Reliable cropping technology needed: Sargent

This was the inspiration behind fifth generation cropper Andrew Sargent’s recently-awarded Nuffield Scholarship, which aims to investigate “how farm sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) can improve the efficiency and profitability of cropping and mixed farming enterprises”.

The IoT is the incorporation of the internet into everyday devices, from fridges to parking sensors to weather sensors, enabling them to send and receive data.

Andrew is particularly interested in new sensor technologies and how they can allow for better weather observations and inform the decision-making process when it comes to climate variability, as well as reduce staff costs and monitoring times.

“To increase the scale of our operation, we’ll need to utilise new technologies to bolster current practices. 

“There’s a lot of interest from Australian farmers in sensor technology, but we’re lacking the knowledge and confidence to implement it successfully on-farm.”

Andrew crops 2000 hectares of wheat, barley, lentils, canola and oaten hay with parents Malcolm and Jane at Crystal Brook and Appila – properties 50 kilometres apart.

It’s this distance that motivated Andrew to apply for the scholarship.

“It would be nice to more accurately track what is going on weather-wise at the Appila block, whether too windy or the ground too wet, before making the trek,” he said.

“We also want to incorporate more technology on-farm but we find it can be very frustrating first getting it set up and then be easy to use.

“We noticed it at seeding this year. We have all the tech to variable rate sow, but the yield maps weren’t loading like they were supposed to.

“Many farmers have come to expect issues if they use varying brands of technology on their seeders, but we only use one brand of equipment and it still didn’t work.

“In the end we had to blanket seed as we just needed to get it into the ground.

“The products that are currently available don't seem to be as reliable and easy-to-use as they should be.”

With his scholarship, Andrew plans to travel to the Netherlands, which is leading the way in the free roll out of IoT networks currently used for smart city and environmental monitoring, as well as leading research institutions in Europe and agtech start-ups in the United States. 

Andrew said he had always been interested in the latest cropping technology.

He dabbled in mechanical engineering at university, then worked for an autosteer company in Vic, attended Roseworthy to study Agriculture, before returning to the family farm in 2009. 

Andrew’s father Malcolm was the inaugural president of the Society of Precision Agriculture Australia in the early 2000s.

Andrew said back then they talked about compatibility problems in machine technology.

“And 15 years later, we are still having these problems,” he said.

“So people keep changing systems in the hunt for something better, which has only been exascerbating the problem.

“That's where the IoT has been improving transparency of these technologies and information.”  ----- remove

But for now, Andrew said they were taking stock of harvest, which finished at the start of the month – much earlier than normal. 

“This year we cut more than 300ha for hay, which included some wheat paddocks,” he said.

“We did encounter some frost, which decimated some lentil paddocks, but the wheat cut for hay was paddocks we didn't think would finish well, or had grass issues, so we made the most of the hay demand from NSW.

“It will be interesting to see if the numbers stack up against the grain crops.” 

Andrew said they only had 140mm of rain for the growing season, compared to the average of 300mm, 154mm since January.

But the season hasn’t fared as badly as they expected.

“Other than the frosted lentils, which we only got seed back, the canola crops were some of the better we have grown, yielding about 1t/ha,” he said.

“We used to have issues with patchy emergence as we would grow it after barley, now we grow it after oats and lentils and it has been much better.

“While considering the rain we had, our cereals also went fairly well – most had low screenings, high test rates and reasonable quality.

“Our cereals normally average about 4t/ha – this year we got about 2t/ha, which was better than we expected.”

The Sargents grow Spartacus and Compass barley and Sceptre wheat.

”The better varieties make a big difference, Compass held on well in the dry season,” he said.

“Spartacus at Appila still went F1, and that had less rain than Crystal Brook.

“We also had a few malt 2 loads with Compass.

“Spartacus would have been malt as well, but the protein levels were too high because of the tight finish.”

It was also the first year the Sargents used implement steering, a modification to the tractor hitch to keep the implement on line. 

“This year we inter-row sowed most of our program,” Andrew said.

“Not only did we gain benefits from the practice, through improved plant establishment, it also helped our sowing timeliness, as we had less stubble blockages.”