ALTHOUGH only six months into the job, new SANTFA president Brad Moyle is no stranger to the revolutionary farming technique that took Australia by storm a decade ago.
Working in partnership with parents Hayden and Bev and his wife Liz on their Parilla property, he made the transition to no-till eight years ago to overcome soil erosion on their 3400-hectare farm growing wheat, barley, canola, lupins, triticale and vetch.
"We did it realising it was the best way for us to be farming, especially on our soil type," Brad said.
"We're on sandy loam here with a bit of heavier red clay country in between.
"But when we were just using Roundup during the pasture phase, we didn't have a lot of cover left on the soil by the time we sowed again."
That made wind erosion Brad's key motivation – Hayden had always attributed it to being the chief cause of crop-loss on the property.
They had to outlay a bit of money for the changeover, to change the seeder bar, change tyne breakout pressure, and to set the right drill points and presswheels.
"I wouldn't say no-till is a cheaper way of farming, but it is definitely cheaper and more sustainable if you can keep your soil on your own farm," Brad said.
"We had immediate results on wind erosion, and we don't have to grade fences any more to get the drift out, which was a job I hated."
After a few years Brad noticed disease levels were down, and crop consistency from "fence to fence" was far better, which resulted in better yield averages.
Many farmers in the district made similar changes as the buzzword 'no-till' spread.
But in recent years the number of transitions have slowed.
"There's a fair bit of no-till farming out there, but there are still some conventional guys getting around, which are mainly the older generation – the guys that have been here all their life and are getting on towards the end of their farming career," Brad said.
"But it's hard. Once you've done something in a certain way for 20 years or more and decide, 'okay, we're not going to do it that way any more and we're going to do it this way', it's a hard thing to get your head around.
"But once you've got your head around it, it becomes fairly obvious and simple to ask 'why weren't we doing this years ago?'"
Brad is confident that more farmers will shift into no-till.
"SANTFA's goal is to have 100 per cent of SA farmers under no-till practices," he said.
"That's probably a pipe dream but I think more land will go under no-till because of generational change and that sort of thing."
Full report in Stock Journal, February 7 issue, 2013.
