PASTURES will be in hot demand this summer season and there is short supply of some species in stock, according to Alosca Technologies business development manager Floyd Sullivan.
Mr Sullivan said fewer Western Australian farmers were growing pastures for seed and the demand outweighed supply.
He wished he had more on hand for his clients but it was difficult to source.
Badgingarra farmer and chairman of the Pasture Grower Association of WA David Paish is the last of 13 WA farmers who grew pastures for seed, in various locations across the State.
Mr Paish said the margins were tight and that's probably why the others were no longer involved.
However it is not the only thing he does on-farm.
His operation covers 2000 acres of arable land, which his parents purchased in 1966.
The farm was total livestock at the beginning but after a fire about 15 years ago, which affected "60 per cent of the farm" including fences, he decided to go all cropping and pastures.
Mr Paish said the fire was so intense it damaged topsoil and destroyed the organic matter beneath the surface.
It has taken him years to build that organic matter back to a healthy level and now he is seeing worms again, indicating what he has done has worked.
Mr Paish works alone most of the time and has "never had a full-time worker".
He said this year he was "a good month behind" his normal routine.
"I like to get the seed in in May but this year I didn't start until the middle of June and didn't finish until July 7," Mr Paish said.
"It was around that time we had a bit of a rain event."
The annual rainfall was about more than 500 millimetres but so far he had only had 200mm.
"We should have had about 400mm by now," he said.
Mr Paish received about 5mm last week after rains on Thursday and Friday.
This season he planted 160 hectacres to wheat, 80ha to canola and has planted some chickpeas as well as a variety of perennial pastures.
He operates under a rotation of biserrula followed up with a crop of wheat, canola and then biserrula.
This allows him multiple harvesting of the pastures while making the most of the paddocks with cereal crops in between.
Mr Paish is always looking to make improvements on the way he farms to increase yields, efficiency and profitability.
When Farm Weekly visited last week he was flushing out a silage tank with a build up of a half tonne of sludge.
He had been trialling an organic compost mix and was excited to see the results.
Mr Paish operates a technical fertiliser application system as each crop needs variations of trace elements.
He mixes the elements himself, reducing costs as much as possible - although he does run a high input operation.
Mr Paish also applies "liquefied urea because it's not as hard on the crop".
He is not backwards in trialling something new either.
"My canola yields have been going down so I've decided to go into chickpeas," he said.
"I planted 45 kilograms of (chickpea) seed (because that was all he had) and got a 2.4 tonne yield.
"There were no problems with fungicides last year."
Mr Paish grows Hykon Rose clover, of which "a lot goes over east and gets sold into California".
He had a stack of pellets in the shed with bags of seed including Casbah Biserrula, Hykon Rose clover, Margurita Pink serradella, Prima Gland clover and Bartollo Bladder clover, among others.
He also cleans his own canola and wheat for reseeding.
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development senior research officer - pasture breeding, agronomy and ecology Angelo Loi said Hykon Rose clover was "a tough clover - tolerant of insects, doesn't burn, grows well in the shade and has a hard seed".
Mr Paish also had "a small trial patch" of raddish on farm which he was "growing to see how it works".
He has also planted a new variety of French Serradella called Frano and is waiting to see how it does compared to other varieties.
Frano was bred by Associate Professor Brad Nutt at Murdoch University and is the first in a series of new alternative legumes that are under development within the Centre for Rhizobium Studies.
Mr Paish is a mechanical engineer by trade and over the years has put his skills to work designing and developing his own seeding bar according to his on farm requirements, which was very different to what is seen in machinery dealerships.
He also designed and built his own seed cleaning system in his purpose-built shed to reduce costs and ensure the quality of his seeds, which he sells to "who ever will buy it".
Some of the parts to the seed cleaning machine came from Perth but other than that Mr Paish built the rest in his shed.
Mr Paish also has a collection of old tractors which he hopes to put on display in the future.
