COTTON grower Ross Uebergang, Tinobah, Miles tries to keep things simple on his 1400 hectare property and in doing so has diversified his operations to get the full potential out of all elements of cropping.
While he might be surrounded by gas companies and lack opportunities for future expansion, he is continually looking at new developments on farm.
At Uebergang Agriculture, run by Ross and his father David, crop coverage is a necessity and they produce cotton during the summer and wheat or barley during the winter while last year experimenting with chickpeas for the first time in eight years.
They also cut their own silage and feed it in their on property feedlot where they trade about 500 head a year.
But the biggest development has come in years of trials and testing of centre pivot irrigation which Ross has slowly increased from the family’s single pivot in 1978.
While he thinks flood irrigation would out-yield centre pivots, the centre pivot system has seen them get the full potential from their country.
“Because our country is quite slopey here our main key is trying to keep as much ground cover in there to get as much water as we can into this profile,” he said.
“The soil is actually quite light here and it’s only got about 150mm of stored moisture when it’s full.”
With intentions to try more double cropping, his chickpea block was prepared this season but had to be “knocked out” due to lack of water.
Despite making the sacrifice his current challenge lies in low water supply and he is hopeful it will last long enough to harvest his crops after a “shockingly dry hot” season.
Mr Uebergang planted 440 hectares of irrigated cotton and 230 hectares of dryland and has all but exhausted water supplies to keep the crops alive on the property 30 kilometres outside of Miles.
“We should make it, we hope, but there wont be anything to spare at all and we could be a little bit short if anything,” he said.
“I think all this dryland cotton has probably only had about 60mm in crop rain.”
Not to let a tough season worry him Ross has already planned next seasons planting schedule and has intentions to focus on their water storages.
“We were down the road of opportunity cropping and putting mungbeans in and all that sort of stuff but when you break it down, you might get a win out of it but there is a lot of stuffing around for not a lot of gain,” he said.
“We thought we would just simplify it and put all our effort into getting the most we can out of one season and that way we weren't trying to spread water between crops and spray two different crops.
“Everything just has a cycle that flows. It’s taken me a couple of years to get my head around it but it works really well.”
Mr Uebergang was named the Darling Downs Grower of the Year and will showcase his property at a field day on March 1.
To RSVP email Mary O'Brien at maryo@cotton.org.au or phone 0408 982 291.
Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
