season of AgVic Talk, where we're taking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with climate variability. Today, our first stop is just outside Wonthaggi, where we're dropping into the property of Daryl Hoey.

Daryl Hoey:

It's a dairy farm, milking somewhere in that 340, 350 cows. And like all of Gippsland, it's just pasture-based.

Drew Radford:

Daryl, you've got dairy flowing through your veins, and it started a long time ago, a family property, didn't it?

Daryl Hoey:

Yes. Yeah. So my great-grandparents settled in on the Darling Downs in Queensland in 1880. So my grandfather had it, father, and I was share farming and working for my parents up till 1993 on that farm.

Drew Radford:

What happened in 1993 that made you move?

Daryl Hoey:

About 1992 or so would've been the start of a very long prolonged drought in Queensland. Probably lasted nearly 10 years. And in April 1993, Lahnee and I got married. So the farm wasn't big enough and didn't generate enough income. We were only a hundred cows to support both families. Dad wanted me to go and work in town, or drive a fertilizer truck, or do something like that. But all I ever wanted to do was be a dairy farmer. So Lahnee and I left the family farm in late June that year, and started share farming at Stanhope in the Goulburn Valley in 1993.

Drew Radford:

That's a big thing to move that far away and move away from the family operation as well.

Daryl Hoey:

It was really difficult. And it took many years, and I'm talking 15, 20 years before those wounds were healed. That I was the one that had walked away from creating another generation on that farm. I think it was only when dad actually put the farm on the market in 2005, and realized what the farm was worth, and how hard it would've been for Lahnee and I to have purchased the farm at that price and make it pay, that he realized that we'd probably made the right decision. But it took a long time for mum and dad to come to terms with that.

Drew Radford:

You've gone on and become a successful dairy farmer in your own right. And you were in the northeast of Victoria. But you've pulled up stumps to move. Why was that?

Daryl Hoey:

There was a number of different factors, and some of it was around the seasonality and the conditions. Some of it was around where I thought the Murray Darling Basin Plan was headed, and whether or not it would ever land in a good space. But ultimately the reason I did leave was, where I thought that the long term effects on climate change was going to be.

Daryl Hoey:

And there will always be a dairy industry in northern Victoria. It won't be the same as it is now. But I have been following the climate change for close on 15 years now. And I've looked at the models and I've looked at the science and I have a fairly good understanding of how it's playing out and what the modeling and the predictions are saying. And if we were to continue, and northern Victoria specifically, the modeling is telling us that we are looking at 20, 25, 30 days a year over 45 degrees. What we were experiencing three or four years ago is just going to be more of the same, and even harder down the track.

Daryl Hoey:

And that's not the way that I wanted to farm. Other people were adapting. They were changing their... What they were growing. A lot more maize, a lot more intensification, more machinery, and that's not what I wanted to do or how I wanted to farm. And others might be able to adapt or chose to adapt. And even if water got cheaper in years, or even if there was some changes to the way you're farmed, I still didn't want to go down the intensification path of relying on barns and big sheds to house cows and things like that.

Daryl Hoey:

I've always had a philosophy in farming that you invest in appreciating assets, not depreciating assets. And appreciating assets are basically land, water and cattle, and depreciating assets is concrete and machinery and sheds. And I did not want to go to the bank and have to borrow another million dollars or 2 million dollars or whatever to go down that path. I would've rather invested that money in more land. And so that's why we just... Really the crux of why we chose to move to a pasture-based higher rainfall area.

Drew Radford:

Your logic there is really, really clear and so interesting to hear it laid out like that. So you've made the move. You did invest in land though, because I'd imagine that move from the northeast to Wonthaggi wouldn't have been a straight one-for-one trade.

Daryl Hoey:

It wasn't that far off, in reality. All we borrowed was for the extra 80 acres for the extra size of the property. But for what we were able to sell the farm for up north, and the water, pretty much covered what we paid for the farm here other than the extra 80 acres. So it wasn't that much of expense to the move.

Drew Radford:

I can imagine it would take its toll, Daryl. So you've moved really from hot and irrigated area to depending on natural rainfall, and sounds like quite cool. What are some of the major differences you're finding in terms of farm practices, moving from one location to the other?

Daryl Hoey:

Realizing how much more cows need to eat in wintertime to stay warm and maintain body condition was something you're a lot more aware of. The farm that we've bought is actually on a flood plain. So we might only get 25 or 30 or 40 mil of rain, but the catchment above us, all that water comes through. So dealing with the floods and the water management on this farm is at a whole new scale, and certainly takes a lot of time. Dealing with mud and things like that. It is hard work. It is really hard work dealing with wet winters. It takes its toll, and takes its toll on the cattle too, with things like mastitis and sore feet and general health conditions.

Drew Radford:

Are there practices that you've been able to bring from the northern area to where you're farming now that have helped?

Daryl Hoey:

I probably forgot about a lot of those practices from when I was a very pasture-based farmer back in the nineties and the early 2000s. I've had to relearn a lot of things that I'd almost forgotten about, but getting back to understanding grass growing again is taking a bit of time. And also in northern Victoria, you apply water, you apply urea in 21 days or whatever, you put the cows back in the paddock. But knowing that there's no water to put on the paddock here over the summer and a hundred percent reliant on rainfall, it takes a different mindset as well.

Drew Radford:

Daryl, from what I understand this move has really been driven as a business decision. Has it paid off?

Daryl Hoey:

From a financial perspective and a superannuation perspective it was a really smart decision, but in saying that, land prices all across Victoria and Australia have gone up too, no matter where you are. But I think from a superannuation perspective and our retirement perspective, it was a really good decision, but it has come at a cost and a price.

Daryl Hoey:

And the thing that we miss the most and the thing that we probably... Perhaps not sure say took for granted, but you just don't realize it until you haven't got it, is the loss of all your friendships and networks. And that is something that Lahnee and I often discuss, is that we just don't... Our best friends are still up north. And sometimes you would like to have been there with them and support them as well, and go through things that they've been through.

Drew Radford:

That's a very big consideration, isn't it? The economic trade-off versus the lifestyle reality of that move.

Daryl Hoey:

And we were told and realized after moved here, that our kids have all moved on from school and are now at university, they've got their jobs, we're not involved in the local school, we're not involved in local sporting clubs. So you haven't got that easy in to get to know people or make friendships and things like that. You just don't realize how much that sense of belonging and that sense of friendship and networks, how important that is to just your own personal growth and your fulfillment, until it's no longer there.

Drew Radford:

Daryl, lastly, in wrapping up, given climate uncertainties, what is one piece of advice you'd like to give to someone starting out?

Daryl Hoey:

All amounts of success come from hard work and a little bit of luck, but it's also about surrounding yourself with good people and good advice. And I have almost had a whole career of listening to, trying to understand, what people way smarter than me, that study things like climate change or government policy research, I have listened to them, and I've surrounded myself with a lot of farmers that have also... Of a similar mindset.

Daryl Hoey:

So when I make farming decisions, it's based off evidence and it's based off facts and it's got information and numbers behind it. So if you are starting out or moving somewhere. So understand where you're moving to, or how you are wanting to farm, as to how the climate both short term and long term is going to impact on how you are going to farm, and the region that you are farming in.

Drew Radford:

Daryl Hoey throughout his career has pondered some hard questions about what he hopes to achieve. For some though, the questions aren't always clear. So the team at Agriculture Victoria have developed a process to help bring some clarity. They're called the Five Big Questions, and they're designed to help deal with change. A person who takes farmers through them is Seasonal Risk Agronomist with Agriculture Victoria, Dale Grey. He's also someone who has lived through on-farm change.

Dale Grey:

Yeah. I come from a cropping property in the southeast Mallee, a little place called Meatian, which is about 50 ks southwest of Swan Hill, where I grew up there. And my dad was... We were a mixed farmer. And then in the 1982 drought, we got out of livestock. My dad never really liked them, and we've been cropping ever since there. And my dad's since retired. I'm in the department as an agronomist and a climate specialist. And my brother is now the farmer back there at Meatian.

Drew Radford:

Well, that's a long connection and you're still in the game well and truly now, helping other farmers with advice. Dale, during the Millennium Drought, I understand that you and your colleagues were starting to go "Well, how do we formulate an approach to help farmers?" What did the team come up with?

Dale Grey:

Well, they were challenging times Drew. We'd had many successive years of dry conditions. We had triple years in a row, which is enough to make any farming business really struggle. And the stuff of helping out farmers that we were generally doing, was just not going to cut it. It just simply wasn't going to help people when they were really, really struggling.

Dale Grey:

My team compatriot at the time, Chris Souness, who was based at Horsham, in discussions with other people in the department. Chris came up with this concept of Five Big Questions, and Chris is very well read, so I'm quite confident some of it came from some of the material he had read over time as well. But he really distilled into five simple things that people needed to ask themselves about their farm. And as you'll see, Drew, is that when you look at these five big questions they could pertain to anyone's stage in life really.

Drew Radford:

That's actually a really valid point. These are big picture questions. Can you list them out for me?

Dale Grey:

The first one is, are you enjoying what you're doing? The second one is, can you sustain the effort? The third is, is your family supporting what you're doing? The fourth is, are you living a lifestyle that you're happy with? And the fifth one is, have you enough to retire on?

Dale Grey:

And if you can't answer yes to all of those, you've got a problem somewhere that's going to be causing grief somewhere down the track. Either you're masochistic and just keep on going, or you might need to consider doing something different.

Drew Radford:

Dale, that summary you just gave at the end of that is really, really good, because obviously farmers at that time were going through one of the toughest, if not toughest, times they experienced. So that's time for serious reflection. And that's what that list is about to me.

Dale Grey:

It's all about serious reflection. And as I suggested, it doesn't matter whether you're an agronomist, or you're an accountant, these questions, if you can't answer yes to all of those, there's probably something in your life that's causing you to be unhappy. And if it doesn't change, it'll cause issues. So farming is really no different. It's like any other business.

Dale Grey:

It was interesting Drew, because coming from where I come, I have an empathy with these sort of questions in farming, but I'm not an accountant. I'm not a farm economist. I'm not a rural counselor. So in many respects, our team found difficult, I suppose, to engage these questions with people, particularly if they're not questions you ask yourself, Drew, very often. And they're probably not for many of us. But it became apparent that to help people out, the stuff that we'd been doing before wasn't going to cut it. And we probably did have to have some harder or more thought-provoking discussions.

Drew Radford:

Dale, how did you and the team use these questions to assist family farms? I understand they were distilled down a bit further.

Dale Grey:

Well, exactly right. It was really about the five big options that people could undertake. And of course there's many of things in these options. They're quite simple, but if you tease them out, they're much more complex. But the first one, using tools and skills to remove income volatility, could be examples like changing your varieties, or re-grafting an orchard, using precision ag, or robotic milking, or potentially going organic. Something like that.

Drew Radford:

What's the second option?

Dale Grey:

The second option, capturing more profit along the value chain. You might decide to start buying your inputs direct and cutting out the middle person, or selling stuff that you were generally throwing away that wasn't being valued or potentially processing what you produce.

Drew Radford:

That all makes perfect sense. What's number three?

Dale Grey:

Well, that's making a change to your enterprise. And now all the pretty much easy things are gone, Drew. We now start doing things like, if you're a dairy farmer, becoming a beef farmer. Or perhaps if you're into horticulture becoming a hydroponic or covered horticultural grower.

Dale Grey:

Or something potentially harder is exiting your current enterprise. So you are a dairy farmer, and you decide to completely stop that and go into something like cropping, or you start deciding to make a cidery on your farm, and process some of your apples that were once being sold for fresh market into actual cider.

Drew Radford:

The fourth one I understand has got something to do with capital. What's that?

Dale Grey:

Exactly. So it's changing the capital base. And that's perhaps buying more land. That's what farmers have often done, haven't they, is just increased the size of their land holding to get those scales of operation. But it might mean leasing land, or getting off income for both your partner or yourself.

Dale Grey:

And then there's a real hard one, which is potentially buying land somewhere else. So completely changing your climatic region to try and remove some of that climate volatility that you've experienced, and heading south, for instance. South of the Great Divide where it rains a bit more and perhaps a bit more reliably.

Drew Radford:

And Dale, the last one, which is sometimes the hardest of all.

Dale Grey:

Absolutely. And that's ceasing farming, making a decision to exit the industry. One where some people often don't want to talk about. But it's interesting, because every farmer that ceases, what they're doing has historically played a part in the success of another farmer in Australia who takes over their land and keeps going it. If you're lucky, they might actually let you do some of the work on it. So if you really like the work of farming, but you don't want the stress of the management, that might be an option for you, or you could simply just choose to leave the industry.

Dale Grey:

And farmers make very employable people with highly desired skills at the moment. And you just don't have the stress of getting up at 6:00 AM, or a frost. And rain just means you can't mow the lawn, Drew. These are the kind of things that people can think about. But it's interesting that when I've talked to farmers who've left the industry of farming, I've yet to meet one who regrets making the decision. They all said, "I should have done it a lot earlier."

Drew Radford:

That's a great reflection to wrap this up on Dale. Dale Grey, Seasonal Risk Agronomist with Agriculture Victoria. Thanks for taking the time and joining me in the AgVic Talk studio today.

Dale Grey:

No worries, Drew. It's been really interesting.

Drew Radford

This concludes season three of the AgVic Talk podcast, where we have taken a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with climate variability We hope you have enjoyed this season and look forward to bringing you season four careers in horticulture.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback. So please leave a comment or rating, and share this series with your friends and family.

All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorised by the Victorian Government Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

A guaranteed supply of water is a basic need for any livestock producer and dams help meet that. But in a varying climate where dams can lose over a metre of water a year through evaporation, other solutions are needed. G'day, I'm Drew Radford. And one of those solutions is reticulation. Simply moving the water around by pipes and shielding it from evaporation. To find out more AgVic talk is taking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with a variable climate. Today, we're heading to Benalla to visit Greg Bekker who put in his first pipes nearly 40 years ago.

Greg Bekker:

My background, Drew is builder by trade and then we went dairy farming back in the eighties when interest rates were 20% and milk prices weren't flash. So yeah, I grew up with a farm, share farming, raised a family, for 25 years in the dairy industry. Put my first water reticulation system in 1984 which was a two-inch system for 600 dairy cows.

Drew Radford:

You did put in that first reticulation system, you've gone on to focus on that a lot in the work that you do now.

Greg Bekker:

Yes, a very important part of the work that I do now, Drew working with AgVic, particularly in the drought sector and we've just come through a drought and no doubt we'll be going back to dry conditions at some stage. So looking at how we best utilise water, particularly in dry land situations where it's a limited commodity for livestock, both sheep and cattle for drinking purposes.

Drew Radford:

Greg, is this the primary reason for a farm business to install reticulation system? There's probably a few others on top, I'd imagine as well.

Greg Bekker:

Certainly there is, Drew. Drought-proofing or maximising the water Drew, for your stock is one. We get better quality water so we tend to get better growth rates, better animal health outcomes. The other big one is when people start going into rotational grazing or when they start subdividing their farm and property into smaller paddocks, because each paddock needs a water source. And at that point in time, digging multiple dams may not be the way to go. So that's when a water reticulation system comes into its own. When you can actually just either gravity feed or through a pressure pump get water to those paddocks.

Drew Radford:

You mentioned there quality of water and also you mentioned dams there too. It's a lot around this as well in terms of, I guess you don't have stock muddying up dams and you're also reducing erosion around those water sources as well.

Greg Bekker:

Yes, to all of those. And I mean dams have been very successful for us in the past and will continue to be a source of water. But the other big one that we are finding is evaporation's our biggest water user in the north of the state. We lose over a metre of the water off the top of our dams in evaporation and with things warming up, climate change, adaptation to climate, all those types of things, we need to look at that loss and how we minimise it. And water reticulation is one of those mechanisms.

Drew Radford:

A metre off the top of a dam, is that over a season, Greg?

Greg Bekker:

That's over a 12-month period above the divide. It's a metre and in some areas, once you get up to Swan Hill, Mildura it's can be 1.1. And for a lot of dams that's significant part of their water, probably a third of the dams lost in evaporation. So you take that over a two-year period with no runoff and you've lost two metres of your water, not for any animals drinking, but just to the atmosphere.

Drew Radford:

And Greg, I understand there's actually some really good online calculation tools with helping you understand how much water you may have and how much you actually need.

Greg Bekker:

So a couple of the really good resources that have been developed is the Summer Water Calculator. So if you just type that into your Google search, Summer Water Calculator, that'll give you something that'll really help you in terms of measuring your dams and working out how much water you've got for stock. And then there is also the online water calculations, which is something people need to do so they know how much water they need and how much water they've got stored. And that's the fundamentals for starting a water reticulation system.

Drew Radford:

You also mentioned earlier climate variability and putting in a reticulation system seems to be a really smart way to actually forward plan for dealing with that.

Greg Bekker:

Yes, Drew. So what quite a few farmers have already gone down this path in consolidating their water, so getting a water source that they know is reliable and that might be from one dam or multiple dams. It may be from underground water. Some people are using desalination plants to improve the quality of underground water. So there's a whole range of different choices and options for having a reliable water source. And then using that reliable water source to reticulate it to the rest of the farm.

Drew Radford:

Greg, what advice would you give to farmers thinking of installing a reticulation system?

Greg Bekker:

One of the critical things is the planning, making sure you do your sums and calculations of why it is you need this water? How much water you need? Whereabouts you need this water? In what parts of the farm? Think about increasing stock rates and increasing water consumption that may happen over the next five or 10 years. Does this reticulation system have the capacity to do that? So you've got to do a little bit of forward thinking. Think where we were 15 years ago with stocking rates, how your business was set up and where that's progressed.

Greg Bekker:

Just a simple thing, Drew an example would be that you may be driving back to your property to fill up your spray cart, maybe with a reticulation system, you have a two-inch system that pumps the water four Ks and that's an eight K round trip that you don't have to take, if you're filling it with water. So there's lots of those things you need to do. All the mistakes have been made so don't make those mistakes. Talk to someone who's done it before and put in a good water reticulation system that's going to do the job for you.

Drew Radford:

Greg, what do you think farmers need to be doing now to be able to manage climate variability?

Greg Bekker:

Interesting. I've had some discussions in the last two or three months with farmers in that time, to be planning for water and improving your water management is when you've got it. So at the moment we've got lots of water. We've had a couple of great seasons. Most dams are full, most water infrastructure is at its maximum so that's the time to be thinking about how I can be smarter with my water. It's very difficult and challenging to manage water when you haven't got any. So I guess what I'm saying to people is now's the time to be looking at your water reticulation and water planning on your property to maximizing it so that you've got water moving into dry seasons.

Drew Radford:

Where can people go to find more information?

Greg Bekker:

So you can go to our AgVic website, there's lots of information and certainly planning questions on what you need to know. We have a water technical reference group with staff situated across the state who can help you in your local area with some of the planning and ideas. And they will then be able to provide you with the information to go to your resellers, knowing what diameter pipe, what length of pipe, what head you've got, what friction loss, there's some of the things you need to know when you go to your reseller to buy your water reticulation system.

We've got three or four of us around the state with very good experience and knowledge about planning and installing reticulation systems and all of us have actually done it. So you're not just talking to someone who's book savvy, we've been up to our elbows in the mud putting these systems in.

Drew Radford:

The insights provided by Greg Bekker and his team are crucial for those planning reticulation systems. People such as Dr. Grant Connelly and his wife, Kerry, who were both not from a farming background. A few years ago they decided to buy a farm and one of the first decisions they made was to improve it by putting in a reticulation system.

Grant Connelly:

Where at a place called Barfold which is in Central Victoria on the Campaspe River and we're on about 200 acres. And we're currently a beef cattle farm, we essentially finish cattle.

Drew Radford:

I just want to wind the clock back a bit. You are not from a farming background, are you?

Grant Connelly:

No, we are refugees from Melbourne really. We've bought the place about three and half, four years ago. And we've been up here since that time. So we’re pre- pandemic refugees.

Drew Radford:

What drove you to be a Melbourne refugee? You could have just bought a house in the country, but you're making this as a working cattle property.

Grant Connelly:

Yeah, that's a bit more fun. I'm not really somebody that sits around in a holiday place. So although we haven't got a direct farming background, we've got a fairly long association with doing things in the country. We've done a lot of camping and hiking and four-wheel driving and traveling around over the years. And we were keen to get somewhere that we could actually set up a base and try and do something that improves the environment.

Drew Radford:

Now you are working heavily on improving the environment, you've only been there for a few years. Now the river runs through the property and I understand this and a number of dams were the primary sources of watering stock were they?

Grant Connelly:

Yeah, that's right. So we've got about half a dozen dams and originally the property, a lot of it was unfenced to the river and that was a major source of stock water.

Drew Radford:

Grant, that would also be a cheap way of watering stock as well.

Grant Connelly:

Yeah, look, it was, there wasn't really any infrastructure that was needed for it, but I suppose it wasn't fantastic for the river. There were problems with erosion and water quality. We really didn't want to be having the stock down there and defecating in the river. We were keen to try and improve the water quality itself, but also there was reliability issues. The river is great, but it's not always flowing well. So we wanted to do something to increase the reliability, but also give us a little bit more flexibility in how we farmed.

Drew Radford:

So that was a central decision there. "Okay, let's fence off the river." It's quite an expensive decision as well. So what have you put in place?

Grant Connelly:

Once the river was fenced, we had to get an alternative source of water. We're lucky we've got a bore on the property and we've got a high pointer hill that have got big tanks on it. I think they're about 240 litres of water up there. So we decided to use that as the base of the infrastructure. And we pumped from the bore up to the tank and then I've set up a system where we gravity feed down the property, it's fairly long narrow property and we gravity feed down that to portable water troughs.

Drew Radford:

In terms of pumping costs, I imagine that's quite minimal other than pulling it out of the bore.

Grant Connelly:

Yeah, that's right. We've got the bores next to the house and we've got solar power on the house. So the running costs of the bore are fairly minimal and the infrastructure for the bore and the tank was already there. So we had that base, we had that skeleton that we could then build on.

Drew Radford:

Is it also about reliability in terms of making sure that you do have adequate water supplies during long, dry periods?

Grant Connelly:

Well, that's a lot of it. We wanted the flexibility of being able to move the stock around. We're doing rotational grazing and that's much harder to do if you haven't got flexible, moveable water sources. So when we first got the place, it was in the drought and the river was really down to just pools of water. And now it's running quite well at the moment, but we decided that we couldn't really rely on that as our water sources, if we wanted to do the type of farming that we intended to.

Drew Radford:

Are you seeing significant gains in terms of your pastures then that they're grazing on?

Grant Connelly:

Look, there are a lot better now. It's hard to know how much of it is what we’re doing and how much is just, we've had a couple of better seasons, but even this year, even though it's been a La Niña, we've had below long-term averages of the rain over the last four or five months. And we've still got pretty good pasture cover, we've still got at the moment, plenty of feed for the stock. I think at least part of that is because of the rotational grazing that we're doing. Our goal is to try and increase the ground cover and improve the biodiversity I suppose and use that to improve the micro-environment and the water cycling. So we're doing that with our rotational grazing, that's our main tool. We think we can see changes that are already happening, but it's a long-term project. We're looking at years to decades rather than the days or weeks.

Drew Radford:

You've only had the property for a number of years, but you're a science driven person, you're a doctor by trade so have you been gathering your own rainfall data since you've got there? And have you tried to look at any long-term trends in the region?

Grant Connelly:

We have, it's not scientific, but certainly our high-tech rain gauge of a plastic measure out the back. We've been probably averaging since we've been here about 580 mm a year, which is less than looking at the long-term averages of more on the 600 to the 610. So in the short term, the few years we've been here, it would look like we're getting a little bit less rain and what we do gets a bit less predictable too. We're getting some big downfalls, but then we're getting some times when we're not getting rain for a fair while.

Drew Radford:

So this watering system will be very crucial for you to help manage that unpredictability?

Grant Connelly:

It is, look we're working on the principle that any rain that falls on the property, we want to try and keep it on the property rather than having it run off. And the best way of doing that is to improve your pastures and improve your soil structure so when it rains, it soaks into the ground and doesn't run off. So we want to capture as much as we can in those, what we think are going to be less predictable seasons with heavy rainfalls and then maybe longer dry periods.

Drew Radford:

Grant, back at the start, you described yourself as a Melbourne refugee. You've obviously gone through a steep learning curve. How are you going about accessing information?

Grant Connelly:

I think we're lucky in a way. We do most of this with Kerry, my wife, because we're both interested in it. We've come from a background without a huge amount of knowledge and I think that's bit of a plus and a minus. It means we can go out and be quite happy to admit we don't really know too much so we haven't got too much of our reputation depending on showing how much we know. So we’ve been to … I've lost count of the number of field days and workshops and in this environment, Zoom webinars and conferences and we've joined a couple of region Ag groups that are very active. People are very generous in their time and their help. A lot of our neighbours have been great in just giving us some practical help and advice. One of the region Ag guys said we'd attend the opening of a letter. So I think we're fairly keen to learn as much as we can.

Drew Radford:

Well, it certainly sounds like you've absorbed a lot and you've applied a lot. Grant Connelly, thank you ever so much for joining us in the AgVic Talk Studio to discuss the fantastic work that you're doing on the property and really looking forward to finding out more about how it goes further down the track. Thanks for your time.

Grant Connelly:

No worries, Drew. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family. All information is accurate at the time of release.

Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria authorized by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

20 years ago, if you'd said to a farmer, "Have you considered stock containment yards as a way of dealing with climate variability?" you may have been asked if you'd been in the sun too long. G'day. I'm Drew Radford and fast forward 20 years and containment yards are increasingly being used for this purpose. To find out how, AgVic Talk is taking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with climate variation. And today we're heading to Peter Gibson's property.

Peter Gibson:

We've got a property located approximately an hour northwest of Bendigo in Victoria, and we run a self-replacing Merino flock, and also a cropping enterprise.

Drew Radford:

Now, Peter, I understand that you and your family have been in that part of the world for quite some time, back to the 1940s, I believe. And you've also got rainfall figures going back that far, or maybe your family's been there even longer. I'm not sure.

Peter Gibson:

I'm fifth generation. So yeah, we have been here for a while, but yes, that's correct. We have got rainfall figures back from the... well into the 40's.

Drew Radford:

Peter, what events led you to build a stock containment area?

Peter Gibson:

Well, it was a series of dry springs, more than summers. We couldn't get the cover of feed over the paddocks over the spring and late spring and it led a very long summer. Also here, we'd been carting water pretty much on and off since 2001, so it led us to think about something else that we can get our sheep off our pastures and then Agriculture Victoria decided to put some grants out, which made it an easy decision then.

Drew Radford:

So Peter, if I'm understanding this correctly, was this really about getting the sheep off the pasture during that tough time so that that would be intact when rain does come?

Peter Gibson:

That's correct. Yeah. Once you get the sheep off pastures and leave cover on the ground, when the autumn break does happen to come, pastures bounce away very quickly. When they've got a bit of dry matter to hold the moisture in and paddocks aren't wind-blown, swept, and shiny looking they recover really quickly.

Drew Radford:

This sounds like it's been a good investment for you well and truly.

Peter Gibson:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The sheep that do go into the yards do well. Not just survive, but they do well.

Drew Radford:

Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Peter Gibson:

Well, we've been using the yards mainly for younger sheep that aren't in lamb. And once they get used to eating from feeders and hay racks, they sort of relax and they're comfortable in their environment. And because they're not walking the paddocks looking for feed, they're not burning energy.

Drew Radford:

That makes a lot of sense then, in turn of maintaining, arguably improving their conditions.

Peter Gibson:

It's amazing how much weight they actually do put on in a week. I think we're up roughly about the 300 grams a week and they are quite comfortable doing it.

Drew Radford:

Peter, that's a substantial gain. Obviously, there's a cost that's associated with that, because you got to bring feed in or are you providing feed from your own property?

Peter Gibson:

We provide feed from our own property, mainly. There's those times where things are pretty tough that we will have to import some feed, but they were going to get that feed anyway, whether it be in a paddock or in a containment yard situation.

Drew Radford:

Peter, can you describe the containment yards?

Peter Gibson:

Well, there's nothing flash about the containment yards. They're basically just two yards that are 50 by 50 metres roughly, but we're really lucky where we've got them situated. It's around an old house site. So we've got a row of peppercorn trees going right through the middle of both yards. So there's sun all day if they want it, and there's shade all day, if they want it, which during the summer months is very comfortable. But having stock in yards, they do get bored really easy, especially young sheep. You know what children are like. They soon get into trouble. So we've also put in throughout the yards, logs and stumps just so they can play around.

Peter Gibson:

I've even heard of people putting soccer balls, basketballs in the yards so that the sheep actually do play with, I'm not saying putting scoreboards and goalposts in the yards, but they do get bored really easily. If they get bored, they get into trouble. They start pushing on fences and start trying to get out, and they're not comfortable with where they are.

Drew Radford:

Peter, what advice would you give to other farmers thinking of installing their own stock containment area?

Peter Gibson:

I'd advise a lot of farmers to do it. They're there as another tool in the toolbox. So it's just a matter of if the need arises to put sheep in. If you don't have to build one each year, it's already there ready to go. You've just got to train the animals to feed out of feeders and get their stomachs used to eating dry matter and go from there.

Drew Radford:

I'm guessing this is a bit like insurance. Have you had to claim on it in the last few years?

Peter Gibson:

Yes. We have, many a time. Not so much in the past three or four years, but prior to that, it was easy decision to put younger sheep into yards and actually fill them out.

Drew Radford:

Lastly, Peter, what do you think farmers need to be thinking about right now to be able to manage climate variability on their own properties and be able to react to it as best they can?

Peter Gibson:

Climate, it's very variable at the moment. So you just got to be aware of what's happening around you and make decisions on what's happening at the time, and be aware of what's help is around you as well as far as the departments, whether it be Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia are offering as far grants and information about getting through these tough times.

Drew Radford:

For Peter Gibson, containment yards have made sense on many levels. What though, has been the experience of other producers? A person who spends his life going from farm to farm is Martin Hamilton, Land Management Extension Officer with Agriculture Victoria. For him, it comes down to animal health and productivity.

Martin Hamilton:

The main reason a farmer will consider a stock containment area is the health of their livestock, particularly during summer or extended periods of dry conditions. This allows farmers to take advantage of the benefits to pasture health and gives them other farm management options a stock containment area will provide during the year.

Drew Radford:

Martin, tell us how stock containment areas help with managing current and future climate variability.

Martin Hamilton:

Every summer, a farmer has to decide how many stock they can carry. It's always a difficult decision as to how many to cull, how many can you feed? How long will the water last? It's one of the most important decisions a farmer will make in late spring. And it also has to do with prices. Will they get the price they want? And many farmers look for options, and with the uncertainty of summer and the seasons the way they are, these options are becoming more and more important. So a stock containment area is considered by many to be a real asset to the farm, giving farmers more options to manage livestock.

Drew Radford:

That being the case then, Martin, what advice would you give farmers thinking of putting in or upgrading stock containment areas?

Martin Hamilton:

The advice I would give you is there are options on the table for you to put those animals somewhere safe, where they don't have to wander using valuable energy. All you have to do is feed them a maintenance ration, and supply good quality of water and check them once or twice a day. You know what, some farmers actually locate their stock containment areas where they're driving past all the time, like at the end of shearing sheds and existing yards. They extend existing yards to house large numbers of animals for extended periods of time. That means that they're just always looking over the fence to see how the animals are going. And if there's anything wrong, they'll be picked up quickly and easily and then readily fixed.

Martin Hamilton:

Other advice I would give is you would need a supply of grain on hand. Well, of course you are their primary carer and therefore you do need to feed the animals and supply good quality water. So you do need to have a good supply of grain and hay on hand. Now, a lot of farmers say, "Well, they're just going to trample the hay."

Martin Hamilton:

Well, they don't trample at all. They do manage to eat a lot. And the hay that they do trample then becomes a nice protective ground covering that minimizes the dust that might occur. So there's multiple benefits here. A lot of farmers tell me, or ask me rather, don't the animals hate being confined? Is it a place of deprivation and starvation? No, it's not. No, it's not.

Martin Hamilton:

Many farmers tell me that even after a short time and once the animals are used to the rations, because you do have to accustomed them to the rations. Once they become accustomed and they settle into the routine of the stock containment areas, many people find they don't want to leave. The animals want to stay housed in the stock containment areas. And the other piece of advice you need to think about is, when the animals have been safely confined over summer, your paddocks have been able to maintain good ground cover. And when the break does come, the pasture will respond sooner and be much sweeter and more palatable to the stock when they do arrive back on the pasture.

Drew Radford:

I imagine really that pasture management is the starting and ending decision for this entire process?

Martin Hamilton:

Yes, it is. Farmers hate to see stock wandering through gates from one paddock into another because they know they're using energy and they just want them to settle down into the shade of a tree somewhere, but the animals need to eat and they won't settle down until they do eat, and a stock containment area means they'll just get up, have a feed out of the feed bin and then go and have a drink of water. And then they'll go and settle in under the shade for the rest of the day. It's really quite comforting to watch the animals in a stock containment area once they're used to it.

Drew Radford:

Martin, you mentioned shade there. Imagine that would be quite important, particularly because you're looking at containing them during the peak of summer.

Martin Hamilton:

That's right. The shade is really important, it's not just the shade. It's also a protection from the wind. So trees are important. What many people did, and have continued to do, is plant trees around the stock containment area so that eventually they'll grow and provide wind and shade. Until then farmers have even been known to make temporary shade using shade cloth. And it's really quite amazing to see how many animals can fit under a three-metre wide strip of shade cloth. It's really important. I can't imagine myself being in the heat of summer sun without shade or even a hat. I can't think of anything worse. Well, it's the same for livestock. They're much more comfortable and when they're comfortable, they're not using energy as much.

We talk about adapting to climate change and dry seasonal conditions. Well, farmers are doing that so well. They really do deserve some credit here, because they're already doing a lot. And by installing a stock containment area, you'll be doing something for yourself as well as your livestock and your pastures.

Drew Radford:

That's a great point to finish on. Martin Hamilton, Land Management Extension Officer with Agriculture, Victoria. Thanks for joining us for this AgVic Talk podcast.

Martin Hamilton:

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback. So please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family. All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm. This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorized by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgTalk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

Every farmer wants to improve the productivity and sustainability of their property. The issues are usually time and also where to start. G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and there is a solution. It's a course called Whole Farm Planning. As part of AgVic Talk's virtual climate bus tour, we're going to find out how this course is helping farmers prepare their operations to deal with an increasingly variable climate.

Drew Radford:

Today we're heading to near Lancefield in northern central Victoria, stopping at Zig Zag Grazing, which recently was taken over by newly minted farmers, Malcolm and Delia Keag. For Malcolm, life before farming involved working as a chemical engineer and then as a marine biologist, so I was keen to understand how a person with such a varied background ends up on a farm, and then how they go about preparing it for the future.

Mal Keag:

Well, it was through a previous work connection, a long term friend who we used to look after the farm for. And we were looking at doing something very similar. And Peter, the previous owner, came up with a succession plan of sorts that was mutually beneficial for them and for us. So that's how we ended up where we are.

Drew Radford:

That's quite a career change, but I understand your association with Peter, you got familiar with the farm over a number of years.

Mal Keag:

Yeah. That's exactly right. And it is quite a change, but in some ways it's no different to anything else that you do in the world, which is all around people and process and planning. So, it's different, but it's the same in a way as well.

Drew Radford:

Well, we want to drill down into that process side of it in particular, but what are you running on the property at the moment?

Mal Keag:

At the moment we've got a thousand ewes. We're in the transition between running first cross ewes for production of lambs and also for wool, but we're moving across to a hundred percent self replacing shedding flock, as part of where we want to go in the future. At the very moment, we're about 50/50 wool sheep and shedding sheep, but eventually we'll get to a hundred percent shedding sheep.

Drew Radford:

Most people when they take over a property, they want to make changes. But I get the impression that you started to look at climate as part of your planning process to make those changes.

Mal Keag:

So when we moved onto the farm, we were coming to the end of a very dry spell and the paddocks were bare, and we were doing a lot of supplementary feeding. And so we had to manage that issue, but then all of a sudden the heavens opened and it started to rain a lot. So, we've ended up coming out of a dry spell into two very wet years. And this year's looking okay, although touch wood, we're waiting for some follow up rain at the moment. So yeah, climate variability's presented itself as a big factor right up front.

Drew Radford:

So you've gone from extreme dry to very, very wet. So what were you thinking you needed to do to deal with those great variations?

Mal Keag:

So, I mean, each of them throws up challenges, and dry spells, it's very obvious what issues are faced when it's very dry, but wet spells are also challenging from a sheep production perspective, from foot issues or parasite issues or fly strike issues. So you've got to be able to manage both, and you don't want to get yourself caught in a cycle where you're trying to buy sheep when prices are high and everyone else is chasing him. You also don't want to be caught in a cycle where you're trying to sell sheep when prices are low and everyone else is trying to sell them. So where we're trying to move to is a self-replacing flock, but we need circuit breakers so that we can run the farm, irrespective of whether it's wet or dry. And that's really around planning. So that's the basis of what we're trying to do.

Drew Radford:

You mentioned that word, planning, and this is what we're focusing on in this episode, farm planning. So what did you find to actually help you with that particular process?

Mal Keag:

We were starting our own planning processes and we came across the AgVic Whole of Farm Planning course, a bit accidentally because we got invited to one of the sessions, which was around soil health, but then it immediately became obvious that their Whole of Farm Planning course and what we were trying to achieve really dovetailed nicely. So, we asked, maybe begged, to be allowed on at late notice. And so then we found ourselves on the Whole of Farm Planning course. And it's a fantastic framework because it's very holistic, so we really enjoyed that process.

Drew Radford:

So what are some of the key things that you took away from that process?

Mal Keag:

I guess you'd look at it at two levels. I mean, there was a fair bit of technical stuff, which is great, managing through drought, how to set up your farm in terms of fencing and pastures and all that sort of stuff. But the other thing that was really good about the course was the mixture of people on the course. It was right from six generation farmers, right through to people like ourselves who are relatively new in the industry. And it's amazing how much you can learn from the people as well as the presenters.

Drew Radford:

So structurally, what did you take away and start making changes around the property from the farm planning system?

Mal Keag:

The first thing probably for us, was about improving our laneways, so that we could better move stock from paddock to paddock. And particularly if you're in a lamb business, lambs can be challenging to muster, so having laneways really helps. We implemented things like whenever possible, we run a really big mob of sheep rather than a whole heap of small mobs. So that helps from a grazing perspective. So, we'd have a big mob of sheep which we'd move once a week, instead of having smaller mobs that we might move three, four weekly. So that helps from a pasture perspective and a worm control perspective. That was the first thing.

Mal Keag:

But then stock containment really appealed to us because it was that circuit breaker for climate variability. So if you had a very dry year or a failed autumn break, instead of having to sell off sheep or denude your property, you could actually do something about it. You could actually take your sheep off and feed them, care for them properly, and still maintain the integrity of the pasture, waiting for the climate to change back again.

Drew Radford:

I understand you're very focused on the care of the pasture and obviously what's beneath that, and that's the soil, and trying to maintain the health of that as well as possible, down to the point that you try and minimize vehicle movements across your pastures.

Mal Keag:

Yeah, we try to. I mean, we use a side by side ATV as much as we can, instead of driving a ute across the paddocks, because it's so much lower from a footprint perspective, but even things like we muster on foot. That works well, with less compaction, but also it's a calmer way to move stock, keeps the stock calmer, keeps the dogs calmer, and we utilise our laneways. So usually, all we've got to do is get our sheep out of a relatively small 30, 40, 50 acre paddock into a laneway, and then they can calmly walk to where they need to be. And our ewes are pretty well trained. They actually usually know where they're going and they'll just walk that way anyway.

Drew Radford:

Malcolm, how's whole farm planning help set you up to deal with future climate variability?

Mal Keag:

It's given us a framework to analyze, and so, we have a plan. And there's still a lot to do on that plan. So, things like stock containment areas. We're looking very much at the water systems on the farm. We want to have troughs so that we don't have paddocks where we run out of water. We also keep sheep out of dams if possible, and that's good for them. It's good for the dam. But what it means is, as the plan evolves, we're trying to keep a live document. So as we come up with better ideas or we rethink something, we actually change the plan. But what we're trying to do is to have ideas that cohesively give us a better outcome. And by writing it down, by thinking about it, by testing it, I think you get a better outcome than just doing it ad hoc.

Drew Radford:

That also goes back to your science background too, I'd imagine as well. It's not just a gut feel. I need the data to prove it.

Mal Keag:

It does. Having that background helps, but I think good planning helps everybody. Everyone's going to do it differently because everyone's got a different background, whether you're a six generation farmer or you're someone new to the industry with different background. But having a plan and doing it your way, and having something like the Whole of Farm Planning course, which can give you a bit of a framework and gives you people to bounce ideas off, is a fantastic way to come up with a plan, which you can work on year after year, remembering that we'll probably have a plan between now and the time that we're too old to farm, because you're never done with these things. But having that rigor, we find very helpful for us. But I think most people would find it helpful.

Drew Radford:

Malcolm Keag is now on the path, preparing his property to deal with an increasingly variable climate. One of the people that’s helped him get there, is Agriculture Victoria’s Land Management Extension Officer, Clem Strumfels. In recent times, he has been delivering the Whole Farm Planning courses.

Clem Sturmfels:

Look, whole farm planning is just the process of taking time out, away from the farm, meeting with other farmers, either online or face to face, over maybe six to eight weeks, a day a week, taking time out, away from the farm, just to really think about the farming future, where you want your farm to be, where your family want the farm to be, think about succession planning. But most importantly, try and improve production and improve the resilience of your farm or sustainability, by looking at re-fencing and managing your farm according to its capability. And I guess that's really the core.

Clem Sturmfels:

As far as I'm concerned, it's about protecting the natural assets of the farm, whether that's your water quality, whether it's the sustainability of your soil. We're losing soil pretty constantly with water and wind erosion across Victoria. So it's all about sustainability, looking after your assets, but also hopefully improving production on the better parts of your farm. So push some parts of your farm harder, other parts of your farm backing off a bit, and by fencing and managing, according to your soil types, your slopes, your drainage, allows you to do that pretty effectively.

Clem Sturmfels:

So really, it involves a bit of writing and a bit of planning and a bit of thinking, setting a vision for the farm, setting some goals, thinking about your lifestyle, all those things that you never really stop and think about. And I'm not very good at planning myself, but for a farming business, it's really critical, particularly with climate change happening and affecting our businesses all the time.

Drew Radford:

Clem, you mentioned sustainability in there and wrapped up with that key phrase there, climate variability upon us. So I imagine this is a particularly important process in terms of dealing with that.

Clem Sturmfels:

Look, it is. Things like wind erosion, we've done a pretty good job in cropping areas, say in the west of the state, in dramatically reducing the extent of wind erosion and how often it happens. As our climate changes slowly, we're seeing some of those sorts of events occur more regularly and are more difficult to control. And of course we're also seeing more natural disasters, which if you like are overriding some of the protection mechanisms we might have had, whether that's the amount of stubble we leave on the ground or the amount of pasture and a ground cover. When we get these very intense or more intense than we've had before thunderstorm events, you really need to think about adapting your management to protect yourself against that sort of thing.

Drew Radford:

Clem, you made the point earlier on, about it's sometimes difficult for us to take time and stop and take that bigger picture. Look, are there other triggers that you see that get people engaged with this process?

Clem Sturmfels:

There certainly are. And I can just reflect on the last few courses we've run over the last two years, where we had quite a lot of farmers from the Western district and then more recently from Gippsland. And when I think through some of those people, they varied from some very large holdings where the farms had changed over to a younger generation. Children had come back. Many of them with outside education or an apprenticeship had come back to the farm and really wanted to take a fresh approach to managing some of these very large properties or smaller properties and wanted to think outside the box. So, they came along.

Clem Sturmfels:

Commonly when people are first entering farming, we certainly probably had 5 per cent of our attendees at recent courses had never farmed before, so were very new and very open to ideas. Other people who'd bought more land is quite a common picture we see when people expand their business. But then there's certainly other people who we've had come back two or three times, just to refresh their ideas, their thoughts, their management strategies, and again, take time out to think about things as their family gets older, all that sort of stuff.

Drew Radford:

Clem, after people have done the Whole Farm Planning course, what sort of work do you see undertaken by farmers?

Clem Sturmfels:

Drew, I think it's important to understand that whole farm planning isn't something you do overnight, and a lot of the changes can be implemented over many, many years. And in fact, re-fencing the whole farm to land classes, may take a whole generation. So I think it's important to understand that. But some of the more short term things that we do see, is people maybe re-fencing a small area of their farm. I mean clearly, if they've experienced a natural disaster such as a bushfire and lost a significant part of their farm, it might be quite dramatic, the outcome. They certainly do look at where their new fences go, and something people don't think about, where their gates might go in the future. So even simple things like that can really change how effective and how efficient it is to run the farm.

Clem Sturmfels:

Certainly putting in laneways. Laneways really can improve productivity, simply by the efficiency of moving stock around the farm. And I think that's probably one of the most common features we see, pretty soon after farmers attending Whole Farm Planning courses, is getting those laneways in, just to make things a lot easier and quicker. Certainly things like setting up stock containment areas, and when we're thinking about climate, stock containment areas, at the end of the day, if you're trying to protect and retain breeding stock in a two or three year drought, you really haven't got a choice. Once your ground cover gets low, you need to protect your pastures. You need to protect your soil. You need to protect your water, and stock containment areas are a key to doing that.

Clem Sturmfels:

Other things, things like wildlife corridors, farm forestry and certainly reticulated water supplies. We're seeing a lot of pipelines being put in around farms, troughs and pipelines, just to make the use of water during dry seasons or droughts, more effective, more efficient. So they're the sorts of things that we commonly see pretty soon after a Whole Farm Planning course.

Drew Radford:

Clem, that's a lot of great information about how to set up your property better. Does the course drill down into dealing specifically with climate variability?

Clem Sturmfels:

Drew, it certainly does. And in fact, every subject we touch on during the course, really do focus on climate change and its impacts. And then we have a specific session on climate change, usually run by a specialist called Graeme Anderson, who is based down at Geelong, who does a fantastic job in introducing us, right from the start, to climate change, weather patterns, monitoring your local climate, but most importantly, a whole range of tools that farmers can use to look ahead at the coming season and try and adapt their management to suit. And those sorts of tools are direct climate tools that are online.

Clem Sturmfels:

But one of the key ones that I use very regularly is the soil moisture monitoring bores that the department's put in and a number of Landcare groups have got involved around the state. And that means we can actually see what subsoils are doing. So even back in June, July, if subsoil moisture levels are well below normal, then regardless of how much spring rainfall we get, we can see it's unlikely we're going to get run off, and many dams are going to be dry. So that sort of stuff I think is becoming crucial for decisions by farmers, whether they're talking about sowing pastures or sowing crops or offloading some of their breeding stock early in the season, to manage an upcoming season.

Drew Radford:

Clem, what advice would you give to farm businesses thinking of developing a whole farm plan?

Clem Sturmfels:

Just go for it. I can't remember anyone saying negative things about Whole Farm Planning courses. Sure, we've had the odd people had to pull out for family reasons, but the overwhelming feedback attending the courses is that it was in their words, a fantastic use of their time, "Great learning, should have done the course years ago." And that was a direct quote from somebody at the last course we ran. And another quote from a recently completed course was, "Initially thought it was a lengthy course, but enjoyed it so much and learned lots, that I prioritised the course and found time commitment okay, even with homeschooling." So I think, all I can really say, is make the time to get involved. You will learn as much from other farmers as you will from specialists in their own area. It's a great social opportunity, but it's also a really good learning opportunity.

Drew Radford:

Lastly, Clem, how do farmers find out more about getting involved?

Clem Sturmfels:

Simply get in contact with your local Agriculture Victoria office. Give them a call and just ask them to put their name on a waiting list, would be the best way to go, Drew, I reckon.

Drew Radford:

Clem, sounds like a fantastic course to be involved with, and farmers would learn a lot from it. Clem Sturmfels, Land Management Extension Officer with Agriculture Victoria, thanks for taking the time and telling me all about this course for this AgVic Talk podcast.

Clem Sturmfels:

Thank you very much, Drew. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 5:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family.

Speaker 5:

All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria or your consultant, before making any changes on farm. This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorised by the Victorian government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

One of the key pieces of advice for dealing successfully with a bushfire is have a plan. Farmers are now using the same approach with drought and climate variability. G'day, I'm Drew Radford and one of the ways farmers are being helped to create these plans is through the Farm Business Resilience Program. In this season of AgVic Talk, we're taking a virtual climate bus tour to look at how farmers are preparing for drought and climate variability.

Drew Radford:

Our first stop is Frank Casella, who farms beef cattle near Lakes Entrance. The drought of 2017, '18 left a lasting impression upon him. Since then, he's done a lot of planning, focusing on ensuring his business and family are never affected in the same way again.

Frank Casella:

We're close to Lakes Entrance, but it's still about an hour away. We're actually down at Dutson and we've got another property down Hawkins Road, Seaspray and they're the three properties that we farm Angus beef cattle.

Drew Radford:

And that's been a family operation, I understand, Frank?

Frank Casella:

Yes, it has. Yeah. My late father, Alex, started farming up here in the early 70s and then my brother, Lou and myself, we both farm on our property.

Drew Radford:

Growing up on those properties, you would've seen some droughts, but I understand 2017, 2019, like for most people, was something you hadn't seen before well and truly.

Frank Casella:

I remember all the previous droughts. I can give you all the years. 2017, 2018 was really bad. 2019 wasn't much better then we started getting the rain and getting the east coast lows come in again and things are pretty good at the moment. We've had well above average rainfall and things are great.

Drew Radford:

Things are great now, but during that drought period, what happened to your herd?

Frank Casella:

During that drought period, yeah, it was pretty sad having to sell cattle. Some of our best cattle. It was a horrible period. Yeah, there wasn't much feed and we used all our supply of hay and it was hard sourcing the hay and buying grain and it was a pretty tough period for all the farmers in this district.

Drew Radford:

I get the impression that you really came out of that going, "We've got to do things differently in the future to deal with this if it occurs again." Or when it occurs again, probably more than likely.

Frank Casella:

Yeah, very true. We'd started on a journey prior to the 2017 drought. We'd put in some eight inch PVC infrastructure and along with two inch poly pipe to access dams for stock water, but it just wasn't enough. With three different locations, our properties. So it helped with what we did, but we knew once that drought came, we had to do so much more and that's what we're doing. We were always investing in infrastructure for stock water and doing a bit of irrigation.

Drew Radford:

Part of that process, so I understood you undertook the Farm Business Resilience Program. What did you get out of that?

Frank Casella:

I actually found it really good. It was a really good program. There was five modules involved. It was great hearing other farmers because it was on via Zoom. I picked up a lot of good things. The biggest thing I got was a SWOT analysis. It looks at your strengths, your weaknesses and your opportunities and your threats to your business. So around all of that, I've put things in place with regards to dry season in our business.

Drew Radford:

So what are some of the key things that you've taken from that SWOT analysis and started implementing on your property? I'm getting the impression too, this isn't something you fix overnight. This is a long term plan you're putting in place.

Frank Casella:

What we're working on is more infrastructure and automation. So we've done a bit of irrigation as well and that's all automated via a field app on my phone so I can stop and start that and I can see everything going on with the irrigation. Where it's irrigating, what the pressures are. I know how the bore's running. I also can see how much power I'm using because I've put a bit of solar in. Furthermore, we're installing tanks to supply troughs with a level indication that comes back to my phone. And actually that was great on module three, the AgTech discussion with Mark Sloan. There's some really good information there.

Frank Casella:

While the going's good, we're spending money on infrastructure because droughts will come and go and to be better prepared for next time. And even in module four, the seasonal risk workshop, that was really good too. I learned a lot about soil management. Just simple things like maintaining 70% ground cover, rotational grazing, stock containment areas in dry conditions and feed budgeting. Soil testing. That's a big thing, especially with soil carbon. I think that's an area of watch this space. There'll be a lot of information. And this program touches on that and they probably might tweak it for the future ones, but it gives you access to all those people with Agriculture Victoria for information to help you with your business plan.

Frank Casella:

Because at the end of it, module five, you review your plan and at the end of it you'll have your own plan completed. So going forward, if you start getting into a dry season or you've got the mitigation, you've got the farm plan and you've got the SWOT analysis to know what to do at different times because as farmers, when the going gets tough, it's hard to make the right decision. So if you have a plan in place, you refer to it and you follow the mitigation as part of your plan.

Drew Radford:

There sounds like there are so many benefits from actually doing this. You're carefully managing your soil. You're carefully managing that other resource, water, to make sure you're okay. But having that plan and in place also sounds like that's actually good for your health and wellbeing as well, Frank, so that you can confidently go into another period like this and go, "Okay, I've done everything I can this time."

Frank Casella:

Yeah, that's right. You have a vision. At the end of the day, we all do what we do for our family and to maintain good health and enjoy it with our family. That's why we do what we do. It's for our family.

Drew Radford:

Frank, I'd imagine that plan is also fairly important as well in terms of dealing with financiers, banks, et cetera, to say, "Look, well, this is my business plan. This is how I'm setting up to deal with the future."

Frank Casella:

Yeah, well that's right. It's all about you want to reduce your debt and be sustainable for an ever-changing climate. And part of doing this resilience program, being around good people is how you improve yourself. So with AgVic and this resilience program, you've got all that experts in their field to help you to become successful, become a better business. Yeah.

Drew Radford:

Frank, I understand you've done the whole farm planning process in the past. What drove you then to go on to do this course?

Frank Casella:

Well, I'm always looking to improve on the year before. Every now and again, I do look on the AgVic website and I saw this Business Resilience Program and I thought, "Well, this is pretty timely given we've just come through one of the worst droughts in the Wellington Shire." So I signed up to do it online and I thought it was fantastic. Talking to others from different areas of Victoria, about what they do and sharing experiences, then also breaking out into groups in these workshops. I've found it really, really good.

Drew Radford:

What would you say to other farmers who might be contemplating doing the course? Why should they get involved?

Frank Casella:

I think it's a great program to be a part of. Most farmers, you have a mental note of things you do at different times of the year. This here helps you formulate a plan and get to put it all in place so it's ready to go. I already know at different months of the year, the rainfall drops off and season starts to dry out. I'll go to my SWOT analysis and I look at the risk matrix and I know exactly what I need to do rather than leave it till too late then things go backwards.

Drew Radford:

Lastly, Frank, what do you reckon farmers need to be doing right now to be able to manage climate variability?

Frank Casella:

I believe while the going's good, invest in infrastructure for stock water so that you can access all the dams on your property or even set up backup plans so that if your bore breaks down, you've got capacity for stock water. Even hay supply. We've got plenty of hay and we're going to be doing silage later this year. So I'm all about infrastructure for stock water, irrigation, automation. There's so much technology there to make your life easy and these people at AgVic and this resilience program will help you get that information so that you can make your life easier. More time to spend with your family.

Drew Radford:

Frank Casella is very passionate about making life better, especially after he saw other local farmers suffer debilitating mental health impacts from the drought. Agriculture Victoria's Kit Duncan-Jones is responsible for delivering the Farm Business Resilience Program. He says, "It's all about ensuring farmers are better prepared for droughts and climate variability."

Kit Duncan-Jones:

Well, it's really about providing farmers with the information and tools that they need to be better prepared and there's sort of three key areas of the program helps them out with this. One is supporting them to do a self-assessment of their farm business, so we use a farm fitness checklist to do that. And it has a range of questions that farmers go through and answer from the financial side of their business, the people side of their business, and also the natural resource side of the business, so the soils and water and the landscape. And the farmers go through that and they identify areas where they've nailed it, but they also identify areas where they could do some improvements to strengthen their business.

Kit Duncan-Jones:

Then we also run a heap of events and services, which support farmers to develop skills and better management practices to improve those sides of their business. So run a range of workshops on the finance side of things, so how to make a profitable farm decision. On the people side of things when it comes to farm safety, managing people on farm and not just employees, but also your farm family members and making sure you're communicating well and you're all on the same page of where you want your business to be. And then also importantly, on the soils and water. How can you better manage those resources and set your farm up for future success in that space?

Kit Duncan-Jones:

And the last point is really bringing it all home in a plan. So we support farmers through the program to develop a farm business plan and this plan sets out the goals which will help a farmer strengthen their business into the short and long term and includes an action plan at the end, which they can implement to make that happen. It's really about showing that farmers that have a plan and undertake regular planning are in a better spot when it comes to droughts or other key business shocks that they may face, natural disasters like fires and floods, but also market disruptions and financial pressures, which we've been seeing a bit recently and how you get across those. And it's going to have an impact, these sorts of events. If you're prepared, thought about it, you're going to come out the other end in a stronger position and get back to being a successful farm business.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like a remarkable education opportunity as well though, Kit. And not everyone gets the chance to go and a business degree, but this sounds to some extent like a compressed version of that, but bringing in the key elements that are crucial to running a farm business.

Kit Duncan-Jones:

I tend to agree, Drew, and it's certainly a holistic program looking at all the elements within a farm business. And yeah, there's not a heap of courses out there, which really focus on all those things. And as you say, there's some courses where you can really get into the detail of business management and undertake a Cert or that sort of thing. But this one's a bit more packaged up for farmers who are often short on time, struggle to get to those in depth, long term programs, just with all the demands they have on farm. And this one provides an opportunity for them to come along, get some new skills that they're really interested in to improve their business.

Drew Radford:

What sort of reactions and responses are you getting from primary producers that have been involved?

Kit Duncan-Jones:

Yes, we've had a range of different farmers get involved in the program. We've had people new to farming come along and get a lot out of the program in developing a new plan for their new business. And equally we've had experienced farmers come along to the program and yeah, just develop new skills and it might even be something simple, like a decision support tool, like a SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So looking at a certain element of your business and undertaking a SWOT analysis to make an informed decision. And you can then apply that tool to all different areas of your business, which will really help you make an informed decision going forward and hopefully one that, yeah, will get you the outcome you're hoping to achieve.

Drew Radford:

I would've thought too, Kit, that a detailed business plan would be really important for primary producers these days when dealing with financiers as well. You go to a bank, surely they'd want something like this to say, "Yeah, I thought about my business and what the future threats may be." I could imagine it would be kind of helpful on that front as well.

Kit Duncan-Jones:

It certainly does and finance is a critical aspect of many decisions on farm, so often in our plan, we support the farmers with their goals and we ask them to think about, "Well, is that financially suitable? Is it achievable? Have you got the resources to actually make it happen? And do you have the skills?"

Kit Duncan-Jones:

You're right. Having a plan in place helps you communicate not only with your business partners, your family, but also others outside of the business. So yeah, going to the bank, talking about what you're hoping to achieve. "This is my plan."

Drew Radford:

Kit, you mentioned there they certainly need to be thinking about their finances when developing this plan. What else should people consider when they think of undertaking Farm Business Resilience?

Kit Duncan-Jones:

So farmers, when thinking about undertaking the Farm Business Resilience program should really consider where their business is at now and where they want their business to be. And I guess the program can also support them with that in terms of identifying where their business is currently at through the farm fitness checklist. But then in terms of they've got goals, whether it's about transition between the generations, so we've had a number of farmers in the older spectrum of life look at what the farm's doing and looking at the children and others coming along and what the farm business is going to look like going forward. So the program can support them with that and what a transition looks like across the generations.

Kit Duncan-Jones:

We've spoken about farm finances and how the program can support farmers to make a profitable farm decision, whether it's selling or holding stock, when to sow your pastures, and when to expand your land. Are you better off buying land or getting into leasing arrangements to grow your business? But also around the soil side of things and different practices you can do on your farm with your soils and water to grow better pastures and crops or whatever other products you're looking to grow on your farm.

Drew Radford:

Kit, it sounds like an amazing program to be part of. How does someone get started with the Farm Business Resilience Program?

Kit Duncan-Jones:

The Victorian Government's teamed up with the Australian Government through the Future Drought Fund to bring the program to Victorian farmers. To get involved, I recommend farmers head to the Agriculture Victoria website at agriculture.vic.gov.au/fbrp, which stands for the Farm Business Resilience Program. And on there, you'll find details about the program and also an opportunity to register your interest to participate in the program. So when services become available in your local area, we'll get in touch and see if you want to get involved. I'd also recommend that farmers follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We post FBR, Farm Business Resilience Programs, on there from time to time.

Drew Radford:

Kit, it sounds like fabulous work to be involved with, important work, and I guess satisfying work as well. Kit Duncan-Jones, Project Leader for the Farm Business Resilience Program, thank you for taking the time and joining us for this AgVic Talk podcast.

Kit Duncan-Jones:

Thank you very much, Drew. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family.

All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

If you can't measure it, you can't evaluate it. For any business this is an important step in mitigating risk.

Drew Radford:

G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and in this series of AgVic Talk, we're taking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with climate risk. Today, we're visiting two farmers who've structured their businesses in ways that enable them to tackle future challenges. Our first stop is in the Millewa, Darkra Farming run by Craig Henderson and his brother.

Drew Radford:

They've got their properties in different areas to mitigate risk. For Craig though, this philosophy stems from his pragmatic approach of farming is just a way of supporting a lifestyle.

Craig Henderson:

That's what it is. Some people go to university and become a doctor or a surveyor or whatever, to give them an income to support the lifestyle they'd like to live. And hopefully over the progress over time, education levels can rise and our farming business can also rise and support a lifestyle you choose to live.

Drew Radford:

It's a very pragmatic approach though, as well. Does that help bring clarity to your decision making?

Craig Henderson:

Yeah. We try to keep all emotion out of our decision making and stick to the facts, which makes it a hell of a lot easier. Because everybody's got different emotion levels of different perspective on things. So we stick to the facts and leave the emotion at the door when we go into meetings.

Drew Radford:

Well, Craig, let's talk about some of those facts. First of all, the farming operation. It's spread over a bit of an area. So where are the farms and what do you do on the properties?

Craig Henderson:

We're basically a broad acre farm business. Wheat, barley, bit of canola and legumes, lentils and peas, and we're from Brim through to Wilkur, Berriwillock and then spread over about 70 kilometres in the Millewa, from one end to the other. So, about 1,100 kilometres, I suppose, to drive around the whole lot and then inspect it all in one go, yeah.

Drew Radford:

That's a reasonable drive, Craig, in anybody's book to check your farm, collectively farms. Now Craig, spread over that sort of area, you're dealing with different climate zones and there's business diversity in there. How does farming over different climate zones help with managing climate variability?

Craig Henderson:

Very seldom you get a rain event right across the lot. By buying ground north of us has helped us utilize our machinery better. We can start cropping up there earlier, sowing and then harvest usually starts a couple of weeks earlier and then we go from Werrimull through to usually Berriwillock and down to Wilkur across to Brim is the timeframe in that order. Like last night we got no rain in the Millewa. We got 35 millimetres at Berriwillock and 16 millimetres at home. And it's been the other way several times, too. So it spreads your timing out instead of congesting it all into one area at one time, in you a get major rain event.

Drew Radford:

Spreads your timing out, but I assume there must be a degree of spreading your risk as well.

Craig Henderson:

There is, yeah. We look at land and what we think the percentage return we can achieve out of it. And you'll always get a high return on the long term in marginal country, rather than safe country, because there's an insurance factor factored into the income because it's so consistent if you've got high rainfall, whereas lower rainfall you'll have a lot more variabilities and up and down and your cash flow. So how we combat that and mitigate that risk is by storing grain and holding it for sometimes up to three, four years, whether it's legume or barley in bunkers, we can hold about 80 per cent of our average production now. So that helps mitigate the risk of the climate variability in the Wimmera Mallee.

Drew Radford:

That's a very forward looking way of doing it. But to get to this point, though, I assume you've had to develop a bit of a business model around it to work in these different climate zones. I mean, you said, it's 1,100 kilometre drive. Clearly you are not doing it all.

Craig Henderson:

At the moment, we've got contract sprayers in the Millewa. We've just planted up with two sowing rigs to go up there. We had one there last year. We run one sowing rig at home and we haven't got anyone permanent in the Millewa yet, but become Christmas we'll have at least two up there, which we find is critical. We really need a permanent person up there. So our nephew's coming back onto the farm and he'll run the Millewa country and I've got two sons at home on the northern Wimmera southern Mallee country. One's basically running the operation there, where other son runs our broiler farm. And then there's four staff at home. We probably need two more, but there's a shortage at the moment. So we're working on that, but that's basically how we operate. And I helicopter over the top, I suppose now. And don't do a lot of day to day, but do a fair bit of management and do a bit of off-farm stuff.

Drew Radford:

In terms of the yearly operation of those farming properties, though, Craig, how data driven are you in terms of keeping your eye on whether it's forecast for a La Nina, El Nino, fuel prices, those clear data signals that help you make decisions about what you're going to plant or what you're not going to plant?

Craig Henderson:

Yeah. We run a reasonably tight rotation, as in, we’re only flexible, probably up to about 20 per cent variance. But we do run a benchmarking on our properties and to identify any weaknesses we've got against our peers so that we're on a benchmarking group down here and that benchmarking organization has 11 groups on the east coast. So that'll then give us information, what's happening, you get some basic ideas, how your area is going against other areas. And then you get a really good picture of how you are going against your peers in your region. And I think that's critical. That was one of the best decisions we made as a family to take away any of the guesswork and any of the emotion. Our sons then can see exactly what they need to do, where our weaknesses are, where we need to invest.

Craig Henderson:

So it could be we're running too low a plant capital, where we should be running a higher plant capital and less wages or less maintenance. All these things come into it. And then you yield data on your crops, your average price, your water use efficiency, all those sort of things we monitor throughout the farm. Quite frankly, that's critical in these businesses now, because you vary $5 or $6 an acre on some chemical or hectare and same on your fertilizer or your water-use efficiency drops off a couple of millimetres that equates to huge amounts of money at the end of the year.

Drew Radford:

I interviewed someone recently and we were talking about benchmarking and he was saying that benchmarking against your peers is fabulous. And the best benchmark you could have is your own longitudinal data, comparing your performance against your performance over years. Is that what you found is you've accumulated the data going forward?

Craig Henderson:

That's right. And as time goes on, we'll break each farm down. We can do that now, but we'll start looking into that. If you need a bit of a, five years, we've got six years data now, but work out what area is producing the best. What crops are yielding the best, what sequence of crops are giving us the best results and all these numbers come into it to give you a clearer picture. And then the number one thing is, is percentage return on assets managed and that's the critical number. And if you vary, say the top 20 per cent is 2 per cent better than the average, that equates to a massive amount of money, an asset building over a lifetime. So very conscious of that.

Drew Radford:

You've talked about some of the advantages of working in different climate zones in terms of the season can be spread out or the risk can be spread out. But what are some of the challenges of operating in different climate zones in terms of running your business?

Craig Henderson:

Because you start three weeks earlier, you've got to have your maintenance right up to speed because you're expecting more out of your machinery. And the other thing you got to be very conscious of is you're expecting more out of staff and yourself and family because your peak periods run for longer. So you got to be conscious of that and how you manage that because OH&S is a major thing now that you got to be aware of on your farms and you got to be conscious of the workload and the long period of your peak periods, say of cropping and harvest. But what it also enables to do down the track will be to move, say, if there's a high-pressure spraying period in the Millewa, we'll just move a spray rig up there and help. And then we can bring one back. We've also purchased a selective sprayer, which will be running mainly in the Millewa but we'll be able to bring it down here to the northern Wimmera southern Mallee.

Drew Radford:

Craig, what do you think farmers need to be doing right now to be able to manage climate variability as best as possible?

Craig Henderson:

Well, you got to know your numbers, number one, and know what's happening in the field. To manage the variability, which could be managing variability in your income. So how you market, how you store, how you buy your inputs, which is just another commodity, same as wheat, your fertilizer, your Roundup, or your fuel. All those things have got to be managed and when things are below the long -term average, you start looking at stocking up on that or storing the grain and those things will help you mitigate the risk of variable income.

Drew Radford:

Craig Henderson's razor like focus on the numbers has helped him and his brother build Darkra Farming into a resilient business.

Drew Radford:

We're now going to head north of Swan Hill where the Gleeson brothers have 18,000 hectares on which they grow cereals, legumes and hay. Gleeson Farms also occasionally fatten sheep. Tim Gleeson has sought to reduce risk by adding another component to the business. Specifically, trucking.

Tim Gleeson:

I suppose we'd like to vertically integrate the our supply chain. So, we've got the logistics business, which lets me focus on marketing and also the delivery of, just in time, I suppose, the commodity side of our business. So it allows me to manage that logistics side and also storage side and marketing side, I suppose in a more incremental way over a 12 month period. And the trucking business is a part of that.

Drew Radford:

Tim, that sounds like you've certainly focused on a particular area of the business that suits your skillset. You work it with your brother, Richie. How do you split the operation up? And does that really relate back to your skill sets?

Tim Gleeson:

I'm sure that it does because I think the old saying you have to have a passion for what you're doing. And I think I definitely have a passion for the business management side and the strategic planning side of the business. In a lot of ways, we have a lot of interest off the farm as well, but my brother's skill set is really in the operational side. So he's great at managing the day to day activities, quality control, maintenance. It's another important facet to any business is looking after that side of it because there's a lot of loosely termed business owners that talk about the importance of management and how you should be able to manage a property without actually being there. But you need somebody to be in control of that quality control all the time.

Drew Radford:

Tim, you’ve touched a little bit on the strategic side of things and the bigger picture. How important are people skill sets to farm business needs when trying to manage and deal with climate variability?

Tim Gleeson:

Well, I guess any business or any management responsibility is nuanced to the particular duty that they have to execute. So, we have a skill set with our workforce. So we've got our farm manager, Scott Gladman, we've got our farm mechanic, we've got some other operational managers that all have their duties that they have to execute. And I think given that they all understand their roles, then they can report back, give us some insight information on what's happening out in the paddocks or in every facet of the farm. And so we can pre-plan or we can, I suppose manage those enterprises and probably give ourselves a little bit more of a more accurate way of reporting that, we really like to record all of the costs associated to every option and every execution on the farm. We're pretty accountable to that. We like to know exactly where we are, what we're doing. And so we try to track that.

Drew Radford:

Tim, you've been through the Harvard case study program. I'd like to find a little bit more about that. And also how's that help matching your individual skills to your role help with the management of the farm?

Tim Gleeson:

It's a global business. I've always maintained that we can be extremely insular given the vocation we've chosen. We can isolate ourselves out on our farms and do what we do and just chip away and isolate ourselves from the world. But given that it's a reasonable sized business this one, I actually have to take a more of a peripheral view of the world and understand markets and understand opportunities, understand what's happening in the rest of the world from a agricultural perspective, but also from a marketing perspective, in essence that's the reason why I got involved in the Harvard case study. It really reinforced my view of where we sit in Australia as being a reasonably sophisticated, commercially relevant agricultural industry. So given all the case studies we went through, so it's exciting what's happening in Australia and agriculture, but also globally.

Tim Gleeson:

There's that shift from that stigmatized approach about who was involved in food production, whether you had to have a great deal of intellectual capability to do so, but I think that's slowly changing and there's a better understanding of the skill sets that are required to run a successful and as I said, and reinforce, a commercially relevant business in Australia.

Drew Radford:

Tim, the Harvard case study program, just briefly, how did that actually work and help you broaden your global view of the business that you operate?

Tim Gleeson:

It's a week of case studies that have been predetermined and pre discussed by the people at Harvard University. So they've done the information brief. They've documented it and they've submitted it to all the participants there to read through that brief on the actual case studies that are to be discussed. Then as a part of the forum that I attended, I actually attended it online. Because it was so diversified, so it was anything from Syngenta's acquisition, by Sinochem, it was Netafim's Irrigation business out of Israel. It was a multitude of case studies all based around either the supply chain, whether it was to automation of grocery delivery services in the UK, even down to South America and Latin America and the McDonald's franchises that were involved down there. It was a very broad subject matter, but it was all based around agriculture. And it was really enlightening because it gave you more of a global perspective.

Tim Gleeson:

I've traveled extensively throughout the world, and I've always maintained that Australia has a little bit of a cultural cringe when it comes to really understanding how well off they are and how sophisticated they are as a society compared to a lot of other places. That's only been reinforced by the Harvard program, but it's fascinating to listen to that international perspective of what the perceived problems are and how they differ from where we are here.

Drew Radford:

In terms of your skills, it seems that you have a range of skills that are probably applicable across a number of industries. If there's a young person listening to this who loves the business strategy side as much as you do, what would you say to them about getting involved in a career in agriculture?

Tim Gleeson:

I counted up and this is my 40th harvest. In that time, I've noticed that we've certainly destigmatized the industry and the farming fraternity somewhat. And we still have some way to go from a professional perspective. There's always going to be those pockets where we need to shift people's focus. But it's a pretty exciting time for ag. There's a lot of international investment happening in Australia. There's a lot of capital tied up now. I mean the increase in capital values and the appreciable increase in net farm values and family farm values over that period of time, I can still remember my father when he actually bought his farm. Initial farm was $12 an acre, which is about $30 a hectare. And so we've moved on now, quite appreciably from an asset backing base. So there's a lot of money tied up ag. We're in a very commercially relevant industry. So if you don't make money, then there's only one way you're going to go and that's, you've got to get out.

Tim Gleeson:

But the technological changes are really exciting. This new infrared technology that's coming in, all of the abilities to actually cut costs in the business and actually manage the toxicity issues you may have from pesticide and insecticide residues, all of that sort of stuff. Even down to identifying the chemistry that we use now, we can vary the chemistry so we don't have, or establish too many resistant weeds, we didn't understand that even 10 years ago. You can track it all, all of that now with all your cloud-based software recording systems. That's all becoming more integrated. So it's really exciting. All of this new technology, just feeding in the blockchain technology feeding into the paddock to plate technologies, where you are going to be more accountable about the maximum and minimum residue limits in your food. And I'm just an old dinosaur now, but for any young person that, it should be really exciting for them to get involved. And I think it's not the slave trade that it used to be. There's some really good remuneration packages available for people to get involved in agriculture now.

Drew Radford:

You describe that really well, Tim. It has become such an advanced and high tech sector. And I'd imagine that's probably particularly important as well in terms of having the information to deal with climate variability. What do you think farmers need to be doing in terms of managing that?

Tim Gleeson:

Well, I think farmers are the best people to actually manage climate variability because they're exposed to it every day. And they always have been. The technologies that are available to people now are actually assisting us in adapting even quicker to those variabilities and giving us the ability to make strategic plans for the what ifs, if we do have that variability in seasons. We've established that template and the old adages, you either adapt or you die. I mean, that applies really well to farmers. And we will continue to do that. And we've seen those changes, those shift from maybe more of a winter based rainfall to a summer rainfall regime in our area. But I was listening to an audio book the other day about humans have only been really active for 300,000 years. So it's only a little grain of sand in time that we can draw upon. So, I think that we've evolved quite quickly in ag and we'll continue to do so. There'll be an acceleration. And you're seeing that with the advancement of technology.

Tim Gleeson:

So, in answer to your question, there's all sorts of expectations around the problems that climate change will bring. But I think we're ideally placed to be able to measure all of that with the new technology and adapt with new varieties. And we can analyze all that now.

Drew Radford:

Lastly, on that analyze point, Tim, it seems very crucial to you. I've read a quote of yours saying if you cannot measure it, how can you evaluate it? It seems pretty much fundamental to everything you've talked about there.

Tim Gleeson:

It's one of my pet hates, Drew. I mean, a lot of people are very anecdotal about cost bases, very anecdotal about what it's cost them to grow a crop, what their cost of production is, of course, which is more of the broader term. But a lot of times are just fooling themselves about fudging figures. I mean, they really need to know because when somebody asks you what your cost of production is, you should be able to say, well, what paddock, what field do you mean? Because it varies that much. You've got different operational costs that go into different fields. You've got different costs of chemistry to deal with different weed spectrums in different paddocks.

Tim Gleeson:

So if you can't analyze all that stuff and you can't actually measure it and then actually have the ability to have a third party look at that information, which is even more relevant now with your accountants, your joint venture partners, like your banks, and anybody that needs to look at your records, whether it be the relevant authorities for the Department of Ag, looking at any herbicide issues or any of those sort of things, you need to be able to track all that.

Tim Gleeson:

And I don't think there's any excuse for anybody now to not get involved in more accurate record keeping. It can be all done on your iPad. You can have it cloud based. And when you establish years and years of those records, it's invaluable to any business to be able to go back and analyze any of those particular influences and or things that you may have thought that have influenced future production. So, when we finish every season, every growing season, we have to have the ability to look back and say, have we ticked the box for improving the agronomic strength and the resilience of the farm going into the next year? And that's a part of that.

Tim Gleeson:

You need to be able to be looking at improving your productive capacity in an ongoing sense. And that's why it's always interesting because we get pilargid sometimes by particular parts of society about being these environmental vandals. And we have a great responsibility to be stewards of the land, but here we are, 18,000 hectares of the most fragile soils in the world. And we've being a steward that's improving that over time. So, if anybody asks me, am I environmentalist? Well, of course I am, but I'm walking the talk. I'm not just talking it.

Drew Radford:

Tim Gleason, 40 harvests in, the business has grown enormously. And clearly that's been through a strong focus on skills and strong focus obviously in making the business work. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your journey with us in this AgVic Talk podcast.

Tim Gleeson:

You're welcome Drew.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback. So please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family. All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm. This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorized by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

Benchmarking. It's a term bandied around a lot, but what does it mean when applied to a business? And importantly, how can it be used to make a farm more profitable?

Drew Radford:

Good day, I'm Drew Radford, To find out more more AgVic talk is taking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers apply benchmarking to their business. Today we are heading to Millewa to visit Ian Arney who started to ponder a number of years ago when he was approached to be in a benchmarking study. Ian's the third generation of his family farming that land. It's a history filled with change and adaptation that was needed to continue production, arguably none more so than in the last decade with a move from cereal and grain cropping to focusing mainly on sheep.

Drew Radford:

So, how important has benchmarking been in this decision, and what role will it have in future decisions, especially in terms of dealing with climate variability?

Drew Radford:

To find out, Ian Arney joins us in the AgVic Talk studio. Ian, thanks for your time.

Ian Arney:

You're welcome. Thanks for the opportunity, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Ian, your family's seen massive changes over three generations. How central has technology been in dealing with those changes?

Ian Arney:

Well, technology has been fantastic and I'd suggest that it's probably the only reason why we can still grow crops in the Millewa because of slightly less rainfall than what we used to get. But we have to go for higher yields now to cover our costs, and technology and adapting, using technology has been the greatest benefit we have. Without the technological changes that we've had, I probably wouldn't be farming like so many others who have left the land. I probably would've done the same.

Drew Radford:

Ian you've kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of where this discussion's going. Because we want to talk about benchmarking and you've said I've had to adapt and you detailed that you've moved across to sheep in the last 10 years a lot more. So how did you get started with benchmarking on your farm business?

Ian Arney:

Oh, that's a really good question. I actually became involved with benchmarking thanks to ABARES because they contacted me to provide just the information through their ag survey.

Ian Arney:

And about five years ago, I had someone from ABARES contact me and asked me if I'd like to participate in benchmarking, and I said, I would. So we did that for four years and it sort of demonstrated to me that things were going okay, but our profit by comparison to others doing a similar thing was less. So the return on investment was virtually zilch. We were able to pay some wages, invest further in machinery, and by drawing a comparison to see how others were going, I thought, well, I need to change, something's not right.

Ian Arney:

But one of the issues I had was the lack of ability to actually talk to the other people that had completed the benchmarking because we didn't know who they were. Privacy wouldn't allow us to communicate. No one could sort of give us a rational reason as to why some people are turning over less, but actually earning more profit.

Ian Arney:

So there was no direct comparison with regards to the nuts and bolts. So the information was really good, but it just wasn't enough. So I actually applied and joined another group. I've only completed one year of the benchmarking and certainly the last year has been a difficult one, and not to make excuses, but I haven't actually done myself a favour and provided them with the information so that they can come back and discuss how my figures look and draw a direct comparison to other people and what they're doing without actually naming them. But by grabbing other businesses that farm along similar lines, run similar sheep to me. In that way, it will, it hasn't so far, but it will provide me with a far better idea as to what activities I should just cut out completely as opposed to trying to hang on to them.

Ian Arney:

And that's what I'm looking for because I can give you an example of someone I think is one of the best farmers in the Millewa. And they grow phenomenal crops year after year, even in 2019 when we had a severe drought with decile one rainfall after decile one in 2018 as well. And they grew some pretty terrific crops on very little moisture, while the majority of people in the Millewa didn't grow anything that was worth harvesting.

Ian Arney:

And I thought, wow, they sort of hang in there last year. They had some great yields, 2020 superb yields far better than the average in the district, and they have their business really ticking, and I thought, and have for a long time, it would be great to emulate that.

Ian Arney:

But having played with direct drill and being on top of conserving summer moisture and being really stringent on getting out there and stopping the weeds very quickly to maintain as much moisture as possible, even that still didn't work for me in a number of situations.

Ian Arney:

And I thought, well, I need to look at something else. Hence, I've concentrated more on livestock or sheep and it's proving to be safer, a far safer bet for me, and while the returns are nowhere near as good as some of the returns from grains, for example, it's safe and I can actually make a living from it without taking a huge gamble and risk of putting a crop in and possibly getting no return. And for example, 2019 having a $300,000 loss, which takes a lot of coming back from.

Drew Radford:

That is a significant amount of money in anybody's books, Ian. Just reflecting back on what you've talked about there. The important part of benchmarking seems to be really comparing like for like, so is that important to build your own benchmarking data? So you're constantly looking at your own organization because that's the ultimate comparison, isn't it?

Ian Arney:

That's right. It's one thing to have a look at your own data, but it's I think vitally important to look at others and see how they're going, but it has to be apples for apples to do a reasonable comparison, otherwise it's just a waste of time.

Ian Arney:

For example, labour rates need to be the same or pretty much the same because if I'm say charging, if I have someone work for me at $25, $41 as a casual rate, but someone else down the road is working at $35, and we benchmark and compare our businesses. It's a bit difficult when their wages are up already to the tune of $10 an hour by comparison.

Ian Arney:

There's so many comparisons you can do. It could be as simple as you like, as basic as you like, but you have to be able to compare things that are similar. And it's one thing to look at your own benchmarking year after year to see whether you've improved, whether you've lost ground, how you're going, whether you're holding your head up and things are working out.

Ian Arney:

So that you can then think, okay, well this is okay, it's working all right, but I need to fine tune it a bit better. So go looking for different advice or you try something different, but in order to get those results sooner, it's far better to take advantage of other people's knowledge and what they are doing and what they've been successful at and what they haven't been successful at.

Ian Arney:

I did belong to an agronomy group, and the best information I found was all the conversation around what was working and what wasn't working for individuals. And to me, that was another form of creating a very basic benchmark so that I could avoid problems or through the information I shared, other people could avoid problems.

Ian Arney:

So it can be on an incredibly basic level around just a conversation or it can be comparing like figures and saying, well, why doesn't this work for me? It's working for these people and asking the questions around, how do you get it to work and fine tuning? And that's probably the best part about benchmarking is you have the information, but making it work for you, how do you go about making it work so that you can improve what you're doing?

Drew Radford:

You seem very data driven. You said that it right at the start that technology's been largely one of the reasons that you're still actually farming and being able to draw upon information and apply that. So tell us how benchmarking your farm business helps with managing and preparing for climate variability.

Ian Arney:

I think with regards to climate variability, certainly the way I've used benchmarking is that I've determined quite simply by comparing figures from one year to the next, that I am actually earn more money by running sheep. And now trying to tweak the kind of sheep that I run to increase the amount of income.

Ian Arney:

It's all data driven because generally speaking if the figures are correct, they don't lie. They'll tell you that either there are some shortcomings or that what you're doing is successful and they're vitally important. If you want to survive, you want your business to survive, you need to know your figures and what's happening.

Drew Radford:

So in the context then of benchmarking, how important is it in terms of what farmers need to be doing right now to be able to manage climate variability?

Ian Arney:

Personally, I think it's vital. If they want to keep farming, they need to have a really good understanding of their figures, even if it's just basics with regards to expenditure on chemicals in particular, because that's an increasing expense, certainly this year with glyphosate tripling in price and fertilizer almost tripling in price.

Ian Arney:

They need to be able to look at figures and draw a comparison from one year to the next as to whether the expenses are getting out of hand, can they rein in the expenses which doesn't necessarily mean more profit. It just means that there's less money that's outgoing.

Ian Arney:

And it provides you with a little bit more stability because it's an expensive exercise, putting a crop in and hoping that it's going to rain, but in terms of continuing to farm by benchmarking, comparing yields in particular, and the cost that's involved to produce a particular crop from one year to the next, keep an eye on the profit margin is really important.

Ian Arney:

Because as that decreases, if it does decrease, you need to be able to see that coming because you can do something about it. And you can see that with benchmarking as opposed to someone who just has a gut feel and thinks, no, we're right. We've done this in the past, we'll do it again. Doesn't work that way. I wish it did.

Ian Arney:

But certainly from my point of view, it doesn't. A lot of my decisions now are made on the basis of benchmarking costs. Does it work? Will it work? What's the risk? That can be demonstrated from information from the past. Yeah, it could work. If it doesn't work, what's it going to cost me? If the risk is deemed too high, then I either reduce the risk by not going so hard or by not doing a particular action at all.

Drew Radford:

Ian you said you were now part of a benchmarking group. What sort of benefits do you see other farmers getting from having an external party review their operations through benchmarking?

Ian Arney:

There's businesses that were turning over a lot of money and virtually keeping none. And they're looking at it, the people owning and operating it looked at it and thought, what the hell are we doing? And by going out and drawing comparisons and getting someone in particular to have a good look, they've been able to identify where they were spending a lot of money and not making much.

Ian Arney:

It sounds so simple. We all should be able to do it, but unless you take time out of your business to work on it and look at it, a lot of the simple things slide by. Whereas if you have a fresh set of eyes that can look at your benchmarking, they'll come back to you and ask questions about, why are you doing this? And did you realize that you're actually breaking even? What's the point of doing an activity where you're breaking even. You'd be far better off doing this, because you can demonstrate where you've been making money.

Ian Arney:

And for so many of us that work in the operations all the time, the decisions we make can be on the run, whereas benchmarking either having someone else take a look or standing back and having a good look and trying to work on your business, it's just vital, especially with the effects of climate change. If you want to survive, I just think people have to do that or they'll be gone. They won't survive.

Drew Radford:

While Ian Arney's focus on benchmarking is about improving his own farm, a person who does this for many farms is Sam Henty, Farm Business Economist with Agriculture Victoria. Sam describes his job as helping make informed decisions about the efficient allocation of resources, and he views benchmarking as one of the best tools for achieving this.

Sam Henty:

When we talk about benchmarking, it's another way of talking about the comparative analysis and really the only comparison a farmer should make, at least initially, should be comparing themselves to themselves over time.

Sam Henty:

So when we talk about benchmarking, it's establishing the business performance and all the indicators within that farm business, and then tracking that over time. So looking at those key profit ratios and measures and looking at them over time. So laying down the facts and facing them basically, and getting a better understanding of the farm and the year that was, but then also using that to plan for the future.

Drew Radford:

So recording data's key. So how should someone get started on benchmarking their farm business?

Sam Henty:

Depending on how they'd like to do it, there are existing projects around. So the Victoria State Government runs a farm performance projects and monitoring projects. So the dairy farm monitor looks specifically at dairy farms and the livestock farm monitor looks at sheep and beef farms and mixed enterprises, with some cropping in there. And looking at those, the performance of each of those enterprises and farm businesses within each of those industries.

Sam Henty:

And so getting involved in one of those or some of the privately run equivalents that are out there at the moment is one way of doing it. Contacting your local business consultant or local extension officer is a way to understand what's available.

Sam Henty:

But most farmers have the capacity to do this themselves. And it's just a matter of bringing together the information required to analyze your farm business and understand if it's any good or not, or how the year has been and what part of the farm is going well and not well. And so that is about bringing all the information that's already collected together and putting it into the framework to estimate those performance measures.

Drew Radford:

You're talking there about a lot of data, but I imagine from the outset, Sam, you really got to know what you're looking for in terms of what's your outcome. So what makes for good benchmarking?

Sam Henty:

What makes good benchmarking is that it's got to be based first and foremost in the principles of farm business economics. So the information that you're getting out needs to be sensible and needs to be something that you can make a decision with. So it needs to not only be based on the current methods and theory, but it needs to be something that when you look at it, you can make a decision with. And so having an understanding of what each of the measures are that are coming out are really important.

Sam Henty:

So you can produce a number, but if it means nothing to you, you're not going to make a decision. So it's all about providing something that's going to help you make a decision, and that's where professional help can be useful. So, as I mentioned before, business consultants or accountants can help bring that information together and interpretation of results to make for better comparisons between the business, between years and within the different enterprises of the business.

Drew Radford:

Sam, it all seems to make perfect sense, but I imagine there's some pitfalls people need to be cautious of.

Sam Henty:

Yeah, absolutely. So the pitfalls of benchmarking, generally the want to compare your business to another business and to see how you are going.

Sam Henty:

So if they're running a beef farmer in Gippsland comparing to a beef farmer in the Southwest, the real pitfall there is that each farm is individual, and while the output may be similar, the operating surface and environmental conditions and the skill and stage of career and experience of the manager are vastly different for all farms.

Sam Henty:

And so comparing your performance to an anonymous farm or an aggregated number average for a particular region or industry needs to be done with extreme caution, because generally you're comparing just a partial measure. So comparing, say how much fertilizer you've put on, or the cost of the fertilizer you've put on for the year.

Sam Henty:

And so to compare, say fertilizer costs or stocking rate and equate that to, well, they only applied X amount or the average only applied X amount or ran X amount of DSE. Therefore, I am above or below the average, doesn't take into account all the other things that go into making a profit and doesn't help profitably allocate resources or efficiently allocate resources.

Sam Henty:

So it does help comparing to other farms or to an average does help you to look at your information more. So just wanting to know, well, how much did I spend on fertilizer this year compared to the average, is an exercise of just getting you to look at your costs and look at those different indicators within your business.

Sam Henty:

But really the best comparison is to yourself over time, and so that comparison to an average or a benchmark or another farm really needs to be done with caution. What we advocate is the only comparison initially should be to yourself over time.

Drew Radford:

Sam, what do you think farmers need to be doing right now to be able to manage climate variability in the context of the discussion we've been having?

Sam Henty:

Initially it starts with having a farm business plan where each of the managers and the people who work on the farm have buy into that plan. So setting goals to understand where the farm wants to be in the future and then determine how the farm is going to get there.

Sam Henty:

Once you've got those goals of where you want to be and how you're going to get there, it's understanding where you are now. And so understanding how the business is going at the moment will help with that path of those goals could be anything from big goals of you want to be debt free in 10 years, or you want to be net zero in 10 years, or you want to be the most profitable as you've ever been in 10 years or all three. Or you might just want to pick up the kids from school every day and want to go to the footy on the weekends.

Sam Henty:

Each of those goals is valid. And that's what I mean by each farm is unique, that each farm will have a different goal and ability to get to those goals. But having those goals will help manage the rougher times that will come because of climate change. So understanding where the farm is now and understanding how and what are big influences on farm performance will help manage them when times get rough.

Sam Henty:

And also when times are good, it will help you pull the levers to say, right, well, we're in this position now. Let's go and buy that block next door, or let's go and buy those extra stock, or let's plant that extra crop or whatever it is. Just having the ability to plan and understand the business will help in those rougher times.

Drew Radford:

Sam Henty. Thank you ever so much for joining us for this AgVic Talk podcast.

Sam Henty:

No worries at all.

Speaker 5:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family.

All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria authorized by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

Decision-making is it something that can be learned and developed as a skill? Good day, I'm Drew Radford and as farm businesses get bigger and more complex, plus also having to adapt to climate variability good decision making is fundamental to success. To find out how much so, AgVic Talk is undertaking a virtual climate bus tour to see how farmers are dealing with climate risk. Today we are heading towards Queenscliff to meet Cam Nicholson. He is a farmer and also a consultant with Nicon Rural Services, plus for a bit of good measure he is also a university lecturer. He has a passion for helping farmers, that stretches a long way back.

Cam Nicholson:

Background is agricultural science. I worked for the Ag department for six or seven years in Victoria, Northern Victoria, mainly. And then went out consulting, well now nearly 30 years ago, mainly in pasture agronomy, livestock side of it in soils as well, and also involved in a family farm where we run beef cattle and wool sheep.

Drew Radford:

So did you grow up on that?

Cam Nicholson:

No, I was actually from Melbourne, but my father-in-law had just a small block there and once we got married, he said, would you like to help us out because he wasn't a farmer by background either. And just over time, we've just sort of expanded as we've gone along as well as kept the consulting side of things going as well.

Drew Radford:

So Cam you certainly get to walk the talk for one of a better description. Farm decision-making, you're a consultant, you're also a university lecturer, so I imagine you got some fairly good insight to this. Can farm decision-making be learned?

Cam Nicholson:

Oh absolutely. It's something when I first started, I didn't quite appreciate, how I suppose we hadn't been taught how to make a good decision. I can remember when I was taught to read and write, do arithmetic, spent many years at school and you progressively got better and better at that. But when I ask people, when were you taught to make a good decision, most people just sit there stunned. Well, we just make decisions, never really thought about it. Never really been trained in how to do it. And there is a process. There are steps that you can go through and I think you can become better at it. And I have certainly seen in the clients, the farmers that I work with, that some of them have a innate ability to make good decisions. Others don't, others can get themselves tied up in knots a bit or find it difficult to make some decisions. But the ones that do and do it naturally do actually follow a process that I think we can all learn from.

Drew Radford:

That's actually a great analogy, isn't it? There's so many things in life that we're not actually taught, but we assume that we have the key knowledge about.

Cam Nicholson:

Yeah, yeah. And decision-making is one of those. And when I became more aware of this and did a bit of background work on it to find out a bit more and in fact, there is a lot of fantastic information out there around decision-making and what influences your decision-making. I just realized that I hadn't been taught any of this. You sort of learn it as you go. And when I then reflected, as I said on some of the really good operators that I see in agriculture, they follow a process. Sometimes they don't necessarily know that they're doing it, but they do follow a process. And I thought, "Gee, there's a lot we could learn from that." So that's sort of where my interest has grown in that area, around farm decision-making.

Drew Radford:

Cam, what are some of those key elements in that process then for effective decision-making?

Cam Nicholson:

It's a number of them. One that I think is really important that I try and get people to recognize now is what I call, how the head, the heart, and the gut influences your decision-making. I was taught because I've got a science background that it was very much about what I'd call the head, the facts, and figures, the analysis that you can do, the spreadsheets that you can calculate and work out the numbers on. And I used to do a lot of things with clients and think, well, this makes sense to me, and this makes sense on paper to do, but then the client would be reluctant to do it. And it's because those other factors, which I call the heart and the gut also have a big influence on that. And quite often we not so much dismiss the heart, which is sort of your values, your beliefs, your preference, those sort of things, and your gut, which is your past experience and your intuition.

Cam Nicholson:

We tend to sort of put them in the background quite often, particularly as a consultant like me, that would go out and just want to look at the numbers and look at the facts when those other two aspects are really, really important. So the first thing I've really learned out of all of these is to make sure that we're not afraid to surface the head, heart, and gut and say how each of those might influence the decision that we need to make. The second one is that there is a difference in personalities. And so some personalities have a different approach to how much emphasis they put on the head, heart, and gut in their decision making. And I've come to recognize that much better. And so people that are very instinctive decision-makers, I've learned now to work much better with them, put the facts if you like the background and worry more about their past experience and what they've encountered and seen and observed in the past in that decision-making.

Cam Nicholson:

And I think the third one that I'd add in there is, I've learned a lot about risk and understanding risk and volatility and how that almost subliminally influences the decisions that people make because they're assessing the risks all the time, but we rarely actually bring them to the surface and actually talk about them in a number sense. They just sort of sit there in the background with, "Oh, I think that's a bit risky." Or, "I'd be willing to have a punt at that because I think that's an acceptable level of risk." So they're probably the three things I've learned in the decision-making that I think is important.

Drew Radford:

Cam that's a great insight. What about on the other side, what can lead to poor decision-making?

Cam Nicholson:

A number of things. I think probably the most important one is that we often do things in haste, particularly some of what I might call the more challenging or complex decisions that we might need to make. There's a wonderful fellow by the name of Daniel Kahneman, he's a professor at Princeton University in the US. He actually won a Nobel prize for his work on decision-making. And he talks about fast and slow decision-making. And I recognize this a lot with the people I work with that sometimes we make some decisions and if we'd spend just a little bit more time and had a process that we could work through, we would actually make a far better decision. But quite often we'll make a decision based on past experience, it worked last time, it'll work again. And quite often circumstances have changed, things are different. And so what worked last time may not work this time.

Drew Radford:

There's certain trigger points and use of calendars that are important in a decision-making process.

Cam Nicholson:

Can be, depends on what the decision is. Some of the big decisions might be buying a block of land or splitting a farming business or amalgamating a farming business or whatever else, which aren't really necessarily calendar-based. But there are certainly a lot of decisions that I'm seeing now. And particularly with the work I'm doing at the moment with the Future Drought Fund of where there are probably some very useful calendar-based trigger points that we could use each year. And because every year is different, the decision will be different, but the time to pause and to think, and to go through the process and ask yourself those questions again, I think is very valid. And I think we can do a lot more of that in the future.

Drew Radford:

Cam, climate variability. How's that impact on decision-making?

Cam Nicholson:

It's huge because it brings in the risk because really what the climate change is doing is it's adding to our volatility. Quite often we hear that the average temperature's gone up a bit, but in fact, what I think we notice more is that there is greater variability or greater volatility in the climate. Now, when you add those extremes together, the average may only change by a small amount. And quite often we talk about the average, but the risk lies in the extremes. And what I'm seeing with the climate change is that we're having to get prepared for more extreme events. Now whether that's longer droughts or wetter wets. Changes fluctuations from a really wet start to a season, say to a really dry end to a season. I think that is increasing compared on where we've been in the past. We've always had it, but I'm just seeing that the volatility is increasing around some of those things.

Drew Radford:

So, arguably then a careful decision-making structure is more crucial now than ever.

Cam Nicholson:

Ah, yes. Yeah. And will become more so in the future. And I think around the climate stuff in a lot of cases, it's been, oh, we'll lose rainfall. So rainfall will reduce and temperatures will rise, but that's not going to happen every year. So we're still going to get some years the same as we've had in the past. And they're good years. And they're years that I think we really need to focus a bit more and capitalize on. How do you make the good years great, because they may not be as many of those around the corner as there's been in the past? And the flip side of that is how do you make good early decisions in those tighter years that may come earlier than we've had before, or be for prolonged periods?

Drew Radford:

Cam Nicholson, agriculture consultant with Nicon Rural Services, some fantastic insights there about making good decisions, particularly around climate variability. Thanks for taking the time to join us in this AgVic Talk Podcast.

Cam Nicholson:

No problems. Thanks, Drew.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback. So please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family. All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm. This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorized by the Victorian Government Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

Any good business person will start paying close attention when they hear something is going to reduce their profit margin. G'day, I'm Drew Radford. And arguably, that's one of the issues in conveying the effects of climate change. Sure, the insurance council may forecast future damage bills in the billions of dollars but that's not something that's relatable to most people, except when maybe it's broken down into words like, "Your profits are going to drop by 40%."

Drew Radford:

In this season of AgVic Talk, we're taking a virtual climate bus tour around Victoria to meet people who are acting upon climate variability and putting in strategies to deal with it. Today, we're off to meet Cam Nicholson, the consultant with Nicon Rural Services. G'day Cam, Thanks for your time.

Cam Nicholson:

Yeah. Thanks, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Cam, you call yourself a consultant but what do you really do?

Cam Nicholson:

What do I really do? Oh, that's debatable I suppose. No look, I tend to give advice to farmers and to advisors as well around various issues. I suppose I help translate some of the science and information we've got there into practical terms that can be applied on farm.

Drew Radford:

That's an important skill to be able to distill that. And you bring some dirt under your nails to the game as well because you're actually bit of a part-time farmer as well, I understand.

Cam Nicholson:

Yes. Yeah, we farm cattle and sheep on the Bellarine Peninsula just out of Geelong. And even though it's a relatively small place, we have about 200 cows and about a thousand ewes all up, we try and do a good job with it. As I say to people that come out here, "Don't look too much about the scale, look at how you're trying to make the best of what you've got."

Cam Nicholson:

And I think understanding that and trying to implement that and cope with all of the challenges that farming throws at you, I think puts me in a pretty good position to then translate the science into something that people can adopt.

Drew Radford:

I very much like that I walk the talk analogy. And in your work, you're very focused on decision making, what's that spring from?

Cam Nicholson:

Well, two things. One is that we've realized on our own farm that unless we make good timely decisions, it costs us both in the bottom line from a profitability point of view, from a production point of view, but also on your own stress levels and how you feel about running your business. I've spent many years trying to get our decision making systems and our trigger points better because it just takes the stress out of farming and makes farming more enjoyable. But I've also observed a group of farmers that could be confronted with similar situations, and some of them just have this uncanny ability to make good decisions at the right time. And in the long run, you see how that pays off. And I'm thinking, "Well, it's a choice they've made, it's a decision they've made. What do they do and what systems do they use to do that better than others?"

Drew Radford:

Well, we're going to be pulling that apart a little bit today in regards to climate change, translating climate change into production impact. What is something farmers seem to misunderstand about climate change?

Cam Nicholson:

I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, but it's that challenge in taking what we keep being told about how the climate's going to change, and translating that into production, what it actually means for production. To give you an example, where we are, the climate change predictions are in our part of the world that we might get 20 or 30 mm less rainfall and it's going to be slightly warmer in winter and slightly hotter over summer. Now, while I understand what those words mean, actually understanding what that does to our production system, how much grass we grow, how much hay we might cut, those sort of things is challenging, because 30 mm for us in the middle of winter where we've got more than enough rainfall, a loss of 30 mm in that really wet soggy period has far less impact than the loss of 30 mm at that critical time say in October just before ... Or September, October before hay cutting, 30 mm loss there makes a huge difference.

Cam Nicholson:

And farmers understand this. All we needed was one good rain and this would've been a much better finish than what we got. So as much about climate change is about when it occurs and how that impacts on the different crops and pasture and things that you're trying to grow.

Drew Radford:

So is that kinder saying then, if you unpack that a bit further, do projected changes in average temperature and rainfall give farmers enough to enable them to plan and future proof their operations?

Cam Nicholson:

No, no. The simple answer is no, because if you think about it, if we got average prices and average yields every year and we knew what our costs were, there wouldn't be much risk in farming because you know what it's going to be. The challenge with farming is that we get extremes, and it's the volatility. It's going from one year where you've had well below average rainfall to well above average rainfall, you've got to adapt your system. You've got to respond to that change. And sometimes those changes can be very rapid. And so it's a volatility that becomes more important than the averages. And I think from a risk point of view, which is really what we're talking about with climate change, is how does it change the risk that we're exposed to in our farming businesses? Averages don't do that. You've really got to understand the extremes.

Drew Radford:

So, what do you reckon climate change really means on farm?

Cam Nicholson:

It'll be different things to different people. That's a flippant way of saying it but depending on where you're located and what your farming system is, the impact first of all, will be more or less depending on what plays out but also your ability to adapt to that and put something else in place that better responds to that change in climate, will vary from business to business. In some locations, you can't easily shift. If you've got perennial fruit trees or something in, it's not that easy to adapt to, but if in let's say a cropping situation where the season may be finishing more often earlier, in other words, you don't get that late bit of rain, it might be as simple as just a change in variety choice. Instead of a very long season variety, you might grow some mid-season variety as well as some long season variety. In other words, you hedge your bets by just a small change in the type of seed that you're planting can help in that response.

Cam Nicholson:

And look, the flip side's true in some areas. I've done some work south of Ballarat where it gets very cold and very wet in winter. And the modeling, all the calculations that we've done with it being warmer over winter and also less wet, we're actually going to grow more pasture. Climate change in that part of the season for that cluster of farms in that area is actually going to be believe or not, of benefit in pasture production. To capitalise on that or take advantage of that, you've got to think about how do you tweak your production system? And so that might be that they calve down or lamb down a bit earlier because spring's going to finish earlier but winter you're going to grow more feed. Maybe you lamb or calve down three or four weeks earlier. It will vary from farm to farm. And I think that's the biggest challenge I reckon for me, in translating what is the climate scenarios that we're being told could occur, into what's it mean for your production system and therefore, how should we respond?

Drew Radford:

Cam, what are some of the strategies to manage climate change and also increasingly extreme weather?

Cam Nicholson:

Look, I reckon the responses are infinite. Some of the work I've done and what I choose to do now, is I effectively show a group of farms I'm working with, a group of farmers, I show them what the modeled change in say pasture production might be, or crop production might be if we stick with what we're currently doing. And then I just say to them, "Well, if this is going to be the change, what are some of the possible responses?"

Cam Nicholson:

And I can tell you, the list is as long as your arm because everybody can see opportunity, "I could change this. I could do that. I could adjust this."

Cam Nicholson:

Some of them will be subtle, as I said, that variety type thing. It might be the types of pastures that people are sowing, it's lambing and calving time. I had one farmer that said, "Well, I'll probably just sell animals as backgrounders."

Cam Nicholson:

In other words, not finished animals, rather than what their system had been designed to do, which was to finish most of the animals they have on the place because they've got feed. They said, "Well, if I don't have as much feed, maybe part of them go and we sell them onto someone else to finish them because that might get a bit tighter."

Cam Nicholson:

Every farmer that I've encountered can see ways of adapting their farming system. Understanding just what impact that's going to have, is another part of that equation. Because you can say, "Oh, what if I do this?"

Cam Nicholson:

Then we really need to understand what that means from an economic and from a risk point of view. But I think it's endless. As one fellow, Graeme Anderson said to me ages ago, "If your climate's going to change, I bet you can find somewhere else in the country that's got your future climate now and they farm, and they farm successfully."

Cam Nicholson:

They've adapted a system to suit their current climate, which might be your future climate. We need to understand what some of those tweaks and what some of those changes are. I'm not prescriptive in that. If anything, just throw up some ideas of, "Here are some things potentially we could think about."

Cam Nicholson:

But in my experience, I don't have any trouble with a group of farmers being able to identify a whole lot of possibilities that can adapt.

Drew Radford:

You've talked about production impacts there but I imagine there's other structural issues that farmers should be considering around the operational side and financial side of their businesses as well, to cope with that variability.

Cam Nicholson:

Absolutely. If we think of some of the structural stuff, water's going to be a big one I could see going forward, and just whether dams that reliably filled each year may not in some years. Or we may get less runoff in them, "Do we have the capacity within our current system to actually still have water when we need water?"

Cam Nicholson:

Because you can buy feed or you can cart feed, but you can't cart water for stock. It's a killer, "Do we have adequate water supply? Do we have things like containment areas that we can use to bring stock in, so that we're not over grazing pastures?", which means that they will respond better when we do get rain again. I think the whole containment side of it, there's lots of things associated with that, how they're designed, how you feed efficiently in them, how do you avoid environmental problems? Things like where are your fodder reserves, to operate and operate that efficiently? I think there's a whole lot of structural things that need to be put in place there.

Cam Nicholson:

And as you said, the financial side of it's pretty important, and finance but also supply chain type things. For example, I know a few farmers now who don't cut all the fodder that they might need on their farm, trying to get longer term contracts with other farmers that cut fodder so that while they'll take them in their good times when really no one is selling hay because no one wants to buy it, because everybody's got lots of hay, they'll have a contract that will take it in the good times, as long as they can get looked after in the tighter times.

Cam Nicholson:

I think there'll also be more of this longer term structural thinking about how you secure some of the critical inputs into your farm business and just how we can shore up some of those so that it will give us a bit more confidence going forward.

Drew Radford:

What do you reckon is going to make a good farmer over the next 15 years?

Cam Nicholson:

What's going to make a good farmer? Probably the same attributes that made them a good farmer 15 years ago. And that's their ability to read a situation and adapt and adapt quickly. Make decisions quickly. The top farmers that I see round all the time are the ones that are reading the play. It's almost like a good sports person, they can almost see how the game's going to play out in front of them and they magically seem to be in the right place at the right time or do the right thing. It's those that can see forward. And the climate stuff is no different to me. It's just another one of those considerations going forward that we need to be sharp on. And if this is starting to change, how much of an impact is it likely to have in my place? What implications has that got to my current production system and what can I put in place that helps mitigate that or adapt to that? I think they'll be the same Drew, as what they were 15 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

Drew Radford:

I understand some of this work that you're focused on in terms of climate variability, started a while ago with a project you did with Ararat Rural City Council and also the Perennial Pasture Group, but I understand that work is still just as relevant.

Cam Nicholson:

Yeah. That was a few years ago and it was the first time I tried to translate what the climate impacts were having on production. And so there are a couple of whole farm computer models I used, which showed how it changed annual crop growth and annual pasture growth. What you do is you change the weather input into those models and then you compare what had happened in the past to what might happen in the future. And some years we are good, some years were better in the future than what we've had in the past, but it also clearly showed what impact it was having in some of those tighter years with climate change. And that's when I learned this idea of, "Well, this is what's happening. What do you think we should do about it?"

Cam Nicholson:

I basically posed it to this group of farmers, and I've done this probably six or eight times now in different locations. And all get the same, very positive response that, "Yeah, this isn't as bad as we thought it would be."

Cam Nicholson:

I think a lot of people are ... Because they're uncertain, and that uncertainty means you become a bit scared, once they can see what the impacts potentially could be, they then can be proactive and positive about what the solutions might be. I think that type of work has got real value in getting people to get their heads around what it means and responding positively to what the climate change impacts might be.

Drew Radford:

Cam Nicholson, you work in a fascinating space, helping farmers make better decisions. Thank you for taking the time and joining me for this AgVic Talk podcast.

Cam Nicholson:

No problems. Thanks, Drew.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family.

All information is accurate at the time of release. Contact Agriculture Victoria or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria, authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to AgVic Talk, keeping you up to date with information from Agriculture Victoria.

Drew Radford:

It's pretty common for a farmer to have a gander over a neighbour's fence, and see what they can learn. It's probably not so common when that fence is about 150 kilometers away, and the farm being looked at gets significantly less rainfall. Good day. I'm Drew Radford, and this is the story of the Hunt family, who farm near Bordertown, in Eastern South Australia.

Drew Radford:

Before the science was settled and the tools were put in place to help predict the future climate of a location, the Hunts headed Northeast to the Wimmera, to see what they could learn from farmers working in warmer, and drier conditions. It's a journey that paid off for the Hunts many times over. In this AgVic Podcast series, we're going to find out how farmers are dealing with climate variability, by visiting them on a virtual climate bus tour. Climb aboard because today, we are heading over the border to South Australia to meet Ben Hunt.

Ben Hunt:

We are 10Ks South of Bordertown in South Australia. We got about 3000 acres in the old speak, and we crop about 800 hectares of that, and I run 1300 breeding ewes.

Drew Radford:

That's a fair bit going on Ben. Has that ratio changed much over the years, or you've been pretty consistent with that split between cropping and livestock?

Ben Hunt:

When I first come home from school, I suppose we were about 50/50. I reckon we've got 80% of the place in crop now, and about 20% in pasture. We've learned a few tricks to extend out through the Grain & Graze program. We've learned a few tricks on how to graze and crop at the same time. We're running probably 30% more sheep, I suppose, from the late '90s on about half as much dirt, I suppose.

Drew Radford:

Ben, you mentioned there the ratio has changed and you're constantly tweaking it. In terms of climate variability, what's your property experienced over time? What's changed?

Ben Hunt:

I think it's probably the severity of the events that we get. We used to get a hot day in October, which would come through and blow the yield off your canola and your wheat, but now you'll get a week. Back in the late '90s, you might be unfortunate to cop two days of 35 degrees in a row with a 50 kph northerly wind, but that can last seven to 10 days. We've just noticed that the springs have got tighter. We don't have those big gluconic springs that bring home the crops like they used to. And we've had to adapt to that. And I think you either adapt to it, or you go broke slowly, I suppose.

Drew Radford:

Well, in terms of that adaption, you mentioned you've been part of some cropping groups, and you learned some tips and tricks. What are some of the key things that you reckon you've done to adapt and deal with that?

Ben Hunt:

The big thing we learned up at Birchip, especially with those boys that are growing three-ton barley crops in seven inches, in real desert-like conditions. Every scrap of water that hits the deck, you make sure it goes into that profile, and you make sure it goes into next year's crop. The building block for this game is nitrogen, NPKS, and H2O. You've got to make sure as much of that goes into your product as you can.

Ben Hunt:

And that's what we learned. We got a lot more ruthlessly efficient. We started going up there in the '14, '15 drought. We learned a fair bit about Vetch fallow and summer spraying. And that's two of the things we bought home here. We don't have the sandy soils like they do up there, but we've got very heavy black soils, and very heavy reds down here, which we can lock up water down here.

Ben Hunt:

We were trying to grow five average crops in a rotation, so we decided to grow four belta's and lock up the water in at least one of those years. And then that blew out into our current system, so that's five years. It's a seven-year rotation, and that's five years of cropping, three years pasture. We learnt how to go out of the cropping cycle, by running interrow sowing, clover and barley. So we can graze that, and set up the clover for the pasture phase and get a crop off it at the same time.

Ben Hunt:

Then we really tightened up the length of our pasture phase too. We use a lot of crop competition ideas in the pasture phase. We build up a lot of organic end, and we build up a lot of organic matter in the soils over that two year pasture break. We go in pretty ruthlessly in the spring, in that third year of pasture and set it all up for canola. In the first year of the rotation, we go into our cropping phase with about 150, 200 kilos of nitrogen in the soil. We've lifted our organic levels up from about 1, 1.1 to 1.6 -1.8, sometimes two. So it sort of gives us a more robust, flexible soil, a lot more water holding capacity. It really helps us bring home those crops, even if the season does go against us.

Drew Radford:

You described the soil differential from where you are compared to a lot of those guys up in Birchip. What's the rainfall differential?

Ben Hunt:

We're cropping between 350 and 450 most years, millimeters of rain. And those boys are on seven inches. They're between seven and 10. It's a big difference. It'd have has to be 150, 200 mm difference every season.

Drew Radford:

The science is out there, where you can look at other areas in Australia and go, well, potentially our climate could be a bit more like what they're experiencing, a hundred K's North from here, in 40 years time. You guys were early off the mark there, and went and did that yourselves. What inspired you and your Dad to do that?

Ben Hunt:

Just got sick of being smashed around in droughts, and figured there was a better way. So we just went out looking for people smarter than us, and get off the home patch. And go out and start talking to people up in The Mallee.

Drew Radford:

And what do you think farmers need to start doing now to be prepared for a more variable climate?

Ben Hunt:

The big one for us was learning how to adapt to the changes in the climate, which have happened over the last 20 years. And I think if you're still successful in this game, you're still in front, by adopting the technologies, doing your minimum tillage, getting your summer spraying right, setting up healthy soils. I think healthy soils are the number one key to that. If you've got healthy, robust fertile soils, you're still going to grow good crops. If you've got access to the new varieties to deal with the conditions, and you're across what varieties do well in your conditions. We were out-yielding by about 50% what we were doing when I first came home, in the late 90's by 50%. We used to work on 18-20 inch rainfall, was very common back then with a big long spring.

Ben Hunt:

We can do that now with 13-15 inch rainfall, and spring that cuts off on us in middle of October sometimes. I guess when you look back at some of the stuff we do different, we used to be finished sowing, maybe the middle of July, when I first came home. Now we're worried if we're still going in June. Our sowing windows moved about six weeks forward. I think we're a lot more aware of the risks associated with early sowing, and time of sowing. Shout out to James Hunt. He used to present at Birchip a fair bit.

Ben Hunt:

He'd talk extensively about how you've got to work out when you want your crop flowering, talking about wheat specifically there, when that frost risk minimized, and when that heat minimizes as well. So you set your sowing date to fall in that least amount of risk in those windows there. That's the type of information we've used, and how we've adapted to the new norm, I suppose you could call it. If you're still doing it, like we were back in the 80's, honestly, well you'd still get a crop, but it wouldn't be as good as what we're doing now.

Drew Radford:

The approach of the Hunt family, to compare their farm with a warmer and dryer location, was arguably ahead of it's time. Today, it can be done via software. The term used for this, is climate analogs and the person we're off to visit to find out more about them, and how they can be used, is climate specialist with Agriculture Victoria, Graeme Anderson.

Graeme Anderson:

Essentially it is about analogy. We hear a lot about the climate change projections, which are done as future climates become warmer, and climates zones shift across Australia. I guess one thing of trying to work out when a farmer hears that, "Oh, well the future might be one, two or three degrees warmer than it is today. One degree warmer doesn't sound much for most farmers, but if you look at a place that's one degree warmer, for every day of the year, for most farmers in Victoria, you'd have to travel a hundred kilometers to your North, to find somewhere that's currently farming, where it's currently one degree warmer. So there's a gradation of climate zones. That analogy is that if you want to get a sense of what it's like to farm in a place that's one degree warmer, then there's people already farming in places that are one degree warmer. So what are they doing? That's where the climate analog, or climate analogy comes from.

Drew Radford:

There are some great tools to assist with this. I've actually gone online and had a bit of a play. Where you can go, "Okay, where are these locations that are currently one degree warmer than me, and also potentially 20% or 10% less rainfall. Where's all this coming from, these tools and how do you access them?"

Graeme Anderson:

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have done some great work. I guess the climate change in Australia, if you plug that into a search engine on the website, you'll get the sort of national climate projections. In amongst that there's some useful tools. One of them is the Analog Explorer tool, where anyone can go and just look at your location, and then plug in a few bits in the tool. It'll give you some other regions, which are currently experiencing climates that might be one, two or three degrees warmer in future.

Drew Radford:

So how can farmers use this to help them with their business planning?

Graeme Anderson:

One of the key things is that there's a large range of climate zones across Australia, and there are successful farm businesses, that operate in all climates. So climate doesn't determine whether you're having a successful time in agriculture, but what's really important is that there are different things, and different systems that farms set up to manage with their climate, and how their seasons flux and wane. Victoria, as you head further North, it gets warmer and drier. And I think farmers have always done this a bit. Farmers learn a lot from what's going on in other regions and how successful farmers make it work. As we talk about looking at how do farmers have to consider climate change, we know that as you head North, it gets a bit warmer, gets a bit drier on average, there's a bigger summer to deal with. But also, we know it still rains there, and can occasionally get quite wet.

Graeme Anderson:

There's a lot that the farmers do, to manage that change in that seasonality. It's interesting that often in the higher rainfall zones of farmers down South, they consider that they've got a bigger buffer, due to climate change. But often, sometimes there's greater vulnerability in higher rainfall zones, because if you live in a place where it always rains, and you always have good Autumn breaks and things, then you can get used to that. When the climate then doesn't do what it's supposed to, then suddenly you've got a lot of pressure on your system. It's very easy to be overstocked, and get caught short. That dealing with that bigger variability is something that, when you head further North, there's farmers that have found ways to manage that. And how do they deal with it, how do they set their farm up to make them most of the good years, when there's plenty of rainfall around, and there's plenty of production. And how did he convert that into business opportunities. Also, then when you're having tougher seasons, what do they do that actually helps manage and get through those drier times?

Drew Radford:

Graeme, you spent the bulk of your career speaking to farmers along the way, what are they telling you about how they view climate analogs?

Graeme Anderson:

That's probably one of the important things about just seeing how others set up their farms. I know, some farmers have said when they talk to discussion groups that are further North, they're still in the same business of trying to grow good crops, or grow good pastures, and good milk production. But the seasonality of how they do it is a bit different. So there might be farmers further North dealing with a bigger Summer, a bit of a compressed Winter growing season. So they're doing different things to try and maximize how they make the most of that Winter, Spring and production. And then get through what can be a bit of a longer Summer. Or what happens if you have a later Autumn break.

Graeme Anderson:

So it's maximizing how do you make the most of things when the conditions are right. And what we've seen whenever farmers hang around together, they're always interested at looking at, how do you make that work? And so what sort of feed, or fodder system, or water infrastructure system. Or the balance of livestock, and what you have is core breeding flock versus trade. All of those things you see in other farm systems that people are doing, which enables them to deal with that sort of boom and bust cycle of increasing seasonal variability.

Drew Radford:

Graeme, there's a lot of information out there. Where can primary producers go to find out more?

Graeme Anderson:

There's the Climate Change in Australia website. That's just one word. You can go and find their projections tool and Analog Explorer there. Also, Agriculture Victoria's climate and weather website. We've got some pre-prepared climate analogs for a few towns across Victoria, which can give you a bit of an idea of potential future climates, and what we'll need to be adapting to. So people are welcome to go and use that. I guess just in closing Drew, there's a lot of successful tricks that farmers use, to manage changing variability. And we've got lots of things on our side, such as good research, and good genetics, and good technologies that are coming through. But also, things like good farm infrastructure to manage water, store more water when it's about. And improve fodder systems for years when we've got plenty, to help us for the years when things are a bit skinny.

Graeme Anderson:

Also, the increasing importance of business management is really important, because I think that fluctuation of the financial part of it is such a key skillset now for farming. Also, we see great stuff done where farmers have all been doing stuff around farm planning, and looking after the landscape. Certainly trying to minimize the impact of those big dry years, or the big wet years, to make sure they don't have a long lasting impacts on your farm. So farm planning is more important than ever. And the other thing is, just making sure you're well networked, and see farmers that are really well set up with good advice, and good networks, and people around them. And of course, good podcasts to follow,

Drew.

Drew Radford:

I'll take that as a win there Graeme. Well and truly. Graeme Anderson, climate specialist with Agriculture Victoria, thank you for climbing on board and joining us for this virtual climate bus tour.

Graeme Anderson:

Yeah. Thanks heaps Drew.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to AgVic Talk. For more episodes in this series, find us, and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment, or rating. And share this series with your friends and family. All information is accurate at the time of release.

Contact Agriculture Victoria, or your consultant before making any changes on farm.

This podcast was developed by Agriculture Victoria authorized by the Victorian Government Melbourne.

Hello and welcome.

Graeme Anderson here, Climate Specialist at Agriculture Victoria.

I am very excited to present to you season three of the AgVic Talk podcast, the Virtual Climate Bus Tour. Taking you to visit farmers and advisors who are producing solutions for their regions and businesses in a variable and changing climate.

Victoria’s farmers know all about seasonal variability, however our agriculture productivity is being challenged by climate change. The state’s average temperatures and the frequency of extreme hot days are increasing, while seasonal rainfall patterns are changing and many are noticing an increase in variable or extreme weather.

However successful agriculture occurs across many climate zones, and in this series we will hear from farmers looking to other districts for approaches that can work successfully in warmer, drier or more variable conditions, and how their farm systems can be adapted with solutions such as stock containment, water, fodder & infrastructure innovations that have helped manage more extreme weather and seasons – making the most of the good years and limiting risks in the tough ones.

Doesn’t matter where you live or what you farm, there will be something in this season for you.

For more episodes, find us and follow wherever you get your podcasts. We would love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment or rating and share this series with your friends and family.