The best sorghum harvest in more than a decade throughout the district of Yallaroi, north of Warialda, is injecting confidence into the farming sector with average yields of 6-7 tonnes per hectare at 12 per cent moisture.
Agronomist Leigh Norton, with Delta Agribusiness, said he had never seen such high average yield area-wide for early season planted sorghum.
"At no time did early sorghum crops struggle for moisture," he said. "And plant establishment was fantastic. They were even and spot-on with the required number of plants."
Farmer and contractor Richard Gilmour, who works with his son Harry, says the area-wide adoption of precision sowing equipment has ramped up yield potential this year, with "every seed out of the ground" right from the start.
The Gilmour family have been farming the district for 99 years with Richard starting out in 1979.
"I believe this is the biggest crop I've seen on my country," he said. "And it is the first sorghum crop we have had in three years. The drought in 2019 was the first time we didn't harvest either sorghum or wheat on our farm."
During that time nearby localities like Croppa Creek managed to squeak by with a reasonable crop, but Yallaroi was never allowed such opportunity. "It all went around us," Mr Gilmour said "You could smell the rain but we weren't getting it."
The crop of Pioneer A66 and Pacific Seeds MR-Bazley was planted at the higher rate of 70,000 seeds/ha or about 11 plants per metre of row on 1.5 metre spacings between old wheat stubble from the 2020 cropping season.
Seed was placed into a full moisture profile on black basalt soils along the Yallaroi Creek. Available levels of fertiliser meant just 90kg/ha of MAP, without urea, was applied with a side-banding disc 38cm from seed.
The wider footprint - required to fit in with their controlled traffic program - was expected to compromise yield, but seed heads filled out well.
"We were expecting sowing on 60 inch centres to limit our yield by a bit, but the season and the planting technology has allowed us to do better," Mr Gilmour said.
"There's a lot of feed about," said Mr Gilmour. "With our on-farm storage mostly full with winter cereals we will build and fill a bunker for the first time and from there will sell the grain when we need cash flow."
According to Harry Gilmour, the adoption of tweaked equipment resulted in excellent germination and he credited the Boss disc unit mounted with Precision Seeding Solutions seed boxes and electric V-drives, with Furrow Force closing disks trailing behind, for getting seed into contact with soil at the right depth.
There's nothing especially new about precision planting equipment, except that the nuances of the technology are being fine-tuned and uptake by farmers has increased coming out of the drought.
"Precision technology has enhanced performance of the planter," says Boss Ag's director Dan Ryan, whose Inverell company has just delivered its 1000th unit, this one fitted with the latest technology.
"In farming everyone's looking for some improvement and by attaching precision products we can enhance the performance of a planter. It just gives you that opportunity. You can use less seed; you know it's going in at the right depth and you can trust the press wheels at the back to do their job.
"There's a real uptake of technology. Farmers are right now grabbing it."
David McGavin from Precision Seeding Solutions, also at Inverell, says the interest was there for new equipment even during the drought.
From pneumatically suspended trash whippers to the addition of Delta Force hydraulic downforce units on the seeding unit - all the latest gear helps establish plants. Now the operator sitting in the tractor can watch the machine determine levels of soil compaction and monitor how it applies constant pressure, whether the ground is soft or hard.
"The technology is more widely known," Mr McGavin said. "A lot of people already knew what they wanted. They were just waiting for the season to turn.
"In the beginning we focussed on the metering system and getting the spacings right but now we know that it's more important to get the crop out of the ground."
With precision summer planting data now confident around corn, proponents say cotton growers might benefit from the same research.
There's nothing especially new about precision planting equipment, except that the nuances of the technology are being fine-tuned and uptake by farmers has increased coming out of the drought.
"Precision technology has enhanced performance of the planter," says Boss Ag's director Dan Ryan, whose Inverell company has just delivered its 1000th unit, this one fitted with the latest technology.
"In farming everyone's looking for some improvement and by attaching precision products we can enhance the performance of a planter. It just gives you that opportunity. You can use less seed; you know it's going in at the right depth and you can trust the press wheels at the back to do their job.
"There's a real uptake of technology. Farmers are right now grabbing it."
David McGavin from Precision Seeding Solutions, also at Inverell, says the interest was there for new equipment even during the drought.
From pneumatically suspended trash whippers to the addition of Delta Force hydraulic downforce units on the seeding unit - all the latest gear helps establish plants. Now the operator sitting in the tractor can watch the machine determine levels of soil compaction and monitor how it applies constant pressure, whether the ground is soft or hard.
"The technology is more widely known," Mr McGavin said. "A lot of people already knew what they wanted. They were just waiting for the season to turn.
"In the beginning we focussed on the metering system and getting the spacings right but now we know that it's more important to get the crop out of the ground."
With precision summer planting data now confident around corn, proponents say cotton growers might benefit from the same research.
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