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 Joe Fleming.
Joe farms alongside his family at Ulah, a 10, 000 hectare mixed farming property, just west of Walgett in north- west New South Wales. With some opportunity irrigated cotton, cattle trading, and reducement also featuring when the season allows. In today's episode, we hear that as well as farming, Joe is pretty handy with a welder, and runs his own engineering workshop on farm called Evolve Ag. His latest venture has been
into the manufacturing of machinery, and in particular, crimpers. You'll hear Joe explain how these innovative tools can help farmers manage weeds without disturbing the soil, providing benefits for both pastures and cropping country. Joe also shares with us his family's succession journey, and how difficult a process it can be. He discusses it from his perspective, and how it's important to remember the privilege of being in the situation where
inheriting a farm is a possibility. Local Land Services mixed farming advisor, Rohan Leach, sat down with Joe to find out more about the future opportunities he sees in agriculture today.
G'day listeners. Today, I'm with Joe Fleming near Walgett. Welcome to the Seeds for Success podcast, mate.
Oh, what a pleasure, Ro. Thanks for having me, mate.
Can you start off by giving me an overview of your business here at Ulah?
Yeah, mate, so I guess there's two sides of it. Our business is up on the farm west of Walgett. We started Evolve Engineering five years ago off the back of Ulah Engineering, which is an engineering business I started probably 10 years ago. Then that, for lack of a better word, evolved into something bigger and better. And then the other half of the business, I guess, is our family business being at Ulah, which I'm fifth generation, we are out on farm.
Give me a bit of a run down of Ulah. What sort of hectares, business type, enterprises, those sorts of things?
Ulah's around 10,000 hectares, give or take a bit. We're mixed farming, and try and keep a bit of variety around that with different streams and avenues of income, I guess. We're around 3, 300 hectares of dry land or cropping, which we mix between mostly wheat and chickpeas. We find that there's going to be a forced fallow in there, one way or the other around that rotation. But we have done some summer cropping before in the dry land sense of things with
dry land cotton, and fava beans. Well, that's a little more winter as well, but we sort of have played around with a few things. Then, we've got 400 hectares, or around that, of irrigation that's on unregulated river catchment, so that's sort of more opportunistic flow, so we can't order any water down, or anything. It's sort of more what falls in the catchment, and what's buzzing past us to meet thresholds. Fairly rigorous thresholds have to be met in order for us to take that water.
And with that water, you sort of pump out into on- farm storage, and then water from there?
Yep. We sort of try and reserve that country for cotton in the irrigation, but it's also opportunistic as well. We do grow winter crops, depending on the water availability. What we've got there is the general thought process, is if we don't use it, we lose it. So, we've sort of got to be able to move that around as well. So, we do plant chickpeas or wheat in the irrigation as well as an opportunity thing. And then the rest is grazing, so we're just working out a bit more water. Or water's
pretty good, so we're probably more so fencing. We've got a bit of a scatter of grazing around the place, but there's plenty of opportunity there in that space as well. We don't have a nucleus herd anymore, but we have been looking at reducement and into trading. Whatever's going, really. So, that's probably to meet the theme of west of Walgett, it is opportunistic farming out here too, so that pretty much sums up the enterprise , yeah.
So, all cattle on the grazing, or is there sheep as well?
My old man sold. We were, for the most part of Ulah's life, was a stud. Well, Merino stud and Merino's breeding program. But my old man sold all of our sheep in 1991, on my first birthday, and we haven't actually stepped back into the sheep side of things. We have traded a few lambs here and there, but it's something that he lost interest in and sort of more so focused on.
Selling all the sheep on your first birthday, mate, that's a pretty ominous sign, or maybe auspicious. It means that you probably didn't grow up learning how to dag fly- blown sheep.
Yeah, mate. Look, talk to a few people. I mean, you're either on one side of the fence or the other. You either love it or you hate it. But I've yet to figure out if it's probably the best birthday gift that he's ever given me. But it could quite potentially be. But some people would argue that. My father- in- law would argue that after the day he dies.
So, the balance of the grazing country, what sort of pasture species, or what's that look like?
What I've learned over the last four years in developing our other business, or my business, I say, Evolve, is working out really that west of Walgett here, and around a lot of Walgett, we've got a really high protein seed base embedded out here. It doesn't really call for much need for boost, or pasture improvement at all. It's heavily breeder country here. And left alone, and without sort of stimulating that, that sort of term too is higher protein herbage. That's the
word I'm looking for. There's a lot of herbage, but to stimulate that pasture, I guess, you can really try and push into there. Well, you can sort of access the seed base that is there naturally, and that's quite a lot of good grasses and good herbage mixture that can really be beneficial for any type of enterprise, if you are breeding or if you are trading cattle. It's just sort of more so making the most out of the opportunity for
things to grow, and jumping on it straight away. That's why I think a lot more people out here now are moving towards a trade, or the trade side of things, because the drought has really tattooed the back of our minds as to what it's like feeding for so long, and it can just be a heartache. So, I think there's either a lot more opportunity in that now, and people are realizing the potential in that. So,
that's what we're sort of trying to work towards. There's a lot of infrastructure that goes with that as well, so you'd have to set up to be able to spell paddocks correctly, and water stock efficiently. So, there's a lot that goes with that, but I think that's what we're trying to move towards to now.
So, a lot of infrastructure still to go in. What does that look like for the next 12 months?
We're just about to start exclusion fencing. Well, it's been in the wishlist for a while now. It's a very expensive process. We're actually, I've got three blokes in the workshop with me. We're setting up a trailer, a fencing trailer right now, to just... We're going to build the exclusion fence ourselves, I think. Comparing price-wise and time spent on it, I think that was going to be the most efficient, effective way for
us to do it. Look, we're not flying out of the gates and putting the whole lot up at once. We're going to do the first six Ks, and that's going to be our furthest most northern boundary. I won't mention who, but one of your interviews from not that long ago, he's put an exclusion fence that borders on
the northern part of our property. And what we found, was that exclusion fence that he so dearly loves, is all the animals, all the fauna that are hitting that fence, whether it be feral or natives, are then re- diverted and come straight into our northern boundaries. So, here we go. We're finding that there's going to be an absolute necessity for more of the exclusion
fences go up. They've just got to keep going up, because there is going to be a larger amount of animals that are going to be infiltrated into the places that do not have these as a barrier. It's a blockade. So, yeah, that's going to be the start of our exclusion fence to the northern side of the property, and then we're going to slowly start wrapping around, and find what that does just with potential of growth, et cetera. I think it's a no-brainer.
I think the return on investment from a lot of the guys that I've spoken to, that have put them up, it is a big input, big capital cost, but it can generally pay back within a few years, in terms of increased grazing and less damage to your crops. Mate, you've talked about your other business, Evolve Ag, what is that, and can you tell me a bit about that?
Yeah, certainly can, mate. It's been, well what, we've been five years now, nearly four and a half years. So, about four and a half years ago, my wife's uncle approached me. It was the end of the drought. It was about 2019. Said that he had interest in planting a cover crop, and he wanted me to develop an idea around a chevron blade barrel to then crimp that cover crop out. He just
wanted to give it a go. And look, I'd been closely following what those techniques around, and what they were doing around America around that, and the benefits that they were finding with cover crops. It just sort of really didn't hit my radar that was something that we were going to really step into. So, we made the first. Well, I suppose we'd call the first BLADERUNNER, which we coined them to be now in 2019. Coming into 2020, he had a cover crop that was ready and were up to crimp. So, we
hooked into it. It did everything that we were expecting it
to do. A chevron blade barrel is, think of a round barrel, a tubular or a cylinder, on the outside of it you have blades, but instead of blades standing up perpendicular to the center axis of the barrel, the blades are actually wrapped around the barrel, so in a V, in a formed V. So, if you imagine a blade then rotating, if you had straight blades on the barrel, instead of them clunking, or as it rotates one, it hits one, then the next, you then, with them formed into a V in a chevron, you
then get the weight dispersal difference. So, the pressure starts at the front edge of the V, and then as the barrel rotates, that pressure splits up into two different sections, and then works away along to the end of the barrel. So, what you have effectively is then a lot of pressure getting transferred from the frame and the barrel itself, to a very small area. That's how a chevron works. You're trying to get as much pressure on the smallest amount of barrel or blade as possible.
So, less paddle wheel, and more impacted, more precision?
Yeah, it's precision impact really, and it's key for biomass. So, what America or the Rodale Institute who coined or came up, who invented, I suppose, this type of implement tooling, is that to lay over biomass, to bruise the stem, it's really important that in a cover cropping scenario that you're not actually laying and then severing a stem, because then that can influence re- shooting
of that plant. We're laying over, we're bruising the stem, and shutting off that fluid nutrient supply, or the access to the nutrient supply from the root system to the solar panels, or the leaf. Or the actual top of the biomass. So, what then happens, in turn, is you can actually terminate certain plants organically, and that's how covered cropping works. The laying over. Well, that's how crimping covered cropping works, and that's the positives in utilizing that biomass as ground cover,
and then as a weed suppressor. And there's a heap of beneficials that you can find in that space by using that cover crop, or crimping a covered crop. So, to go on from what you're saying before where we found Gus, what we did for Gus in his country, in his cover cropping scenario, is exactly that. It worked. He had a mixed partial. I think it was millet, silk sorghum, Sudanese grass, bits and pieces, whatever. It crimped everything over. It terminated everything quite effectively over
the few days that we're trialing at his place. So, that worked really well, but we were expecting it to work, because the formula was sort of written for us. What was interesting after that, was what came next, was that it was the end of the drought, he had a lot of rain on his country, and it was tight. It wasn't compacted. The nutrient, or the process of the soil at that time was spitting out nitrates. So, we were getting a lot of thistles
bursting out of the seams of the country. And he's a cattle producer too, so we were looking for availability of pasture, and we really needed to get, well he really needed to get cattle back on his country, because he didn't want to sell any. They were underweight. And what we thought we'd do, is have a crack at putting the BLADERUNNER over these nitrates, and seeing how if we could effectively do the same as using a cover crop scenario. It was mostly variegated thistles at that point in time.
And we just thought, " Well, we didn't really have anything to lose." So, we chucked it in there. That was really the start of Evolve Engineering, was the results that we then got from doing that. Which was effectively, we were laying over the thistles. We were terminating the thistles organically, and then we were allowing grasses and clovers, or medics and grasses I should say,
to grow up and then flourish. And the explosion of those desirable pastures was something that really clicked over a gear in my head, as to think, "Oh, wow, the potential of this. We've just found something here that the potential of this is huge."
So, important to point out the difference, I guess, or is there a difference between slashing and crimping?
Yeah, very important, mate. Look, I think I get this question so much. Of course there is. There's a huge difference between the two. It's important to note that they are all tools in a toolbox. Farmers like to have a lot of tools a lot of the time. But the slashing takes a lot of horsepower. It runs down time. It's very slow to do, and it severs everything that's in front of
you at an equal level. So, whether it's a nitrate weed, whether it's grasses, whether it's your medics, if it's desirable or undesirable pasture, it will cut everything back to an even playing field. The difference, I suppose, between that and the BLADERUNNER, is that BLADERUNNER is a lot more efficient to get over your country. It takes very little horsepower to run.
And it will organically terminate weeds, or undesirable pasture, at the right time of the year, or it can mulch and smash down biomass matter that's dry and has zero or very little protein or nutrient densities for stock. So, it then, in turn, allows light to penetrate through a canopy, and it sort of influences that turnover of your season, if that makes sense.
I want to expand on both those scenarios there. So, obviously timing would be crucial. What have you found the best timing for getting rid of, say, thistles?
I generally tell clients timing and farmers doesn't necessarily always go hand- in-hand. It could be a preparation issue. It could be a rain or moisture. It could be wet weather. It could be anything. It could be your accountant's coming on Thursday. There's not really a wrong time to do it,
if you are in the right season to do it. If you have undesirable pasture that is impeding upon desirable pasture because of competition, or because of sunlight, or because of moisture, if it's taking something away from another plant that you want to grow, then there probably isn't the wrong time to do it. But if you do want to have the most desirable effects, it would be at either end
of the season. So, probably with nitrate weeds, and being something like thistles, you probably, just before flowering, some thistles get really woody like saffron, and then mid- season would be not that advantageous to be crimping them during mid- season, because they are quite woody. So, you just wait for them at the end of the season, and then smash them down as a mature, broken down biomass. It's a lot easier. But saffrons are probably the hardest thistle that
we take. I'm sure that's quite a generalizing. You can effectively crimp things through most part of the season. It is a suck it and see scenario. You will find that our machinery is a learning tool, so we don't have the answers for everything. It is season... Well, there's so many variables in the season, that could say, " Well, you will." But the other side of it too, is you will get benefits out of it whenever you do it. It's probably
more so just thinking about when you're going to get the most out of using it. And you've also seen some pretty interesting results more recently around in your neck of the woods, on things like roly poly, and roly poly skeletons. I mean roly poly being a nitrate weed too, it is really, really reactive around our country. There is that many hundreds of thousands of acres that is just choked down with roly poly, and it really impedes on production to the utmost.
It's just an absolute problem. Now, the thing about that is, it's not just that as being a problem, it's what people do to react around those conditions, because the immediate thing in people's head is, "Okay, we're either going to chuck a match in it. We're going to put the Kelly chain in it. We're going to get the stick rake. We're going to get a pinwheel. We're going to get the prickle chain, and we're just going to try and wipe it out." The thing to remember about that, is
that the nitrate weed is actually doing a job on your soil. So, if you do that, if you completely wipe it out without letting it run its course and do its thing, is that you could trigger the exact same thing to happen, for it to go straight back into roly poly. What
we've found with roly poly around Walgett for trials... Well, not so much trials, is the results that we're getting around here is utilizing the actual large biomass effect of a roly poly with a BLADERUNNER and rolling over it and crunching it into the ground, it gives the soil exactly what it needs.
It gives that mulching effect without actually a really high impact on your soil?
We're still looking after that.... The topsoil, or where your seed germinates for these nitrates, is it's in the top 50 mil, or even less really, the top 50 mil of your soil. So, looking after that and conditioning that soil, for then to favor moving out of that nitrate cycle, is really,
really important. So, what we're finding around here, is cycling, trying to instead of wiping your country out, utilizing your biomass potential of that roly poly, crunching it down, severing it, and then trying to cycle that country back into production, rather than wiping it clean and hoping to the gods that you'll just grow something good after the roly poly, which doesn't happen very often. It's a much more efficient and
effective way to grow beneficials or productive pasture. And that's exactly what we've seen time and time again with our machines in this country around here. They're very, very effective there. The next thing for us, mate, is working out its full potential in the cropping side of things. We sell machines into stubble retention, or light lying down stubble.
Mate, you have mentioned that you've drought, and having set up your own business, you've been on and off farm at various times in your stage in your development at Ulah. I'd just like to talk a little bit about succession and succession planning with your family. Your eyes just made a little pop, so hopefully it's a fairly good topic to talk about, but what's it been like for you guys?
If you're privileged enough to do it, you go through it. But there's another thing that I'll say about it, is that you don't do it on the weekend. It's certainly something that you don't take home and enjoy over the weekend. It's sort of something that's an absolute necessity. And I think the biggest thing for us, Rohan, and where we slot into it, is the very annoying, but very privileged thing about it, is
that we have a legacy that we want to continue on, generationally. That, mixing legacy with business, is really, really difficult, because you don't necessarily have your best business cap on when you're thinking about it. It's a very fine balance between an agricultural sector as a business, and that is something that you want to continue on generationally. We are going through the throes
of it now, mate. It's taken us probably, when we first started talking about, it probably to now maybe 10 years. It's developing now to the fact that, "Okay, we have a couple of trigger points here." My old man wants to move on, and put down the reins. I'm ready to pick up the reins, and move on with it. But it's just we've got to
be so careful about it. And there's a few delicate issues around that, and the fact that you've got to make sure that everyone's looked after, and that you can still have a successful business out the other side of things without risking too much in between. So, it's a very, very hard thing to get right. But I think if... Look, not to say if I'd have my time again, because there's no need to say that, it'd probably be
more so just be open about conversations around that. And don't make every conversation so knuckled down and try and work out all the world's problems at once. It's a very slow process, so it takes a very long time to do. We're sort of hopefully getting through to the end bit now of transition of management, and stuff like that. So, I'm hoping that within the next six months, my wife and I can move back to Ulah on farm where my workshop is, and
work it side- by- side with Ulah and Evolve together. That's being all in one.
So, are your siblings involved in the succession as well?
Yeah, look, they are. As far as the management side of Ulah goes, not so much. Look, they've all played a big part in Ulah and have an interest in it as being the family home, probably. And have helped. My younger sister, Prue has been here, and has been hands- on quite recently. But as far as the business sense goes, Rohan, it's probably been more so my wife and myself, and my mum and dad looking at that. So, they're certainly involved.
But as to the point of succeeding the business on for what it is, it's just probably more so my wife and I. That's what we're interested in doing.
So, what strategies have you taken to transition ownership over?
We're still going through the throes of this now. I don't want to divulge too much, but look, I can say that's probably the trickiest thing about it. It's not something at the click of your fingers you can say, " Well, that's going to be the best scenario", because there is always going to be something that doesn't quite fit. It has to be quite malleable. As far as where we sit with it, and what we're doing, we're
sort of looking at a leasing model. So, my wife and I will lease off my three sisters, so the property will get transferred into a trust, which is myself and my three siblings. And then my wife and I will lease that for a certain amount of time. But we're just trying to stipulate now what that means for that lease period. If people can be bought out, or if they want to stay part of Ulah. We're just working out the throes
of that now. But I think what we have figured out is, as a very broad brush paint over the whole lot, is that that was going to be the best way for us to transition in, is a lease or contractual agreement in the form of a lease, I should say.
Mate, thanks so much for sharing that. This is probably one of the topics that when I start to ask questions, people start to sink down a little bit in their chairs and not want to answer. So, definitely appreciate your forthrightness with me.
You know why too, Rohan? I mean, it is a sensitive topic. I can't really divulge too much, but I just know how important it is. It is for the success of businesses moving forward too. It's a huge part of life, and that's where we're at. As I said, we are in a privileged position to be able to do it, and you've got to just remember that sometimes. It's pretty hard to remember sometimes.
And I think agriculture is one of those few industries that you're lucky enough to work with your family. Some might say that's not so lucky, but it can be a really good situation, where you're working on the land with your loved ones. So, I think it is, as you said, a privilege. Mate, I've had a great time, but just for my final questions, I like to ask, what do you see as the big issue in Australian ag at the moment?
I'm not going to lie, I did know this was coming. And I have been thinking about it too, and I don't really want to paint myself in a cliche brush, but I just thought there's a couple of things that sparks to mind, I think. And I do have the privilege in my Evolve, as my other business, I've got the
privilege of talking to a lot of farmers every day. So, I do get to have a rare insight into what are the challenges that they're facing, and then compare that to, I suppose, what, which I think the challenges are for myself. But I think that it comes back to productivity, and what you expect to get out of your farm, or what you absolutely need to get out of your farm every year. And the offside of that, is because of input costs. The input costs, especially, probably over
the last... Or for the revolution into zero till, which was an absolute necessity at the time, and we've developed it over the last, we'll say 25 years at least. The offside of that, is we're getting to the pointy end of that now, where input costs are starting to outweigh potential production. So, we're now having to push and push and push our country because of that. And then things become, well, you're less risk- adverse. It does become more stressful. And I think that
that is the biggest challenge to date. How do you go to bed and not stress every day? How do you get profit out of your country without spending all of your profit? How do you expand that, the line between the two? That's probably the biggest challenge what we're facing to date, mate.
So, with challenges comes opportunities, I guess. So, is there a big win on the other side of that?
Yeah, and that's right, mate. I mean, necessity is the mother of innovation or invention. There's absolute potential there. But the upside of that, and that's what I'm passionate about now, mate, and that's what I've found with Evolve. It gives me the opportunity to look at improving management strategies and implementation of those strategies, and how we are going to improve country or maximize production on country without spending everything in your back pocket. That's
the exciting thing about it. Whether it's what I'm trying to do here, or whether it's swarm bot, robotics in minimizing chemical usage on the country by robots in spraying. How bloody exciting is that? I think we're at a really exciting time in agriculture now, that we're finding the next revolution of farming enterprises. It's that. But that's gotten to a point out of absolute necessity. So, yeah, I think that that's probably the most exciting thing about what we're
all doing now together, mate. And what you're doing, sharing these different people's opinions and ideas and views, that goes with it. With podcasting and information around that, and how accessible that is to people, and what that means to people to be able to listen and have a deep think about, "Well, how are you managing, or how are you running your place? And can you do it that better without costing you an arm and a leg than a kidney?"
Leave the kidney for a steak and kidney pie, I think, mate. Mate, I've had a great time. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Thanks, mate, much appreciated.
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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