A Farmer’s Experience of No-till Farming in NorthernNSW Australia

摘要

My husband Ray and I own and operate a 1400 ha no-till dryland cropping enterprise nearCoonamble, northern NSW Australia. We converted to no-till farming after experiencing devastatingdust storms during the 1994 drought and purchased a no-till planter in 1996. We have discoveredhowever that no-till farming is not just direct drilling crops into undisturbed soils but involves aworking knowledge of weed, disease, nutrition and most importantly moisture conservationmanagement. A change to rotating crops was imperative. In our area continuous wheat was thenormal practice. Crown rot and yellow leaf spot were two diseases that emerged since converting tono-till. We started rotating crops with chickpeas and more recently introducing canola andinvestigating mustard, aiming to have all paddocks in a wheat/ chickpea/ wheat/ canola or mustardrotation. The reasons for and benefits of these rotations will be discussed. Other innovations thatwe are trying will also be outlined. Some of these include controlled traffic to reduce chemical usageand to improve soil structure, introduction of integrated pest management and herbicide rotation tolesson the effect of herbicide resistance and doing on-farm nutrient and herbicide resistance trialswith the NSW Department of Agriculture. There will also be a discussion on how since converting tono-till we have noticed an improvement in yields, profit, water use efficiency, soil nutrition and soilstructure as well as enjoying a quality of life that doesn’t involve spending many hours on the tractor.