Member Day 2004

The ‘Eyre Peninsula Sowing Systems’ field day held over two days at the Minnipa Agricultural Centre was a combination of presentations and field demonstrations.

Paul Kaden, MRF Chairperson opened the day and introduced keynote speaker Alan Fisher from Primary Sales. Peter Walsh, consulting agricultural engineer WA followed with a presentation on options for reducing the cost of soil compaction.

David Roget, CSIRO presented messages on tillage interactions with root and leaf diseases, emphasizing tillage is only one part of the management strategy.

Andrew Hanson, SANTFA and farmer Coomandook spoke on seeding into stony soils.

Group demonstrations in the field:

• How to stuff up no-till, observing the effects of herbicide on no-till sowing systems with Andy Bates, local consultant and Dean Willmott, farmer Kimba;
• Variety x herbicide x no-till trial with Michael Bennet, SARDI and Ed Hunt, consultant Wharminda;
• Seedbed utilization and fertilizer toxicity by Neil Cordon and Brendan Frischke, SARDI;
• Tillage types x herbicides trial explained with Ken Webber, Nufarm and Jon Hancock, SARDI;
• Tractor efficiency by CASE representative;
• Woody weeds workshop with Brenton Lynch, consultant;
• Managing stubbles addressed by Andrew Polkinghorne, farmer Lock; and
• The cost of wind erosion delivered by John Leys, DIPNR NSW.

Brenton Lynch, consultant Lynch Farm Monitoring wrapped up presenting costs of conversion tillage systems, from conventional to no-till.

An after dark demonstration on chemical throw was run by Ken Webber, Nufarm and Greg Secombe, Rural Solutions.