The UK squeeze

Having left France without a visit to Paris on our honeymoon (oops!!), we flew to Edinburgh on Friday (the 21st -  3 long weeks ago) for a weekend of sightseeing. For those who haven't been before, Edinburgh is a beautiful city full of history and fantastic old buildings. It is split into the old town and the new town, built in the 1700's, with torture and hangings the most popular form of family entertainment in years of old. 

This is the view of George Heriots school (one of Scotland's most prestigious schools - and Zom is the IT director!!) from Greyfriars cemetery next door - both venues inspiration for JK Rowling and a series of books she wrote! 

View Of Edinburgh Castle

While we we there, we also caught up with two friends from uni days (University of New England), Zom (Adrian Semmler) with his wife Gillian and daughter Georgian, and Nudge (Grant Jones) and daughter Olivia for lunch at their local pub, reported to have had a licensed premises operating on the site since 900. Yes, that's 900, not 1900, making it the oldest pub in Scotland if not the UK. And to boot it has its own skittles (bowling) alley.

Zom, Tracey, Gillian, Olivia and Georgina (sorry Nudge, you didn't fit in) in Scotland's oldest pub.

Made our way on Sunday afternoon to stay at with Ross and Caroline Millar and there kids Finlay and Sophie on their farm just out of Dundee. Caroline is a 2013 Nuffield scholar too and runs The Hideaway Experience, three 5 star self catering apartments on the farm that are superb with a great view of the valley below. We were lucky enough to get a night in The Honeymooners, a treat that was thoroughly enjoyed, especially the hot tub and a starlight sky on Sunday night, only after I had helped Ross check the ewes that had just started lambing. Monday we had a look around the farm and did a drive down the coast road to St. Andrews (just another golf club, right?), before dinner at the local pub next to Glamis Castle. 

The Honeymooners cabin and The Hideaway Experience - we could have hidden there all week! 

Helping Ross check the ewes!

The future Mayoress of Dundee - although she might not have time to fit it in. 

The problem with the UK is that there are two many scholars for the size of the country, you literally can't drive more than a hour and not have passed someone, and that's just from my year of 2013. Unfortunately, we had to put our blinkers on and head south on Tuesday and got to visit Jake Freestone, near Tewkesbury, Hampshire, another 2013 scholar, as are the two other farmers we visited the next day - get to them soon. It rained most of the way to give us the sort of weather we expected to get but haven't had so far.

Jake is the farm manager for Overbury Estate, privately owned by the same family since the early 1700's. The farm consists of 2000ha (5000acres) of land, but did I mention the Estate also owns the village of Overbury and about 60% of the neighbouring village - now that's diversification. The Estate has a historic site on the top of the hill of the estate (946'/300m high) dating back over 2000 years where huge banks have been dug creating moats in front of them to protect the stone buildings and their inhabitants from invading neighbours. The sheer cliffs on the other two sides were the natural barriers to invasion. 

 Bank and moat fortifications built 2000 years ago

Jake is Mr Organised, managing the 6 staff with 1200 ewes and the cropping program in between his social media commitments of blogging, tweeting and facebooking. I don't know how he keeps up. Jake has taken a liking to no till (currently using a contractor with a Cross Slot) and cover cropping, where the cover crop is grazed and then sprayed out before a spring seeding. Cover crop mixtures used in the last couple of years, based mainly on forage turnips, fodder rape, forage rye, oats and phacelia. One of the problems he has in getting enough growth out of the turnips when seeded after harvest in August, so has used forage rye this year with more feed available. The cost advantage of the no till is about a third the cost of establishment of conventional seeding, so Jake is expecting to increase the area to no till. 

One of Jake's cover crops - wheat seeded into right half.

Jake in OSR/canola with unexpected cover crop - a result of Jake's absence last spring 

at the Nuffield conference in Canada.

We finally had a decent meal in Europe (only joking to everyone who has fed us) - roast lamb and vegetables with mint sauce - with a potato bake delivered by Michelle, the Estate Manager, on her horse - now that's service!! I got to do another night check on lambing ewes - lucky all was good. Once they get into the peak of lambing, a uni student will do the night shift to keep an eye on everything, a bit more attention than those who run paddock based systems would give. 

Our final day of visiting farms saw us visit the Andrew and Jenni Janaway, just out of Winchester, Hampshire (1 hour south west of London) and Tom and Sarah Sewell, just out Maidstone, Kent (1 hour south east of London).

Andrew, with his 2 brothers and parents, run what can only be described as a truly diversified farm, but its not all about farming. Their main enterprise is potatoes, all 800ha of them, spread across 2 properties with seed potatoes grown on a property in Scotland not farm from Ross and Caroline, where they also run beef cattle. Winter and spring crops are grown in rotation with the potatoes on a minimum tillage system. 

Andrew and his new venture - just something to keep the grey matter ticking.

As it seems to be common on some UK farms, if you have a spare shed and can't fully utilise it, it gets rented to some one who can and will pay rent. So Andrew has business' including an engineering works, fertiliser spreader contractor, skip hire company, joinery, chemical supplier renting sheds on the farm. The pick of the tenants is Riverford Organics who grow, pack and deliver fruit and vegetables (and some meat) to local consumers as part of a national ordering and distribution system. The arrangement has led to Andrew renting a 250 acre farm for organic potato production to supply Riverford, while establishing a 10 000 hen free range organic operation, with Riverford taking all egg sizes - a suppliers dream. 

Andrew's organic chicken sheds that towed between paddocks every 12 months - built on skids.

Tom and Sarah with Toms parents run a cropping and contracting business based on winter and spring seeded crops on land they own, rent and sharefarm. With land pushing £10 000/acre (urban demand and intensive agricultural production in tunnels (berries)) and land able to be rented for £125/acre, renting is a good option. Tom has been no till seeding for a couple of years with a tined drill, having being doing min till since 1991 and is just abut to take delivery of a Cross Slot seeder on 9"/22.5cm spacing, which is going against the norm for the majority European farmers on 6"/150mm spacing. 

Tracey, Sarah and Tom

Tom's rotation based on wheat, OSR/canola and faba beans is the same as mine, while he has just started using cover crops (oats, phacelia, fodder radish and mustard) between his winter canola and winter wheat and the winter wheat and spring beans. For the past 17 years all the straw has been chopped and spread at harvest, with no bagged P or K fertiliser haven't been applied in that time, but he uses liquid phosphite with lots of trace elements. The system is working because fertility levels are either holding or going up and the worm count is around 1200/sq. m.  Tom is dedicated to no till seeding, a rarity in that part of the world, so it will be interesting to see what the neighbours think looking over the fence. 

Tom's no till canola on a wet English day! 

Tom has built two grain sheds with in floor aeration (3500T capacity) while being a member

of a local grain marketing co op that allows direct delivery of grain or it is picked up ex farm, 

sometimes only hours after it has been harvested and loaded into the shed. 

Perhaps I need to get a bit more professional. 

We finished off the trip with two nights at the Farmers Club in London, just around the corner from Scotland Yard and a stones throw from the Thames. The club was formed in 1842 as a place for farmers to visit to share their experiences in new technologies and management practices of the day - farmers have always been prepared to help each other out, something that is quite unique to agriculture even though we are competitors in the market to each other. 

Arriving after dark on the first night, we had been well advised by Andrew Janaway to visit one of his many haunts, Gordon's wine bar, the oldest wine bar in London, with not a beer or cocktail in sight. 

We spent our last day wandering the streets of London, had lunch at great little deli, Ottolenghi (some of the tastiest salads we've ever had) but the last thing we got to do on our trip was to head to a meeting on regenerative agriculture (http://www.breakthroughcapitalism.com/regenerative-agriculture.html) It had a world class line up of speakers including Dwayne Beck (US), Ademir Calegari (Argentina), Frederic Thomas (France), Daniella Ibarra-Howell (US), Odette Menard (Canada) and our own No Till Bill, Bill Crabtree from Western Australia. I was on Bill's no till tour to the US and Canada in 2004 (where I met Dwayne Beck and got a taste for covers crops) and I think I was the last person Bill expected to see at the meeting- great to see him after all these years. 

I'm not big on taking photos of what I eat, but if you ever get to London, you've got to try Ottolenghi.

What an impressive line up!

Had dinner before the meeting with Tom Sewell and a couple of his mates involved with cover crops and no till, Guy Eckley and Andy Howard, and an Aussie working in soils and crop nutrition in Norfolk, Danny Sherlock (thanks for dinner Danny!)

One of the quotes I took away was from Daniella, "management of complexity yields results". This to me is what what going through a Nuffield Scholarship is all about - looking beyond the status quo and realising that the variables encountered every day in agriculture can be harnessed in ways not previously considered, but it takes planning and effort to see it through to the final result.

We flew home the next day via Abu Dhabi and as much its great to be travelling, its also good to get home. It was a whirlwind three weeks, given we drove nearly 4000km through 6 countries. A huge thanks to all those that had us visit and/or hosted us for a night or two - it was great that we only spent a week in hotels. We look forward to repaying the hospitality some time in the future. 

The next (and final) leg of my travels is to South America, Canada and the US in June and July. All that has to be done between now and them is get the crop In the ground and the house renovation kick started again. 

Until then, that's all for now! 

Belgium and France

Oops, forget we spent our last day in Germany in Cologne. Didn't leave Ulrich's until 3pm and got in at 8pm without a hotel booked, but stumbled on one near the Rhine and city centre - more luck than management. Had dinner in the hotel bar and the guys next to us where doing tequila slammers but with orange and cinnamon with Tequila Gold - new one to us. Had a look around the city the next day - the cathedral was amazing, think the tallest I have seen. Tracey loved all the shoe shops but couldn't find a pair to fit!

Unfortunately we had to leave Cologne by mid afternoon as we wanted to get to the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony at Ypres in Belgium, held every night at 8pm since the memorial was opened after WW1. I attended the ceremony last July on the Nuffield Global Focus trip, but hadn't realised at the time that my great uncle and four of his cousins had died there and were on the wall, so I was pleased to be back. 

The Last Post Ceremnony

We went thought the Flanders museum the next morning and visited a few of the historical sites around the town before heading for the home of Antoine Bertin and his parents in Normandy, France, not far from Giverny where Monet's garden is. 

I was hoping to meet up with Peter Jan in the Netherlands about covers crops and Thierry Tetu in France to look at his research on nitrogen fertiliser efficiency, but both were unavailable so will follow up when I get home. 

Arrived at Antoine's with only a day of seeding left to finish their spring program, which was lucky for Antoine as we weren't the only visitors. Susan and Kate Hodge from near Spokane in Washington State, USA had dropped in for a few days. Susan works for the Randy and Lisa Emtmann near Spokane, who we have met through Cross Slot conferences and their son Greg stayed with us a couple of years ago.

If anyone is wondering what these Cross Slot conferences are all about, once a year owners are invited to attend a conference/bus trip where we go to a country where the seeders are being used and visit them and other farmers in the region that are pushing the boundaries in whatever agricultural enterprise they are involved in. I try and go each year as I see it as a great chance to look outside the farm boundary and see at what's happening in the world of agriculture - it's my annual week of professional development! 

Antoine owns a Cross Slot with his friend Gregoir and he is currently doing 60ha of no till out of the 300ha of crops he grows, but is aiming to increase the area. He is using cover crops wherever he can based on oats, tillage radish, phacelia, field peas, faba beans and Niger and the mix is dependent on the following crop. His rotation includes wheat, barley, faba beans, field peas, canola, sugar beet and linen (same family as linseed/flax), with most autumn/fall sown. The region is the main linen producing area in the world. 

Antoine with Tracey, Susan and Kate - barley sown into cover crop

Good root growth from the cover crop

It was great to see Antoine and his parents, as we spent a weekend with them in 2012 and wished we could have stayed longer then, as on this trip. Antoine took a liking to meat pies when he worked in Australia and New Zealand, and wanted me to cook him one on our last visit. So the girls and I took over the kitchen and did a combined Aussie/Kiwi/Yankee meal of meat pie and mashed potatoes/salad with chocolate blondies and bread pudding for dessert. I don't think if Madame Bertin ever thought her kitchen would be the same! Your turn now Antoine with the pie making. 

Nice pie Antoine! 

Germany

We left sunny Switzerland and headed north into southern Germany where we met Hermann Schumacher, who was involved in research into the CULTAN system with the Dr Karl Sommer, the man who developed the system. CULTAN, Controlled Uptake Long Term Ammonium Nutrition, is based on using a concentrated band of ammonium nitrogen fertiliser in the soil that is available to plants on as needs basis. In contrast, where nitrates are used to fertilise, the plant doesn't regulate the uptake in the same way which can lead to excessive uptake and growth. 

Anhydrous ammonia drilled in prior to seeding is a classic CULTAN system, but is available in limited areas in Australia. Alternatively, ammonium sulphate could be drilled prior or at seeding, but the logistics of seeding high rates of granule fertiliser (475kg = 100kg N) is a issue. The third option is injection of liquid ammonium fertilisers. Ammonium sulfate dissolved in water is only 8% N, but when mixed with urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), 15% N is achieved. A stainless steel wheel with 12 spokes mounted on a boom sprayer has been developed to inject concentrated amounts of liquid into the ground 5cm deep at 15cm spacings. Units are spaced generally twice the row spacing apart. 

Although high rates need to be applied to achieve a comparable rate of N from urea, only one pass is required, it is not reliant on follow up rainfall and the efficiency uptake of the N is commonly 90%, much greater than the 40-50% used for urea. 

I know one of the biggest complaints I hear from cropping farmers is the amount of N being used on crops, so possibly the CULTAN system has some merit. I am keen to get the 3 CULTAN spoked wheel injectors I have a home up and working to see what happens in the paddock. 

Hermann and his wife Petra were generous hosts in putting us up for the night and giving us a tour of Frieburg and taking us to a great little Italian restaurant off the beaten track with the best Tiramisu. 

Tracey with Petra and Hermann overlooking Frieburg

Having left Frieburg, we headed north to Harsewinkel, home of the Claas family and agricultural machinery company. The factory builds headers/combines and jaguar choppers. We were the only English speaking visitors for the day and we had Willie Schultz, a 50 year veteran of the company and who grew up in a house (still standing) on the grounds of the factory, as our personal tour guide. Willie is almost part of the family having started his apprenticeship with August' son and after he retired in 1997, he has been involved in factory tours ever since. 

From beginnings in a blacksmith shop in 1913, August Claas and his two brothers founded the company that developed a knotter for binders that wouldn't break the paper twine that was in use following WW1 due to a shortage of twine. As Willie described it, the knotter was "the money maker". From there the family controlled company that has always focused on harvesting technologies has grown to a company that had a turnover last year of €3.8 billion (approx $5.7 billion) turnover employing 11 000 people around the world. 

The tour through the factory floor was fascinating - the logistics of keeping the supply of parts up to production (no more than 2 days supply of engines on hand) was impressive. The line can turn off 15 headers per day in a single shift and smoking is allowed in the factory whenever workers want! 

Which toy do I play with today?

From Harsewinkel we back headed eastwards towards Dresden to visit Ulrich and Beate Tink and their son Clemens at Seidewitz and Tomas and Astrid Sanders and their family Johan, Paulina, Sophie, Magdalena, Maria and Karl. We have met both families through Cross Slot conferences in the US and Germany in 2010 and 2012.

 They live 70km apart and there isn't one other no till farmer between them - they are shags on a rock, as are most no till farmers in Europe. Ulrich and Tomas both gave the same reasoning when I questioned then why German farmers aren't looking at no till. It's all about not getting off the tractor! The plough goes out to the field, followed by the cultivator, followed by the seeder, in an attempt to create consistent conditions, whereas no till is a little more dynamic than that and requires more monitoring. 

Ulrich needs both feet to get the shovel into the neighbours conventionally ploughed paddock.

Soil structure is completely different under cover crop and no till system. 

100 v 300kg/ha N applied with CULTAN in the fall/autumn - can you pick the difference?

With Ulrich, Beate and Clemens

Both farms have a wide range of crops sown in rotation including wheat, barley, field peas, faba beans, sugar beet, maize and soybeans, whilst using cover crops in between winter sown and spring sown crops. Cover crop mixes are made up of oats, faba beans, peas, lentils, phacelia, tillage radish, lupins, buckwheat, vetch and rye grass. One of the down sides of their adoption of cover crops has been the introduction of red fescue grass in some of their earlier mixes but which has ended up being a serious weed, especially in lighter soils. 

Ulrich seeds all his crops with his Cross Slot, even in the paddocks following where the sugar beets have been lifted (harvested = dug out out of the ground by a 60t harvester). Tomas has changed his seeding operations and is precision planting his sugar beets, maize, soybeans and canola with a precision seeder after the stubbles have had a Kelly Chain over them twice before seeding, while using his Cross Slot for cereals and legumes. 

Great minds must think alike because both Ulrich and Tomas have adopted the CULTAN system, with Ulrich contacting to local farmers (including Tomas), while Tomas is working on a new design frame for the CULTAN wheel based on a walking beam and a trailing boom. Tomas likes making as much farm machinery as he can - he is a former organ maker turned farmer/agricultural engineer who has made his own CNC machine for cutting steel 50mm thick. He is just trying to work out how to program it to make it work! 

Tomas and his home built CNC machine - picked up the frame at the tip!

Tracey with Astrid and Paulina on a Sunday morning crop inspection - their enthusiasm waned as the rain and wind set in! 

All the family minus Johan

They use a mix of liquid ammonium sulfate and UAN at rates between 500-1000L/ha (75-150kg/ha) although Ulrich has done some strips this year on canola in autumn/fall at 100, 200 and 300kg/ha to see if there is any affect on canola growth and to date their is no visual difference in the plots, which I would expect if we had used urea at be same rates. This is one of the benefits of the CULTAN system - the plant only takes up the N as required, as opposed to nitrate N where excessive early growth would be expected if the same rates were compared. Farmers are restricted to how much N they can apply in the autumn/fall to avoid leaching of nitrates over the winter, but Ulrich has done the rates to let researchers look at how the CULTAN system might differ. Currently they only use the system on wheat because in early spring to much damage is done to the canola, so being able to apply to canola in autumn/fall would be an advantage.

We got to see Ulrich's machine working (18m wide), applying 1000L/ha at 6km/h. 

Welcome to Nuffield 2013

To say I was excited when I was awarded my Nuffield Scholarship in October 2012 is an understatement. I had a few recent scholars encouraging me to apply, and I finally did while in Europe in June 2012 in the middle of a farm tour/holiday. 

I am very proud to be sponsored by The William Buckland Foundation and to have been selected by Nuffield Australia to represent them. 

I am planning to study the role of cover crops in dryland farming systems and what application systems and fertilisers might be available to increase nitrogen efficiency. 

Change is never easy, especially for farmers in a cost driven production system, but unless change is looked for, it will never be found (that's about as philosophical as I will get).

Switzerland - March 2014

Having only been married for 12 days, Tracey and I headed to Europe on Thursday 6th March, 2014. straight off the plane in Zurich on Friday morning at 8am after nearly 30 hours of travel and 3 hours of sleep, we were met by our good friend Wolfgang Sturny, who is on the committee of Swiss No Till and works in soil conservation (Office of Agriculture and Nature) in the Canton of Bern. 

We headed straight to Geneva to meet Nicolas Courtois, an agronomist for AgriGeneve in the region to adopt no till and cover crops and to push the boundaries of how they can be used. Different cover crops mixes have been developed to follow various crops grown but Nicholas had gone a step further. He is working with growing the cover crop with the main season crop in the autumn, so when the cover crop is killed over the winter by the cold temperatures, the crop is left to harvest in the spring. The interesting combination he has grown is a mix of buckwheat, canola and red clover sown in straight after harvest (July), with the buckwheat harvested in late autumn (November), the canola in the summer (July) and the red clover in the autumn (October) the year after the buckwheat. 

Nicholas' general observation has been the higher the percentage of legumes in the cover crop mix, the higher the yield in the following crop. The effect of the cover crop is often seen in the second year crop and this varies between between crops.

Canola in winter killed cover crop

Wolfgang Sturny, local no till farmer Jonathon and Nicholas Courtois

The weekend was spent with Wolfgang and his wife Iris, wonderful hosts who took us to Jung Frau ('The top of Europe' at 3454m) and into the Valais region, the main wine region in Switzerland, where we visited one of the local wine makers and friend of the Sturny's. Their is never time to stop when Iris organises a weekend away - we had a great time eating, drinking and laughing with them. We finally got to meet Reuben and Veroniqhue and it was great to catch up with Cedric again, although we didn't meet his girlfriend - next time. 

Iris, Wolfgang and Tracey at Jungfrau

We also caught up with Hanspeter and Lillian Lauper and his family. Hanspeter is president of Swiss No Till and showed us his new JD seed drill which he has adapted to steering with RTK auto steer. He has set up his corn planter for auto row shut off but wants to convert his seed drill to auto row shut off for seeding all crops, given the small paddocks he works in as a contractor (as small as 1ha). 

Hanspeter and Lillian - take note of the schnapps being poured out of the auger. 

We visited two other researchers involved with cover crops while in Switzerland. 

Bernhard Streit, Professor for Agricultural Mechanization at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, is involved in looking at the establishment of cover crops and like Nicholas, he is interested in seeding the covers crop at the same time as the main crop. With the subsidy system in Switzerland, farmers get paid to use no till seeding, but there is also a payment now being made if they can grow a cover crop/main crop without glyphosate. 

Due to nothing being available on the market for establishing cover crops with a precision planter, Bernhard has purchased his own precision planter (on eBay) so he can look at modifications to achieve this. Bernhard is also working on a project looking at robotic seeding on a small scale. The average Swiss farm size is 20ha, so the cost of owning machinery is uneconomical for may farmers, so the Bernhard is building a tracked machine with 4 openers for full automation of seeding including filling the seed and fertiliser. 

Bernhard also teaches at the university and one of the lessons he does with the students is to show them the difference between ploughing and no till in terms of draft requirements. He literally hooks up enough students to a single mouldboard plough in the paddock until they can operate it (usually about 14) and then does the same with a single no till opener (1-2 students). A very effective way of learning.

The robotic seeding project workhorse

Raphael Charles is based at Agroscope, Nyon and is leading the research into assessing the suitability of different species as cover crops, having originally started with almost 50. The species in his current trial are lentils, peas, white and brown mustard, berseem clover, tillage radish, vetch, Avena strigosa (Brazilian oats), turnip, linseed, buckwheat, phacelia, Niger, sunflower and sorghum. Crops are assessed for traits including  DM production, soil temperature regulation and weed suppression, with a crop sown into the residue to evaluate yield responses. He is 

He also oversees a long term seeding trial (wheat-canola-wheat-maize) in 1969 comparing ploughing, minimum tillage and, since 2008, no till. Fertiliser stratification, where nutrients are concentrated in a narrow band at the depth they are placed at seeding over a long period, has occurred in the minimum tillage and is beginning to occur in the no till plots. 

Brown mustard cover crop with Wolfgang and Raphael

Our last visit in Switzerland was to the Meier family near Olten, having had Lukas stay with us in Australia in 2012 after we met him at a Swiss No Till meeting in June that year with Wolfgang. We arrived at lunchtime with another great Swiss meal of rosti and sausage with the whole family (thanks Rita) - something they do most days except when they are very busy. The family has 20 ha which they crop, but Lukas and his brother Philipp also have a contracting business for seeding (built their own no till seeder) and fertiliser and slurry spreading. They run 70 sows and 8 000 chickens which are grown out under contract to 2.1kg. Miriam (Philipp's wife) taught Tracey how to make the traditional plaited breakfast bread Zopf, while Christian, their father is the craftsman of the family, making some great furniture from their own forest timber. And we couldn't forget little Ben keeping us entertained. 

Lukas, Miriam, Ben, Philipp, Lukas (the farm apprentice) and Tracey

Tracey making Zopf

The nuts and bolts!

I farm at Shepparton with my wife Tracey and parents Neville and Wendy, approximately 2 hours north of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). The farm is 1055ha, comprising what we own and share farm for 3 neighbours. The crop rotation is based on wheat, canola and faba beans with millet having been used opportunistically in the last 5 years as a cover crop/cash crop due to wet summers. 

The cropping program is based on a full stubble retention system using a Cross Slot No Till seeder. A 3m controlled traffic system is used with 9m (seeder, combine/header, lime/gypsum spreader) and 27m (SP sprayer, urea spreader) working widths. All crops are direct headed. 

The soils are predominantly duplex and range from fine sandy clay loams to light clays and the annual rainfall is 500mm/20", with the majority of the rain falling from March to October. Seeding occurs in April/May with harvest in November/December.

I became interested in cover cropping/opportunistic summer cropping after visiting Dwayne Beck in South Dakota in 2004 and seeing the trials with summer crops in a low rainfall environment (350mm/14" from memory) and the trials showed positive crop responses in the following wheat crop after sunflowers and millet compared to the stubble fallow treatment. The lesson I remember from Dwayne was to plan for failure in the rotation - it was better to have something growing in the paddock and have it fail. The adoption of a no till system with full stubble retention 4 years later gave me the opportunity to test the system if the opportunity arose.

A summer crop trial was established on my farm in spring 2009 with University of Melbourne and the National Water Commission looking at the potential for sunflowers, mung beans, white French millet, lab lab and safflower. The crops were seeded into a wheat stubble and with above summer rainfall, all crops were harvested except the lab lab, which had DM cuts taken off it as it is a forage crop.

The millet crop was the standout financially and given we had wet harvests the 2 following years, shirohie millet was sown as a cover crop, but both years the crop was harvested for seed due to the high summer rainfall. As in the trial, the millet crops were the the best ever gross margins and wheat was able to be seeded straight back into the millet for a double crop. 

The cover crop interest has developed as I look at how to increase the diversity in the rotation of 

3 main crops currently grown. With the cover crops/summer crops, the seeding window is opened up from 2 months to potentially 8 months of the year with the various crops we can grow. Although in an area where farmers wouldn't traditionally consider growing summer crops without irrigation, the variability and intensity of out of season rainfall may allow increasing opportunities for seeding. There are many potential benefits from the cover crops, the question is what role they can play in a farming system such as ours. 

As with the cover crops, I have been interested in managing Nitrogen (N) in the farming system. The faba bean part of the rotation obviously plays an important role in N supply for the following 1-2 crops, but as there are four crops until the following faba bean crop, the need for artificial fertiliser is required. urea is the main N fertiliser used and is spread on the crops, according to a N budget for each paddock, just before a rain front to minimise volatilisation losses. The efficiency of urea uptake is only 40-50% in this system, so I am interested in what options there are in terms of application equipment and fertilisers to increase this N efficiency. The CULTAN (Controlled Uptake Long Term Ammonium Nitrogen) system I saw in Germany in 2012 and was impressed with the technique, and so I am interested to see what application it could have for Australian conditions.

The opportunity to undertake travels around the world under the banner of a Nuffield Scholarship is a fantastic opportunity not to be missed. I am always looking at how and why we do the things we do, and I'm sure I will be able to provide some options and answers to these questions.