GRDC in Conversation: Steve Madden

Well, Steve, firstly, yeah, welcome to GRDC in conversations. It's great to have you here. We're chatting with different people involved in and around the grain sector and I think your background and we wore itself will be really interesting to talk about and then also the whole crop capsules piece and what yourself and Ann are up to with your business as well. So welcome.

Thanks, Ollie. Yeah, thanks for visiting us here in Sunny. We wor. And yeah, interested to see how your podcast business goes into the future. Well done.

No, thank you. It's definitely exciting and I think, yeah, when I get to meet other people and they talk about their businesses and staff numbers and things like that, I can definitely commiserate a little bit in what people go through. But you've got a bit going on.

It's a great initiative and a good way to communicate what's happening out in agriculture across the different regions. So, yeah, well done.

No, thank you. It's. It's nice to be up here. Tell me a little bit about we wore as a town. Like you've. You've been here for a little while since what, the early 90s?

Uh, yeah. I started work here on the 6th of May 1991. So there was a lot more people back in those days, probably double, I imagine. A lot more itinerant workers, particularly in the cotton chippers. A lot more people in. On the farms, irrigating, cultivating. Just a lot more people on farms. So I suppose that's probably been the biggest change that I've seen is the number of people in town. It's a good little community. Obviously communities like this, what you put into it is what you get out of it. And yeah, it's a great little town for coming and being able to, if you're keen to work and you know, make a go of stuff. There's plenty of opportunities here in we will with the irrigation and the diversity of the crops and so forth. And I suppose that's a big positive about the district.

And am I right in thinking that your family's not from a farming background?

No, my father was a headmaster and he was brought up on a dairy farm. A lot of people were back in those days. He's an avid gardener, loved growing vegetables and had enough in the backyard for the most of the district, not just ourselves. And I certainly got interested in growing vegetables when I was younger through dad and he broke his leg in an accident probably when he was about. When I was about 15 or 16, it was my job to take over the veggie patch. So I Certainly got a bit of interest in agriculture and growing stuff from that early age. But yeah, what did you do to.

End up out here at Wee Wall?

So I had an uncle that I used to worked for in the, in school holidays and while I was at university, Reg Smith, he, he was a farm manager and he was probably the guy that got me really interested in the broadacre agriculture. I used to go wool pressing on his farm and all the farms that he managed. And I suppose he really astounded me the knowledge that he had with the, with the education that he had and I'm not that was just the way it was back in those days. I think he told me he left school when he was in year nine with an intermediate certificate and he had a uncanny ability to know a lot of stuff about farming and operating farms and the decisions that he made really astounded me that he could do that with so little education and you know, he managed 20,000 sheep and 5,000 cattle with, including feedlots and then he was able to go and manage hundreds hundred thousand acres of wheat and win crop competitions. And it just fascinated me that someone could do that by just learning and thinking and just learning from other people and that's probably what really got me interested in agriculture.

And so from that time on was it the only pathway that you wanted to pursue?

Yeah, pretty much. I did agriculture at school and I had a couple of passionate agricultural teachers, Steve Condon and Mick Holland and you know they really tried hard to get us some good marks so that you know and, and good marks in our HSC back in those days but also create some interest in, at the school with ag plots and you know, sheep and showing cattle and visiting a few farms in the district and that. So that was a bit of a passion and I suppose. Yeah, I looked at maybe doing some university course through, through that passion at school.

Do you remember what those earlier aspirations were when you, when you started to.

Think of what you pretty much to be a district agronomist with the, with the local, the government? Yep, those back in those days there wasn't a lot of agronomy independent consultancy companies and there was a lot of Broad Acre agronomists. So most of it was involved with Department of Ag. And when I Left University in 1990 there was a bit of a recession on and drought and there wasn't many jobs available. It wasn't easy to get a job. There wasn't as many granimous jobs as what there is now and I suppose through connection with Reg My uncle. I was able to get a start out here at Wewill and it was pretty much didn't really know where I was going then or what I wanted to do and I thought it'd be a good way to get a bit of experience and maybe just do a year or two. But 33 years later I'm still here.

Haven't gone too far. So was that a district agronomy role that you'd stepped into?

No, no, I didn't take a district on my role here. No. I worked for a company called Nemoy Rural Traders. They were integrated company that supplied seed, fertilizer, chemical and also did grading and, and did some export of some products like chickpeas. So they had a splitting plant and it was certainly a good start. It was mainly, I was mainly focused on legumes. Certainly a good start to get a good grasp on, you know, fertilizer and chemical and seed and varieties and things like that. So I worked there for four years and yeah, and I guess I'm interested.

Because I've only ever known agronomists as being really private operators. When did that transition happen and kind of what did that look like and do you know what the reasons were for, for that transition?

I suppose there was before my day, before I came to, we wore. There was a lot of the chemical companies used to supply the bug checking and then a few of the agronomists around that were working for those bug checking chemical companies decided to work for, you know, go out on as an independent agronomist. So that probably was back in the, in the 70s when I came to town there was half a dozen of those guys. Chris Lehman and Jeff Brown were probably the two leading agronomists back in those days and they employed a range of bug checkers and so forth that started in the 70s. But a lot of the private consulting in broadacre agriculture away from crops, away from cotton really didn't happen until the 90s my recollection and it certainly has grown, you know, as farmers have, you know, demanded more information and knowledge. The, the private consultancy firms have certainly increased in size and, and the services and information they transfer to those farmers. And it's. Yeah, it's certainly a big part of the farming and the agriculture production, particularly in this area.

When did you make the transition into the consult into agronomy?

So I worked for Nemo Real Traders for four years and then I went and worked on a farm for a couple of years. I was asked to go and do some agronomy on the farm and help out on the farm. And Reg always used to say to me that it's no good on a piece of paper, it's not practical and doesn't work on the farm. And I always remembered that. So I thought a bit of practical experience would be good. Learned how the farms operate and it was an irrigation farm, so learn how the water operated and just to learn how machinery and some basic stuff like that. So I did a couple of years there and in the first year I had an opportunity to go to the Mississippi and the guy I was working for encouraged me to do that. And I went and worked for a consultant over in the Mississippi about a place called Clarksdale. And that was probably the biggest experience of my life, really. And I worked for a consultant over there that was. He was a Texan, but had a consultancy business in Mississippi named Joe Townsend. And he was a very unique character. Very loud, very.

Very Texan.

Yeah, very, very Texan. Very Texan. And I had a wonderful time working for him and learned a lot and he was very helpful and he's a really good mentor and kept in touch with him for a long period of time after that. But I suppose that was the real passion that drove me, working with him and watching what he'd done and how he was able to communicate with farmers and transfer that information and talk to his farmers and the respect that the farmers had for him. I knew then that that's what I wanted to do. So it's just a matter of working out how to go about doing it.

So my flow on question from that. So how once you got back and had that amazing experience, had you hit the ground.

The guy that I was working for on the farm, I started doing his agronomy, John Palmer. And he had a share farmer there as well, Darren Weber. And pretty much it started from there. I continue to work on the farm and pick up a couple of farm next door and another farm. And I suppose those first few years wasn't. It certainly wasn't great financially. You know, you virtually had no money sometimes to put fuel in the truck, you know, and sometimes you're looking at. Oh, no, John's brother Vinnie. I used to get a bit of fuel off him just so that I could get to work. And so it certainly wasn't easy, but it certainly was something that I really loved, enjoyed doing, being, you know, able to manage the crop for the grower and try and do your best to try and get the best result for them. And I suppose it was a challenge. But it was certainly something I wanted to do and I put everything I could into it, you know, in those early days and it sort of grew from there.

I'm interested in this because I'd say I feel like it's, we're similar in the sense of there's a skill set that we have which I guess becomes our product. For me it's the, the podcast and the interviewing side and I certainly probably haven't, haven't really put a value, a true value on what it's actually worth. Did you find in those early years it wasn't about trying to earn dollars, it was about earning that experience in the stripes.

Correct, Correct. I wasn't even interested, didn't even know what to charge and it really didn't worry me too much as long as I wasn't charging more than the, the other guys. But yeah, it wasn't, it certainly wasn't about the money. It was about trying to get to the standard that the other guys were in the industry, you know, the likes of the Jeff Browns and, and, and those sorts of consultants to, to be able to manage the crop and know what you were doing. That was the focus, you know, and to do it properly, not to do it half hearted but it was a lot harder to learn back in. That shouldn't say harder, but it was not as easy with the information packages that you have now that you can get off Internet and Google and so forth. So you really had to know where to get resources and learn that way. Because I was sort of on my own. I wasn't working in, underneath another agronomist so that wasn't overly easy. But I did a lot of research and thinking and a lot of after hours work to try and upskill myself in what needed to be done.

Was there a defining moment for you, you reckon, where it started to really come together and you hit your groove?

I suppose when I met my wife, Anna was an agronomist as well. Is an agronomist. Not was, is still is. So when we met I was doing some farms and Anna was doing some farms. It was actually my uncle that introduced us out on a large dry land, a farm about half an hour from here. So once we sort of got together and started to work together and it sort of became turbocharged agronomy, you know, so that was probably, you know, I mean we, I had some clients that I was working with prior to that and then it was working with a company at Mori. Once we sort of established our relationship, we moved in and started our Business together. And that's probably, you know, like I say, turbocharged things.

Yeah, certainly. I think it seems like the two of you just work harder than the other. It's a bit on between.

Yeah, it's been a long, it is a long, long process with cotton. It's, you know, it's seven days a. It's, you know, it's. It's not five and six and eight, 10 hours a day. It can be 12 and more. So it, yeah, it's what you put into it is what you get out of it. You know, you can, you can do it just nine to five, but you're not, it's not going to work. If you want to be success and you know, have a, have a reasonable sized business that can provide a future for yourself, you. It's not going to work if you're not nine to five.

Would you say that those early interests that your Uncle Reg had put on you, like, is it still there, that real passion?

Definitely. And it's not just. It's the work ethic. He was always up early. He did a lot of work after hours. He did weekend stuff and I suppose it's that. And my parents had that as well. And I should say my auntie, she was also a big factor in Reg's life as well. She did a lot of the cooking for the shearers and she ran the books and the phone and she was magnificent organizer and worked from daylight to dark as well. And yeah, I suppose the combination of my parents and my auntie, my uncle, it certainly gave you a lot of work, a bit of work ethic and to know that things aren't easy and if you're gonna, you know, achieve anything, you've gotta get out and have a bit of a go, you know, you're gonna fall over a lot of times too. And it's a matter of getting back up and making sure that, you know, and that was one thing my father always said to me that, you know, do your best and don't quit, you know, and if you don't, if you, if you do that, you'll be a winner. And I suppose I've always just taken that sort of attitude. But there has been, you know, a lot of guys just not Reg as well, but he was certainly the first. But a lot of people in agriculture, they love to help you, you know, and they love to see young people do well if they can. And I think if you try and learn off those older people, you can really get ahead quickly. And that's what I found With a lot of. There's a guy called Alan Young, he actually showed me how to bug check. He was a farmer and again I think he left school when he was about year eight and there wasn't anything that he couldn't do. And I suppose that's a great thing about agriculture is if you've got skills and are willing to learn, there's so much you can do. And Alan actually he was 60 something and a farmer and he showed me how to bug check and I still find that amazing that he could actually learn how to do that himself. And we, the first crop I think I checked was with him and we decided to spray it this day and that day and he really gave me a bit of a go and made sure that I was thinking on the right track and you know that it was all about making your recommendations and making sure you're doing the right thing by the crop. So. Oh cool.

Tell me. Wee was obviously changing about. Well I guess just with the advancements of especially cotton in the area here. But for you, what have you really noticed as things that have evolved and changed for the better across your career?

Certainly less spraying on the cotton. That's been the biggest positive and you know, the, the research that the cotton industry has done, the researchers that have been involved out at the research institute have you know, had a big impact on that. So when I think, you know, the cotton fields have been treated 14, 15, 16 times, you know, with insecticide. When I first started managing crops now, you know, at this point in time, this season, we haven't treated, treated fields at all. So it's, it's, that's been the biggest change in, in, in the cotton. The less insecticide that we're using. And then the other thing is, is the yields, the yields have really been able to be gained every year and so we're nearly double what we're getting. Pretty much double what we're getting when I first started checking that's 30, 28 years ago I suppose. So that's, that's been a very big positive impact on, on, on cotton and the quality that the producers will be able to produce. It's a better quality product. And I suppose the other major thing is that the technology with irrigation and growers just being able to manage their crops better, you know, from the word go, I think, you know, the very efficient with their water use, very efficient with their fertilizer use and just very efficient with their resources.

And you're saying the similarities in the carryovers between say the cotton and the Grains?

Yeah, certainly. It's just not cotton. I mean, we, we check on range of crops, you know, wheat and barley and sorghum and chickpeas and favor beans and the improvements are all through there. But I think cotton has probably been the leader, you know, and a lot of that's to do with. A lot of it's to do with the researchers, but also a lot of it's to do with the agronomists and the consultants and the growers working together and managing their crops better. And I think that's. The cotton industry is probably just a very leading part of agriculture in Australia, but also in, in the world. And I don't think some of the work that those early consultants and early growers have done about sharing information across the industry has been a really big advancement, how it's adapted and grown.

So let's chat about one of the other areas you're involved in. And so. Well, Anna was able to educate me a little bit around biologicals because I was saying to her, when I think of biological biologicals, I've probably only started to hear about them over the last few years and I learned that what we're putting on the Faber bands before we're selling them was actually a biological when they were going down the chute. And I guess that's how I was thinking. But. But you've been really actively involved in, in the insect side of things and introducing. Yeah. Insects and other pieces into, into the crop. Can you just explain to us like. Yeah, firstly, for someone who absolutely knows nothing like what is a biological and how are they used?

Yeah. So I suppose a biological can be a range of things, whether it's a, an insect or a fungus or bacteria. It's just a natural product. I suppose that we've been, I suppose the IPM Integrated Pest Management and the, the positive impact that beneficials can have on your crop, as you know, has been widely used and transitioned right through our industry for a long time. I think it was back in about 2014 we started to get a pest here called silver leaf whitefly and they'd had issues with it in emerald and they'd had issues at St. George and we were told by the research they didn't think we'd have a problem here, but we ended up with a problem and it was pretty severe in the first year. So it's a white fly that secretes a honeydew and it can downgrade your cotton lint in color. And also the honeydew can be a problem with the spinning. So it can be a very big issue with cotton and it has been in Arizona, in California, I think for years. They've been able to manage the pest as well. So I suppose we were doing a lot of the, to manage the pests. We were doing a lot of the, the things that our researchers were telling us to do. The, you know, the IPM road and using a soft chemical and spraying the products at a certain period. And we still found that we're having issues with the pest and mainly with color disc grades and which was costing growers, you know, over 5 or 6, 7, $800 a hectare depending on the yield, you know, and the downgrade in the color. So the thought is possibly a better way to manage this or there must be another way to manage it. So we looked at what they're doing in horticulture because they get a lot of white flying rock melon, tomatoes and other vegetable crops. And I just googled one night what they were doing and yeah, the horticultural industry was releasing little wasps in their vegetable patches all around Bowen and a few other places to manage this Silver Lake whitefly. So I rang a couple of researchers and a couple of growers been involved with the beneficials about whether they thought it would work in cotton. And they said yeah, should give it a go. So because we had our own little farm here, we were able to do a few trials and they were pretty positive. And I spent a lot of time hand releasing at night and, and through the crop through the day and so forth. And we found that, yeah, that we're getting some positive results. So I suppose that was in about 2016 or 17. I can't, if my memory serves me correctly, somewhere around there. And then we spoke to a couple of farmers. One was Luke and Robin Finley and their father Bill, he was a cotton fanatic. And Anna and I used to work for Bill years ago and he was another guy. I suppose that really astounded me what he knew in the cotton field and the passion that he had for cotton. And he often would have a sweep net looking at, looking, sweeping the cotton and looking for beneficials in the crop. And he was probably well into his 60s at that stage. And it really amazed me how much passion that he had for cotton. And he'd get me to put out the lacewing larvae on. Cards and the next week we'd have to check to see with the lace wing were in the fields. And Bill told me about how he tried to fly beneficials on in his farms in America. And it always stuck in my mind about how he tried this. So I suppose we got thinking about the Hayati. We could hand release them and we get a good result, but there's no way that you could hand release tens of thousands of hectares. It's just impossible. So we came up with an idea about putting them in a little capsule and dropping them out of a plane. And a few people said, we're mad, and I probably thought I was too, and it actually. It actually worked better than I thought it would. And, yeah, I suppose that's the start of it all.

How did it go from being an idea around the capsule to actually being physically implemented and trialled?

Yeah, it was a. It was a long, hard process. We were doing a little bit with releasing them from drones. We found the drones cumbersome. It was too hot, you couldn't use them. It was too windy, you couldn't use them. It rained, you couldn't use them. So there was another consultant as well that was interested in using them, Mike Stone. Maury and I mentioned to him about the idea of dropping them out of a capsule and he thought it was a great idea. And I suppose he's thinking that Mike's a leading consultant in the industry and I suppose once he sort of thought it was a good idea, it gave me the confidence to give it a bit of a go. And I was telling a mate that I went to university with about the idea of it, and he was sort of finishing up in Melbourne and he liked the idea, he did a bit of research and he decided to sort of come and help me with the project. And I suppose he had a bit of some background. No real background knowledge in agriculture, but background knowledge in food and food technology, and that was certainly beneficial in getting it going. He had some contacts that could injection mold the product and pretty much from there. Yeah, it was a slow process, but we. We got it going. I got a. A local guy here, David Johnson from Crockwell, to build. Build a hopper that we could put the capsules in the plane. And he. He developed it so that we could release so many per hectare and have a. Have a good rate. There was a, you know, a distribution was even across the field and a little bit of few changes along the way with each product, but it ended up working pretty well. And, yeah, I suppose that's been the story of.

So I think. Well, I was going to say what. What the capsule reminds me of is nearly what's inside those kinder surprises. About the same size.

Yeah, yeah.

A few other goodies coming out of it.

Yeah. You're not the first person that's said that, so.

Yeah, and then in my head I was thinking that it was literally a pilot just dropping it out the window. But it is. It has to be really quite precise.

Yeah, it's precise so that we can get a good even distribution. The hoppers are CASA approved, so that, you know, they're allowed to be put in planes.

Yeah.

And we're able to get them out very quickly. So then the wasps can emerge. That's the key to it, is they've got to survive. So they're released as a larvae. They've got to survive and they've got to find a mate. So the males usually emerge first, they mate with the females and the females go off and lay eggs in the white fly larvae and then they reproduce in a couple of weeks or more and then go and take more whiteflies. So the capsule has been able to increase the survival of the wasps and that mating process. Yeah.

What do you reckon the opportunity is with the capsules themselves, but across also broadacre agriculture? What is the opportunity with being able to introduce biologicals like this?

It's certainly because you can do big areas very quickly and it can be, you know, it's not a. I wouldn't call it. It's not a. You're not putting out bushfires. We're inoculating the crops so that we. As soon as we start seeing the pests, we release the beneficials and then they sort of stop the pests from getting out of control or becoming a problem. So we're releasing them very early. We've been doing some work in corn with Trichogramma. We've been doing work in Canola for aphids with aphid wasps. We've done some releasing pecan orchards this year with Trichogramma. So I think there's certainly a big opportunity for a range of applications. It's just not easy to get hold of the good bugs. That's the big difficult thing, because they're not rare in massive numbers. That's required in Broadacre. So I think, you know, the. The. When we started to do the Hayati, the insectaries may have been rearing, you know, hundreds of thousands of the wasps each year. Now they're up to 30 to 40 to 50 million of them. Wow. So it's not easy to do that either. And you. So that's probably the hardest part, is to get hold of the good bugs and then have the growers scheduled to use them at the right time. Yeah.

How'd the trials in Canola go variable.

So we had some good results on some fields and some farms and not so good on other farms. So we've been doing that for a couple of years now. We're involved with the GRDC project next year with Caesar and hopefully trying to look at release rates or release timings and specific species of aphids or specific species of the wasps for those specific aphids to see if we can get some improvement. So the results weren't conclusive, but we did have some positive farms that worked okay. Yeah.

So watch this space, Watch this space.

Hopefully we'll learn some more with the GRDC project that's happening over the next few years and.

Yeah, fantastic. And I guess a couple of questions to round it out. But, um, for you, what do you see as the next, I guess, frontier of opportunity in Broadacre Ag and what you're saying?

Well, I think it's probably going to be dominated by the consumer. You know what the products that they, they're going to demand, you know, less pesticide, more carbon friendly. And I think that the producers have got to align with that. It may well happen a lot quicker than we think. Suppose bigger corporate farms will be able to meet those demands a little bit easier. I think if, you know, the family farm, if they want to be able to be in that space, they've really got to either piggyback on someone else or get on the front foot. It's not that we don't produce good products now, but it's going to always be done better. It will be done better. The way that we're doing it now certainly won't be doing that in 20 and 30 years. It'll be totally different, very different. So I think that's what my wife and I have always tried to do with our agronomy business, is to try and be on the front foot with that changing scenario. Happens in agriculture and it's happening quicker and quicker. And you know, as an agronomist or as a business, you really gotta embrace the change because if you don't, if you keep doing it like you are, it's not gonna, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be the way, not gonna be that way in the future. So you just gotta keep trying to change, try things and, and get, and try and get better and improve.

How have you found, like with the, I'll say, the increase in information going from back in the day when it was of an evening, you'd read whatever publications were coming out to now it's there all the time. How do you go sifting through what's good?

Useful, certainly. Yeah, I suppose you gotta find what's useful and what's not useful. I suppose I've had links with other consultants in other areas and that's been a big help. Talking on the phone with experienced guys. Probably one of the leading best agronomists, very technical. I call him King consultant Jamie street from St. George. I was very fortunate to develop a relationship with him and he knew a lot of and did a lot of research and he was able to see, talking to those types of people, you could really cut out what you needed, what was good and what was bad. They're in the same game as you and so that's certainly a big help. But I suppose it's just a matter of research is good, but it's not all. Like my uncle used to always say, my work on paper, but if it doesn't work in the paddock, it's not, you know, not too good. Not going to be too much good for the farmer. So it's just a matter of that and experience and asking other farmers as well. Like, farmers have been growing these crops for 30 and 40 years and a lot of the guys that I work for or I learn off every day, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. But I've learned so much off all the growers that I work for and listening to how they produce their crops and their thoughts because they're doing the research as well. So you can learn so much from your farmers and you're able to trans or communicate that to other farmers. And that's probably what Gronomy is really. But I think, you know, learning from, you got to learn to know who to learn from and that probably takes experience too.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Steve, thank you so much for having us and for sitting down for a chat. It's been fantastic.

Yeah, it's great, Ollie, and once again, thanks for coming all the way to. We will from Geelong and hope to see you again soon. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll keep our eyes peeled for how this GRDC trial goes next year.

Yeah, certainly. I'm looking forward to it actually. Thanks.

Thank you.