TWENTY growers, agronomists and re-sellers attended the Pioneer field walk last Thursday at Mukinbudin.
The day focused on Super Sweet Sudan (SSS) which is a summer forage that is being trialled and successfully grown in the Eastern Wheatbelt to combat the lack of summer feed.
Gentec Seeds Central WA area manager Erinn McCartney said it was also a learning day for new growers.
“It was an information day for growers to talk about what they have done and how it has worked for them, also what they plan to do with SSS going forward,” Mr McCartney said.
The field walk was held on Brendan Geraghty’s property north of Mukinbudin, where there were successful paddocks of SSS for people to see.
Mr McCartney said SSS was quick to graze and could sustain multiple intensive grazes.
“It has been grown over east under irrigation and they use it for good hay and silage, where as over here it’s a fit for dry land grazing,” he said.
Prussic acid, which is toxic to livestock, is low risk in SSS in comparison to traditional sorghum, which requires a lot more rainfall to lower the risk.
Given the Eastern Wheatbelt is a low rainfall area, SSS can grow without the risk of the acid, compared to growing other forages on a dry land farming system.
“It will help the farmers in the Wheatbelt utilise the increasing summer rainfall patterns that we have been seeing over the past decade,” Mr McCartney said.
He said it has become quite common to see substantial summer rainfall, which has been increasing and also dryer winters.
“It’s helping mixed farming operations to utilise that rainfall and get something back out of it,” Mr McCartney said.
The ideal time to sow SSS is technically when the soil temperature is 15 degrees and rising for three days in a row, which Mr McCartney said was towards the end of October.
He said they had seen some good results from some later sowing in January, with one Beacon farmer putting his crop in on January 19.
“Within 30 days he had it up at about a metre high, so (sowing is) anytime between October and January,” Mr McCartney said.
The first trial of SSS was in 2015 at Northam, where in 2016 they held a field trial and four growers decided to start growing it.
By 2017, 6000 hectares of Super Sweet Sudan was growing across the Wheatbelt.
“It’s got these guys excited and it’s one of those products that could potentially change the way farmers go about things,” he said.
Anyone that has had summer storms or late finishing rains in October can benefit their mixed farming operations and get some good quality summer feed, Mr McCartney said.
Another field walk will be held on Tuesday, March 27 in York, where the outcome has been slightly different due to the more sustainable rainfall patterns in the area.