"Every rainfall event we got, we needed it"

Planted mid-January, the crop of Auzzie Gold 62 has battled through minimal in-crop rain, high temperatures during germination and significant bird pressure, but Mr Williams said the crop looks surprisingly good. 

“We had a pretty full profile, but every rainfall event we got, we needed it,” he said.

“We planted mid-January and after sowing we had 20 millimetres of rain.

“Then we had 15mm for February, 30mm for March, 3.5mm for April so far. 

“It’s only just enough to keep us going, but we’ve still got a month to go and it’s looking very promising.”

Pursehouse Rural agronomist John Redden, Coonabarabran, said because of temperatures above 40 degrees whilst sowing the top-soil dried out and not all of the seeds germinated at the same time. 

“We sowed it at 32,000 seeds per hectare and we were trying to establish 25,000 plants per hectare,” he said. 

“It happened over two or three weeks so now we've got advanced plants and other plants coming up that are three weeks behind.

“We're going to get bird damage on our maturer stuff. 

“The birds have already got into the ones that are fairly advanced and it's going to knock the yields around a bit on the first plants that came up.” 

Despite the crop being “touch and go,” Mr Redden said sunflowers are quite a simple crop to grow.

“Sunflowers, because they've got such an aggressive taproot, once you put them in and get them started, they look after themselves.

“If you had any other crop out there this year it would've died, probably a month ago.”

The 2000ha “Magomadine” uses a rotational cropping system but primarily focuses on winter crops.

A problem with phalaris, black oats, and ryegrass in their wheat crops meant the paddock was left to long-fallow for weed control, and Mr Williams said they then looked to the option of a summer crop. 

“We needed to keep our minds open about the weed problem.

“We’ve looked round for something that might make us money and we had a failure last year with mungbeans so the toss-up was for sunflowers or millet.”

Deciding to try both crops, the Williams’ also planted 150ha of millet but had trouble getting it to establish due to the hot and dry conditions, forcing them to spray out what did germinate and instead use it as a cover crop.  

Composting a vital part of being sustainable

Agronomist John Redden puts the success of the sunflower crop at “Magomadine” down to the Williams’ composting practices.  

After the drought of 2007, the Williams started putting compost extract into the soil during sowing.

Mrs Williams said the practice has made a big difference to their farming.

“We make our own compost and turn it into liquid,” she said.

“We do a compost and run water through it and take all the soluble nutrients out.”

Despite “just a tiny drop” going in with the seed, Mrs Williams said the difference was noticeable in their yields.

“The biggest affect was the country, what we used to call worn out country, which had been farmed for a fair while,” she said. 

“There was a big kick in yields in those paddocks and it's made us more sustainable.” 

While no compost was added during the sowing of the sunflowers, because the contractor’s planter didn’t have the capability to do so, Mrs Williams said the benefit of the compost was still apparent in the crop.

“We've had 10 years of compost (injection) in that paddock as well as spreading compost in that paddock over the years, so we think it was in pretty good condition. 

“A lot of these things are an unknown science, but the proof's in the pudding.

“The crop has handled the dry conditions very well and we were very surprised.”

With a doctorate in soil science to her name, it’s no surprise that the farming practices have changed at “Magomadine” over the years. 

“We don't want to be buying inputs all the time, making other people rich. We want to do the best we can and we think we're becoming better farmers because of it.”