Scott Clark from Jamestown, South Australia talks about his family's grain farming operation and how they use technology and data to improve crop yields. He reflects on balancing work and family life while leaving the land in better condition for the next generation.
I guess it can be seen as a little bit different, but I guess a lot of our stuff is just copied off of social media. Farmers conferences. Going to see guys that are doing things a little bit different and then making our own judgment on whether we think that's successful or whether that's something that we can implement on our place. My name's Scott Clarke from Jamestown in South Australia. We've got a 1680 hectare farm. My brother and myself, we're equal partners and we've both got three kids each and mum and dad are semi retired in town. We call dad our steering wheel attendant. He comes out in busy periods. A very reliable area historically winter dominant rainfall. When you look out from here, you can see what we're trying to do with our system. With the soil cover holding in the moisture. So it's much the same as your garden mulch. We can't change the amount of rainfall we get. But the more we can store less runoff by having our paddocks bare, well, that just gives us a bigger opportunity to have a more profitable crop. We're running two different brands of tractor. One John Deere with John Deere autosteer and another one dad found quite difficult to use, we headed over to our dealer. We ended up coming home with another John Deere tractor with John Deere autosteer in it. To make it easier for dad to understand everything and the. The rest is history. It went from there. Before I was home on the farm, I was actually working for a stock firm doing the accounts. My brother, before he was an agronomist that helps on that side with rotations. Chemical use, I guess I sort of COVID the business side and gives us separate jobs each and just sort of trust each other to do our bit. We pride ourselves on our work. We don't like outsourcing to contractors. We'd rather have things done at exactly the right time. When it needs to be done and when we want them to be done. We participate in the pre season programs. We do as much maintenance as we can, which stops a lot of breakdowns. When it comes to seeding time, harvest time, you need a dealer that understands what you're striving for so that you can get the results that you need. We invest heavily in machinery so that we can get operations done in a timely and efficient manner. We're able to upgrade the machines to have the latest and modern equipment, modems, MTGs in them so we have seamless data transfer to our phones, laptops with recommendations for chemicals, seeding, fertiliser, Applications, every machine we have, the two tractors, harvester, sprayer, all have the exactly the same screen in there. The steering, the air carp, the bar, everything's controlled through one integrated screen. That does the whole lot for you. So it's easy for us to walk dad through steps. We can log into his screen through our phones and help dad if he's stuck with my operations so that we've got a record of what we're doing in each paddock with our seeding, harvesting, spraying, spreading of fertiliser bait. We've been collecting our harvest data. We started collecting that in around 2006. It's been critical to be able to layer the data over an extended period of time to find your poorer performing soils and your better performing soils and know exactly where they are in your paddocks and go and test them and find out what the differences are to ultimately get the biggest return you can off each hectare. We like a work life balance. Both got young children. We want to see our young kids grow up. Whether they be at a school sports day or a school concert. We pride ourselves on being able to go to those things so that our kids do get to see their parents interaction with them throughout their life when they're growing up. We like the innovation and technology and the future and what it holds, what we might be able to do that's big for us, what shape we leave the land in for our children if they decide to come back to the farm. We want to make it better for them. If they come home, they have the same opportunities of what we had, that the land's held in good heart, it is looked after and it is cared for. The future generations, it.
