CONSTANTLY looking for improvements and efficiencies guided Beverley farmer Duncan Young to a win in the Sustainability category at the recent Syngenta Growth Awards in Sydney, New South Wales.
The annual awards were held on Thursday, November 30 and recognise growers and advisers who are making a difference to the industry through leadership, best practice and innovation.
Luke Marquis, who manages more than 250,000 hectares of crop each year with his business, South East Agronomy Services in Esperance, won the Productivity award and Ray Harrington, Darkan, inventor of the Harrington Seed Destructor, received the Case IH award for his 40 plus years in agriculture.
Embracing different ways to look at agriculture is what made Mr Young an outstanding candidate.
This year he hosted 11 hectares of on-farm trials for chemicals, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and Syngenta.
“I run with some pretty ‘out there’ ideas and we try a lot of new stuff,” Mr Young said.
“Each year we have between 10-18 trial sites on our farm with other companies.”
Knife rolling is one of the many ways that he focuses on reducing his environmental footprint, moving away from burning stubbles.
Mr Young also focuses heavily on water supply which he said helped with chemical efficiency.
Six years ago he built a desalination plant that is used to strip minerals from the water.
“We have a big artesian water supply and we use some of that water and desalinate it down to almost distilled water,” he said.
The water comes to the surface at 3000 parts per million of salt, which is reduced down to 100 once it goes through the plant.
Mr Young said weed-killing efficiency had improved dramatically just from the quality of the water they used.
“It’s just the little things that add up,” he said.
“We also use the water for a lot of other things like livestock – typically the water is high in minerals so we need to get rid of them.”
Other ways in which Mr Young has tried to improve his farm is cover crops and green manuring, which he said seemed to work well in his area.
“I assume I won it because we are trying to adapt to new technology and I try to push the envelope a little with the trials.”
A few years ago Mr Young tried to improve spray efficiency and signed up to trial both auto steer and boom section control.
He said sometimes you have to be the guinea pig and make mistakes but believed people needed to try new things to move forward.
Having one full-time worker and a part-timer over harvest and seeding is another way Mr Young has improved efficiency.
“We have mechanised up so we don’t need a big workforce,” he said.
“We do more with bigger bits of machinery, I try to get the best efficiency out of everything.”
Mr Young has a full plate on his 2800 hectare property where he has been harvesting canola, wheat, barley, milling oats, lupins and field peas, as well as running Merinos.
Cold weather and late rain has meant only the canola and lupins have been harvested so far.
“We won’t be finished by Christmas, nothing was ripening quickly and we have just started our barley,” he said.
Mr Young said the yields were better than anticipated in the middle of the season.
He said a mild finish had helped the grain fill out the heads, with the lupins being the best he has grown in years, average wise.
“It’s a real mixed bag in this area with others more advanced into their programs,” Mr Young said.
“People who didn’t have much canola have ripped into their cereals.
“Then people like myself, who have big canola programs, have taken a fair while to get through it.”
Mr Young is currently the WAFarmers grain section president and sits on the Grain Producers Australia production committee.
He also serves on the Grain Industry Association of WA’s barley and oats standard committee.
With a strong love and passion for agriculture Mr Young hopes to continue improving efficiency across his property for many years to come.
