CENTRAL West farmer, Will MacSmith, wants to make changes to his cropping operation to cut fuel expenses by 30 to 50 per cent on his Cudal property, “Corroboree”.
He plans to achieve this by moving to bigger spraying equipment to reduce time spent spraying and the number of runs through the paddocks, and will also look for efficiencies in sowing, including an upgraded planter.
Mr MacSmith is a fifth generation farmer who runs the 1900-hectare farm with his father, Lachie.
They run 1800 Merino ewes with close to 500 joined to White Suffolk.
There are 40 Angus/Charolais cows plus Angus steers, and the herd is being expanded to take advantage of good pasture.
Their 900ha, dryland, no-till cropping program this year will include 330ha of canola, 25ha oats, 50ha grazing barley, 36ha of lupins, and 459ha wheat for grain, including 55ha of dual purpose.
Mr MacSmith said in the next 12 months he wanted to make changes to his spraying gear to reduce fuel use.
“With our current system I’d like to think we could get a 30pc saving with our fuel by expanding the boom width another nine metres,” he said.
He said the tractor for spraying used 10-centimetre Trimble guidance, with an easy boom auto section shut-off.
Mr MacSmith said the 10cm accuracy helped reduce input costs by 10pc by reducing overlap.
As another part of his cost-reduction strategy, he wants to head towards a controlled traffic system based on nine-metre multiples.
“At the moment our spray rig is 18m with the intention to go out to 27m shortly to get the time spent spraying down,” he said.
“It’s about a 30pc fuel reduction if you go another 30pc wider.
“We’re trying to get our fuel costs down a little bit: one from the number of passes in preparation for sowing, and two from the time spent doing spraying.”
Mr MacSmith said the tractor was using up to eight litres of fuel a hectare for sowing, but even with a tractor double the size and wider gear, he might be able to get down to under five litres a hectare.
“If we can get our cropping program to one pass for planting, I think we’ll see a significant reduction in fuel costs,” he said.
“Currently for the canola program it involves spreading sulphur, and for about 30pc of the canola we had nitrogen put down pre-plant.
“I’d like to incorporate all that into the one pass sowing system.”
With wider machinery he thought they might get a 50pc fuel reduction with the sowing pass.
“It’s a six-metre sowing system at the moment,” Mr MacSmith said.
“Hopefully in the future we will go to nine metres, and three-metre wheel centres.
“The header will be nine metres so you’re always running the same wheel tracks down the same path.”
Preparation had a lot to do with what could be achieved in the way of efficiency gains, including being able to deal with stubble.
“Canola is difficult to get good seed to soil contact in high stubble without going too deep,” he said.
While it would be “a challenge” moving to a two-centimetre implement guidance steer system, Mr MacSmith said he hoped to inter-row sow and leave the wheat stubble standing.
“I’d like to try to get the cost associated with stubble loads down,” he said.
“To get there we’d probably have to upgrade our planter and go from 10cm to two-centimetre guidance.
“We would probably have the implement steer on that as well to get that accuracy in undulating country.
“We’re currently using a tyne machine, which will not handle the stubble as well as a disc machine if you were going straight through stubble.
“But because a disc machine wouldn’t handle our heavier soils we use a tyne machine to inter-row sow.”
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