ALTHOUGH sandalwood only makes up a small part of Bruce Storer’s farming enterprise, in the 15 years that he has been growing it he has seen evidence of its benefit and believes the tree has excellent potential.
With his wife Beverley and his son Carl, he owns and operates a 1075 hectare property, known as Cadonia Park, with 688ha at Cunderdin and 387ha at Bencubbin.
Mr Storer was a third-generation farmer when he moved from his home town of Koorda to set up his own mixed farming operation at Cunderdin in 1989.
The Storers’ farming program consists of about 65 per cent cropping, 30pc livestock and 5pc sandalwood.
Their 2018 cropping program will include 600ha planted to wheat, 30ha of barley with the remaining 120ha sown to lupins.
This program has been reasonably consistent over the past five years and the Storer’s yields have averaged around 2.4 tonnes per hectare for wheat, 2t/ha for barley and lupins coming in at 1.7t/ha.
The crops are planted in a rotation with two seasons of pasture, followed by two seasons of cereals, which Mr Storer said had worked quite well for them in recent years.
They have also been consistent with spreading lime on each paddock once every three years.
Mr Storer said they were planning to start seeding after Anzac Day.
As part of their livestock operation, the Storers have the Cadonia Park Poll Merino stud and run about 400 breeding ewes with 190 ewe hoggets, 60 Merino ram lambs and 80 wethers.
Despite primarily focussing on the more traditional facets of the farming business – crops and livestock – after much experimenting, Mr Storer has developed a strong passion for cultivating sandalwood.
His experience with sandalwood began with a small area at his Cunderdin property and after obtaining a licence to harvest it, he soon realised its high value.
Rough country with harsh wodjil soils on the Bencubbin property would make it almost impossible to grow grain, but there was an abundance of healthy native sandalwood on the land and his earlier experience with the tree drove him to want to learn more about growing it.
Mr Storer expanded his knowledge by attending various field days and formed a group with other growers to get a better grasp on how to successfully cultivate sandalwood, which later became the Australian Sandalwood Network.
The early days of the plantation were very small scale as Mr Storer was seeing a high mortality rate, but in 2011 he received a grant from the Wheatbelt Natural Resource Management to research wind erosion and alternative land use which kickstarted the large scale planting of sandalwood.
Now 15 years on, Mr Storer has a handle on growing sandalwood with six plantings – at a survival rate of about 90pc to 95pc.
“Growing wheat feels like almost fighting against nature, whereas growing sandalwood – because it is native – it seems to complement the country,” he said.
“All you really have to do is watch that is has germinated after the first year of seeding and then it pretty much looks after itself.”
The Storers sandalwood plantation at Bencubbin consists of about 70ha of cultivated sandalwood and 120ha of wild sandalwood.
In order for sandalwood to survive it must be planted next to a host plant which the Storers plant as seedlings in winter – two metres apart.
The following autumn, the sandalwood is sown by hand using Pottipuki planters with about one metre distance from the host plant.
Mr Storer said the one metre spacing between host plants and the sandalwood had proved efficient in reducing shade and allowing the sandalwood to compete for light and grow up with the host.
“If the host becomes too big, shading becomes an issue but if you can get the sandalwood away early, it usually reaches up pretty well,” he said.
Mr Storer said it was important to stimulate germination of the sandalwood nuts in a way that mimics a thunderstorm.
He receives the seeds in February and before a hot, dry day, will soak the seeds in water for 24 hours and will then dry them out on hot concrete during the day, causing the nuts to form a hairline crack.
“It seems to help them germinate in the first year – if we don’t do that, we have discovered that a lot seem to come up two of three years later,” Mr Storer said.
“Sometimes we have gone back and re-seeded it, not knowing if there is one there or not and we can end up with two coming up which we don’t want.”
Mr Storer said there was a lot of ambiguity around how long it took for sandalwood to grow until it can be harvested.
Although he predicts it will take about 25 years for his trees to mature he said there was a possibility immature sandalwood could hold some value.
“Immature sandalwood was said it wouldn’t have any oil in it and would basically be worthless,” he said.
“As the tree matures and sets heartwood in the centre, it starts to produce the valuable oil and immature trees don’t really produce any oil.
“Scientists tell me that once the tree starts laying down heartwood, it starts producing oil.
“But some trees produce heartwood much earlier than others, and there is being research done to look into that.”
Over the past 15 years of growing sandalwood, the biggest challenge Mr Storer has had to overcome was finding the best ways to cultivate it, including the layout of the plantation, knowing how to stimulate germination of the seeds and deciding to plant by hand.
Despite the challenges Mr Storer has noticed significant improvements with his sandalwood plantation and hopes to expand it from 5pc to about 15pc to 20pc of the farm’s income.