BETTER farming opportunities enticed Randall Boughton to leave his predominantly grazing operation near Pallamallawa for the black cropping soils at Moree.
Since 1989, Mr Boughton has owned "Gilroy Farms", his 2200-hectare dryland cropping property he manages with his son Ben.
Starting with only 800ha, the pair have added several blocks to their farm where they grow chickpeas, barley, sorghum and wheat.
Keeping an eye on farming technology has always been important to the Boughtons, especially if it provides an opportunity to improve productivity and profitability.
"Technology has so much to offer farming, we've seen it with automatic steering tractors and satellite imagery," Randall Boughton said.
As a recipient of a 2014 Nuffield scholarship, Ben Boughton has been trialing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly for their ability to retrieve aerial images and infrared crop data.
Although the technology was only in its early stages, he could see a benefit in having the freedom to access quality data whenever he wanted.
Recently, he had a UAV demonstration flight in hope it could determine how an area of wheat was performing.
The drone mapped out an area of wheat with images, which, after some fiddling, allowed him to extrapolate useful data.
The images revealed parts of the paddock not performing as well as others by showing a smaller amount of biomass.
"We could see parts of the paddock where the planter had applied a lower amount of fertiliser," Ben said.
UAVs are the next step forward for Ben Boughton, who has already been using satellite imagery to determine whether parts of his paddocks were performing as well as others.
Cloud cover could be problematic for the satellite images, although he said because it was such a dry year, they were able to collect a good catalogue of images throughout the season.
Although the satellite images did not deliver the same quality the UAVs do, they had been a useful tool for the Boughtons to monitor their crops' progress.
"It's great, it allows us to look at what's happening district wide," his father said.
"Once you've had that aerial perspective, it's hard to imagine farming without it."
Technological shifts had also seen them move to no-till farming about a decade ago, which had brought with it better moisture management.
Some strategic cultivation is occasionally used, but the system is largely based on disc planters on a three metre tram track system based and their 12m planter and header wheat trials.
Initially, the Boughtons worked on a two metre tramline spacing but have extended it during the past two years to fit their header.
"It was all to do with reducing soil compaction," Ben Boughton said.
On average, their property receives an annual rainfall of 600 millimetres - 250mm of that typically falling in crop.
"We're in a safe dryland area, it's generally a good area for reliability," Randall Boughton said.
'We rely on fallow rainfall to give us moisture in our fallows over summer."
In the past 12 months, the property has only received about half of its annual rainfall, but has still managed to produce promising yields.
This year the Boughtons barley averaged 3.5 tonnes/ha, the wheat came in at 2.5t/ha and the chickpeas averaged 1.35t/ha.
"We went into planting this year with only 50 centimetres of sub-soil moisture," he said.
"We still managed to achieve some very pleasing yields."
Never shy to try new ways, the Boughtons have implemented a strict rotation which has helped them with weed control, but also production, as growing some crops tends to benefit others.
"Obviously the old way of growing wheat continuously caused substantial agronomic issues with diseases and nutrition," he said.
Now, a typical cropping year involved planting wheat, followed by barley which is long fallowed to sorghum and then a double crop of chickpeas.
"We never grow the same crop twice in a row," he said.
"Growing legumes helps the wheat protein the following year," Mr Boughton said.
Weed control is still an important regime for the Boughtons despite their strict rotation and they apply herbicides after rainfall events in summer.
They have been using residual herbicides in fallow to control their resistant weeds and always apply a follow-up if it's needed.
"We might do a (spray with) Round Up as soon as the weeds germin- ate, then follow up seven to 10 days later with paraquat spray," Mr Boughton said.
A recently planted 340ha sorghum crop was in desperate need of rain.
