Neroli Brennan: This is Seeds for Success. A show where we have
Neroli Brennan: a good yarn about ag life with producers who are
Neroli Brennan: having a go. On the show you'll hear from farmers
Neroli Brennan: in New South Wales who are out there battling the
Neroli Brennan: elements, making tough calls, and getting the job done. You'll get
Neroli Brennan: a laugh out of some of their stories and also
Neroli Brennan: pick up some knowhow along the way. I'm your host,
Neroli Brennan: Neroli Brennan. Today, we're having a yarn with Craig Whiteley.
Neroli Brennan: Craig runs a 700 acre property called The Oaks just outside
Neroli Brennan: Geurie, overlooking the Macquarie River, where he and his family
Neroli Brennan: produce Aussie Whites, lucerne hay, and other irrigated crops. In
Neroli Brennan: this episode, Craig shares with us that his family have
Neroli Brennan: had a long history with this property. Spanning close to
Neroli Brennan: 100 years of continuous ownership. And throughout this time, they've
Neroli Brennan: doubled in a number of different ag commodities, ranging from
Neroli Brennan: cherries to potatoes and corn. You'll hear Craig discuss his
Neroli Brennan: willingness to innovate and make the most of new opportunities
Neroli Brennan: when they present themselves, while also striving to balance promising
Neroli Brennan: markets with simplicity in production, and just loving what you
Neroli Brennan: make. Local land services cropping advisor, Tim Bartimote, caught up
Neroli Brennan: with Craig for this chat while sitting on the lounge
Neroli Brennan: at The Oaks.
Tim Bartimote: Well, welcome everyone back to the podcast. I'm here today
Tim Bartimote: with Craig Whiteley on The Oaks. How are you going
Tim Bartimote: today, Craig?
Craig Whiteley: Pretty good, thanks, Tim.
Tim Bartimote: Can you just tell us a little bit about The Oaks?
Craig Whiteley: This place is about 700 acres. It's the sort of
Craig Whiteley: place that has a mix of irrigation and dry land.
Craig Whiteley: And so, as my father used to tell me, not
Craig Whiteley: big enough to get yourself out of trouble and just
Craig Whiteley: big enough to keep yourself in it. So it's a mixed
Craig Whiteley: operation and we grow, typically now, have done a range
Craig Whiteley: of things over the years, but typically now, based on
Craig Whiteley: a self replacing mob of Aussie White sheep. And we irrigate
Craig Whiteley: about 120 acres under pivot, and principally, lucerne hay production,
Craig Whiteley: but have done plenty of corn, popcorn, seed corn, seed
Craig Whiteley: production for canola, cereals. We've tried to grow some cherries
Craig Whiteley: in the past, unsuccessfully. I think we had one crop
Craig Whiteley: in 10 years, so that was the end of that.
Craig Whiteley: We've grown Consol lovegrass seed, fenugreek, coriander, potatoes, as well
Craig Whiteley: as the usual. You know? Cereals, wheat, barley, canola, those
Craig Whiteley: sorts of things. So wide- ranging, but the older I
Craig Whiteley: get, the more simplified we get. So, it's primarily sheep
Craig Whiteley: and lucerne at the moment.
Tim Bartimote: We're not too far out of Geurie and not too far out of Dubbo.
Tim Bartimote: How far would you say we are?
Craig Whiteley: Oh, we're about 3 Ks south of Geurie on the
Craig Whiteley: banks of the Macquarie River.
Tim Bartimote: Good spot to be.
Craig Whiteley: It's literally half an hour to Dubbo and 20 minutes to Wellington,
Craig Whiteley: so it's a pretty handy spot.
Tim Bartimote: And how long has your family been associated with The Oaks?
Craig Whiteley: On this iteration, my grandfather and his father bought it
Craig Whiteley: in 1935. So it's been in the family a little
Craig Whiteley: over 100 years. I think the Whiteley's had a crack at
Craig Whiteley: it for 20 odd years in the late 1800s and
Craig Whiteley: sold it again in the early 1900s, and bought it
Craig Whiteley: back again in 1935. So my grandfather and my grandparents
Craig Whiteley: were here, and lucky enough to be able to follow suit.
Tim Bartimote: So from day dot, you've spent your entire career on
Tim Bartimote: the farm or you've come from other places?
Craig Whiteley: A bit of a checkered past. Spent some time in Sydney.
Tim Bartimote: Oh, we won't hold that against you.
Craig Whiteley: Yes. And went down there doing a little bit of
Craig Whiteley: futures trading for a little while and a little bit
Craig Whiteley: of building and development work, and backwards and forwards from the farm.
Craig Whiteley: But back here full time. So nice to be here.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, I bet. And can you describe for the listeners a bit
Tim Bartimote: about the country itself? Is it mainly river flats?
Craig Whiteley: It's a small place, but it's such a diverse geological
Craig Whiteley: background. We've got alluvial country obviously on the river flats,
Craig Whiteley: but we've got to the east of the place, is
Craig Whiteley: the end of that Devonian limestone ridge that comes through
Craig Whiteley: from Jenolan Caves, Wellington Caves sort of finishes up at
Craig Whiteley: the back of Geurie. So we've got a little bit of that.
Craig Whiteley: Well, if you like, three small hills on the place. Two
Craig Whiteley: of those are the shale, and one of them is
Craig Whiteley: sandstone. We're on the foothill, if you like, of Geurie
Craig Whiteley: Bald Hill, which we can see out the window there,
Craig Whiteley: which is an old volcanic plug, which is a basalt plug.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, there's not much hair on it. So yeah, it's
Tim Bartimote: pretty bald.
Craig Whiteley: That's right. So it's quite diverse in its geological breakup.
Craig Whiteley: But most of the soils on the dry land side
Craig Whiteley: of things would be clay loam.
Tim Bartimote: And is that where your pivots are situated?
Craig Whiteley: Most of the pivots are on the alluvial country, but
Craig Whiteley: some of it swings up on a clay loam. So
Craig Whiteley: again, each pivot has got a few different soil tops
Craig Whiteley: mostly, so that can be a bit tricky to manage.
Craig Whiteley: But you seem to be on top of it now
Craig Whiteley: and that's just an ongoing thing to keep that soil
Craig Whiteley: balance right for those pivots.
Tim Bartimote: So would you say that the Australian Whites are the
Tim Bartimote: main driver in your business, like that's the main source
Tim Bartimote: of income?
Craig Whiteley: It would be equally split between the sheep business and
Craig Whiteley: the irrigation business. So it would... Yeah, about half and a
Craig Whiteley: half. But the hay business obviously compliments the sheep business
Craig Whiteley: well, because when we finished the hay season this year,
Craig Whiteley: we got to the end of April, we had a
Craig Whiteley: cut of hay ready to go. Season changed a little
Craig Whiteley: bit, got a bit rained, and got quite dewy in
Craig Whiteley: the mornings and cold. And we made the call that
Craig Whiteley: we didn't think we were going to be able to
Craig Whiteley: make the hay or make some quality hay at least. And so
Craig Whiteley: we ended up putting a mob of lambs on there.
Craig Whiteley: So you get that extended grazing period. We tend to
Craig Whiteley: run highly interactive lucerne varieties, which gives us that little
Craig Whiteley: bit more shoulder production. So that works in well with a
Craig Whiteley: sheep. Typically no bloat issues. So we are not worried
Craig Whiteley: about cattle on straight, loose and always a good thing.
Craig Whiteley: And it gives us the opportunity if we get a
Craig Whiteley: bit of rougher hay as well, we can use that
Craig Whiteley: for our own sheep stocks. And they compliment each other
Craig Whiteley: pretty well.
Tim Bartimote: Is lucerne hay the predominant thing that you're making with
Tim Bartimote: the pivots? You've tried a number of different things, which
Tim Bartimote: I want to get into later. I'd love to have
Tim Bartimote: a chat about that. But at the moment is lucerne
Tim Bartimote: hay the primary output?
Craig Whiteley: It is. That mixed with probably a seed corn production. That's
Craig Whiteley: a nice way to use up some of that additional
Craig Whiteley: nitrogen fixed over that lucerne period. Either that or back
Craig Whiteley: into winter cereal type to utilize some of that extra
Craig Whiteley: nitrogen. But typically it's based on at the moment a
Craig Whiteley: lucerne, straight summer lucerne growth without anything else into... What
Craig Whiteley: I mean by with anything else. We're not growing lucerne with phalaris or lucerne and clover, or anything else. It's just a straight lucerne monoculture.
Tim Bartimote: How long are these stands lasting for?
Craig Whiteley: Typically four or five years. We get quite a bit
Craig Whiteley: of khaki weed on the rib flats, or can do.
Craig Whiteley: And that's a great indicator. As soon as we start seeing any of
Craig Whiteley: those things coming into the... You know? that the plant
Craig Whiteley: stand has thinned out and it's time to rip it up.
Craig Whiteley: So it's a great indicator.
Tim Bartimote: So in regards to thinning out of lucerne stands, are you
Tim Bartimote: primarily making that decision based off weed burden, which demonstrates
Tim Bartimote: to you that the stand has dropped to a point,
Tim Bartimote: the population has dropped and so you need to do
Tim Bartimote: something about it? Or could you just argue that maybe
Tim Bartimote: it just needs a winter clean or it needs to
Tim Bartimote: get blown out or something like that? Or is it
Tim Bartimote: you find a strong correlation between plant population of the lucerne
Tim Bartimote: and the increase in population of weeds?
Craig Whiteley: Yeah, very strong correlation between the plant population thinning out and
Craig Whiteley: the increase in weeds. So yes, we will sometimes then
Craig Whiteley: oversow a winter cereal for the wintertime, as a hay
Craig Whiteley: production in the spring, or feed it off. But that
Craig Whiteley: following summer will be far reduced yield in terms of hay production or
Craig Whiteley: anything else. So we might do that, take the hay
Craig Whiteley: off in the spring, rip it up and plant whatever,
Craig Whiteley: say a corn crop then in the late spring.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, right. It gets to the point where it's just
Tim Bartimote: not worth carrying it on anymore. And that's demonstrated by
Tim Bartimote: the increase in the summer that-
Craig Whiteley: And it costs you the same. You're putting on the same
Craig Whiteley: amount of water, the same amount of inputs. You're just
Craig Whiteley: not getting the yield out of it and it's just time to rip it up.
Tim Bartimote: Once heard an old cookie say that if you're not
Tim Bartimote: plowing your lucerne with tears, then you're doing it too late.
Craig Whiteley: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's a good saying because you always
Craig Whiteley: do look at it and you go, " Oh, there's plenty
Craig Whiteley: here, there's plenty here," but experience tells you it's just
Craig Whiteley: not worth persevering.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, okay. Because I definitely would find maybe more in
Tim Bartimote: the dry land space that people argue for like five,
Tim Bartimote: six years or something out of a stand.
Craig Whiteley: In a completely different situation. You definitely get productivity out
Craig Whiteley: of it, but it costs you so much from an
Craig Whiteley: irrigation point of view. You've got that opportunity cost, you've
Craig Whiteley: got the infrastructure, you've got the water costs, you've got the electricity
Craig Whiteley: costs. You've got to make it pay, you've got to
Craig Whiteley: keep it moving. So if it was a dryland situation,
Craig Whiteley: different story. It's very easy to go, and I've got
Craig Whiteley: plenty of them here, dryland blocks have lucerne where you
Craig Whiteley: do go, : Oh, it'll kick that can down the road
Craig Whiteley: for another year or two," and do so. But it is
Craig Whiteley: different on the irrigation.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, so the bang for buck is... Yeah.
Craig Whiteley: Yeah. That's the theory anyway. Sometimes you weaken and you
Craig Whiteley: keep a block for another year, and you always get in
Craig Whiteley: the middle of the season and you go, " Oh, why did I do it?"
Tim Bartimote: Yes. It should have been gone. Should have been growing
Tim Bartimote: cherries here.
Craig Whiteley: I need to learn that lesson again.
Tim Bartimote: No. So let's move into that question that's probably on
Tim Bartimote: everyone's mind. Well mine anyway, potatoes, cherries. How'd you get
Tim Bartimote: into cherry... What happened there?
Craig Whiteley: Oh, cherries? Long story, but in a nutshell it was
Craig Whiteley: the guy around orange that was growing some cherries and
Craig Whiteley: basically looking to expand and grow some in these western climbs,
Craig Whiteley: thinking that we would have enough of the cold requirement
Craig Whiteley: to be able to do it just on the western
Craig Whiteley: edge of it. And we did, but I think again,
Craig Whiteley: experience is such a wonderful thing, but in hindsight we
Craig Whiteley: did have the cold requirement, the chill requirement to be
Craig Whiteley: able to just grow the cherries. The issue for us,
Craig Whiteley: and I'm struggling to remember the numbers exactly, but I
Craig Whiteley: remember reading this paper obviously after we'd finished this full experiment,
Craig Whiteley: but it was a paper out of Japan where they'd
Craig Whiteley: done some research on once the fruit had been set,
Craig Whiteley: the temperatures after the fruit had been set, and again
Craig Whiteley: I'm struggling for the exact number, but I think it
Craig Whiteley: was 28 degrees. Once the fruit had fertilized and you
Craig Whiteley: got more than three days above 30 degrees, the fruit
Craig Whiteley: would abort . And that was happening to us, and it
Craig Whiteley: looked like the fruit was frosted. It had that same
Craig Whiteley: sort of look. So the trees would fertilize, you'd get
Craig Whiteley: a little pea- sized fruit, and you think, here we go,
Craig Whiteley: we're away. Because the other thing we were worried about
Craig Whiteley: was frost. The fruit has formed and then it would
Craig Whiteley: just senesce and die fall off the tree. And so
Craig Whiteley: in our climate here, very much in that October period,
Craig Whiteley: we go from spring to summer very quickly. We always
Craig Whiteley: talk about the hair dryer gets turned off, the winds
Craig Whiteley: come in from the northwest, and that's the end of spring.
Craig Whiteley: So typically I think what was happening for us was
Craig Whiteley: it was getting too hot too soon. And so the
Craig Whiteley: cherry trees would abort , drop the fruit and go, we'll
Craig Whiteley: have another go year. And so the year that we got some
Craig Whiteley: fruit was actually a wet year.
Tim Bartimote: So you need that atypical soft spring actually produce a
Tim Bartimote: decent crop.
Craig Whiteley: Yes, correct. So if you look at the areas, they grow a lot of
Craig Whiteley: cherries. Orange, young, Tasmania, further south. They get that longer
Craig Whiteley: finish to a season. So I think that's where our
Craig Whiteley: issue was.
Tim Bartimote: Which can happen. We've had a few the last couple
Tim Bartimote: of seasons. We've had a really rough spring last year
Tim Bartimote: and then had some soft ones. But we don't get
Tim Bartimote: them commonly I guess.
Craig Whiteley: That's right. They are atypical, aren't they?
Tim Bartimote: Yeah. And potatoes, what's the story with potatoes?
Craig Whiteley: Potatoes, again looking at crops that you could potentially get
Craig Whiteley: bigger yields from. And they were 25, 30 ton an
Craig Whiteley: acre sort of yield potentials. And this was a fair
Craig Whiteley: while ago now, back in the '90s, and we had some local
Craig Whiteley: guys that were growing potatoes and looking for some extra
Craig Whiteley: country. And we grew it with them, and they were
Craig Whiteley: sent to Sydney and turned into chips. But it wasn't
Craig Whiteley: without its issues. But interestingly enough, some near neighbors last
Craig Whiteley: year have started growing potatoes again for the first time.
Craig Whiteley: And I think they've had a pretty successful season. So
Craig Whiteley: well power to them and I think they'll be doing
Craig Whiteley: it again. So it's interesting.
Tim Bartimote: Maybe it was you who was telling me that actually.
Tim Bartimote: Because I was like, " Huh," it sounds like you're not the first
Tim Bartimote: and you won't be the last anyway.
Craig Whiteley: As is always these things. And again, just across the
Craig Whiteley: river we've got a few guys growing cotton. Which this
Craig Whiteley: far east we'd never seen before. And as varieties change
Craig Whiteley: and as things change, it enables other crops. So it's
Craig Whiteley: forever thus I guess.
Tim Bartimote: It's that age old story of you've got a certain amount of
Tim Bartimote: water, it's just trying to make the most money I
Tim Bartimote: guess, in terms of you're always going to use the
Tim Bartimote: same amount regardless of the year. And so it's like, well,
Tim Bartimote: you're going to grow this crop that makes this much
Tim Bartimote: money or you're going to grow that crop that makes more
Tim Bartimote: money. Obviously you're going to go with the one that the best bang
Tim Bartimote: for your buck kind of thing.
Craig Whiteley: I do remember an old agronomist telling me that it
Craig Whiteley: takes three years to grow new crop.
Tim Bartimote: As in three years to get used to a new
Tim Bartimote: crop to grow it well?
Craig Whiteley: Correct. So in my youthful impetuousness, I poo-pooed that and said,
Craig Whiteley: that won't be right.
Tim Bartimote: Work it in one .
Craig Whiteley: But I often reflect on that and think how right he was.
Craig Whiteley: Because anytime I've grown a new crop or something new, it
Craig Whiteley: seems to take at least three seasons to figure out what
Craig Whiteley: it is that you're doing. And sometimes you never do,
Craig Whiteley: but it's a fair approximation for where you start to
Craig Whiteley: get more comfortable.
Tim Bartimote: It sounds a bit like a pendulum. You go really
Tim Bartimote: hard one way and you're like, " Oh, that didn't work," and
Tim Bartimote: then you swing back the other way too far, and
Tim Bartimote: you're like, " Oh, that didn't work either," and you find
Tim Bartimote: your equilibrium in the middle maybe.
Craig Whiteley: Such his life.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, that's it. That's really interesting. And so now I just go back
Tim Bartimote: to a bit about the fodder story. Because obviously you've
Tim Bartimote: been involved in one of our programs called top fodder,
Tim Bartimote: in pro grows.
Craig Whiteley: Indeed, yeah, both. Yeah, still doing the pro grows now.
Tim Bartimote: So in terms of hey versus silage, what's your thinking
Tim Bartimote: now? Are you still using silage or you've kind of
Tim Bartimote: chucked that out and going back to predominantly hay?
Craig Whiteley: We could have made some silage this last cut that
Craig Whiteley: I was talking about, this season just gone. And I
Craig Whiteley: think it really has its place in that, perhaps first cut
Craig Whiteley: of the season and last cut of the season. Again,
Craig Whiteley: this is just my take on it, not everyone's take,
Craig Whiteley: but I think from doing the silage course, which was
Craig Whiteley: great, the top fodder, learned a lot about silage, but
Craig Whiteley: also learned how much you don't know, to some degree.
Craig Whiteley: Have I made silage before? Yes. It hasn't been a
Craig Whiteley: regular part of the program because the way that we've
Craig Whiteley: done it has been individually wrapped round bath, which tend
Craig Whiteley: to be from a cost per ton perspective, the most
Craig Whiteley: expensive form of silage. And it is a form that, it's
Craig Whiteley: difficult to transport, so it's hard. We sell a lot
Craig Whiteley: of the hay that we produce, where the silage is more
Craig Whiteley: difficult to sell over long distances, because you're transporting half
Craig Whiteley: water. It's got problems in terms of we've got a
Craig Whiteley: lot of cockatoos on the river, you get a lot
Craig Whiteley: of bag damage from birds. So it doesn't last a
Craig Whiteley: long time. So you can put cut of hay away
Craig Whiteley: in the shed and that will last one, two, three
Craig Whiteley: years, no problems at all. But with your silage, if you're
Craig Whiteley: putting it in a bag, you better be starting to
Craig Whiteley: think about using it next year within the year, and
Craig Whiteley: two years is probably the max that you'd want to
Craig Whiteley: go. It's an expensive form, it's not that transportable, and
Craig Whiteley: it doesn't last.
Tim Bartimote: So in your experience, because of your tendency to export
Tim Bartimote: and sell what you're producing on the pivots and just
Tim Bartimote: your local landscape. So what about pitted silage?
Craig Whiteley: So I've never done the pitted silage. I think there
Craig Whiteley: there's an opportunity for that. But again, the disadvantage is
Craig Whiteley: you've got to use it on farm, and once you
Craig Whiteley: open the pit you've got to use it. Now if
Craig Whiteley: we're in a different sort of production system where we
Craig Whiteley: were trying to feed some cattle or some sheep or
Craig Whiteley: whatever the case may be, different story. I think it's
Craig Whiteley: all horses for courses. My take home from the top
Craig Whiteley: fodder course, with a silage, it's a lot easier to
Craig Whiteley: make good quality hay than it is to make good
Craig Whiteley: quality silage. And that is you cut the hay if you get the seasonal
Craig Whiteley: conditions right, if it doesn't rain and you bail it
Craig Whiteley: up, it's easy to get that right. When you're on-siling, you've got to get
Craig Whiteley: your moisture content right, you've got your bacteria, right. You've got... You know?
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, you've got those 48 hours, those two days to
Tim Bartimote: really sort it out. Yeah.
Craig Whiteley: So much more, the processes are far more critical. And
Craig Whiteley: what you are on-siling, and it's stage of growth, and the sugar
Craig Whiteley: contents, and how much fermentation goes on, all that sorts
Craig Whiteley: of things. So it's more difficult to get right. It
Craig Whiteley: doesn't mean it's not worth doing, and it's a valuable food source.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah. Is the potential higher quality or having a different
Tim Bartimote: timing against hay, do you think that's worthwhile in that potential?
Craig Whiteley: Oh, absolutely. I think the real advantage for the silage in an operation like ours, as I say
Craig Whiteley: that first cut and the last cut where you can
Craig Whiteley: extend that season a little bit. Or if you've got
Craig Whiteley: a weather system coming or something, where it just gives
Craig Whiteley: you that little bit extra flexibility. But there's no point
Craig Whiteley: making it unless you've got the use for it on farm,
Craig Whiteley: or a market for it.
Tim Bartimote: It goes back to the potato question I guess. All
Tim Bartimote: the cherries and things.
Craig Whiteley: That's right. Everything else.
Tim Bartimote: Yeah, it sounds great. But you haven't got anywhere to
Tim Bartimote: sell it or if it doesn't work with your climate, then it's
Tim Bartimote: not really a good fit.
Craig Whiteley: It's interesting just doing the pro grows course now and
Craig Whiteley: doing some actual feed tests. And we did it on
Craig Whiteley: one of these pivots with lucerne, in it where we tested the
Craig Whiteley: lucerne as it was growing, and it was about a week off
Craig Whiteley: being fit to cut for hay, when we would normally
Craig Whiteley: cut it for hay. As I said, it turned a
Craig Whiteley: bit cold and wet, so we didn't cut off hay, we put
Craig Whiteley: the lambs on it. But we did the feed tests
Craig Whiteley: on that and then we did feed tests on... This
Craig Whiteley: is a new block of lucerne, so we only got
Craig Whiteley: three cuts off it for the season. But the three different
Craig Whiteley: cuts that we did were pretty ideal. It had no
Craig Whiteley: rain on, it all went pretty smoothly, all pretty well.
Craig Whiteley: And so we did a feed test on each one
Craig Whiteley: of those cuts. And the green lucerne. Now each one
Craig Whiteley: of those cuts you could throw a blanket over the
Craig Whiteley: results of the lot of them. They're all fairly similar.
Craig Whiteley: But what was the standout for me in a light bulb moment,
Craig Whiteley: was that the green feed was testing at around 32%
Craig Whiteley: crude protein. Whereas the hay was about 18%. In the
Craig Whiteley: haymaking process, we lost 50% of the crude protein with
Craig Whiteley: no rain, just a normal haymaking process. The metabolizable energy
Craig Whiteley: dropped by about 30% from memory. So I think standing
Craig Whiteley: in the paddock it was roughly 11, and came back
Craig Whiteley: to eight or nine for the hay, which was a pretty
Craig Whiteley: significant loss in the haymaking process.
Tim Bartimote: That's ideal. They talk about 11 plus kind of thing, like
Tim Bartimote: 10 plus. And to do certain things with certain livestock
Tim Bartimote: classes. But then you're dropping in that eight or nine,
Tim Bartimote: it kind of limits.
Craig Whiteley: And as I say, this is off the top of my head, but I certainly remember
Craig Whiteley: that the drop from the green feed and the paddock
Craig Whiteley: to the hay was a 50% loss in crude protein, and
Craig Whiteley: basically a 30% loss in metabolizable energy. So it'd be
Craig Whiteley: really interesting to do some tests on the silage to
Craig Whiteley: see whether that loss is linear over the number of
Craig Whiteley: days that it's drying down, or whether a lesser loss
Craig Whiteley: in the silage making process in terms of food quality.
Tim Bartimote: I think that's for those who haven't done the course
Tim Bartimote: of that critical 48 hours. Getting it done within that
Tim Bartimote: time obviously helps with that preserving. Because I guess it
Tim Bartimote: comes back to what are we doing? We're preserving something.
Tim Bartimote: You can't make something better if it's not...
Craig Whiteley: That's true.
Tim Bartimote: The best you're ever going to have is like, yeah,
Tim Bartimote: sitting out there in the paddock with the... I think I
Tim Bartimote: can see some white specs in the distance, doing some
Tim Bartimote: grazing at the moment. They're going to get the best
Tim Bartimote: option right now, but then how do we stop this
Tim Bartimote: deterioration, and which is the best way of preservation?
Craig Whiteley: And if you think, and again, this is something that came up in the top fodder
Craig Whiteley: course about cutting hay, and that first 48 hours is
Craig Whiteley: still a respiration process, and perhaps in that first 48
Craig Whiteley: hours in that respiration process, that is when you lose
Craig Whiteley: the least amount of quality and potentially gets exponential, and
Craig Whiteley: you're losing more as the days progress as you're drying it down.
Tim Bartimote: Jumps off a cliff maybe.
Craig Whiteley: Yes. Maybe. Don't know. Well, more to find out.
Tim Bartimote: So it's been really interesting, Craig, to hear your thinking,
Tim Bartimote: I guess in terms of what you actually grow. And
Tim Bartimote: we have talked about this before about matching markets and
Tim Bartimote: landscape, and preferences, like obviously your corn. In this area
Tim Bartimote: anyway, there seems to be a lot of corn growing
Tim Bartimote: along the river, because of potential market and value per
Tim Bartimote: hectare. Is that really what is driving your choices? Do you
Tim Bartimote: think it's more preferences or more markets?
Craig Whiteley: It is multifactorial. It is-
Tim Bartimote: That's a good word. Multifactorial.
Craig Whiteley: It's definitely driven by price. It's easier to get excited
Craig Whiteley: about different things when there's a higher price involved, but
Craig Whiteley: you do have to come back to what you enjoy
Craig Whiteley: doing and what you like doing. I think I calculated one time that
Craig Whiteley: growing seed corn versus growing the lucerne hay, we had basically
Craig Whiteley: the same number of passes over the land. Differed by
Craig Whiteley: one or two. So the seed corn crop would typically
Craig Whiteley: be a 90 day crop. So it's quite quick. You've got to get all your
Craig Whiteley: ducks in a row. If you have a irrigation problem
Craig Whiteley: or a pivot problem or something goes wrong with that corn,
Craig Whiteley: if that happens today, you better have that going tomorrow,
Craig Whiteley: because that crop needs it. With your lucerne, it's far
Craig Whiteley: more forgiving. But it's a long season. You're talking six,
Craig Whiteley: seven months. And if you get to a period where,
Craig Whiteley: like we did a few years ago in the drought,
Craig Whiteley: you get a week of 42 degrees days, and you are struggling
Craig Whiteley: to keep a crop going, you can go, well, it
Craig Whiteley: doesn't matter, I'll cut it now, because it's only three
Craig Whiteley: parts done, or it's half done, or whatever it is,
Craig Whiteley: that'll do, let's take that leaf away, that transpiration pump away,
Craig Whiteley: and turn it into hay, and this period will pass and
Craig Whiteley: we'll go again. So you can do that. But with a corn crop you
Craig Whiteley: can't do that. So once you start, you're locked in,
Craig Whiteley: and away you go. So it feels more intense with
Craig Whiteley: a corn crop, because it's obviously compressed over a 90
Craig Whiteley: day period. Whereas the lucerne spread over six to seven months.
Craig Whiteley: But the number of passes that you do over the
Craig Whiteley: land with you lucerne hay production, your cutting, your raking, your bailing, your carting,
Craig Whiteley: you do that four or five times, versus your corn
Craig Whiteley: production where you're inter- rowing and you're sewing and you're inter-
Craig Whiteley: rowing and you're chopping the tops out, and you harvest
Craig Whiteley: all the rest of it. So getting back to your
Craig Whiteley: original question though, multifactorial. Yes, you do start off following
Craig Whiteley: the money, and then you lean toward the things that
Craig Whiteley: sit well with you. And the lucerne production sits well
Craig Whiteley: with me because it is a little bit more forgiving.
Craig Whiteley: And yes, you do have failures and you get a
Craig Whiteley: wet cut and so forth. But you get another bite
Craig Whiteley: of the cherry. With your corn production, if you have
Craig Whiteley: a misnick or a non pollination, or wiped out with
Craig Whiteley: hail or whatever it is, that's it. You get one
Craig Whiteley: bite at it.
Tim Bartimote: Right. So it's not completely relativistic where you can grow anything
Tim Bartimote: you really want. There's some good options that fit. Obviously
Tim Bartimote: we're not growing cherries at the moment, but there's some
Tim Bartimote: good options that might fit your business, and you've just
Tim Bartimote: found something that you like, that you're good at, and that works
Tim Bartimote: really well, out of the couple of options that you
Tim Bartimote: do have. Those number of factors is what's helping you
Tim Bartimote: make a decision about what do you do with this
Tim Bartimote: block. It's not a complete blank slate, like it has
Tim Bartimote: some particular ridges that make it suitable for some things
Tim Bartimote: and not other things. But at the end of the
Tim Bartimote: day, you're growing what you like to grow, and-
Craig Whiteley: I think we always gravitate toward that. It's easy to
Craig Whiteley: see. With guys who might run cattle and sheep together,
Craig Whiteley: for instance, very often you'll see they do a better
Craig Whiteley: job on the sheep than they do on the cattle,
Craig Whiteley: because they like the sheep. Or vice versa. Some guys
Craig Whiteley: like sitting on tractors and growing crops.
Tim Bartimote: And listening to podcasts,
Craig Whiteley: You're listening to podcasts. It's much harder to listen to
Craig Whiteley: podcasts when you're drenching sheep, but can be done.
Tim Bartimote: Well. Thanks Craig. Really appreciate the conversation and your time, and
Tim Bartimote: having a chat about your business. I hope you have
Tim Bartimote: a great rest of the season.
Craig Whiteley: Thanks, Tim. Pleasure.
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