Paddock Perspective | Brett Wheaton - Nhill VIC

Hi everyone, Brett Wheaton here. I farm in the North West Wimmera, in the Nhill area on approximately 8500ha in total. We have 5000ha in the Telopea Downs area which has sandy to Mallee clay soils which we run our stock on and the rest is full rotation cropping with heavy red bulloak soil to black self-mulching Wimmera ground. We sow vetch, canola, beans, lentils, wheat and barley; and have an average rainfall of 350ish mm a year - though it is never the same year on year. Our farm business is a family run show, with my brother Dean and I, and our four kids all in the business.

This year, we had a very wet Summer and harvest, with 250mm falling from November to January. Luckily, we didn't get any downgrades of grain quality during harvest and we had a lot of Summer spraying - some paddocks getting sprayed 3 times. We had 17mm of rain in March and 15mm in early April, but none since. At the moment, we have 85% of the crop in and are still dry sowing safely, but early canola and vetch had patchy germination and are struggling. We only have a bit of wheat and barley left to go and we'll be all done.

We also run a Merino Sheep flock for wool and lambs. We run a small stud for breeding rams and self-replacing Merino ewes and Border-cross lambs for the breeders market. We also run a herd of poll Hereford cattle in Telopea downs properties and feedlot finish our vealers at home with our own grain and hay to value-add both the cattle and grain business. We've finished lambing now and will be marking lambs this week while the weather is dry. The cattle are still calving and we are feeding vealers in the feedlot. We hope to start selling them off in June - direct to Coles market.

Over the past few years we've been upgrading our business plant and infrastructure so we can keep a modern fleet going with less down-time hassles. It's been good to see the kids get involved and take an active role on the farm. There's lots of challenges in the ag business and it will be interesting to see what the next generation of operators manage the opportunities and challenges that are ahead of them. Not just costs vs returns, but government and policy, weather and other outside factors. It will be interesting times and we love the challenge, being the best we can be.