WHEAT competitions are not new to the Kilby family, Inglewood, Gilgandra. They have been among the winning circles since the 1950s.
And although taking on many farming ideas of former district agronomist, Col Mullins, it was their wheat crop and farming management practices that delivered the coveted "Farming Excellence Award" of the 2019 Agricultural Societies Council/Suncorp Bank Dryland Field Wheat Competition.
The award, now in its 13th year, was introduced to the competition by the ASC after the judge, Paul Parker, Young, and coordinator, Tom Dwyer, Forbes, saw management practices playing vital roles in crop and farm management.
In announcing the award during presentations Mr Parker said Kevin Kilby and son, Jon, had developed and carried out excellent management control of their 2000 hectare property.
"Their mixed enterprises include sheep, cattle and cropping with cropping rotations including canola, barley, wheat, chickpeas, lupins and oats," Mr Parker said.
"This, with well-managed rotation of herbicides are practiced to help control the main problem or potentially problem weeds of ryegrass and black oats.
"Summer tropical grasses are also used to assist in controlling weeds as well as supplying valuable stock feed."
Mr Parker said soil testing of both shallow (normal 10cm to determine phosphorus levels) and deep-end tests to monitor soil nitrogen levels, were undertaken each year.
"Lime is applied on a regular basis to address soil pH issues and lupins and barley crops are usually sold at harvest.
"Judicious use of a grain trader is made to assist with grain marketing throughout the year."
Kevin Kilby said his grandfather, Daniel, took up Inglewood in 1940 with his father, Keith, following and for some years working with Kevin's brother, Greg before he moved to Coonamble some 38 years ago.
"Jon and I now run the operation, but I owe a lot of our farming practices to Col Mullins who had a big influence on us," Kevin Kilby said.
"He introduced us to liming our country and direct drilling with the use of Roundup as he believed in minimum cultivation of our red soil country.
"Col also was a big supporter of mixed farming and lucerne-based rotations, plus he got us growing canola, lupins and chickpeas."
Mr Parker doesn't believe in luck as a part of farming.
"It all comes down to being a good manager. You make your own luck because of your management."
Long fallows, big pluses in northern crops
YIELDS of crops judged across all four regions during the 2019 Agricultural Societies Council/Suncorp Bank Dryland Field Wheat competition were slightly higher than 2018.
State championship judge, Paul Parker, Young, told growers at the annual awards dinner at Club Dubbo recently.
"The results of comparisons on average were slightly better in 2019 than 2018," Mr Parker said.
He attributed that to excellent management, particularly in the north and Liverpool Plains where crops were sown on long fallows of self mulching clays with summer rain stored moisture.
However, when it came to in-crop rainfall from sowing to harvest, Mr Parker said the northern region from Dubbo north, but west of the Newell Highway had less recordings from a low of 29 millimetres up to only 56mm.
"And yet crops were grown and finished on it," he said.
Not in favour of using water use efficiency (WUE) as a judging criteria, Mr Parker did some calculations and found a crop of Gregory at Boggabilla produced 106.7 kilograms of grain per mm from 30mm of rain.
Crops on the Liverpool Plains calculated at 57.1kg/mm from 84mm of rain to 55.7kg/mm on 70mm of rain.
By comparison southern crop yields went from 14.7kg/mm on 190mm of rain to 29.8kg/mm on 181mm of rain.
"These are not true WUE estimates as they do not include the amount of soil stored moisture, it's only in-crop rainfall," Mr Parker said.
"However, they are still interesting to look at and show the importance of conserving moisture over the summer period for all regions.
"The comparisons show the importance of soil type and stored moisture, but interestingly the season held by the growers in the north."