Australia
March 30, 2007
Cotton Seed Distributors
article
A video version is available
at
http://www.csd.net.au/default.asp?file=/showwow.asp?wow=2362
Recently the Cotton Grower of
the Year field day was held at Auscott Narrabri, which drew a
lot of cotton industry interest. On today's Web on Wednesday the
CSD Extension and Development team outline the judges' winning
comments and discuss the operation of Auscott Narrabri with Farm
Manager, Ben Stephens.
Hello and welcome to this weeks
Web on Wednesday. Today we are talk with Ben Stephens. Ben is
the Farm Manager of Auscott Narrabri, winners of last seasons
Cotton Grower of the Year Award.
Some of the aspects of Auscott Narrabri’s operation which really
impressed the judges and made it stand out from the other
quality farming operations? to these Awards were; an extensive
integration and implementation of farm design to assist with
crop management, irrigation timing, water harvesting and rapid
irrigation water delivery to and removal from cotton fields. The
use of telemetry to monitor water storages, pumps, channel gates
and water movement throughout the entire farm. Detailed
measurement and data recording of both the lateral move and
furrow irrigation systems which is supported by objective
decision making which is underpinning the water use efficiency
gains achieved on this property. Auscott Narrabri has shown a
great commitment to industry leadership and a high participation
in research and development. The judges were impressed with
their commitment to and standard of BMP implementation. Finally,
the strategies for land, water and crop management that are
driving the yield and efficiency gains achieved on this
property.
We will now hear from Ben outlining some of the aspects of the
management of this impressive farming operation.
Ben we have just been on a tour through the Auscott Narrabri
farm, could you I guess briefly just give us a few facts and
figures about the farm, its size and how much cotton it normally
grows and so forth.
Well today we had the Cotton Grower of the Year farm field
walks. We had a good crowd to come out and have a look on the
farm. We are pretty much developed for just under 9,000 hectares
of developed fields of that we will grow perhaps half of that on
a one to one rotation subject to water availability so we would
like to aim for about 4,500 hectares a year. At this stage we
have only got 1,500 hectares in so I guess the drought kicking
in. We have got three out of 10 fields in but we have managed to
get around and see most of the crops today and have a good look.
One of the stops we went to was actually a new pump and
storage that you have built. Can you tell us a little bit more
about why you did that and how you did that particular redesign?
We had a good look at the way we manage water on farm and one of
the interesting things throughout this drought is the more we
are concentrated on our water the better we have actually got at
using it, so we are growing more cotton using less water and
doing more with it. So the whole redesign of the farm and it is
actually a complex redesign of the whole thing culminating in
the dam up there was all designed about managing water. So it
was a water management structure. It enables us to extract water
off farm during storm events. It allows us to drain the farm so
we don’t get waterlogging and water staying on the fields for
too long. Not only does it do that but it allows us to supply
water back into the farm at a rate which allows us to grow for
maximum yield.
Another unique thing about it and you might be able to say
something about it is the telemetry and how you have that
particular pumping system and infrastructure so it can be
adjusted from the office?
So what we really looked at is how can we manage our water
better and it was a full package of where we can take it on the
farm, where we can send it to and then how we go about managing
that. So yes we did invest in some telemetry which allows us to
remotely control that site so if the situation arises that we
have a storm, we don’t need to drive up there we can remotely
start it, stop it, regulate the pumps, open and shut gates from
the office and just allows us greater versatility to manage our
water.
The other thing that we looked at that certainly not unique
anymore but is certainly not everywhere was a lateral move
irrigator that’s been set up to grow cotton on and quite a large
unit, why did you look at lateral moves?
We have been very interested in looking at alternative forms of
irrigation. We are really chasing overall profitability and
allowing us to be productive into the future. So we are looking
for a system that will give us a lower cost of production,
greater yield and use less water and the lateral move system,
the modern day lateral move system offered that to us. So we
installed two machines a couple of years ago and we are really
still in the trialling phase but the results so far have been
very promising. The water saving is there, we are consistently
saving about 30% of water which has come in very handy to use
during the drought, we have got a slight yield increase that we
believe we can do better on and to date we have seen some
savings in growing costs. So long term it looks positive that we
will be able to grow a better system, a better farming system
under the lateral move irrigator that we will see is more
profitable into the future.
So you may not be able to use lateral moves everywhere on the
farm and you are still doing quite a bit of work on furrow
irrigation of course, could you maybe outline some of the work
that you have been doing on optimizing furrow irrigation as
well?
And that’s correct, laterals aren’t for everywhere they really
need to be placed in a well laid out system and they really
don’t fit everywhere across the farm so furrow irrigation is
here to stay, furrow irrigation on a proportion of the farm is
something that we will still be doing into long term, and we can
do better at it. We are really focusing on drainage, getting the
water off the field, we are focused on getting water to the
field so when we come to a field to go irrigating we want to get
the water on quickly, we will want to get it off quickly and
really only put on the exact amount of water we need to put on
the crop. So it is all geared around irrigating a little bit
more frequently but putting less on and ultimately we aim to put
less water through the profile as in deep drainage and grow a
crop that suffers less stress in there. So these are some of the
things that we are achieving through laser levelling, redesign
of head ditch pads, redesign of tail water systems and it is
contributing to some increased yields and better water use
efficiency.
Ben its been difficult to make the labour changes and the
management of those fields on farm, has that been a challenge or
has that been relatively easy?
No it is a challenge, it is a different system and we are really
trying to put more science into the design, into the application
of applying water to these fields so it is not just as simple as
starting a siphon and letting it run anymore, we run these head
ditches at a set height, we want to run the syphons for a set
time, we want to minimise our tail water and it’s a different
frame of mind, we need to go out there and irrigate with. We
want to be able to irrigate more frequently so it’s a large job
to get water from one side of the farm to the other but if we
can do that efficiently we can be ready to go when the heat
comes in and we can move forward. So it is a different mind set
but it is a challenge but I guess that’s what we need to do to
improve. |
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