Tambellup farmer Daniel Nazzari has a big future in the agricultural world

Some children choose to leave and never come back, leaving their family to sell-up.

Others go to learn trades, before eventually returning to take over.

However, when children do take over, it can often look very different from what their parents had done before them.

This is especially true as many farms in WA slowly shift from mixed farming to more cropping businesses.

Between 2016 and 2021, the historically strong sheep-producing State experienced large declines of more than 1.1 million head in its sheep population, equal to about eight per cent.

It is no surprise this shift to cropping has become more substantial in the past year, as the phase-out of live sheep export by ship looms over the industry.

Tambellup farmer Daniel Nazzari, 22, is one young farmer who sees the benefit in increasing the cropping area on the farm, while still appreciating the value of the sheep rotation.

"I probably personally enjoy cropping more, it just seems less stressful in many ways," Mr Nazzari said.

He found with cropping he often didn't need to worry about rain as much, whereas with pasture he always had an eye on the radar.

"It's typically never enough rain with pastures, especially early on," Mr Nazarri said.

"And a few good rains in April/May (or lack thereof) can be highly consequential in terms of the feeding requirements for the rest of the season.

"But I do appreciate the value of sheep in the rotation.

"There are plenty of benefits with regards to soil health, resistance management and long-term productivity - striking the right balance is the hard bit."

The Nazzari farm is about 5200 hectares and runs a 75pc sheep and 25pc crop operation - which has become atypical for the area, according to Mr Nazzari.

The farm used to be quite live export heavy, with a large proportion of two-year-old wethers going on live export ships.

Mr Nazzari said that had slowly been declining and eventually he expected they wouldn't export any sheep at all, due to the inevitable ban on live export.

He said the decline in sheep numbers was inevitable after a ban was enforced during the northern hemisphere summer.

"Since then, the writing was on the wall, it was never that big of a shock," Mr Nazzari said.

"That being said, when the announcement was made this year, I was a bit like, 'oh crap, this is actually happening'."

Last year the farm struggled to get all of its 1.5-year-old wethers on a live export ship and instead had to hold them until this year.

This has meant they now have to crop less to continue to hold them, which Mr Nazzari found "annoying".

He still wants to keep sheep on his farm, but was hoping to hold less and instead increase his cropping space.

"We will probably back our sheep numbers off because of the ban and we will probably be cropping a bit more - so you can thank (former WA agriculture and food minister) Alannah MacTiernan for that," he said.

"It's not that we have to get rid of our sheep, but we won't get as high of a price for our wethers and this will be exacerbated in the event of a drought, as we simply don't have the market options available, nor the capacity in the system to deal with large turnoff's (without live export).

"So you don't want to have too many numbers or it can be a bit painful."

Last year the cropping program yielded well, with 550ha of wheat averaging five-six tonnes per hectare.

The 350ha of barley averaged 4-5t/ha, while the canola averaged about 2.2t/ha, oats averaged 6t/ha and lupins averaged 2.5t/ha.

It is a similar rotation this year, but canola was dropped due to the lower prices and a very dry start to the season.

The Nazzaris' general rotation is three out (pasture) and one in, however Mr Nazzari said this changed depending on the circumstances.

"For example, if we planned to put a paddock in and it comes up with really good feed and there is another paddock which we planned to keep out but has very little feed, we might switch it up to put the paddock with less feed in," he said.

"It's a bit of a catch-22 though, because often the paddocks with more clover are the ones you are better able to prepare the year before."

He said if he did manage to clean up a paddock with little clover, they might crop it three or four years in a row and then sow it back to clover.

The farm isn't trying any new varieties or machinery in 2023.

In recent years they have seeded Flinders and Maximus barley and stopped growing Flinders barley as CBH no longer accepts it as a malt variety.

"We will grow exclusively Maximus barley from now on until a new malt accredited variety is released that we can try out," Mr Nazzari said.

The farm is growing Zen, Sceptre and RockStar wheat, but they are considering dropping RockStar to "simplify things" and switching Zen to a new noodle variety when one is released.

Before fully returning to the farm, Mr Nazzari decided to learn more about agriculture and is undertaking a bachelor of agribusiness degree at Curtin University.

Australian Grain Technologies (AGT) wheat breeder Dion Bennett last year delivered a lecture to Mr Nazzari's class, which caught his attention.

He sent an email to AGT asking to work there and has subsequently spent a day a week this semester learning about the world of plant breeding.

"Dion has been great, he's a good mentor and I've been picking his brain," Mr Nazzari said.

He has found his time at AGT extremely "eye opening", especially after learning how long the process is to create a new variety - about 10-12 years until they enter the market.

Mr Nazzri is still deciding what he wants to do when he graduates from Curtin University, as he said to become a plant breeder he would have to further his education with a PhD, or at least an Honours degree.

Mr Nazzari said he might utilise his degree to become an agronomist or enter the banking world.