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By Jonathan, September 1, 2010 9:43 pm

I know, I know, it’s now September. But that’s ok because I managed to take some photos on what seemed like the only clear, sunny day we had all of August. So I give you the final winter ‘View from the Silo’ for this year. You can see the earlier shots taken of this crop here: April , June & July.

The August that finished yesterday was the wettest one around here for a very long time. It has actually been wet enough to have some of the locals thinking ‘we don’t really want any more rain’. They’re thinking it, but no-one is game enough to say it. Apart from all the rain there isn’t anything extra to report on this crop, just the extra months worth of growth that you can see above. Hopefully that rain will set us up for a bumper harvest. But we will see.

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By Jonathan, August 26, 2010 10:45 pm

I wouldn’t say it went viral, but my post from last Thursday on ‘Tweeting with Tony Burke’ was extremely well received. I had lots of positive comments about it on twitter, and it was re-tweeted by several people, many with little interest in farming. It was easily the most viewed blog post I’ve ever had & was great to get positive comments and commenters.

This months ‘View From the Silo’ will be a few days late due to poor weather. For 2 reasons:

1. Windy, cloudy, rainy weather makes for bad photos.
2. Windy, cloudy, rainy weather makes me quite reluctant to climb our quite tall silos!

So while I wait for the weather to clear, I give you this YouTube video that appeared in my twitter feed a few days ago. It’s thought provoking and illustrates some of the reasons that I decided to try a career in agriculture over a career in the corporate world. Despite my earlier post about the shrinking of rural Australia, I honestly think that the future of farming can be nothing but bright. The reality is the world will struggle to feed it’s growing population, and that can only be positive for agriculture and rural areas in general. The other passion of mine that this clip talks about is technology. In order to feed an increasingly resource scarce and populous world it will have to use all the technology it can get it’s hands on.

Check it out and tell me what you think.

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By Jonathan, August 18, 2010 12:00 pm

Something new and exciting has started happening in Australian Agriculture over the past few weeks. For the first time, Australians interested in all things farm and agriculture related are getting together on Twitter to discuss their trade.

It’s been called ‘agchatoz’ and happens every Tuesday night from 8pm EST. This twitter chat was started by a small group of us Aussies who decided that we could copy the tweeting success of the American based ‘Agchat Foundation‘. The format of the chat is that there will be a moderator who poses questions around a particular theme to all who are following. These questions are used as conversation starters and allow different viewpoints to be heard and issues raised. ‘AgchatOz’ has been growing in popularity every week since its debut, with tonight’s chat being the best yet.

‘AgchatOz’ was particularly topical this evening because it featured an appearance by Tony Burke, who is our Australian Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry as well as Minister for Sustainable Population. He was an active participant in the conversation and also responded to many questions, including my own. Just to really emphasise this let me restate: I was able to ask questions and receive instant responses from a member of federal cabinet just 4 days before a federal election*. Read that last sentence again and think about how social media is changing our world. The Internet has such potential to improve and revolutionise the democratic process. It makes the sharing of information so easy that one can instantly ask questions, share ideas and solicit feedback.

Tweeting with Tony Burke

Our national broadcaster has also been getting in on the act, with a couple of twitter chats being hosted at other times by ABC Rural. I’ve found all of these conversations great. They offer opinions and dialogue that would otherwise never occur. Conversations that aim to educate and share can only be a positive thing. So please, if you are all interested in farming, have any questions at all about agriculture, or just want to join in and learn via observation, then hop over to twitter and search for, or use the hash tag #agchatoz or even simply #agchat.

*Oh yeah, and I didn’t have to get off my couch to do it.

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By Jonathan, August 11, 2010 12:00 pm

Last Sunday I was able to give the Communion address at the local church I attend. Yes, I’ve just publicly outed myself as a church goer. Hopefully you’re still reading and havn’t yet closed your browser window. If you are still reading, but are not terribly impressed with the Christian people you have observed in you time, then I understand. I based my talk around a quote that I first read about on a blog called Stuff Christians Like. The quote was by author Anne Rice & it said:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

To summarise, I spoke about learning to both be forgiven and also to forgive. If you’d like to read the notes I spoke from, they’re here: Communion Talk 8-8-2010

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By Jonathan, August 8, 2010 9:38 pm

Symptom of an underlying trend

The task I was undertaking when this photo was taken wasn’t the most exciting job I’ve ever completed. So it’s no surprise that this probably isn’t the most appealing photo you’ve seen today.  The wooden posts you see above are now stacked in a very nice firewood pile just near my house and the rusted wire has been taken to our local tip. (I think it’s recycled as scrap metal) Yes we were pulling up a fence. Now fencing isn’t rated as an enjoyable job in the farming world. Mostly because it’s one of the few jobs that’s done pretty much the same way now as it was 60 years ago. So it’s still quite a manual task. So while the fence pulling on it’s own was not terribly exciting, putting the task into some historical context definitely makes it more interesting.

Our family business was fortunate enough to be able to purchase the above land late last year when another local family farm was carved up and sold. As usually happens when farm land is sold, it was brought by other nearby farmers including ourselves. While fortunate for us, it was a real pity that the farmer involved and his young family had to sell, as they are now out of our local community & economy. This has meant the  population of this rural town dropped by four and the average farm size got slightly bigger. This isn’t a new occurrence to farming locally, nationally or even globally. For the last 60 years or so, farmers the world over have been doing their job so successfully that they’ve literally been doing themselves out of work. Innovations since WWII including ever bigger and more powerful tractors and implements, improved knowledge & use of fertilisers, better weed and disease management practices, better soil management practices and many other innovations have meant that farm productivity growth has outpaced global population growth for a long time. For the world this is an amazing and wonderful achievement. Cheap & plentiful food has meant massive population increases and economic development. However, for farmers this has meant that their commodity prices haven’t kept pace with inflation for a long time.

I found the above graph in a 2009 economic report put out by the Westpac Bank. The report is looking at the impact of China on global wheat supplies, but it touches on several much broader and far reaching topics. If the prices listed in the graph don’t mean anything to you, think about the broader impacts such a trend has on the rural economies of the world. A downswing in the above graph means that the real income from a fixed amount of grain is decreasing. Of course an upswing means that a farmer is earning more from that same amount of grain. This graph only refers to wheat but the same trends have been at work across broad sections of agriculture for the past ~60 years. If the real prices of your produce are always dropping you can only stay in business by becoming more efficient and/or working more land on smaller profit margins to make money. Production increases of course help in the short term too, but in the longer term they only continue the trends I’m discussing here. Bigger farms mean less people living in rural areas and more urbanisation. These trends have lead more than anything to the shrinking of rural Australia. Moreover, these trends will continue until the above graph plateaus or turns the other way. Rural populations will not stabilize or grow until real farm income rises to support it.

Interesting perhaps, but how does all the above relate to us pulling up the fence? Well, the existing paddocks the previous owner had setup were too small for the equipment that we have. It’s much more efficient in time, fuel, fertilizer etc. to have bigger paddocks. With bigger paddocks you can farm more area in the same amount of time and with the same equipment.  I know that the other farmers who purchased the other parts of the previous owners farm have done similar things to us. So the cycle continues…..

Bonus food for thought for reading this far: See the little bump up in prices down the bottom right of the graph in 07-08. This was the effect that the commodities bubble had on wheat just before the GFC. (Global Financial Crisis) It was this increase in food prices globally that brought about great unrest in various parts of the world & (in part) the other GFC. (Global Food Crisis) It makes you wonder what prosperity agriculture would return to if farm incomes returned to even 1970s levels and also, what unrest this could cause globally?

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By Jonathan, July 30, 2010 9:53 pm

This is part 3 of my series – ‘View from the Silo’ showing the dramatic changes our area undergoes throughout a cropping season. The first 2 in the series are: April & June.

A big change from April

Well it’s the end of July and we’re thankfully over halfway through winter. You can see that our wheat crop has started growing and now has almost complete ground cover. Welcome rain has meant that the crops in our area are looking quite good at this early stage. The tire marks you can see running up and down the paddock show that this wheat was sprayed last week in order to kill weeds and the ‘self-sown’ lentils and clover from last year. You can see the complete contrast in colour compared to the April photo just 3 short months ago. Dead, dry and barren then, lush green and growing now. It’s a very welcome change!

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By Jonathan, July 13, 2010 2:19 pm

Farmers aren’t stereotypically known for their ability to adopt and embrace new technologies. Which is often unfortunate because business and farming practice in agriculture is constantly changing and evolving, as it always has done. This is one of the several things I’ve found that IT & Agriculture have in common: The need to constantly improve and stay informed of industry trends and, dare I say it, ‘best practice’. To this end I’ve been fortunate enough to attend 2 industry development events since our busy time of seeding has finished.

The first one, (that I tweeted about) was a two day conference in Adelaide focusing on ‘precision agriculture’. The conference was hosted by a group called the Southern Precision Agriculture Association (SPAA). SPAA’s website states that:

SPAA is a non-profit and independent membership based group formed in 2002 to promote the development and adoption of precision agriculture (PA) technologies.

Our mission is to facilitate research, extension and the adoption of precision agriculture.

The idea behind ‘Precision Agriculture’ is that with the arrival of new technologies like GPS guidance, satellite imagery, and remote sensing, farmers can allow for and farm according to the natural variations within paddocks. This has numerous potential applications, but it means that farmers can do things like decrease fertilizer application in areas of a paddock that continually under-perform. Wikipedia contains a more in-depth intro to precision agriculture.

The second event I attended was put on by a non-profit farm research organisation called the Birchip Cropping Group. ‘ It was a one day event called the ‘Grains Research Expo‘ and featured all manner of agriculture related seminars and exhibitors. Some of the things I was able to do on the day included:

• Meet a professional weather forecaster.
• Hear about industry experts in grains marketing.
• Learn about the potential of gene technology to produce more drought tolerant types of wheat.
• Hear about the issues faced by other farmers where multiple generations are working together on the family farm.

These industry events are great for hearing about new things and networking with other farmers. As a new guy in the industry I’ve been able to learn a lot from them an hope to be able to attend more in the future!

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By Jonathan, June 14, 2010 9:40 pm

This post is the second ‘View from the Silo’. It’s a series I’ve started to document the dramatic landscape changes that happen in our area over a farming season. I did the first one back in April.

The colour transformation is beginning.

Compared to the photo from April, you can see that much has changed. Autumn is now winter, bright sunshine is now grey overcast and cold. By mid June the scene above is a common one around here, as most farmers have finished planting and the crops are in the ground and starting to grow. As of today, this is the case for us too. A good thing, as the long hours in the tractor seat do get repetitive and the risks of weather &/or machinery delays are now past.

This paddock was planted with wheat & fertiliser about 3 weeks ago, and has now germinated quite nicely. Yours truly was driving for most of this paddock, but I unfortunately can’t take credit for the gun-barrel straight lines of new life you see above. As well as making tractor driving less demanding, the GPS guidance also means efficient use of paddocks via the elimination of overlaps or missed sections.These green lives carve a welcome pattern into the dark soil.

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By Jonathan, June 2, 2010 5:15 pm

As I sit in the tractor driving it, the cultivator and connected air-seeder while listening to Day 3 of the Hamish and Andy ‘Caravan of Courage’ tour, I’m pondering a couple of different questions:

1. Who owns the ‘Clarkson – The Ultimate Collection’ DVD I just found behind the passenger seat? Yep, this tractor has a passenger seat.
2. How can it be that I’ve made so few posts recently?

Not something you expect to find in a tractor.

Fortunately, I can answer both of these questions quite easily. As I alluded to at the top, I’m on the tractor, and as well as myself there are only 2 others who drive this tractor regularly. One of them Is my dad, the other is my uncle. One is a car buff, the other probably doesn’t know who Jeremy Clarkson is. One has a PS3, the other doesn’t. Uncle Jack, if you can’t find your DVD it’s because I’ve borrowed it.

Q2: We are about 2/3rds of the way through seeding. Seeding, as the name suggests is where we plant all our crops to start another growing season. Along with harvest, it is one of our two really busy times for the year. It is busy because the ideal planting time is only a 4-6 week window around now. The possibility of weather delays and the inevitability of machinery breakdowns only add to the urgency.

An idea of what I spend most of my days seeing.

However as simple as seeding is, we have some pretty cool technology helping us do it. Our tractors are all fitted with GPS guided ‘auto-steer’, which means they can supposedly steer accurate to 2cm. Our is experience is that while it isn’t quite that perfect, it is still brilliant! It is much more accurate than a human operator could be and it allows us to plant in between the rows of last years left over crop stubble. While this gives our crops many agronomic benefits, the coolest thing for me is sitting in a machine that can drive itself! I can’t overstate how cool that is! The future is here!

The seeding depth is also automated via four infrared sensors along the front of the cultivator. These sensors measure the height of the cultivator from the ground and the controller in the cabin directs the cultivator up or down. Likewise, once I set the hand throttle the tractor will travel at it’s set speed until I shift it. Which brings me back to the DVD. A DVD is useless without a DVD player. Yes, we’ve installed a 7″ LCD DVD player, which usually displays the inside of our air-seeder so we know when to fill up. But of course, it can play DVDs, which can be watched because everything is automated in this tractor while seeding. Which gives me the ability to write blog posts or watch DVDs. I only need to be sure that I steer around trees, and at the end of a pass!

View of the Cultivator & Air Seeder at night

So that’s a little bit about seeding and my lack of posts recently! Anything surprise you? Any questions or comments?

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By Jonathan, May 9, 2010 6:46 pm

I achieved something close to nerd farming nirvana for a short while on Wednesday afternoon. This very rare and beautiful state was achieved as  I was sitting on the tractor and planting canola. For you see, this tractor was driving in gun-barrel straight lines courtesy of the 2cm accurate auto-steer that was steering it. At the same time as I was being directed by these invisible satellites, I was on my phone participating in an online Twitter discussion hosted by @abcrural. This was farming I could handle! Sometimes, technology is just awesome.

To repeat: I was participating in a live twitter discussion using my iPhone 3Gs over the Next G network while sitting on a tractor that was steering itself with 2cm satellite guided accuracy while pulling planting equipment weighing several tonnes. Farming has come a long way.

When I first started back at the farm I discovered an entire network of farmers using social media. This group was headed up by the folks over at Ag Chat & was linking together farmers from all over the world. I’ve found it really interesting ‘following’ American farmers, and reading about the totally different challenges they have and the way they farm. However this Twitter chat that I participated in on Wednesday was fantastic as it’s the first Australian based one that I’ve come across. It was started by the rural reporting arm of the Australian ABC. This is great because it provides a way for Aussie farmers and ruralites to connect and discuss issues online through social media. Hopefully it will grow and thrive as it’s American equivalent has and farmers from all around can engage both with each other and the consumers around them.