New research has found an innovative farming system increases ground cover and crop residue while reducing evaporation, improving soil health, plant growth, drought resilience and ultimately farm profits.
Richard Quigley was motivated to take on a Nuffield Scholarship investigating the strip and disc system after farming through the 2017-20 drought. He found its potential particularly in moisture limited environments.
Cotton Australia and Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) supported Richard’s Nuffield Scholarship, seeing the potential benefit of understanding this farming system better.
Richard, who farms at Trangie in Central West NSW, has released his Nuffield report today exploring the benefits and challenges associated with the strip and disc system.
This system uses a stripper header to harvest cereal crops, stripping the grain from the stem, leaving most of the plant material behind.
Farmers then follow with a disc seeder, utilising a sharp disc running on an angle to cut a slot in the residue in the soil, into which the seed for the next crop is placed.
Richard has seen the benefits to this approach first-hand, implementing it the family’s Quigley Farms.
The Quigleys run a mixed farming enterprise growing irrigated cotton, dryland wheat, barley, chickpeas and canola, and opportunity dryland cotton.
They also have a grazing operation focused on breeding and finishing sheep and cattle.
With an average annual rainfall of 480mm and measured evaporation of over 2000mm, moisture is usually the limiting factor for their crops.
Having tested the system on-farm and travelled for Nuffield to review the approach, Richard said the benefits would be greater in below-average rainfall years.
“For example, the extra soil moisture this year has allowed our crops to finish really well, with good grain fill and no or very little screenings,” Richard said.
“I think it has real benefit to improve the yield and quality of dryland cotton crops by providing more plant available water, therefore allowing the crops to finish better.
“I see the most benefit from stripper headers and increased levels of crop residue in Australia’s semi-arid grain growing regions and dryland cotton environments, and the benefits will be reduced in higher rainfall and cooler regions.”
Richard has seen the benefits to this approach first-hand, implementing it the family’s Quigley Farms. Pic: Supplied
Richard found significant increases in harvester efficiency and throughput, resulting in a reduction in fuel burnt during harvest by up to 50 per cent.
This builds upon the soil health benefits and increase to the amount of water available to a crop.
Overseas, Richard was particularly impressed with how farmers in Kansas and Colorado were using strip and disc farming system to store moisture.
He said farmers there used the system to catch snow, preventing it blowing away in their winters and allowing them to produce grain crops on less than 250mm of rain.
Richard also travelled throughout Australia, as well as to Singapore, Europe, Canada and America.
However, he said the strip and disc system is not without challenges.
Stripper headers are not compatible with conventional furrow irrigated cotton production in Australia without additional residue management techniques, primarily due to trash flow issues. However they are compatible with sprinkler and drip irrigated cotton farming systems as well as Dryland cotton production systems to increase water use efficiency.
Richard said most farmers would require new machinery, and there can be additional pest, weed and disease pressure thanks to the extra soil cover.
However, Richard believes the benefits of adopting this system still outweigh the challenges.
As well as giving him confidence in this new production systems and learning how to optimise its implementation, Richard highly recommends the Nuffield experience for the connections made.
“We bonded with colleagues who are passionate about agriculture and are professionals in their respective fields,” Richard said.
“It was great to bounce business ideas off them and get their insights.
“But it’s not just people we travelled with – being a Nuffield Scholar opens a lot of doors; it creates a connection with people in the agricultural world.”
