Ignoring BOM's advice pays off for dryland farmer

The harvest of 2023 hectares (5000 acres) of mungbeans at Bareena Valley, Orion, was completed literally minutes before the rain started and now that's done, harvesting of Mark and Megan Baker's 5665 ha (14,000 acre) sorghum crop is set to get underway at the end of May.

Mr Baker said he had not grown mungbeans for about six years and decided to plant it as he wanted to get a summer crop in after wheat on wheat.

"My weather bloke, Anthony at AV Weather was predicting a wetter summer which was contrary to the BOM's forecast so as I trust him a lot more than the BOM, I went with his prediction and it definitely paid off," he said.

"We went full summer crop so we have also got 14,000 acres of sorghum in."

The Bakers of MB Agriculture planted two mungbean varieties - Jade and Taipan - between January 5-9.

Mr Baker said he chose Jade as it was a variety that had been around for a while and one he had grown before so knew it was not a huge risk to grow as it had been good.

"Taipan is a new one so I decided to give it a try... an agronomist and the rep for that variety both suggested it. We planted 1800 acres to Taipan and the rest was Jade."

Mr Baker said another reason he decided to plant Taipan was because it grew a bit taller than other varieties, set pods a bit higher and had a larger sized bean which buyers preferred.

"Since we planted the crop, we had about 300 millimetres of incrop rain so it was waterlogged a few times which held it back a little bit and then we defoliated and had 50 to 60 mm of rain on it which caused it to lay over a bit so getting all the pods during harvest was a bit of a battle," he said.

"We did lose some pods at harvest just because they were laying over too much, but the quality was still good. Basically, all of the beans went to processing grade...so it was good quality seed which we get better money for it.

"We got just over 3000 tonnes off the 5000 acres so about 1.3 tonne/hectare. The experts all told me that it was going to go a lot better, but I was thinking it would be around that figure of 1.5 to 2 tonnes/ha so I was happy."

Early rain also caused a problem with feathertop weed in the mungbeans because the country was too wet to spray Verdict and when it did dry out the crop was flowering and they could not spray.

Mr Baker said one of the things he trialled this year with his mungbean crop which had not been done a lot in central Queensland was, instead of using Roundup to defoliate part of the crop, they swathed a row, put it into a windrow, let it dry down and then picked it up.

"We did one long row and pulled out because we thought it wasn't going to work because the row was so big and we thought it would go hot and mouldy. But, we did one big long row anyway just to give it a trial because I thought I could just write it off if it went hot and mouldy, but it didn't. It dried down really well and picked up with the pick up truck really well and the sample was fine," he said.

"One interesting factor I found with it was when we windrowed it was 24 m - so it was two 12 metre fronts put together to form one windrow, it was a 24 m windrow of mungbeans - and when I harvested it was using about 50-55 litres/hour of fuel to harvest a 24 m strip and when we were just normal harvesting with a 15 m front we were using around 70-75 litres an hour of fuel so there's big savings in fuel if we windrow."

Mr Baker said the trial gave them a saving in Roundup and fuel costs, but an added expense of windrowing.

"But, I think there's a fair bit in it to be honest and I think we're going to try it again next time," he said.

Mr Baker said he was also thinking about trying it for other crops such as chickpeas as he believed the days of using Roundup on crops grown for human consumption were numbered.

As to his sorghum crop, Mr Baker expects to defoliate the early planting of sorghum in about four to five weeks with harvest starting from the end of May through to June.

Planting took place from January 15 through to February 20 with three varieties - Bazley, Buster and Pioneer - G33 - chosen.

Mr Baker said Bazley was a longer season variety so he started with it and then went in the middle with Buster and the last was G33 because it grew a bit quicker.

"The planting was spread out over a month because basically we'd got 3000 acres and then it'd rain and we were pulled up for a week, and then we'd get another 5000-6000 acres in and then it would rain and and then the last 1000 acres was planted in mid February," he said.

"It's looking good it's had good rain on it so the earlier stuff put a head out about three weeks ago and the latest stuff is just putting out a head now."

A big issue for his sorghum crop, however, was that it "got hit pretty hard with fall armyworm" in the earlier sorghum which had to be sprayed with Vantacor by a ground rig when the sorghum was pushing out a head.

"The issue is that you lose leaf out of the crop and if you lose the leaf area it affects the ability of the plant to fill the grain and push the head out. All of the crop has been affected. It's just that the earlier stuff was affected more, but the latest stuff the numbers of army worm dropped off so its been able to compensate for any damage they were doing to the plant. They're still there, but not in high numbers," Mr Baker said.

"We basically sprayed about 7000 acres of the sorghum - the latest stuff we haven't sprayed yet, it's been okay because the numbers dropped off, but I don't know how it will affect yield.

"We were really concerned at the start that it was going to impact our yield, it was a bit unknown as it was all new to us and we thought it was going to be bad, but when you look at the crop now it's all out in head and filling grain and I don't think it is going to affect it that much."

Mr Baker is hoping for more than 3 tonne/ha which would be more than the district average of 2 to 2.4tonne/ha.

He said they never had fall armyworm before and hopefully did not have to spray the sorghum again this season because the chemical was very expensive.

"You can use Vantacor on mung beans to control heliothis, but it's at a rate 40 millilitres/ha, but when we were spraying the sorghum we had to use it at the rate of 80 ml/hectare and the chemical costs about $900/litre so it's expensive," he said.

"I reckon it would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to spray...it's $90,000 just for 1000 ha."

Mr Baker expects that fall army worm will now be around for a long time and they were just going to have find other ways to control it.

Yesterday, Mr Baker had started planting chickpeas into the paddocks where the mungbean crop was harvested.

He said after the mungbeans were harvested they had about 70-80 mm of rain which meant they now had "a couple of feet" of moisture in that country.

"We'll just see how that goes because we're basically moisture farmers, that's what we are, and if we've got the moisture we try and use it ," he said.

"So we finished harvesting the mung beans on the Friday (April 4) about 10.30 at night and it started raining about 10.35 so we just got it done by the skin of our teeth.

"We sent it to three different buyers, a lot of it when to Goovigen to Allenden Seeds and the rest went down to Dalby."

Once the sorghum crop is harvested, Mr Baker plans to let the paddocks lie fallow to see what summer rainfall they get.

"If we get rain, I might put some mungbeans in early next year, I might put that into the sorghum country. We will just have to wait and see what the weather brings."