This is Seeds for Success, a show where we have a good yarn about ag life with producers who are having a go. On the show, you'll hear from farmers in New South Wales who are out there battling the elements, making tough calls, and getting the job done. You'll get a laugh out of some of their stories and also pick up some know- how along the way. I'm your host, Neroli Brennan. Today, we're having a yarn with Sam Mason. Sam farms at Spicers Run with his brother, Joe, and their families.
Spicers Run is a mixed farming operation spanning four and a half thousand hectares just north of Wellington in the Spicers Creek area. In this episode, Sam outlines how their 10- year rotation of lucerne and cropping helps them to make the most of their land. He explains how dual- purpose cropping is a key component of this success, because it provides a bulk of high quality feed over winter, while also providing something to harvest at the end of the season.
You'll also hear Sam explain how this production intensity is a good way to battle against rising input prices, which is making farming more difficult. Local Land Services cropping officer, Tim Bartimote, sat down with Sam for this chat while perched amongst some dual- purpose hay samples at the back of our ag shed.
Well, hello listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm here with Sam Mason today. How are you going, Sam?
Well thanks, Tim.
That's the way. Thanks for coming in this morning. Can you tell us a little bit about Spicers Run?
Spicers Run is a mixed farming enterprise in the Central West. It's about four and a half thousand hectares. We're about 20 kilometers north of Wellington in the Spicers Creek area, and I run that with my brother, Joe, and our respective families, and my mum and dad are there as well.
Just for those listeners that are probably used to that Wellington area, can you kind of describe the landscape a bit to start off, like soil types, that sort of thing?
So it's predominantly red kurrajong, box tree country, like a red clay lime is how I'd probably explain most of it. A few different soil types ranges from a heavy red basalt down to lighter creek limes and stuff. So we've got a bit of a mix, bit of a different mix of topography and heights and that sort of things.
And rolling hills, not particularly flat or anything like that?
No, that's right. I'd say it's virtually all arable. So we'd be sort of 95% arable and I'd just call it a gentle rolling hills type of country.
And so explain to me a bit of the history of the place, because obviously four and a half thousand hectares has been brought together over a little bit of time, I imagine. How's it come into your possession?
So that was mainly my father's generation that did that. Him, in conjunction with his two brothers, Nicholas and Paul, put together a bit of a conglomerate of country, most of it in that Spicers Creek area, but also a bit out towards Yeoval. And when their kids sort of got to a school- leaving type age in the early '90s, then they went their different ways and that's sort of how we ended up where we are, yeah.
I've done a bit of work, I guess, in that Spicers Creek area for a little bit now, and I've definitely noticed that the climate is significantly different, particularly like just further west of Dubbo. It's kind of... I don't know, when everyone's kind of thinking about harvest, you're probably a couple
of weeks afterwards. Can you kind of explain to those who are maybe further west than your highway, what the difference there is in terms of crop maturity and that sort of stuff, and timing in terms of sowing your crops and things?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, you're absolutely right about different climate there. As soon as you get east of Dubbo, you start getting into that rolling sort of country. We typically get a bit softer sort of spring. What I mean by that is just lower temps, slightly higher rainfall than the stuff west of Dubbo. And obviously, I think, just that cooler finish probably helps us out, especially with growing crops and having those softer springs and stuff.
I do consider Dubbo as a bit of a cutoff line between what they call the outside and inside sort of country.
And so you said that you're primarily a mixed farming operation. What does that typically involve?
We sort of work off a 10- year cycle. So we'll have six years of lucerne, give or take, and then four years of crop. We try and keep the crop rotation pretty short and sharp, which means we've got to be pretty hygienic on our fallows and sort of our cropping principles. We do this for a few reasons, we
try and keep our pasture pretty productive. We pour a fair bit of money into it, so we like to have a high lucerne density there at all times, otherwise, we just feel like we're wasting the value of the... wasting its capacity, I guess, to a certain extent. Then by doing sort a four- year cropping rotation, that sort of just allows us to keep a bit of a balance. So at any one time we're pretty much farming 2000 hectares, I suppose, 40% of our place. It sort of doesn't
vary too much from there. Obviously, you have a weed blow- out here and there, or a wet year where you can't get country as clean as you want to. It might have an extra year in crop, and by the same token you might do a three- year rotation every now and then if it's country that lends itself more to growing pasture and grazing stock. That's our rough idea of how to get there.
So a big, strong input on that lucerne side. What's your thoughts on lucerne versus other pasture species by that particular one?
If your country's capable of growing it and growing it well, it's just a really good all- rounder we've found. Particularly with sheep, we don't have to worry about bloat issues and stuff in cattle, like a lot of guys, which is, I suppose, one benefit of having a more sheep- focused enterprise. But it just suits our country, clover and lucerne. We grow some phalaris and chicories and stuff like that as well in our mix just to get a bit more of a balance.
But it's predominantly lucerne, clover mix, which obviously then feeds a lot of that four- year cropping cycle will be fed by those six years of pasture beforehand. So we don't have to have super high nitrogen inputs in our cropping phase, which makes things a bit more economical.
So it's almost like you've got a nitrogen bank there sitting in the soil that you've accrued over that six year period that you're kind of... ?
That's kind of the idea of it. And that's why we probably tend to cut those pastures off at the five, six- year mark because we don't want them getting too dirty. We get a lot of barley grass and black oats and ryegrass and stuff in that country if you let those pasture phases go on too long, and then that'll obviously start sapping that nitrogen bank that you just mentioned. And we figure we're better off trying to keep it all pretty tight and sharp, and puts us in good stead for
that cropping phase. Yeah.
So tell me a bit more about the livestock side of things. Is it sheep, it sounds like, primarily?
Yeah, all sheep. We do dabble with fattening steers here and there, but we're not that well- equipped to do it and we've just always enjoyed sheep, I suppose, as crazy as that sounds, but-
It does sound a bit crazy.
They're not for everyone, that's for sure. But I think it suits our country type and stuff there and while we've got enough people to help us with... they're a bit more labor- intensive, while we've got enough people around to help us do it, we'll probably keep doing it. Yeah.
Maybe your sheep are a bit more intelligent than most.
I don't know about that. But yeah, so anyway, back to the sheep enterprise, we've got... we're roughly running 9, 000 breeding Merino ewes, which we actually source all as cast for age ewes from out in western country. When I say western country, talking about Warren, Gulargambone, out to Collarenebri, majority of those grass- blood type sheep. Main reason for that being we can get a good, even line of sheep that are similar types, which is sort of what we're aiming for
and it's obviously not too far away. And good, natural sheep country where they're coming from, so we don't tend to have any issues with feet and worm burdens and stuff like that. So my father developed most of those relationships years ago and we've been buying off the same guys every year for some of them 20 to 30 years. So it works well for us and then we're putting a Border Leicester ram
over them and running a first- cross sheep operation. So obviously, the ewe portion of them are going on to breed at other places.
It's pretty interesting about... you just mentioned it in passing, but the generational relationships that have been built with your father and now you're continuing. Is there anything particularly important
about that you reckon about maintaining that? Is it just because that works for your business and it's something that you prioritize or it's just something inherent in being able to build a good working relationship with someone like that to ensure that your business is being productive as well as theirs kind of thing?
I think it's pretty important in the farming world, are those relationships that you build up. But probably particularly on the stock side of things, like I think a lot of guys would have the same bull and ram studs that they'd go to every year to source their genetics. And while we're not on that stud side, it's the same principles involved in our business, I guess. It works well for us. We know what we're getting, give or take,
every year off these same producers. They've always got similar amounts of sheep and consistently you're getting the same product. And by the same token, the second- cross lamb breeders that are buying first- cross ewes off us are getting a pretty consistent product as well. So yeah, I think
it works well for everyone. They're not having to... The guys that we're buying merino ewes off, they're not having to take their chances with the sale yard auction system and risk getting bad... well, they might get some really good sales, occasionally they'll get some bad ones as well, and so they're just getting a... we like to think we can just agree on a fair price for both parties and yeah, it seems to be pretty straightforward in doing that.
So, Sam, being in Wellington, I guess that's prime, what we could consider, dual- purpose country where your crops aren't just being used for grain, though they might, often utilized for grazing with stock as a fodder option. Can you kind of talk us through how Wellington's suited to selecting those particular varieties that are more dual- purpose orientated than purely grain or fodder?
That location thing we were talking about before. Being east of Dubbo there, and further south, probably lends itself to getting a bit more gross margin off your country. We're talking smaller farms, smaller paddocks, a little bit more of an intensive system, a bit higher rainfall. All those things lend themselves to growing the dual- purpose crops. And since we started growing them 15 years ago, then we haven't really looked back and we're pretty much all our cereals are
more or less now dedicated to dual- purpose crops. We grow the odd straight wheat crop, we've dabbled in grazing a bit of canola, which is a pretty big part of our cropping phase, but we don't do that all the time. Main reason being we find the cereals a bit easier to manage and we kind of have enough country dedicated to dual- purpose crops just by doing the cereals.
So for those who might still be on the fence a bit in terms of dual- purpose cropping, can you give me an example of why it's such a good fit and what are the potential opportunities in your business that that kind of variety opens up?
I think the main reason we do it is it just allows us to utilize our cropping country for more months of the year for the sheep rather than just having our lucerne country just purely dedicated to the sheep. And the cropping, as cropping country, you kind of get two parts of the cherry, as the old expression goes, and we definitely pick up some other benefits. I think they're actually
a really good weed control option. We've found over the years we sort of don't tend to have a whole lot of ryegrass and black oat pressure and stuff in our grazing cereals because the sheep just walk through and selectively pick them out. I think it's one of those things where they crave a bit of variety and you're not giving them that in the cropping in those crops. So they'll tend to walk through and pick out most of the weeds and stuff like that and clean up all your fence lines
and stuff like that. That's a bit of a side benefit. But one of the other big things it does in our area is we can have some reasonably harsh winters where we get pretty slow pasture growth. And in the past, before we started growing those dual- purpose crops, it tended to really bare out the pasture country over the winter and then it was just slow coming into spring, you were having to lamb ewes down on really short, watery feed.
By having the majority of our sheep on these dual- purpose crops through those harshest months in winter, it tends to give the pasture a really good break. And then we'll quite often just have a lot of pasture country available to us in that early spring period that the sheep can just transition back onto and it seems to give you the break and the sheep do well out of the crops. And then they get to go back onto some pretty good lucerne legume country afterwards in spring and hit the ground
running as the country warms up a bit. So it's quite a big benefit as well.
So give us some, I guess, rough numbers to the idea. How many grazings do you typically get out of your grazing cereals?
It all depends on when you get those early breaks and when you get the crop in the ground and that type of thing. But we sort of work off two good grazes off our grazing cereals, so we're sort of planting them end of March, locking them up, taking the stock off them end of July. So that's sort of our timeframe. And during that period, yeah, we'll normally get one good graze for three weeks, four weeks, give it a few weeks' break,
another graze and then lock them up. And then, they're typically pretty easy to manage, those crops are pretty easy to manage from that end of July period. You might have a cleanup spray, it's obviously a time to duck in and do some top dressing if you need it.
And I guess just for the audience's benefit, there've been times where I've seen in the Wellington area those dual- purpose crops, even though you'll get those one or two grazes off it, so you're putting meat on those sheep and stuff like that and wool and things, but at the same time you're also getting potentially I think I've seen like five ton plus on some of those crops?
Yeah, that's right. You've got potential to get some pretty comparable yields to a straight cropping scenario there. I would say, 9 times out of 10 you're probably within 80% of crop that's just been treated purely as a crop. So you do the gross margin sums and we're miles off in front with a dual- purpose scenario, hence us doing so much of it. I will say you probably can't have too much of it as well, 'cause you've got to be able to manage it with pretty high rates
of sheep. A lot of it coincides with grazing at the same time. So we'll tend to go from having all our sheep under pasture and then over the space of a couple of weeks we'll have 6, 8, 10, 000 sheep on our grazing crops. So a bit of management required there, but if you've got the stocking numbers to do it it's a great option, yeah.
So how did you go this year? 'Cause we had a dual- purpose demonstration at your place, looking at all these different varieties and various cereals and even canola and vetch and things like that. And I found in that particular demo that because it's a bit warmer to begin with in the early part of the season, it didn't get as cold as quick, it just kind of... all the varieties kind of ran ahead a little bit. Did you find that this year on your stuff and battle keeping on top of it?
We didn't have the issue with stuff running to head, because the wheat and barley varieties we're growing for dual- purpose have that cold winter habit gene in them. So we're growing predominantly Kittyhawk wheat, Urambie barley, they're our main grazing varieties. So pretty safe in that regard. But yeah, obviously a bit of a risk when you're sowing those crops early in March. If you have a wet mild autumn, they can really bounce away. So yeah, that was kind of what I
was alluding to before. You need to be prepared to have high numbers of stock to go on them to be able to manage them, but it's a bit safer if you've got those varieties that are dedicated grazing varieties. And obviously things like oats and if you're using stuff that doesn't have that cold winter habit gene in it, then yeah, that is a bit of a risk of running up early and then it's coming to frost and that
sort of thing. So I've seen other people in the past, I think we might've even done it as well, of having to slash crops to knock them back a bit and things like that. But yeah, typically, like I said, as long as you don't sort of over- commit the amount of country compared to the amount of stock you have, then you can typically manage it okay.
Yeah, no. I remember, particularly, when I think Pete Matthews was doing a presentation, the cropping guru with DPI, and he made mention of Planet when it first came into the system and people were utilizing it as a grazing option, it just kind of ran away a bit and so people often didn't have enough stock to compete with how much it was
producing in terms of biomass. And so yeah, it's definitely a good warning to heed that if you're going to do more dual- purpose cropping, make sure you've got the stock numbers to keep on top of those.
Yeah. No, that is definitely a risk and a lot of people tend to do that with the barley varieties because some of the varieties out there, while they might not have that cold winter habit gene, they produce huge amounts of biomass and can be successfully used as a dual- purpose crop. But then yeah, you do have that risk of crops getting away from your stock, and having early heads up when they shouldn't be up and having some other issues.
So in terms of varieties, in that demo, was there anything that particularly caught your eye when you had a chance to have a look at it?
There's plenty of impressive stuff out there. We've mainly been sticking with the Kittyhawk wheat and the Urambie barley just because we know they perform well. While they might not produce the most biomass, they have a pretty good gross margin return because we get a reasonable amount of grazing off them and then we get some pretty decent quality grain off them. We're selling all our wheat grain and keeping most of our barley on farm for future sheep feed. But yeah, they just work well
for us. I mentioned before, we've grazed some canolas in the past and you get some exceptional numbers off them in terms of tons of biomass and they can put huge amounts of weight onto sheep, huge weight gains, sheep and cattle and stuff, but they're just that little bit harder to manage. They grow quicker, you can have some high nitrates in the plant, which can cause a few animal health issues,
a few things like that. But don't get me wrong, there's plenty of people that are doing that successfully as well. So I wouldn't rule that out if you were considering it, but it's just they are slightly trickier to manage.
So what's your opinion on the push it seems in the breeding side of things, to get those, say, grazing wheats, pushing them towards higher grain quality, like able to achieve that APH, that sort of idea, consistently, and also a push in the barley space to have some more of those, that winter vernalization that you're talking about, the holding back on the reins of that plant. Do you welcome that approach, I guess?
Oh, that'd be great. I think that's probably one thing, most people would agree, has been lacking a little bit in the research and development of those dedicated grazing varieties. I can't understand why, it's probably not a huge part of their business for some of these grain breeders and stuff, but it's certainly very important to us and more the
merrier in the grazing barley, oats and wheat space. I'd love to see some new varieties there that could compete with, like you said, higher grain quality classifications.
That's the reason why we kind of pushed to do this demonstration is because there has been a bit of that injection lately with some of the different varieties coming through, and trying to utilize some of that European breeding stock and see how that adapts to Australia. So yeah, it's hopefully watch this space, see what happens.
Yeah, no, it is very interesting. I saw some of the numbers on the red wheats and stuff typically growing in Europe and North America and stuff. And my brother's brother- in- law trialed some last year and he got some phenomenal amounts of grazing off it and he was really impressed. But then, yeah, it's just that you just have that slight issue at the other end with where do you sell that grain? And it's fine if you're keeping it just to put in your own silos and stuff. But yeah, look, more
of that research that gets done, I think better for everyone. Yeah.
So, Sam, just to finish off, is there something that is particularly on your mind at the moment that potentially has a lot of impact on your business?
I'd say it's probably what all of the country's going through at the moment, Tim, is probably just cost of living, costs of production for running these sort of businesses, really high machinery costs. We're not really getting any extra benefit when we're selling lamb and grain and things we rely on for our income. But in the meantime, our machinery purchases and stuff have sort of gone up 30, 40, 50% in the last few years. So that's a bit concerning, you
wonder where it's going to end. But don't have a solution for it, unfortunately.
So it's particularly the margins are shrinking?
Yeah, that's right. Which is another reason it makes these grazing cereals and stuff so attractive is because at the end of the day, you're making more per hectare off these crops than what we are as a straight grain crop, at least in our area. Like I said before, it doesn't suit everyone, so I guess it allows you to justify purchasing machinery and stuff knowing that it also complements
your sheep enterprise as well. But yeah, those costs have certainly skyrocketed in the last four or five years.
So is it more a push per se to produce more, I remember when I've done work out west, the margins are pretty skinny, but you're doing so many hectares that it works out okay because it-
Economies of scale?
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. The economies of scale really kick in and that's where the money's made, is how much land you're able to do that across. Is that kind of where it's pushing, but just more towards that inner country that you... ?
Well, yeah, I guess we don't have the economies of scale I guess a lot of those western cropping guys do. But I think that's why we run livestock and why we run those dual- purpose crops and we're really just trying to make the most out of our... run our country to its potential, I suppose you'd say. So yeah, I guess it's a similar thing. You've just got to get better at what you do and run it more economically, I guess.
Right. Well, thank you, Sam. Appreciate the conversation today. All the best for the rest of the season.
No probs, Tim. Anytime. Thank you.
Thanks for listening. This podcast was brought to you by Central West Local Land Services. Local Land Services delivers advice and support to farmers, landholders, and the community across New South Wales. To learn more, you can find us online by searching for Central West Local Land Services. If you'd like more information about the topics we discussed today, as well as links to relevant articles, fact sheets, events, and other helpful resources, we've added those into the show notes
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