English experiment pays off in York

Ian Crawford swapped vegetable farming in the UK to go broadacre cropping in York 11 years ago, but it seems the outsider's perspective has given him a unique take on the grain marketing system.

Not being a big fan of the CBH monopoly system, Ian has been considering what other options are available to him to store and market his grain.

"On-farm storage is the next big thing we're looking at," Ian said.

"At the moment I'm trying to get a company to subsidise my storage, that's the way forward.

"They subsidise the silos, then have the contract rights to my grain for a period of five years or so.

"That way you can cut CBH out and deliver the grain to wherever the company wants it.

"I think there is a big future there and we have a lot of plans, I just hope they come into fruition."

While Ian was reluctant to name the company he was in negotiations with, chances are it's one that's eager to get their hands on his coveted noodle wheat, which last week hit $465 a tonne.

Ian has been growing noodle wheat since he started cropping the 1923 hectare York farm and despite some volatility in the market, he believes demand for the variety will only increase in strength as time goes on.

This year's cropping program included 810ha of noodle wheat, 526ha of export hay and 405ha of canola.

With this season being so poor, yields across the board have been down and Ian is currently harvesting his noodle wheat, which is going Noodle Two due to high protein.

This year his Arrino wheat yielded below 1t/ha, which is well down on previous years, but prices being so high has softened the blow.

"We've been getting a lot of calls from grain marketers chasing noodle wheat lately, the phone has been going crazy," Ian said.

"I think the best prices we've had since we've been growing it have been approaching $500/t, but then it's also been down to $200/t.

"There will always be a market there and I think it's only going to get stronger."

They have been fending off the marketing grabs for their grain, as they have already committed the wheat to Ravensdown/Emerald, in a contract with output terms which is essentially a swap for chemical and fertiliser.

He said his first priority was to fulfil that contract, but he doubted whether they would be able to even do that due to the disastrous season.

Though growing noodle wheat can be lucrative, export hay production is the main profit driver in Ian's business, although this year that has proven to be quite tricky in itself.

"We bale all hay and straw, but it's been the worst year for baling," Ian said.

"We need at least 50 per cent humidity so you don't get saggy, soft bales and at the moment, we're only getting that at about 4am and it's only for a few hours."

Despite only using 750 tonne of their 3500t hay storage capacity this season, Ian said the quality of their hay had been good but they had only sold the very best to Japan for export.

They are holding on to the rest because there will be such a big demand for hay domestically.

Their seed cleaner has been a very handy piece of machinery this year and had turned average samples into good samples, but Ian said they used it every year regardless, with all of their grain.

He said the biggest challenge this year had been knowing how much to spend on his crops with fertiliser rates, fungicides and insecticides.

"Where do you stop?" he said.

"Because rain is the biggest factor, management only gets you so far."

Ian said he was already used to being pretty conservative with his chemical and fertiliser use, because the boomspray technology he used in the UK was more efficient than the techniques commonly used in WA.

He said they used an airboom rather than a nozzle, which reduced chemical rates by over 50pc.

While he is yet to adopt the airboom technology on his York farm, it is available in Australia and Ian eventually plans to implement it.

But there are many other glimpses of the UK in Ian's style of farming, that's aside from the red telephone booth near the workshop and clock tower adorning the machinery shed.

He disc ploughs one third of the farm, which he believes to be a great tool for killing melons, radish and ryegrass and also uses JCB Fastracs for everything around the farm rather than trucks.

Although it initially earned him a few strange looks carting grain into York with a JCB and a trailer, Ian said it was far more efficient than a truck.

"I think it's the only machine in WA that does this," he said.

"Unlike a truck, we can use it everyday.

"They are fast, safe and comfortable."

Ian said there was a considerable price difference in machinery in Australia compared to the UK, so it worked out cheaper for him to freight in many machinery parts.

Cheaper machinery and parts is something that Ian misses about his homeland, but he loves farming in WA and has grand plans to do it for many years to come.

He still farms 170ha of farmland in UK, where his family farmed for 400 years, and he himself grew potatoes and carrots until the market virtually collapsed in 1998.

The opening of the Channel Tunnel paved the way for an influx of cheap vegetable imports to be sold into the UK and growers like the Crawfords simply could not compete.

So Ian began looking at other farming opportunities around the world.

"We wanted to get away from potatoes and carrots to something with lower labour costs, so we looked at potential farms around the world, including Canada, Eastern Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and of course, Australia," Ian said.

"Australia came out as the best place to be, so we came here every year for five years and looked at more than 200 farms in that time."

Ian was looking at farms all over the country, in Victoria, Queensland and NSW but everything he saw was either not what they wanted or was too expensive.

In WA, he looked at farms in Jerramungup and Dongara, neither of which were right.

"We gave up and were on our way to the airport when our agent phoned and wanted us to come and look at a farm in York," he said.

"I said no at first, because we were leaving but we ended up going out there to see it and we fell in love with it.

"It was very run down and more than we wanted to spend, but after two years we scraped together what we needed and we got it."

The property was quite derelict when they purchased it, so everything they have made since has been redirected back into the farm for improvements.

The farm is run as a total cropping enterprise, although they also run 100 Murray Grey-Blonde d'Aquitaine cross cows/calves and will be shortly introducing a small number of deer.