PHOTO: Local farmer, Tony Single, winner of the Award for Excellence and Innovation at the 2023 Farmer of the Year awards.
LOCAL crop farmer, Tony Single has come away with the 2023 Farmer of the Year award for excellence in innovation.
“It’s humbling,” said Tony.
“The award is recognition for a lot more people than just me.”
“My parents are farmers and granted me an incredible opportunity, they really set the wheels in motion for what we’re doing here today.”
“My wife Sharon, employees and contractors, our agronomists, grain marketing specialist, cattle agent, it takes a whole team to do this, and the award is for everyone involved.”
Tony is based on the family property, ‘Narratigah’, southwest of Baradine, where he manages a mixture of crops; mainly wheat, chickpeas and sorghum along with some canola, barley and faba beans.
The family also have a trade cattle business managed by Tony’s father.
One of the areas of innovation on the Singles’ property is their cropping strategy, based on pre-determined soil moisture targets.
“We have rules of thumb around what soil water we require to trigger planting, they allow us to work out if the odds are in our favour to generate an acceptable profit at any given planting opportunity.”
“We farm in an environment with variable rainfall, if the odds aren’t in our favour we will continue the fallow to build up more soil moisture before planting. We aim to maximise returns for every millimetre of rain that falls, focusing on long term profitability.”
“For wheat and chickpeas, we typically want a minimum of 60cm of moisture, or 90 mm of plant available water prior to planting.”
“Canola can be a riskier crop, for that, we want a minimum of a metre of moisture, or 150 mm of plant available water.”
During the recent drought the Single’s worked to maintain as much ground cover as possible, while following their strategy.
“During 17′, 18′, and 19′ our cropping frequency was quite low, but it worked for us, and we kept the business ticking over,” said Tony.
“At the start of the recent wet cycle our paddocks had low disease inoculum, low weed seed banks and good nutritional status, it put us in a great position to take advantage of what turned out to be three exceptional years.”
“That’s the critical part, it’s all about maximising a good year when they come.”
Another innovation is the Single’s use of their drone-based weed mapping system, Single Shot.
“Because we run a no-till system we’re highly reliant on herbicides to control weeds, and with increasing herbicide resistance plus new incursions of hard to control weeds there is always a new challenge,” said Tony.
“A few years ago we looked at optical spot spraying technology but we didn’t find a cost-effective solution with the accuracy we were after.”
With no suitable options on the market, the family developed their own weed mapping system.
“My brother, a mechanical engineer, led the project as we developed a sensor for a drone that flies over paddocks at 200 hectares an hour detecting and geo-referencing weeds.”
“We then generate a prescription map that can be uploaded to any compatible GPS section-controlled sprayer enabling spot spraying.”