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      Better livestock . . .
Drew Vidler checks Janz wheat sown eight weeks earlier at “Coro”, Corobimilla, NSW. The paddock grew canola the previous season after several years in pasture. Drew Vidler has seen a marked improvement in the health of his Merino sheep and wool quality since he adopted a minimum-till biological farming system eight years ago. Together with wife, Janelle, and children, Jock, Harrison and Alexandra, Drew runs 1200 Merino ewes on 1600 hectares of undulating sandy loam soils at “Coro”, Corobimilla, 20 kilometres south-west of Narrandera. Half the property is sown to lucerne and clover-based pastures while the remainder is sown to wheat, canola, barley and lupins. “When my family came here 46 years ago, they grew wheat like everyone else in the area,” Drew said. “In those days, it seemed that the more they cultivated the better things got – but they didn’t know when to stop. The country was getting tired, with hard-setting, cloddy soils.” In an effort to build up organic matter, Drew’s father started retaining as much stubble and ground cover as possible and grew only one wheat crop in each paddock before sowing clover-based pasture. “By the time I took over, 20 years ago, we’d gone back to a bit of burning, mainly to control problem weeds, and instituted a four or five year cropping rotation that brought in canola,” Drew said. “We adopted minimum tillage and applied high rates of MAP and pre-drilled urea. We grew crops that looked beautiful but didn’t deliver at harvest. Obviously there was an imbalance somewhere.” Things began to change in 1998, when Drew bought an AerWay aerator to break up hard crusts, flatten crop stubble and get air into the soil. His introduction to biological farming came the following year, when a neighbour grew a canola crop that yielded 2.82 tonnes/ha – substantially better than the district average – using “biologically active” fertilisers from BioAg. Drew trialled the BioAg approach in a canola paddock in 2000. The paddock was treated with one tonne per hectare of lime, 120 kg/ha of BioAgPhos, 100 kg/ha of sulphate of ammonia, 50 kg/ha of MAP, 3 kg/ha of zinc sulphate and 3 L/ha of BioAg Soil & Seed. “Soil tests showed this was one of our worst paddocks,” Drew said. “It was sandy, infertile and incapable of even growing a barley crop – yet it grew 2.5 t/ha of canola! “It’s been a pretty good paddock ever since. We were sold on biological farming and have extended it over the entire farm. I decided to put every spare dollar into nutrients – although the spare dollars have been disappearing during the drought.” He said the soils on “Coro” were now more friable and easy to work, whereas some paddocks used to contain clods the size of footballs. “Crop yields and quality have improved and screenings haven’t been a real problem, apart from last year,” he said. “Weed problems have eased. We used to have problems with silver grass and capeweed but they’re quite manageable since we started improving the soil balance. “We’ve had neighbours looking over the fence and a few of them are trying biological farming as well. We think a lot more will take it on now that conventional fertilisers are getting so expensive.” Drew’s sheep showed a marked preference for BioAg-treated pasture in early comparison trials and have thrived on it ever since. “Our pastures seem more productive and more sustainable and bounce back well after rain,” he said. “We’ve seen a big improvement in the health of the sheep and they seem to have fewer problems than they used to. Their wool quality seems to be better and we’re getting less tender wool, although we’ve improved our drought feeding regime as well.” |
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