WITH 55 years farming experience up his sleeve Ray Marshall has had his fair share of experience in dealing with dry weather conditions.
The 71-year-old runs a 4000 hectare mixed operation at Pingelly with brother Leslie and son Andrew.
The team run 6000 Prime SAMM ewes and this year’s 1800ha cropping program was made up of barley, oats and canola.
Ray has an impressive agricultural portfolio and is a sitting member of the Grain Producers Australia (GPA) board, founder of the WA Grain Group (WAGG) and is a Pingelly Shire councillor.
Ray has received only 17 millimetres of rain since the start of seeding in mid-April and said it wasn’t the first time he had experienced unseasonably dry conditions since the beginning of his farming career in 1962.
“This is nothing new, but generally you know it’s going to rain sooner or later,” he said.
“This gig is not for the faint-hearted no matter who you are, but you’ve got to be smart and people cope one way or another.
“You can either buckle up and create strategy or if you don’t want to do that, put your farm up on the back page of the Farm Weekly.”
Patches of Ray’s cropping program were out of the ground last week thanks to 7mm of rain in June, with the earlier sown crops in the best condition.
With limited green feed available, the Marshalls were supplementary feeding their sheep with hay, lupins and oats.
Ray said if season-breaking rains remained elusive, several important decisions would have to be made to make the most of the season.
“It’s a bit like a game of football, if it’s half-time and you’re five goals behind you’ve got to do something different or at least be prepared to do something different,” he said.
“You’ve got to make sure you know all of the options and all of the things that are there for you to use.
“Make sure you know what the economics are, make sure that you actually do know that a lamb that survives is going to be worth $150, so having that in mind invest some money, go and buy 50 tonnes of lupins and 30 tonnes of pellets and be prepared to get the hay out of the shed.
“As far as cropping goes, keep the Flexi-N for next year and leave the boomspray in the shed.
“You’ve got to be one step ahead, you’ve got to have that vision.”
Ray said several advancements in agricultural technology had allowed him to better mitigate the risks of drought, including running a minimum-till program.
He had also set up a confined grazing system to keep his sheep in optimal condition and had pregnancy tested his ewes to improve stock management.
“I think now that we’ve developed enough technology through research and development, that even 10 years ago if these sort of conditions prevailed it would be bad,’’ he said.
“Ninety per cent of the crop is in because of no-till and the chemical regimes that we have now and use very wisely.
“Technology allows you to cope with years like this as compared to years like last year.”
With the number of farmers across WA shrinking and farms getting bigger, Ray said farmers needed to have faith in their –bilities and expertise.
“My biggest disappointment in farming is the lack of recognition that farmers get for their skills, for their operation, for their expertise and finesse from the wider community.
“The wider community, including federal government, State government and local government – there’s a massive disconnect.
“There’s about 4200 of us farmers left in WA, in the mid-1980s there was about 15,000.
“Those that are left are pretty good and they’re pretty tough, they’re very good are what they do and they’re not faint-hearted.”
