When Jodie and Jeff Jones started cropping on SA’s Eyre Peninsula in the late 1990s, money was tight, bank interest rates were high, and drought was frequent. Machinery was borrowed from family or bought second-hand.

Today, on-farm operations are starkly different. Son Brayden recently applied his mechanical ingenuity to build a drone to map the property for weeds.

As Jodie and Jeff prepare for succession, they say the changes in technology reflect changes in farming practices and the new thinking that comes with succession.

In the next five years, the Joneses plan to transfer the 3000-hectare cropping and sheep business to Brayden and their daughter Mikaela, who both have fresh ideas on how to run the enterprise.

History

When Jodie and Jeff started, one of their first purchases was a Horward 2140 combine (windrow) with a six-metre comb and a Shearer bar. It had three rows of harrows and an air-seeder box.

“Brayden’s risk appetite is less conservative than ours. Hehas embraced new technology. Sometimes Jeff and I are not sure what button to push, which results in a few ‘choice’ words and a speed dial to Brayden.

Jodie Jones. Photo: Bec Smart Photography

The removal of harrows and replacement with press wheels and knife points allowed them to switch to direct drilling into crop residue, mirroring industry changes at the time to improve water use efficiency.

The need to conserve soil moisture remains very relevant – and one of their more recent additions has been a Seed Terminator, which helps their weed control program.

“We’re now able to crush the weed seeds, which adds another element to our weed control, and hopefully we aren’t so reliant on chemicals,” Jodie says.

“We’re conserving moisture year-on-year by keeping ground cover from the previous harvest and spraying for summer weeds.”

Jodie says Brayden now leads the cropping program with new thinking on technology.

“We’ve gone from having to manually drive to pushing a button here and there, and letting the tractor do its thing. It was very unnerving the first few times the tractor was on auto-steer while sowing the boundary.”

Weed scouting

Brayden has also turned his hand to drone building. He returned to the farm after completing a mechanics apprenticeship in 2020 and spending time working on other farms.

Jodie says a drone-mapping trial on a small paddock worked well. “We put that information into our sprayer to measure if the data would make a comparable difference to our summer spraying program,” Jodie says. It did. “We only needed to spray 0.8ha of a total 10.8ha.”

The family has estimated the cost of an upgraded drone will be returned in two years, with markedly less money spent on summer sprays and less time spent spraying weeds.

Jodie says there are many changes that have occurred since she and Jeff started out, and she is positive about the industry’s future.

I do think the industry as a whole is attracting more young people, because there is so much to offer them, and it is both a business and a lifestyle.