WHEN Canna farmer Cameron Tubby returned home from a four-month Nuffield Scholarship tour in 2009 he was proverbially, full of beans.
He believed he could drought-proof his property and build a sustainable and profitable farming enterprise which included a 5000 hectare cropping program in a district where droughts were common.
The fire in his belly was stoked by the Nuffield Scholarship world study tour, sponsored by Landmark, in which he assessed alternative farming systems for low rainfall, semi-arid agricultural regions of WA.
And what he discovered and already is implementing, by his own admission, will be confronting to many of his peers.
"My objective was to find real alternatives that will require a change in mindset," he said.
"Some options are more a case of what's-old-is-new-again."
He cites native grasses, salt management, olive trees, thornless prickly pears, cactus, aquaculture, different sheep breeds, alternative trees and a range of value-adding products that can turn the typical Australian farm into a smorgasbord of income streams.
In 2010 he was determined to set sail on uncharted waters with his wife Teresa and children Liam, Regan, Aiden and Grace and saw potential in evaluating salt-tolerant grasses and plants which he saw in Israel and the United States.
And on the livestock side, he believed there were opportunities to assess the South African fat tail Van Rooy sheep which produce no wool but handle harsh climates "where Dorpers won't survive and Merinos won't go".
It was the latter option that he enthusiastically embraced, keen to produce export-grade and domestic slaughter-grade sheep in a dry season climate.
"Throughout the world in similar climates to ours livestock are a critical component of dryland farming," he said.
"Nowhere did I see 100 per cent cropping operations."
But his good "ship" hit an iceberg a year into the voyage with the disruption to the live export trade and the bureaucratic bumbling that produced the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS).
Undeterred, Cameron has doggedly steered through rough seas and still remains optimistic about the future of agriculture.
"We're well down the pathway with the Van Rooys, in producing a dual-purpose meat sheep that is easy-care with the ability to stand up in testing conditions," he said.
"And we're still looking at a perennial pasture system."
Adding another string to the bow or life raft to the boat Cameron is involved in a national trial along with the Mingenew Irwin Group.
The Shrubs for Emission Reduction and Carbon Storage (SERCS) project is part of a national trial evaluating the on-farm use of a range of Australian native shrubs and to demonstrate their anti-methanogenic properties and potential as a fodder source, when used as a green feed during the summer-autumn feed gap.
It's based on 16 paired trial sites on eight participating properties in WA, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
It is expected the inclusion of these plants in the stock diet will promote more efficient digestion thereby limiting emissions primarily methane, from animals.
The project is in collaboration with the Future Farm CRC, the Enrich project team and UWA.
It's supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry as part of its Carbon Farming Futures Action on the Ground program.
Eight trial sites have been selected, including Dongara and Canna.
"We're looking at native shrubs that provide the grazing while storing carbon," Cameron said.
"We've cut out areas in salt valleys and ridges and marginal areas have now become big grazing options leaving our good country with potential for mixed enterprises.
"The perennial shrub areas will be locked away and strategically grazed and will become a form of feed insurance.
"That's what we're aiming for."
Apart from wheat, Cameron is focused on coarse grains such as triticale and Feed barley (Yagan).
"The Yagan variety, particularly, can handle the dry better and gets going very quickly," Cameron said.
"And we're still growing field peas which also are consistent performers in drier conditions."
As with all ideas, trials provide the best litmus test to viability and while Cameron is still trialling prickly pear - and battling kangaroos eating trials - his gut feeling is the plant is not suited to his farm.
"I don't think it will work," he said.
"It grows too slowly and they struggle in hot, dry conditions which are better handled by native shrubs.
"You only have to look at the thriving native vegetation to see we've got better adaptive species growing all around us.
"It is a good reminder that we're not in Europe or North America and we should be farming differently in this environment.
"The fundamental reason is risk reduction.
"There can be more emphasis on crop and pasture rotations, including fodder shrubs and native perennial grasses to make livestock production more viable.
"We need more research in WA on native grasses and fodder plants."
Another outside-the-square thought is growing cactus.
"Cactus is widely regarded as a high-yielding, highly palatable and a readily available source of carbohydrates but lacks crude protein and crude fibre," he said.
"Therefore to get the best performance out of cactus it needs to be supplemented with a cheap source of fibre and protein such as hay or grain to achieve a daily weight gain in ewe lambs of 100g/day.
"The hay and grain can successfully be replaced with perennial grasses and saltbush to achieve the desired levels of protein and fibre to achieve good growth rates in animals."
Alternative crops also could include drought-tolerant barley and wheat varieties.
"In Syria, I saw drought-tolerant barley varieties being grown in rotation with sheep along with grass pea, which is one of the main legumes in the Middle East," Cameron said.
"I tried the grass pea but in a dry season, side-by-side with field peas, it failed.
"That's why I'm using new varieties of field pea as an opportunity to get a legume back in the rotation."
Low rainfall lucerne varieties also could be in the mix.
"Having observed how the system works in South Africa I think we would need to target possibly our best land with the ability to absorb any summer rainfall or retain winter moisture into the summer," Cameron said.
"Lucerne would be site-specific and on a relatively low scale compared to the 50/50 rotation in South Africa but once established it appears that lucerne is capable of surviving droughts, especially on the better soil types."
For Cameron, the thinking doesn't stop and he has no doubts he can improve marginal land with the right strategies.
