CTF Australia Nov 30, 2010

Our first day visiting farms and one manufacturer was very interesting. We headed out to the Darling Downs area near Darby. The area is about 750,000 ha and for the most part very level with slight slopes. Its been raining here a lot which has affected crops quality. The area has low adoption of direct seeding likely due to prosperous farms and no pressing need to change.

We visited with Russell Taylor a 3 meter (120 inch) CTF farmer. He has been developing his system over 13 years and now farms 3000 acres., growing wheat, sorghum, corn, chickpeas and cotton. He has grey cracking soils and some salinity at 90 cm. Continuous cropping, CTF and no till have helped drive the salinity deeper in the profile. Some of his comments:

• Develop the system around his combine (header)  and has a 9 m header and equipment to match on a 3:1 ratio
• His biggest challenge in CTF is harvest. The chaser (grain cart) had to go off the tramline to load until he added extensions. He also could not fill the cart full because of his auger system. In addition going off the tramline caused soil damage. Most of those problems have now been fixed.
• CTF has improved his soil water storage and infiltration significantly.
• Tramline repair is a necessary, especially following heavy rains.
• He has been moving openers to avoid seeding on top of the last crop row.
• Looking to increase the tire width on his JD SP sprayer
•  Some benefit he saw as he switched to CTF include operator efficiencies and crop benefits by the second year
• Tim Neale noted that compaction could cause yield issues for up to five years after first occurring.
• Russell had some good examples of front wheel assist axle extensions.

We also took a look at Wade Bidstrup's 4 m system. He uses a Cat Challenger. They were banding urea on cotton. Four meter systems are fairly rare.

Our third farm stop was at Rod Taylor, one of the first 3 m CTF farmers in Australia and a board member of GRDC. He had deep heavy clay soils. His header width drove his adoption process. As with Russell stored soil water is critical for the success of their winter crops so CTF and no till have helped. Rob could not make no till work in his clay soils until he went to CTF.

He suggested that we don't need to buy all new equipment but can work to adapt current equipment and develop the system as we are able.

We were treated to lunch at the Warra Hall and about 20 or so farmers attended the lunch. I spoke briefly on Alberta agriculture stuff and Jay spoke on surface rights. Coal bed methane is a hot topic in the area.

We finished the day with a tour of the Simplicity plant. They are a leading manufacturer of air tanks and seeding tools. All of their equipment is designed for 2 or 3 meter CTF.  They have a very simple system to allow moving/sliding openers on their tool bar- X Bar system. They design some good equipment and believe in simplicity while still being innovative.

Tomorrow we are visiting 4 farmers and Daybreak engineering.

CTF Nov 29 - Austalia Day One

We arrived after about 17 hours of flying to sunny warm and humid weather. Tim Neale of Precision Agriculture met us and drove us west to Toowoomba. We will start visiting farms tomorrow morning.

Some interesting things we learned already:

• The area west of Brisbane is mostly alluvial soils - black loams which are non cracking. Therefore Tim says they have poor self repair. Once compacted they do not easily recover. This area was a major vegetable growing area until the drought hit.
• Near Toowoomba the soils are volcanic, deep red soils with good structure and well drained.
• We stopped briefly at the University of Queensland Gottan Campus where most of the original controlled traffic research was done by Dr. Jeff Tullberg. Unfortunately there has not been any funding for CTF research for at least 10 years.

Tim, Alan, Craig and myself were interviewed by the Australian Broadcast Corporation (radio) about why we were visiting and about surface rights and markets. They have a fifteen minute agriculture program each day as well as other ag shows.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have some CTF info and pictures to share.

Why we are going to Australia

Controlled Traffic Farming Alberta (CTFA) was created to assess controlled traffic farming in Alberta conditions. Much of the interest by farmers was created when Robert Ruwoldt, an Australian no-till and controlled traffic farmer spoke at Direct Seeding Advantage in Alberta in 2008 and FarmTech in 2010.

Funding and support for CTFA comes from the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund, who is also the major supporter and organizer of our trip. As well we receive financial and in-kind support from Alberta Canola Producers Commission, Alberta Barley Commission, Albera Pulse Growers and Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission. The Agricultural Research and Extension Council of Alberta is our managing partner.

Australia has been developing and practicing CTF for over 15 years. So we thought that rather than ask all the same questions and make most of the same mistakes it would be profitable to visit experienced farmers, manufacturers and professionals in Australia and learn from them. We hope we can jumpstart the learning process here in Alberta.

There are four things we want to accomplish on the trip:

1. Learn about the economic and production risk/benefits of CTF
2. Learn about various technical aspects of converting to CTF and running with CTF
3. Review and study their CTF training materials for growers
4. Learn how CTF evolved from an organizational, extension and research perspective.

Eleven of us leave from Calgary November 27 and will return December 12. Most of our time will be spent in Queensland and Victoria states. Once we get on the ground we plan to update the blog each day, reporting on what we see and learn.

If you have any questions you would like use to ask please let us know by posting a comment.