Mendooran grower Pete Rothwell explains how data driven decision making is paying off

There is no secret recipe or unusual approach to the 300 hectare crop that judges of a recent canola competition predicted may yield in excess of six tonnes to the hectare and awarded first place.

It's just the culmination of a number of on-farm changes Mendooran's Pete Rothwell has been making on the 1600ha property in the past seven years that are producing big rewards.

Traditionally the property was only focused on winter cropping and something was always grown each year.

But when Mr Rothwell began researching the local climate and water use efficiency he realised they were overlooking the property's full potential.

Instead, he began using data to drive his decisions and only planted when a full moisture profile was available.

"I'm not sure what came first but it just twigged in my mind that we better start farming water and that was a natural progression," he said.

"Once I went into that mindset it was like, woah I need X amount of water to make something happen and we can take a lot of risk out of things by waiting for that trigger.

"A lot of it is about trying to eliminate risk while maximising the good years."

A nitrogen test is taken each year before sowing to calculate residual nitrogen and the paddock is supplemented accordingly.

Some people thought the yields he was chasing were just "silly", but despite going three years without a crop, their "bottom line is a mile in front".

"Through the drought we saved a lot of costs," Pete's father David said.

"And our yields are definitely trending a lot higher. You have to take into account varieties are getting better over time and there are a lot of pieces to those puzzles," Pete added.

The crop of 45Y91 canola had a residual nitrogen level at 60 centimetres of 290 units and received 100 litres of Easy N, no in-crop spray and one fungicide spray "for insurance".

Harvest will begin in the middle of November with predictions it could yield 6.7t/ha but Mr Rothwell was more conservative at 5t/ha. The property's previous best was 4.2t/ha.

Having been without a crop for so long, ground cover is the next element on Mr Rothwell's mind.

His property is one of three Local Land Services demonstrations sites that will evaluate cover crops with soil moisture probes.

When waiting for a full profile, Mr Rothwell would normally plant two crops in three years meaning long periods of fallow. Subsequently ground cover becomes scarce.

As part of the trial a barley cover crop was sown in August with moisture probes inserted into bare and planted areas of the paddock.

LLS senior land services officer for cropping, Tim Bartimote, said the demonstration sites would provide localised results to research out of southern Queensland.

"The theory is that cover cropping will take some moisture but help it recharge the profile quicker than a conventional fallow, but also provide some benefits in terms of soil structure and keeping that moisture closer to the surface," he said.

"However, there has been some research that suggests that with the cover crop you are also not just paying initially with moisture, you are paying with nitrogen."

He said following drought there had been a lot of interest in the idea.

"Particularly out of the drought there was a big penalty in terms of lack of ground cover so a lot of those dust storms were driven by bare paddocks that just didn't have any rain," he said.

"People are really interested in how we retain soil structure, how do we maintain that soil moisture?

"There is so much penalty in terms of losing those couple millimetres of soil, it can equate to tonnes and tonnes of nutrients and really impact your next crop."