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SUNLAND AG PTY LTD

HOME PROPERTY“Lane’s Bridge”, Hillston, NSW

OWNERSTim and Sally Watson

GENERAL MANAGERDavid Winter, Ben Turner and Lyndon Orpwood

CONSULTANT AGRONOMISTAllan Jones

RIVERINA PIONEER Sunland Ag Pty Ltd, spearheaded by the innovative thinking of Tim Watson has been growing cotton in the Riverina region for 14 years. Located just outside Hillston, the enterprise is highly impressive. It is not confined by conventional thinking and as a result it is achieving outstanding results.

HIGH YIELDS AND HIGH RETURNS Sunland Ag is a varied enterprise consisting of cotton, watermelons, beetroot and wheat, based on a highly secure water supply of excellent quality. The cotton has consistently yielded very well with an 8 year average of 12.2 bales/Ha. This season’s yield was up to 12.8 bales/Ha. This yield is even more impressive given the gross margin calculations of the operation. Agripath benchmarking ranks the enterprises’ Gross Margin per Ha at better than the top 20% of farms participating. Tim’s philosophy is to always be the least cost producer of the highest quality fibre.

PEOPLE REACHING THEIR POTENTIALTim has gathered a highly effective team including Farm Managers David Winter, Ben Turner and Lyndon Orpwood and consulting Agronomist Allan Jones of ABS Agronomy. The farm motto is to empower good people to reach their full potential and achieve excellent results. In this vein, there is a continuous drive to encourage every member of the team to come up with solutions to problems. A recent example is the use of “bubblers” over the wheels of the centre pivots to reduce the depth of the wheel tracks. Tim provides a fair amount of latitude to staff with only one proviso “try not to make the same mistake twice”.

FARMING METHODS IN AN OUTDOOR FACTORY The farm is fully developed with a secure water source primarily from underground water and has fairly low risk climatic conditions. Far from breeding complacency, this has allowed the team to concentrate on generating efficiencies to drive profitability. Tim views the farm clinically, considering it an “outdoor factory”.

FARM FACTS...TOTAL ENTERPRISE SIZE730 Ha plus 400 Ha leased

AREA TO COTTON 2013/2014700 Ha

AVERAGE YIELD 2013/201412.8 bales/Ha

WATER ALLOCATION/S3,300ML river4,200 ML bore

TYPE/S OF IRRIGATION400 Ha of drip 14 centre pivots 600 Ha flood irrigation infrastructure

Monsanto Grower of the Year

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The cotton rotation used by Sunland Ag consists simply of cotton. They have been growing back to back cotton on some fields for up to seven years and seen a continual increase in yields. Tim admits their greatest production challenge is getting young seedlings established, up and out of the ground. Growing cotton in southern regions often involves pushing the boundaries with soil temperature.

Due to the variety of crops grown on farm they have to be particularly conscious of residual herbicides that may impact on their other crops and of potential toxicity to bee populations.

In recent times, energy consumption has been identified as a major and growing expense to the enterprise. A number of procedures and infrastructure have been put in place to minimise the risk of these costs blowing out. Initially Sunland Ag converted bores to electricity. However, over the last few years they have been faced with the ever increasing non-negotiable access charges which are incurred with electric pumps. In an attempt to mitigate these costs Sunland Ag has modified usage, including physically locking bores on a planned monthly basis and concentrating use to a specific pump or bore, installing strategic tanks around the farm for spray contractors and educating staff regarding the impacts of unplanned usage of pumps. Sunland Ag has also recently installed 2 100 KW Solar systems linked to one of their bores to help mitigate electricity costs.

A proactive approach is taken to nutrition application. One example is reduced rate nitrogen (N) strips in fields of flood irrigated cotton. These “low N strips” indicate a lack of nitrogen ahead of time, allowing prompt addition of fertiliser across the whole field.

A range of irrigation types are used. Tim believes different soil types benefit from different types of irrigation application. Deliberate consideration is given to the wheel tracks of the pivot irrigation systems to reduce damage, make picking smoother and ensuring decent yields from these spots. Tim prefers pivots as opposed to laterals because “you always know where one end is”!

NO CHALLENGE TOO GREATTim continues to be highly innovative, open to new challenges and has a blank refusal to accept the status quo on any aspect of the enterprise. Having been asked to grow beetroot 4 years ago he had to google how to grow it. In their first year of production they matched the Australian average yield for beetroot of 37 t/Ha. Not entirely happy with this outcome, Tim and his team undertook some research overseas and analysed the conventional production methods. In their second year of production they almost tripled their yield at 90T/Ha.

Sunland Ag is a highly impressive enterprise, capable of bold decisions based on in-depth research and analysis. Their persistence and careful management over the years has ensured that they have had outstanding results and continue to be on the cutting edge of the cotton industry.

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