Climate change forces new ideas for farming

Thorpdale potato farmer Stuart Jennings spends many an hour driving his tractor, thinking about water and energy.

Stuart’s thoughts and concerns about climate risks and challenges are representative of what many farmers face and the issues that will be discussed at a Climate Risk in Agriculture conference in Warragul this month.

The Jennings family grow 60 hectares of potatoes, six hectares of onions, raise 1400 fat lambs and 50 beef cattle on their 324 hectares.

“The nature of our crops means that water is a massive issue for us and we are always looking at ways to improve our usage,” he said.

“We are on metered water already and if it gets worse and worse like this year we will run out again, because it’s just so dry.”

Stuart said they haven’t made big financial investments yet, but have looked at many options to more efficiently irrigate their crops.

“We’re looking at pump systems that are more efficient, so we’re not using as much power, not using as much water,” he said.

“And we’ve looked into drip line irrigation for our onions - more direct watering so you’re not wasting anything, but we’ve been told our hills are too steep.

“With our onions, which are a long growing crop, we are looking at maybe putting them in earlier so we don’t have to water so much.

“One run with our current irrigation system can take 15 hours. I’d love to have the ability to just flip on the water for a couple of hours.”

Stuart laments that he would love to move to more efficient watering techniques for his crops, but the costs are restrictive.

“What we’re getting paid for our produce is going down all the time, but the cost to adopt some of the irrigation systems are just so high,” he said.

Energy cost and consumption is another of the big issues at the front of Stuart’s mind.

“We do have a solar system on our packing shed that we put in a couple of years ago, which has helped reduce our energy use and costs there, but the cost to run our main pump is huge,” he said.

“We are looking at solar programs, including a bulk buy program through AusVeg.

“There’s even people carbon trading, which could be worth looking into.

At the moment Stuart is looking at ways he can get better growing results using less land and in doing so using less water.

“With our carrots, at the moment we are putting two rows into one spud row; but we are looking at putting in three rows,” he said.

“Also, we’re looking at planting our carrots into a bed rather than a spud row to see if we can get more plant growth, which will mean we won’t have to plant as many acres to get as many carrots.

“It’s just a matter of always thinking about what else we can do.”

The Climate Risk in Agriculture conference will be held at the West Gippsland Arts Centre on June 20.

More information about the Climate Risk in Agriculture conference - p58.