FARMERS across the country have always had a reputation for producing high quality products for the world – both in livestock and cropping.
With today being National Ag Day, we spoke to Calingiri farmer Aaron Edmonds who knows of this quality but said as an industry we need to keep working to stay above everyone else.
“Agriculture is always going to be a reliable producer of high-quality products that the world needs, although we have to keep working away at supplying the high quality products to keep above our competitors,” Mr Edmonds said.
His decision to stick with farming is based on its bright financial future and a lifestyle offered like no other.
“I chose grain farming as it has a financial future and as most people would know it is an addictive industry that we work in,” Mr Edmonds said.
He works with his dad Charlie and said there was plenty of potential in the industry.
“We have a competitive advantage that we need to exploit more, with things like cheap lime,” Mr Edmonds said.
Although Australian agriculture is a reliable industry Mr Edmonds said there was a need to focus on agriculture’s role in the supply chain.
“We can’t take our position for granted and we should be striving to provide efficiency to the supply chain, such as our bulk handling systems,” he said.
This season Mr Edmonds has 1800 hectares in crop, with 40 per cent of that being canola.
“We have been increasing our canola every year,” he said.
“We used to seed consecutive cereals although canola is allowing us to back off from cereals and have less weeds.
“It has been a good way of retaining stubble and not having to burn.”
Most of the farm’s cereals were lost to frost last year with canola being the saving point, although this year the conditions are difficult.
“We have two sorts of canola at the moment, with this patchy and high-variable stuff that came up a bit later in the season,” Mr Edmonds said.
“Anything that is swathed was seeded first and got an inch of rain at the end of April.
“Whatever was seeded after that we have had to direct head because it came up so patchy.”
This harvest has started quite difficult for many WA farmers with isolated showers and thunderstorms across the State.
“The weather forecast changes every day and the wind just won’t go away,” Mr Edmonds said.
“Two weeks ago they predicted all this horrible weather so we did our barley then jumped straight into our noodle wheat.”
Inclement weather damaged the canola that is still standing and swinging in the wind and farmers can see evidence of shedding with pod shells on the ground.
“We have 100ha of wheat still left to harvest, although we got most of it off and into the bin with most of the noodle wheat making grade – the quality seems pretty good this year,” Mr Edmonds said.
He hopes to finish harvest in two weeks, weather permitting.
Before the late showers in October the season was looking short for many.
Mr Edmonds predicted an early harvest with everything drying out.
Late rains and a soft finish meant the plants filled out,`` although he didn’t apply a lot of nitrogen, meaning protein was low.
The rain did affect some of the grain with barley having germ end stain which has sent 80pc of the grain into feed grade.
The yields for both barley and wheat have been above average with Mr Edmonds hopeful that grain prices would remain high.
