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01 June 2009
Paddock Seminar on Controlled Traffic Farming
On 22nd May 2009, CSU Farm hosted a in paddock seminar to outline their move into controlled traffic farming (CTF). Interested staff and students from CSU and DPI were invited to hear and see what is involved with farming using permanent wheel tracks for all machinery traffic including the header, boom spray, seeder and spreader.
See 3m tractor and GPS guided airseeder in action sowing into stubble with presswheels on marginal moisture.
The objective is to keep wheels on hard ground and plants in soft soil, which in turn eliminates soil compaction and helps to increase WUE and yield. This is a major shift in farming practice as previously the header could not match where the seeder or boomspray had travelled during the season and causing partial compaction across the whole paddock. GPS guidance is what makes all this possible with 2cm autosteer in every implement including the header to allow fully repeatable farming where the GPS logs exact locations which are carried forward into the next operation or season.
Therefore to match machinery all wheel axles are extended to 3m widths to line up with the header which is the most difficult to change. The attached photo shows the airseeder and tractor operated by Ben & Lou Beck at Downside who conduct the contract sowing and harvesting for CSU Farm. The axles on the tractor have been moved out to 3m centres. All implements are multiplies of the header and seeder width to allow repeatability with operations. For example CSU Farm are operating on a 9m system with a 9m header front, 9m seeder and 18m boom spray (27m boom is used by the Beck family). Another system used is 12m multiplies (eg Warwick & Di Holding from Yerong Creek).
Overriding all these logistical changes is the focus on best practice agronomy in order to achieve potential WUE and yield. This may seem a given but combined with key practices such as complete stubble retention (facilitated by inter row sowing), summer weed control, calendar sowing, canopy management, weed/disease control, rotation, no grazing, farm zoning and risk management the use of CTF is driving WUE & yields higher in both decile 1 or 8 years.
It is exciting to see CSU Farm and Jim Mellor embrace this change in farming system on a commercial scale and take the lead without any signficant investment in new machinery. I urge all students and members of the academic and research staff to take an interest because at the farm level the adoption of CTF practices is starting to gather significant momentum and what was previously a northern farming technique will become common practice in the south.