John and a nephew use about $1.5m worth of equipment and spend about $150,000 a year on seed, fertiliser, herbicides and more recently fungicides to grow their crops. The gross margin is about $1000/ha a year.
John said the average size of cropping farms between Albury and Bendigo was about 1000ha with 2000ha farms not uncommon.
He said he'd had four bumper wheat crops in the last few years with the best yielding 40 bags/acre or 8t/ha.
The 2024 season will get underway next month when he will burn stubbles and direct drill, dry if necessary, the new crops. John said cultivation for his crops was not necessary and they were direct drilled into stubbles.
He is also keenly interested in quality food (for humans) and will speak about it and even process some for our consumption in the U3A kitchen on April 2. Access eatwild.com for an introduction.
David Palmer