Hi, I’m Brendon Swaffer, and I farm with my family 35km Northeast of Clermont in Central Queensland.
Our family farm, Bungarra Station, was purchased by my parents in the early 1980s after we relocated to Queensland from South Australia. I’m the fourth or fifth generation in my family to continue the tradition of farming, with my two sons looking to return home and follow in my footsteps.
Bungarra Station consists of 8,500 acres of broadacre cropping, with an additional 2,500 acres leased from a neighbouring property. Our cropping rotation consists of cotton, sorghum, wheat, and chickpeas. It’s challenging to get a rotation going as we don’t usually fallow and are opportunistic farmers, influenced by rainfall.
The main obstacle up here is receiving rain early enough to get a planting opportunity. Typically, we receive rainfall in early December, so it’s a mad rush to obtain seed just before Christmas. We normally receive about 550mm of rainfall annually. Historically, this used to be higher, although in the last 25 years we have averaged 550mm. Thankfully, due to better moisture-capturing practices, we can grow better crops with less moisture.
On farm at present, we are preparing to plant approximately 600ha of wheat and 2,000ha of chickpeas. This year, we are faced with the dilemma of planting our chickpeas back-to-back, which will create issues with disease, specifically Botrytis. Most of our crops are grown on subsoil moisture, so disease isn’t usually an issue for us.
Other than that, we have cotton ready to defoliate in the coming weeks and sorghum to be sprayed out. We typically don’t start harvesting sorghum until June, with January or early February being our preferred planting window for sorghum. We will hopefully finish the winter crop plant in the next 3 weeks and start the summer crop harvest in 5 weeks' time. I think this year’s cotton crop is the best I’ve grown on average. If I can get it off, I’m hoping for 5 bales/ha.
Some of the challenges I’ve noticed are on farm labour shortages. A neighbour recently had two staff leave, and it created a lot of issues for him. I’m going ok at the moment, but it only takes one key staff member to leave to throw a spanner in the works.
From an agronomic perspective, weeds are becoming a big problem. We have purchased a camera sprayer, which has been highly effective, although we are having issues with sweet summer grass becoming resistant to Group A’s and glyphosate-based products.
There are always opportunities on farm, though my wife tells me I tend to see the negatives more often! Having my two sons planning to return home to the farm and seeing the next generation come through is exciting. The way I see it is that I’m just the custodian of our place until my sons come home, the same as my father was for me.
I’ve always thought of farming as not a competition with my neighbours or colleagues, but an opportunity to better myself with what I have available. As a kid, I thought there would be lots of money in grain and that I’d get rich, though I have come to realise it’s a noble occupation feeding the world.