CROPCHOICE helps New South Wales farmers make decisions by keyboard

Like other “high-tech” gadgetry, the computer models designed to help farmers with cropping decisions are about to get simpler to use. 

Growers will probably still want an adviser to talk them through the new CROPCHOICE tool from the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSWDPI), but one of its developers, Josh Gordon (photo), says they’re certainly going to find it easier to use and understand.

Mr Gordon, a climate application project officer with NSWDPI, says CROPCHOICE builds on climate and agronomic research by fellow departmental scientists Dr Peter Hayman and Dr David Herridge.

That project, “Delivering climate variability information through a farming systems context in northern New South Wales", was supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).

Mr Gordon’s work also draws on disease research by Dr Steven Simpfendorfer and agronomic benchmarks developed by NSWDPI in an ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) supported project with links to Cambodia. 

“CROPCHOICE is a stand-alone application that uses data for any local situation,” Mr Gordon says.

“Growers can use a simple probe to measure soil moisture and they also need to calculate the amount of nitrogen available for the next crop.

“The CROPCHOICE tool combines the paddock data with local climate, soil, disease and agronomic  information to assess possible yield, and automatically uses that data in gross margin analysis, based on a grain price for different crop options set by the user.

“While these calculations are not complex, CROPCHOICE allows many seasonal and management variations to be compared very quickly.”

Mr Gordon said farmers might like to look at the disease risk if they planted a paddock back to wheat, and how serious the risk of crown rot was likely to be, depending on the season.

CROPCHOICE allowed them look at variety – susceptible or tolerant – and what might happen to any of those varieties in different seasons – good, average or bad.

They could factor in the climate outlook, as well as the prices expected for the different crop options, again across that range of seasons.

The program also could take the biological benefit of rotational crops into account –   putting a dollar value on that aspect of growing canola, chickpea or faba beans – and  compare the overall results against wheat in poor, average and good seasons.

It could estimate the impact of a bad Ascochyta year.

“In its early development we tested CROPCHOICE at a grower workshop in Coonamble, and the next step will focus on working with groups and their advisers, ensuring the program remains grower driven,” Mr Gordon said.

“CROPCHOICE has the ability to take in new considerations like salinity and water use efficiency and to include data for every region.”