Sam North (NSWDPI), Daniel Liphuyzen (farmer host) and Rob Gill (Omnia).
More than 20 farmers and industry representatives attended the Irrigated Cropping Council’s soils farm walk at Chris and Daniel Liphuyzen’s farm at Morago last week.
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The focus of the walk was soil health and improvement particularly looking at the effectiveness of deep ripping and sub soil manuring to improve structure and crop yields.
The Irrigated Cropping Council have undertaken field trials as part of the GRDC funded optimising irrigated grains investment.
It looks at different treatments of deep ripping and adding soil amendments to determine the effects of the treatments on subsequent crop yields and soil structure.
Trials manager Damian Jones shared the results from two local sites.
The outcomes showed that there was a positive impact from soil amendments initially, but there were no longer term crop yield responses at these sites.
Local farmers Michael Hughes and Chris Liphuyzen put in paddock scale demonstrations on their farms to trial the same treatments.
They used a commercial machine to deep rip and apply sub soil amendment to strips across their paddock to assess the effectiveness of deep ripping in their soils.
Given this process is costly, it provided a great opportunity for the farmers to test whether it was worthwhile in their system and it allowed other local farmers and industry to hear about the results.
To help assess the impact on soil structure, two soil pits were dug in the paddock demonstration (one in the treatment and one in a control area) for the farm walk.
Sam North, a research hydrologist, with the NSW Department of Primary Industries walked the group through the key things to look for in terms of soil structure and health.
His key messages from the day were “do your investigation to determine what the soils constraints are, and then apply the right solution to solve that problem”.
“Deep ripping is expensive and only worthwhile if you get a lasting result,” he said.
“Clay soils which crack deeply can repair themselves if allowed to dry, so don’t need ripping.
“Sodic soils should never be ripped.
“Farmers looking to improve their soils should focus on four things: avoid bare fallows, minimise cultivation, retain stubbles and control trafficking to retain organic matter, build structure and protect soils.
“The value of these principles was clearly demonstrated at the site, where a near perfect establishment was achieved in a difficult season on a dispersive heavy clay by not cultivating and direct drilling into sprayed out ryegrass pasture.
“Organic matter is king in difficult soils, so do what you can to build and protect your soils organic matter.”
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