Robin Schaefer and John Gladigau run Bulla Burra Farms in Loxton, South Australia, growing grains with precision agriculture technology. They discuss how they use data and equipment to improve efficiency on their large operation, and the role family and women play in their farming partnership.
John and I grew up together sort of through the teenage years and been mates all along.
Bullaburra started back in 2009 as a. Basically what we did is we took two family farms and we put them together and we run them as one. Robin's is involved more so on the operations side and whereas I'm probably more passionate around the business side. We've been very focused on painting a positive image for agriculture. We've got quite a strong social media presence. We didn't just show the positives, we actually showed the everyday. We showed the mistakes that we made. We actually laughed at ourselves.
Soon after we set up Bullaburra, we had cropping about 8,000 hectares. We've always wanted to build a real professional operation right from the start. Precision agriculture is one of those essential things to running a successful. We could see that the Precision Ag area that John Deere offered was really streamlined. The displays and the way they worked were easy to understand. Up in front of us, the land class changes, it rises. We're on a nice sandy loam here, which is our most productive soil type, and it rises up into a deep sand which doesn't store as much moisture, doesn't hold nutrition as well. So we need to manage these land classes entirely differently. Being able to measure that, to know where those variables occur is critical, but then also to be able to manage that through variable rate application of fertiliser or seed inputs.
With Precision Ag, it certainly creates this whole level of transparency. We can communicate and pass on information to our employees in a way that takes away a lot of the ability to make errors and creates a whole level of accountability. As far as being able to really keep across the business and where people are at is great. We can also monitor every individual machines. We know how many hours are done, we know how close they are to a service, we know what efficiency that they operating at. It's a really interesting learning thing for us how to get the maximum efficiencies out of our machine.
The really big step forward has been the seamless way that that data gets transferred to the cloud within a very short time. You can access that on your handheld device or on the computer in the office. It's about managing costs but also maximising your profit. We have a lot of crop diversity in our area. Vineyards to fruit orchards, almond orchards, and even within our own program we've got grain legumes alongside of cereals. It's really critical that we get our droplet spectrum right. Technology like XactApply really helps us to do that. We've got variable landscape and so, you know, with Xacteply you can vary your speed a lot more and still maintain your droplet spectrum in the same size in the same area. But also then it allows you to quickly change over, choose a different droplet spectrum for a different weed or a different situation.
We've had a really good relationship with John Deere over Tom. It's all about the dealer network. It's about the quality of the product, it's about the backup and support.
They really stood behind us and worked with us, helped to provide us with solutions for our problems, keeping us abreast of new releases or new technology that's coming out that they see might have a fit within our business.
We get weekends off, we get to take family holidays because we can cover each other off. But also we've been really strong about creating a family environment within the business.
The number one thing for me is my family and to have them as a part of the business and working alongside me is pretty special. Some of my kids grow closer to their relationship with agriculture and farming.
Yeah, well, I'm doing an ag science degree at the moment. My passion is in the cropping industry and the cropping area because that's what I've grown up with. I'm pretty excited about women in agriculture. It gives you a bit of a sense of pride, being able to do things that typically aren't seen as a female's task. Like in the last decade, the amount of women in agriculture, the increase has been pretty huge and I'm excited to keep seeing that increase and keep working with it.
I want to hand my farm down to my kids better than what it was when I took it on.
We see that our involvement with John Deere is like they are part of our business and part of our team. It's actually all about getting to the end result that's best for all of us.
