THE decision to grow wall-to-wall barley this winter looks like paying off for Darling Downs farmers Scott Johnston and his father Leigh, despite the rainfall tap turning off soon after planting.
Most of the 260 hectares of barley the Johnstons had in on their Oakey farm Dunkeld this season was grown under irrigation, which kept the crop ticking along despite a very dry winter.
"The reason we went all barley was we have had a lot of summer crops over the past two years and wanted to get into a winter crop rotation," Scott Johnston said.
"There are a lot of dairy farmers and feedlots around us, so barley is always a better option for us because we can do silage, hay or take it through to grain."
The Johnstons have already made silage out of some of the crop, and will end up cutting 160ha for fodder and running the remaining 100ha through to grain harvest.
Mr Johnston said the main threat to their irrigation enterprise - which was based on six bores, a 900-megalitre ring tank and two centre-pivot irrigators - was the dramatic rise in electricity costs over recent years.
"The cost of electricity to pump the irrigation water out of the ground is slowly killing us at the moment," he said.
"It is ridiculous. We had an average year last year and our electricity bill from the bores alone was $35,000. We are only a small business - I'd hate to be a big business."
The Johnstons switched from lucerne hay production to mainly cropping three years ago when the big floods of January 2011 swept across their farm.
"That drowned the lucerne. It was too expensive to get back into, so we have gone back to summer and winter crops."
Neil Lyon
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
