James and Penny Hassall expect to have plenty of soil moisture preserved under their stubble-blanketed paddocks providing ideal conditions to start their planting program with lupins in late April.

Last season’s wet finish left grain quality widely downgraded, but yields were excellent with cereals averaging 4.5 to five tonnes/ha – about a tonne better than expected.

The Gilgandra family partnership, which includes James’ father, Keith, has been quick to adopt precision farming satellite guided technology in the past decade, just as the Hassalls were early direct drill converts in the 1980s.

They now use a doubly precise combination of global positioning system (GPS) gear mounted directly on their planting rig and in the their John Deere 8330 tractor to auto steer the machine at sowing.

GPS gear also guides and records spraying progress and assists variable rate fertiliser applications.

“Farming’s a very much more technical business involving a lot more expense and effort than I think most of our city cousins would imagine,” Mr Hassall said.

Mr Hassall is an enthusiastic supporter of the Australian Year of the Farmer initiative, noting city dwellers are increasingly unlikely to have any family ties with rural life or empathy with what’s involved in feeding Australia and its export markets.

“There’s a lot more to farming than sitting on the verandah shelling peas and watching the crops grow, but it’s amazing how the folksy country stereotypes tend to be cultivated,” he says.

“Television programs love to run a bit of footage of somebody riding a horse in the main street. I’ve never seen that in Gilgandra.

“I think the Year of the Farmer will be a great opportunity to get people thinking about what we do, what makes the country tick and why it’s important.”

Don’t miss your Australian Year of the Farmer special liftout in The Land this week.