CTF Australia December 3, 2010

Today was a travel day from the Gold Coast to Brisbane and then by air to Rockhampton. It was pouring when we arrived and very windy. One person told us that they had 100mm (4 inches) today and that is in saturated conditions. Needless to say there is a lot of water around. After years of drought this is a new experience. They are having trouble getting winter crops off and getting summer crops seeded.

The road to Emerald is flood in three places so we will be not get out there. However, Tim has arranged some other farm visits.

We visited with several members of the Fitzroy Basin Association. The Fitzroy River and its basin is about ¼ the size of Alberta and the second largest drainage basin in Australia.

The group’s purpose is to protect the Great Barrier Reef by reducing erosion and sedimentation.  They promote sustainable development and also CTF as a means of reducing runoff. They are also involved in other projects such as BMPs for grazing and zero till.

Tim Neale our guide and one of the principles of Precision Agriculture usually goes through at least a 12 month process with clients that are planning to switch to CTF. He gets them to look at:

1. Tractor front and rear axles – are they strong enough and long enough to go to a 3 meter stance
2. Getting the combine set up for 3 meter trams and then the tractor
3. Row spacing and seeder widths, usually multiples of 30 or 40 feet
4. Ways to improve efficiencies – usually the longest discussion
5. Developing a 5-10 year plan, where they want to go
6. Lastly and a fairly easy process is the air cart and sprayer setup

As well Tim develops topography maps and helps the farmer design the most efficient system for their fields. This normally includes running trams up and down hills. Length of runs and water, drainage and erosion issues are addressed.

I am told that the blog is too clinical so I’ll try get some good Australian humor for tomorrow.

 Our new logo

Gold Coast, a major tourist destination

CTF Australia December 2, 2010

Another fairly cool, drizzly day, although it got warmer as we headed toward the coast.

We visited several machinery companies and manufacturers today in Toowoomba.

Excel builds no-till equipment and sells directly to farmers.They also are part of a larger company that builds a wide range of products. There market is mostly in eastern Australia. They seem very committed to building what the farmers want and modifying from farmer feedback. It would be fun to try some of their toolbars and openers in Alberta. One unique feature of the company is their parts system. They place a container with parts in strategic area and farmers come and get what they need. Its on an honor system and the parts bin is not locked. One of their parallel link units and a tool bar is shown below. They do design for the CTF market with two and three meter units.

Oztec is a company that builds grain carts or chasers as they are called here. They come with 3 M axles. Their biggest so far is 50t. They have steerable axles and a 30t one costs about $123k.

C&C Machining are experts in axle extensions, some of which I showed yesterday. They have built some units for farmers in the US and of course lots here in Australia. They are not afraid to warranty their work. Prices range from 4%k to over $25k. Part of an extension is shown below.

Gyral built the world's first airseeder in the mid fifties. They continue building airseeders, openers and other equipment. One unique feature of their airseeders is the use of heated air for the air system. It helps prevent those irritating plugging problems on humid days. See the rad below, sitting just above the fan.

We also had an excellent visit with John Deere and learned some interesting things about their commitment to CTF and new things coming online. JD does offer wheel extension kits for the 7030 and 8R tractors.

Tomorrow I will share some of Tim Neale's approach to developing CTF systems. We fly to Rockhampton and will visit farms that area and west to Emerald.

CTF Australia December 1, 2010

Another busy day from 8 am to 10 pm. We visited four farms, one manufacturer, lawyers and had supper with a cropping club.

Its been unusually cool here and wet so crop quality has suffered and fusarium is a huge concern.

Our first stop of the day was at Peter Bach's near Darby. He is a young farmer who has dryland and irrigated land and is an excellent machinery builder. He is on a 3 m system with a 40 foot seeder and 42 foot header (Australians use both metric and imperial). He seeds in 15 and 30 inch rows. His sunflower crop looked great. We saw an excellent example of compaction affecting the root. 

He has built a shrouded sprayer, added cotton reesl to a front wheel assist tractor and numerous other projects.

One of his recently harvested fields showed what can happen to tramlines - soil punched out to the side. Is this a reason not to tramline? I'd say no. Can you imagine what the field would have looked liked if it was random traffic? He plans to leave the tram, no repair and figures it will correct itself to a large degree. Some of his soils will move up to 6 inches.

Its a bit hard to tell but the ridge is probably a foot above the bottom of the tram.

Our next stop was at Kerry Juede's. It was our first place with a lot of new or recently purchased equipment. They are on a 3 m system with a 11 m planter and 22 m sprayer. The seeder and a separate NH3 unit were on 3 point hitches. They were trying a new Daybreak disc unit on their seeder. Sorghum was seeded on 1 m row.

We had a brief stop at Daybreak Manufacturing. Ross was a key person in developing disk units and CTF. You probably would not want to go with anything less than 15 inch rows with this unit, its too heavy, but very rugged. He talked in systems and four key things - weed control, CTF, inter-row and nutrient maintenance all in a zero till system. An advantage of the disk unit is speed. 10 -20 km/hr, but you do need to slow down in sticky soils.

Lunch was provided by a small law firm in Darby. They were interested in surface rights and the group shared their experiences and learned about some of the issues facing farmers here.

Rod and Sally McCreath started on a 2 m systems but switched to 3 m. They crop a 1000 acres and have about 2000 grazing acres for cows. Like most guys they have gradually modified their equipment. One key change to his systems has been to start seeding up and down the slopes.

The slopes are substantial - maybe 4% in some cases. Its working well and erosion is not a big issue as long as they keep all of their residue intact. Tim Neale says this works by keeping the profile dry (right cropping) and minimizing concentration of water flow so it cannot build up energy and cause erosion.

They have been able to integrate livestock but mostly keep livestock off of the cropped land other then say grazing on oats in the winter.

Our last farm visit was with John Piper and his father. They have converted to up and down the slopes and put up with abuse from neighbors. There was some erosion in the trams on their field but they are working to reduce that as they get the system working. On both Rod and John's there was a lot of contouring of the soil. It probably has hindered CTF but is very expensive and unnecessary to remove.

We were treated to a great supper with the Top Crop Group, farmers who meet once a month to discuss what is happening on their farms. Jay and I made our presentations on surface rights and Alberta agriculture.

We toured some pretty country today and met wonderful people. Tomorrow we visit five manufacturers and work our way back to Brisbane.

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.