Soya smiles

“It was pretty desperate out here for us, so to have this rain has definitely taken the pressure off,” Mr Zipf said.

Preparing to harvest 18 hectares of their rotational soya bean crop at the end of this month, Mr Zipf said the recent fall would ensure the seed pods fill.

“It’s been too dry for too long, and the crop just needed that little bit of extra rain to actually fill the seed in the pod, and it’s just brilliant – we really needed it badly.”

Mr Zipf said planting soya, along with cowpea and lab lab, on a rotational basis allowed the nitrogen-rich legumes to enhance the soil in preparation for their staple crop – sugarcane.

“By having that rotation, you can minimise risk if the dry does set in,” he said. “The ground where you’ve had legumes will usually deliver a fairly good crop of sugarcane because the soil profile is in a much healthier

con dition and it has a better waterholding ability compared to monoculture.

“We bit the bullet and fallowed 15pc of the ground in mid-October, but normally we would leave it until the end of the cane harvest which, for us, is early in November.”

The property received about 75mm of rain during November and early December, providing a good profile of

moisture for the incoming soya crop.

“It’s produced a great crop, and working with legumes has allowed us to cut back on fertiliser usage because we want to target the food-grade market – soya bean prices are looking quite strong at the moment.”

The southern sugarcane farmers proudly produce an average of 7000 tonnes of cane per year, but Mr Zipf said this year’s production had been widely

impacted by drought, with other sugarcane farmers in the district producing less than half of the yearly average.

“The decreased harvest will really impact not only us, but our whole district.”

The soya beans are destined for Toowoomba and south to Cargill.

The sugarcane will be trucked from Rocky Point mill to a NSW refinery.

SINCE moving back to the family property in the early 1980s, Mr Zipf said he has fallen in love with the lifestyle of cane farming, through good times and bad.

“We were traditionally only sugarcane and that was our core business, but today we also produce sugarcane mulch as a by-product,” he said.

“It’s natural, it does a great job on the garden and the earth worms absolutely love it, and we also have harvests from our rotational crops as a supplement to our

income.

“We’re very exposed to the elements here – we have no irrigation and are totally reliant on natural rainfall – but we’ve certainly learnt from that and have adapted our

farming practices over the past 10 years.”

Working with his son Mitchell, Mr Zipf says it is a privilege to pass on decades of production knowledge to the next generation.

“When you’ve been doing something for 30 years, you learn little tricks along the way, and every farmer will be able to tell you that each block of ground is unique and you have to treat it well and care for it differently – these are the things I can pass on to Mitch.”

The love of production has been a much needed motivation for the family.

“I really do enjoy growing a quality product and that’s what you get a kick out of, and you’ve got to treat it right to see a return.”