WINNING a category, let alone even entering, the hyper yielding crop (HYC) competition was never on Charles Caldwell's mind - rather his focus has always been on pushing the limits of productivity on his Boyup Brook farm.
Some extremely ambitious targets have been set for the 1780 hectare patch of land, with the farm focusing on constantly replenishing any nutrients that are removed from the soil throughout the season.
With a slightly different philosophy to the average farm, Mr Caldwell and his team of farm advisers from Kojonup and Boyup Brook Agricultural Supplies and CSBP Fertilisers, apply large amounts of various nutrients to offset what the crops take from the soil.
Mr Caldwell's input costs are much higher compared to the average farm in the area, but then again, his output is also considerably higher.
Last season, he had an impressive 7.21 tonnes per hectare average across the 246ha sown to barley.
A couple of weeks ago, Mr Caldwell was named the winner of the highest percentage of potential yield - barley, in the Grains Research and Development Corporation and FAR Australia HYC initiative, for his 64.5ha paddock which produced 7.76t/ha.
It achieved 84 per cent of the crop's theoretical potential.
It was only by chance that Mr Caldwell even entered the competition.
He received a phone call from a mate in September asking if he had any paddocks he would like to enter, as they were a little low on numbers, and he wasn't expecting to win a category - as he hadn't done any differing agronomy for the competition.
It wasn't winning that motivated Mr Caldwell, but rather maximising the output from his farm - with a goal of increasing his yields by 500 kilograms per hectare per year on cereals.
This endeavour started about four years ago, when he attended a CSBP field day organised by CSBP area manager Dan Glover.
Mr Glover talked about the HYC efforts in Tasmania - where farmers were achieving yields between 10-11t/ha for the same crop many farmers were growing in the west, but only growing around 5-5.5t/ha.
"The potential of those varieties are pretty awesome, it's double what we are doing," Mr Caldwell said.
"So I thought what can we do to take those varieties up to that - maybe not 10 tonnes - but for our environment, how far can we take it?
"So since then, each year we've been trying to tweak things."
What followed was an extremely motivated Mr Caldwell and a journey towards pushing yields, which he said wouldn't be possible without the team of people who work behind the scenes.
Family support inspired him to continue pushing during a busy harvest, and without his farm worker Ben Mead, the farm wouldn't be able to run as smoothly.
The Caldwell dream team included the talent from Kojonup and Boyup Brook Agricultural Supplies: company partner and senior agronomist Alec Smith, agronomists Holly Chandler and Corey Taylor and CSBP's Mr Glover.
Mr Caldwell said Mr Glover was essential in the process, helping with soil and tissue testing and fine tuning nutrient application.
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"The CSBP trial work in Boyup Brook gave us confidence of yield potential and economic return on high inputs," Mr Caldwell said.
The biggest change to Mr Caldwell's farming technique, in his opinion, is the use of the SE14 soil wetter - which is getting entire paddocks "up and away".
"It's also the nutrients applied - we are doing more fertiliser targeted on nutrient removal rates," he said.
"So if a tonne of canola or a tonne of barley removed X amount, then we recognise how much that is and replace it."
Mr Smith said the idea was to not be running into the soil storage, but rather provide all the nutrition the soil needs to keep it sustainable long term.
This farming approach has increased costs "considerably".
"We are spending more per hectare, but with the extra tonnes achieved above average yield, the cost per tonne is not that great," Mr Smith said.
However, Mr Caldwell said the CSBP tissue testing and nutrient modelling helped give data to back up the use of these inputs.
After entering the competition, GRDC sends growers an indepth summary of the crop's make-up - which the team thought was fantastic, as normally they would just receive the grain breakdown from CBH.
"Some of the key levels weren't quite there, there is still room for improvement - we've got to get more potassium and sulphur to make the nitrogen more efficient," Mr Caldwell said.
"We're good for our nitrogen but if we had gotten more phosphorus early and also more potassium out throughout the season, it would have been better I think," Mr Smith said.
"And then there are the micro things we need to find a way to make sure we address - like molybdenum has popped up as critically low, which is a catalyst that is essential for nitrogen use efficiency."
The 64.5ha paddock was picked for the competition as it had been pasture for five years prior, meaning it had a higher level of carbon in the soil.
"We'd also set it up going into the rotation by doing the winter clean, the grass selective and then spraytopping at the back end, then it went into canola in 2021," Mr Smith said.
"So we had a low base of weeds going into it, so certainly the management of the first crop was quite easy."
The farm is big on preventative measures for fungal disease, which has been a big change for the farm, and the team have started using a "top shelf" fungicide package.
"We are using the fungicides prophylactically rather than reactively, and doing preventative treatments," Mr Smith said.
Mr Caldwell said when GRDC inspected the crop, representatives were impressed by how clean it was, with virtually no disease.
The farm is also achieving great results with its canola program, and has recently restarted growing wheat after a brief hiatus.
This year, the farm is growing three wheat varieties: RockStar, Denison and Cesario - a new high yielding wheat feed for the area.
When looking at Mr Caldwell's paddocks, it was evident to see that the Cesario grew quite differently to other wheat varieties - with the Cesario looking quite flat because of its sprawling growth habit.
"As a result, it just tillers like fury, producing this amazing bulk of tiller, and so having a whole lot of smaller heads - it's an interesting one," Mr Smith said.
The only downside is Cesario is currently only classified as a feed variety.
Mr Smith also believes Denison wheat has flown "under the radar" - having not performed as well as he thought was possible in the NVT trials.
While the NVT trials are undeniably useful, they fail to help when it comes to early seeding windows or longer season varieties, so having an agronomist/farmer duo who are willing to gamble with different varieties is exciting.
Mr Smith was confident Denison could do amazing things, and would hopefully be outside the frost window, which sounded promising.
Mr Caldwell has also invested a large amount into machinery so he has the flexibility to apply chemicals during time-sensitive windows, admitting that he had the capacity with the equipment to farm much more land than he has.
This new equipment has enabled him to have good spray efficiency, and he has noted that he has saved large amounts of chemicals on each paddock because of the improved accuracy - about 7pc less hectares on average applied on paddocks.
Doing five to six passes each year, 7pc is massive, and Mr Caldwell believed the machinery would pay itself off soon enough.
Header accuracy was also incredibly important to Mr Caldwell, to make sure the harvest of all of his hard work is maximised, by using drop trays to minimise header loss.
Given the new Work Safety Laws, and that his children are getting older and will soon be working on the farm, Mr Caldwell was passionate about making sure the farm was as safe as possible - and was working hard to automate processes.
After a horrendous bout of footrot in his stock, Mr Caldwell has changed the structure of his enterprise to about 90pc cropping and 10pc sheep.
His 4300 ewes lambing decreased to just 500 lambing this year.
Mr Caldwell has been continuously culling for the past three years, but he hopes to expand his sheep numbers next year to 1000 lambing when the footrot is eradicated.
With reduced stock, he has seeded a lot of his pasture to crop but he said some of the paddocks weren't suited for cropping.
"I guess a benefit to that, in five years' time, when we stabilise the sheep to cropping ratio is that that country would have gone through the cropping cycle, going back and reinvigorated with some new pasture varieties - so it is going to have better nutrition underneath it," Mr Smith said.
He loves working with Mr Caldwell and his team, pushing the boundaries to see what the country was capable of.
"This is the bit of my job that I find the most rewarding - working with growers that really want to see what the potential is and seeing how they can change it up," Mr Smith said.
"When we start to push the boundaries and see what this country is capable of, and get some really exciting results, that's rewarding."
