Each year, GroundCover™ follows a group of growers across Australia as they manage their cropping season. In this final instalment, they report on activities before and during harvest

Western Australia

Mitch and Emma Miolini farm with Mitch’s brother Adam, sister-in-law India and parents Robert and Maxine. The Miolini family are fourth-generation farmers at Mt Walker in Western Australia, 40 kilometres east of Narembeen in the central wheatbelt. Their enterprise is a mixed farm, cropping wheat, canola, oats, barley and lupins and running 1500 head of breeding ewes.

We were pretty happy with our harvest. Yields were a bit better than we had thought they would be, and quality was good too.

While rain at the right time helped, our soil amelioration program has been a game changer, with averages across paddocks improving – some by a tonne a hectare.

Harvest results showed that a few years on, the benefits are still there. In one barley paddock, we yielded 3.5t/ha. This compares to 3.6t/ha the first year after the work. It shows the changes are still working. Wheat averaged 2.5t/ha, which was a good result too.

Summer rain will affect our weed management plans. We won’t need to do a lot if it doesn’t rain. Saying that, we want to be more timely with weed applications in 2025. Some paddocks that were sprayed a bit later than others had more ryegrass issues. The problem was resolved with a double knock, but we’re aiming to be more timely this year.

Summer rain will also impact on cropping plans for 2025. If we get summer rain across February, March and some in April, we will plant canola. If not, the program will be mostly barley and wheat, with some lupins, oats and vetch for sheep feed.

We will start carting lime and spreading it in February. And we will continue our soil amelioration journey. We still have more to do. We have also gone back and checked on the paddocks we did five years ago. We didn’t get a huge response from redoing them. So we will leave them for another few years.

I’m still really pleased with the amelioration work and the Plozza plough. Overall, nutrients are more available, and we are getting better water infiltration. Averages have improved across the paddocks.

Plans for 2025 include tweaking our nutrient management. We have maybe been under-fertilising. This will be especially the case after coming out of some good years. We need to give a bit more back. We also want to play around with it a bit and will try a monoammonium phosphate malting blend.

The Miolini’s credit their soil amelioration program with improved yields. Pictured are father Robert and Adam Miolini. Photo: Evan Collis

Victoria

Mitch Henderson, with parents Craig and Pauline, brother Ben, cousin John and their families grow wheat, barley, lentils and oaten hay in Berriwillock, Wilkur and Brim in Victoria’s Mallee. They also rear poultry, using their wheat straw as bedding and then spreading it back onto paddocks as manure in a closed-loop system.

It’s been a strange old year, with only 90 millimetres of growing season rainfall at Berriwillock and 138mm from mid-October through November.

But overall the crops went quite well (with cereals at a Northern Wimmera average of 3t/ha), so it’s reassuring that we have attained these yields with our system, accessing stored moisture in a very low decile year. It gives us some confidence that we’re probably on the right track.

We have a mindset that we are moisture farmers. While we can improve soils and other inputs, moisture is the one thing we can’t add. So we’re heavily focused on summer weed control, and water use efficiency through the growing season to maximise the limited resource.

Given the spring rainfall, summer weed control is now a priority, and we’ll run at least one to two passes on the boomspray to conserve moisture for the 2025 crop.

The downpour also showed how important it is to be adaptable and on the front foot. We hadn’t planned to use contract harvesters, but we had too much crop ready at the same time, so we spent the money, and it paid big dividends because we got 80 to 85 per cent of the crop off before the rain hit.

We got reasonably lucky in that sense but sometimes you make your own luck, and we decided that, even though it was going to be a tight-margin year, the crops were better off in the silo than standing in the field.

On-farm storage with fan-drying capacity that we have been investing in over the years allows us to harvest grain above the normal 12.5 per cent moisture content. It’s been invaluable to have up our sleeve, particularly in a year like 2024. You can make yourself look smart with the right decisions every now and again.

I was also really happy with our new Bilberry green-on-green weed control system. The algorithm for vetch in lentils looks at flowers, leaf shape and plant structure and we sprayed targeted non-residual herbicides at 20 to 22km/h, which is quite fast considering the analysis going on.

I thought we might have been a bit late hitting it (at early pod-set), but there was no vetch in our lentils or seed-set in the paddock and that is big for us. There’s a twofold benefit because our lentils are easier to market, and we are making really good headway in long-term weed control by stopping seed-set.

For 2025, I’ve allocated 75 per cent of our fertiliser and planned the rotations that will be set in concrete in April. We’ll continue with oaten hay as a tactical fourth-year rotation for ryegrass control and to manage risk. We don’t generally chase rainbows – we’ll do what needs to be done – but if you can push boundaries while having a good grasp on the numbers, you’ll make good headway.

Despite it being a “strange old year”, Mitch Henderson says his crops did well. Photo: Brad Collis

South Australia

Lachie Seears farms with his wife Rebecca, children Hugh and Anneliese, and his parents, Peter and Helen, near Lucindale in south-eastern South Australia. Their 6000ha enterprise comprises cropping (wheat, canola and broad beans), 6500 breeding ewes and 1250 breeding cows and heifers (building towards 2000 breeders).

Our staff were encouraged to take some holidays before harvest.

Lachie Seears expects his family’s harvest to continue into January on their property near Lucindale, South Australia. Photo: Adrian Gale

We hoped to have our canola harvested before Christmas. Back then, I could only see us starting on the wheat and beans after Christmas and into January.

Season 2024 was the first time we had grown canola for a decade. To improve efficiency, we debated whether to windrow or direct-head it.

We use two harvesters, one chaser bin and two semitrailer trucks to fill our on-farm storage. The broad beans are cleaned before sale. Generally, I run the bean cleaner.

By 30 November, we had recorded 370mm of rainfall for 2024, about 60 per cent of an average year. Consequently, we have not seen any waterlogging.

The crops amazed me with their performance on the little rain we had compared with our average.

Before harvest, we hoped for three to 4t/ha of canola, seven to 8t/ha of wheat, and 3.5t/ha of broad beans. A mild spring and minimal days over 30°C slowed crop ripening, giving us the confidence to achieve these yields.

With more rainfall, the soft spring finish could have pushed yields up to 10t/ha.

Our long-season winter wheat tillered well despite a delayed start due to a lack of rainfall. Although conditions were dry, we ran a complete fungicide program because of a full-crop canopy. Fortunately, we escaped most of the frost damage.

The dry spring lowered broad bean disease pressure. However, we sprayed twice to control heliothis, whereas we usually only spray once.

While there was likely to be more feed grain available, the bulk was located much further from the market, so we were hoping for favourable grain prices.

After harvest, we will look back and learn some lessons about the delayed seasonal start and the impacts of waterlogging on our crops.

New South Wales

Andrew Freeth, his parents David and Sue, and his brother Marc grow wheat, canola, chickpeas and faba beans, run 2200 Merino ewes and trade cattle near Collie and Trangie in central New South Wales.

Our harvest started with faba beans on 23 October. The faba beans yielded 2.2t of FAB1-quality grain per hectare, equalling expectations. Frost and a dry September took the top end from our yields.

Typically, we desiccate our pulse crops, but opted not to last year. Our faba beans were sprayed aerially, and we wanted to avoid putting a set of tracks through with the ground rig and knocking the crop over. We allowed the chickpeas to ripen naturally because there were greener areas in paddocks with higher yield potential, and we wanted to maximise yield.

Our harvest contractor direct-headed the faba beans before picking up the canola. We then moved on to wheat, which was a smaller portion of our cropping area this year, before finishing on chickpeas.

The harvest flowed well. We only had to wait for some chickpeas to ripen at the end, and we had all the crops harvested before the late November rain.

We briefly stored the faba beans in a shed on-farm before out-loading in December and January. There was excellent biomass in the faba bean crops. We anticipate good nitrogen fixation for our 2025 program.

Our frosted canola yielded just less than 2t/ha, which was a little disappointing and certainly showed evidence of frost. The oil averaged close to 42 per cent, which was pleasing. We were satisfied with the overall canola result as the price lifted significantly from planting to harvest.

Our Collie country had some disappointing wheat, which yielded about 2t/ha of high-protein screenings. Our Collie wheat was about 60 per cent frosted.

Our Trangie wheat, which had the same nutrition but less rainfall on soils with less stored fallow moisture, averaged more than 4t/ha of H2 quality grain with less than two per cent screenings.

We yielded more than 2t/ha of number one quality chickpeas, which was pleasing and above expectations, with limited frost and cold weather impact evident.

We sold 1.5t/ha before harvest to two local receival points to manage harvest logistics and timing risk. The deadline for potential Indian chickpea import tariffs led to a nervous time for growers and the trade. Despite some long truck turnaround times as growers in NSW and Queensland sent large volumes of peas to market in a tight window, we filled our chickpea contracts. This was due to good weather, planning and the work of local packers and bulk handlers using rail to send out peas during harvest to free up receival capacity.

We started our summer weed management in early December after receiving heavy rainfall (50 to 130mm) from 29 November to 1 December.

Andrew Freeth says harvest flowed well and was done before late November rain. Photo: Kirsty Fisher

Queensland

Based at Capella, north of Emerald in Central Queensland, Tim Gersbach farms 4000ha with his wife Courtney, their two young children, and his parents Garry and Cathy. They crop wheat, chickpeas and, occasionally, mungbeans. Sorghum is the dominant summer crop.

We had a great harvest, with chickpeas really responding to the 2024 season.

Tim Gersbach says 2024’s harvest was great with chickpeas responding well to the season. Photo: Rowdy Travis

We planted 1700ha of chickpeas last year (2024) and averaged about 3.3t/ha, which was unbelievable.

They seemed to respond well to how the rain fell. We had two good in-crop falls – of 75mm and 110mm – and then sunny days. It was perfect for them.

Harvesting the chickpeas and wheat was a major job, but we were prepared. We had spent time on pre-harvest maintenance and had also traded in our oldest model for a new, larger capacity John Deere 2024 S770 model. We had some long days, but everything graded well and we’re happy.

We have done some paddock works across all of our winter country, spreading 110kg/ha of urea ahead of some rain fronts in late November. Our nutrient management goal continues to be ‘be prepared’. So, when we see there is rain ahead, we get urea delivered and on the paddocks to take advantage of the rain soaking it in.

Although some people don’t fertilise after chickpeas, we’ve been listening to QDPI’s Doug Sands and our agronomist. Both have said not to rely on chickpeas too much for nitrogen. So we’ve still fertilised after them. If they do leave some nitrogen, then that is a bonus. I also think that spreading urea ahead of chickpeas worked well.

Summer weed control means we are getting to know our new John Deere See & Spray^™ and are using that on what will potentially be sorghum country. It is a self-propelled rig and goes faster than our existing optical sprayer. It is very operator friendly.

We are still deciding on whether to plant sorghum. If we get a full profile, it is the only option for us – and we’re never guaranteed a good winter rain, so you have to go for it when you can. We might also plant some mungbeans.

That said, we are prepared for a summer plant. With Precision Seeding Solutions we have upgraded to air-operated trash wipers – the Precision Planting Clean Sweep system – on our John Deere planter. They help cut through stubble when you use a disc-seeding system. We will be able to adjust the wipers from the cab. It will enhance our planter and our operation. We have also fitted parallel arms on the planter.

In 2025, if we have the moisture, we would like to plant more wheat – 50 per cent to chickpeas and 50 per cent to wheat. It is not something we could do in 2024.