[MUSIC] Hello, Shauna, it's nice to be here with you. Shauna Stone is our farmer today. Shauna is a member of a very good farming family, and Shauna, you're operating a farm in the Kojonup area of Western Australia. Now, this is an area that has good rainfall. And you have around about 1,000 hectares that you have, each year, committed to the major crops of wheat, and barley, and canola, is that right? >> Correct, and oats, and we're cropping about 1,300 hectares now. >> Right, right, so 1,300 hectares. It's a family farm, it's mostly being run by you and your agronomist son. The two of you are the only employees on the farm. >> That's correct, Steve, so my son is an agronomist, which is extremely valuable to our business, and he and I do make all the decisions. My husband works off the farm, in the industry. So yeah, so I've been running the farm with my son now for five years, since he's been home working from his agronomy full-time work. And we share the decision making, although I'm very quickly trying to get him to make most of the decisions now. And I'm just his guidance, really, and he's the machinery operator. [LAUGH] >> Well, I know it's a good partnership, and we're going to discuss, a little bit, your farming enterprise. >> So our farm is in a high-rainfall zone, so we're expecting between 400 and 500 mils of rainfall a year. And we've purchased a farm only three years ago, which was predominantly sheep and stock up until we purchased it, and now we're trying to fully crop the farm. So it's been an exciting cleanup and an exciting time for us to convert a stock property into a cropping property. >> Right, and you mentioned sheep and you mentioned rainfall. How important is rainfall to your farming enterprise? >> Extremely important, because we came from a medium rainfall zone, which was tending to low rainfall, and we've gone to a high rainfall zone. We actually really need the winter rainfall to make crop production at its maximum. >> Right, so in this sort of environment, the rainfall comes in April or so, and that signifies the start of the growing season? >> We prefer to plant all our crop during mid April to late May, and if we can get rainfall prior to crop sowing, that's very, very important. So anywhere from the beginning of April onwards is ideal. We don't want too much rainfall in summer, but we will take it because we can store it in the soil, ready for planting. Potentially, 25 to 30 millimeters of rainfall will be enough to get us planting, and then once we start, we don't stop. We'll just keep going right through until the end of May, until everything's planted. >> Okay, so you mentioned the ability of the soil to store summer rainfall, or some of it. And I imagine, therefore, that minimum or zero tillage is really important to your farming enterprise. >> Very important, so with the minimum tillage, we just cut through the soil with a knife blade, eventually, which is probably 25 millimeters wide, and we make a narrow slot. We put the seed and the fertilizer into that slot, and then we'll seal it down again. We're storing the moisture by sealing it down again, and we're also creating a little catchment zone for future rainfall, which is really valuable. >> Okay, so you would say the benefits of minimal tillage for your farming are that you are saving precious soil moisture, as well as minimizing any soil erosion issues. >> Yes, yes, so we're maintaining the topsoil structure. So the topsoil is preserved in the state it's in, year in, year out. We're not disturbing a whole lot of the soil, we're just disturbing a minor amount of it. So yeah, it's able to store the moisture because it's got this nice humus layer, a layer of organic matter on top, which we preserve. It's very precious. >> So the real advantages of minimum tillage, in your farming career, you've seen those developments. >> We certainly have, and it's the catcher of moisture as well, into those furrows, which is really important, into that root zone. Initially, we get that crop established. Crop establishment's everything. If we've got some moisture there, that's great, but if we haven't, we know we can capture it and utilize it to its best. >> So do you imagine that you'll be minimum tillage agriculture for years and decades to come? >> Minimum tillage, but I think there is an opportunity to turn the soil over, maybe every now and then, to mix in products that we may want to mix in, some clay or some lime. And we're seeing that more in the dry rainfall zones now, but for us, minimum tillage is ideal. >> Right, so minimum tillage, and perhaps a disruptive practice of cultivation to incorporate lime or something, once every ten years in a particular field. >> Potentially, if you but it is really a last resort for us to have to do that. >> Right, so it sounds like a good farming system. What do you think the big challenges are to viability and sustainability of your farming enterprise going forward? >> For us, because we're total cropping our cropping areas, the weed burden is quite massive. So we need to drive the weeds' numbers down. That's our biggest challenge at the moment, and we need to do it with the use of chemicals. But also, with the use of harvest weed seed management and summer grazing, potentially, of and things like that. So the challenge for us, yeah, is to just know that we can grow a weed-free crop, because we have a beautiful soil type. We can give it the right fertilizer, but we need to not have that competition of weeds in that crop. >> Right, so weeds, a major challenge. Now, normally, farmers have been used to weeds, but they've been able to easily control them with herbicides. So why why do they remain an ongoing challenge if we have a wide range of herbicides available to us? >> Well, the herbicides won't last forever, of course, so we need to preserve the herbicides we've got. And we need to use them occasionally, and not use the same herbicide every year and the same crop rotation every year. So we need to rotate our crops around, which is also challenging, to get different crops with different herbicide regimes so that we can maintain the herbicides we've got. >> So the future for you will be a combination of judicious, clever crop rotation, overcome the weed challenge, overcome the herbicide-resistant weed challenge. And maintain minimum tillage agriculture to conserve moisture, soils, and for good agronomy. >> Yes, good agronomy and good decisions, good timing is vital in our enterprise. We need to be ready to go at any time with any spray to control weeds near the crop, yeah. So yes, we've got lots of things to stay on top of on our property. But being a new property to us has been a challenge, but we'll get there. >> Well, that's just great, and a combination of farming know-how, and technology, and good cropland and soils. I'm sure you've got a bright future in farming and crop production in the future. >> I know we have. [LAUGH] [MUSIC]
