I’m Brendan Barrows, and I am a third-generation farmer, currently cropping around 2,200ha around Borden in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. The first parcel was war service land, which my grandfather farmed, and over the years our family has progressively purchased other land, gradually increasing our holdings in the area.
I currently operate our farm with my wife, Melinda and a workman. We have two children: my daughter Ruby has started university, and my son Boston is finishing year 12, so the next few years will determine whether anyone returns to the farm.
In terms of cropping, we have planted a mix of wheat, barley, canola, lupins and oats and over the past few years we have not changed our varieties or rotations too much. This year, we are considering a different canola variety, but we don’t change too much unless we come across something that looks like a good opportunity.
Across our farming operations, we face the challenge of dealing with a range of soil types. Essentially, we have a bit of everything, ranging from sand to river loams to heavy red dirt to a bit of clay. With our soils I am currently in the process of claying country. Last year we did 40ha and I am just waiting for a new claying machine to arrive, so we can do further deep offset disc work to fix those sandy and non-wetting soil types.
The wash-up from our past season was good, and, like most of Western Australia, we generally achieved solid yields across our crops. There was not much protein in the wheat, but most of the barley went to malting, which was pleasing.
At the moment, we are catching up on some stock work, crutching sheep, dealing with calving cattle, and a bit of fencing. On the cropping side, we have completed our paddock programs, established budgets, and made all the normal preparations, and have settled back to wait for some rain. We missed out on the recent rain, and we could certainly do with some good opening rain to fill the dams and run some water to get things started.
Last year we missed the rain, and when you combine dry seeding – which is not normal practice in this area – with non-wetting soils, you can run into trouble with poor germination. To get around this, I did some offset disc work last year on a paddock, turned it over, and the germination was excellent, although it stirred up some weeds. Given the results we are going to do another block of offset disc work to turn over the soil and hopefully produce a good seedbed for the coming crop.
We have also just finished the soil testing program which highlighted that the PH levels across the paddocks were not too bad. There were a few lower levels that we may correct with a bit of lime if we get the time, but our plan is to continue the claying process to fix up some of the lighter soils.
The future is certainly interesting. Our yields are improving, and while we are rain-dependent, technologies are certainly improving. One thing I have noticed is that there is an increasing body of knowledge out there, and this overload of information can create anxiety for some people around whether they are doing the right thing. And while we now know what we could be doing, input costs, along with new practices, all come at a cost. When prices are down, it’s hard to reinvest in improvements. It is a real balancing act, and if we hadn’t got those increased yields, we could have gone backwards based on current prices.
Despite all the problems and issues we face as farmers, I enjoy the day-to-day challenges. As an industry, we are recognised as being clean and green and for the quality of our products, and I think we can rightfully celebrate being up there among the best in the world at what we do.