Paddock Perspective | Byron Birch - Bellata NSW

I farm at Bellata, 5,000ha in size. We have leased property for the last 7 years. We grow wheat, chickpeas, sorghum and cotton, with a long fallow into the summer crop and out of, as part of the rotation. In the last few years, we did some opportunistic double cropping with our winter wheat crop into summer crop.

Our soil type is flood plain black cracking clays. Large paddock sizing and no inefficiencies with regards to no trees and good size paddocks, is what attracted me to this farm. We have 500mm average rainfall, evenly spread all year round.

It's stacking up to be a good one, getting a bit of profile, and I would like another 50mm of rain to cement the winter crop in. Our winter crop is to be sown mid-April, winter wheat mostly (Raider variety), and try new varieties Intrigue and Sundancer.

We have been spreading urea in front of the rain at 150kg/ha and getting the planter ready for planting. I'm trying to do strip and disc planter configuration, stripper front and disc for moisture retention. We have been using this configuration for the last 5 years - I wouldn't say it's a perfect system, but it's a system we've been using. In the wet years, we've been struggling with the bigger biomass, from bigger wheat crops. Before the drought, we were using an old Tyne machine and then when the drought came, we needed to do something different.

I think our opportunity is that the weather conditions and outlook is promising for a good winter crop. About 3,000 ha of winter wheat is to be planted. We have had a little bit of urea supply constraint over summer, and I think with it being a dry year last year and a couple of wet years, we're finding it a challenge to get some chickpea seed.

I'm proud to be an Aussie grower because we have low inputs and have a sustainable cropping system. I think that we are not pushing the limits with synthetic chemicals and fertilisers. Unlike the environmental issues overseas, we are not getting the same amount of run off.