Farmers managing climate risk successfully on their farms

Maria Rose, Dairy Services, Agriculture Victoria, Ellinbank

Welcome back to our new segment “Farmers Managing Climate Risk Successfully” in which we meet the other four of our eight dairy farmers as case studies focusing on how they effectively manage climate risk, in their individual situations.

In this edition of “Milking the Weather “, we meet the following Victorian dairy farmers;

* Chris Nixon from coastal east Gippsland

* Kevin Fitzsimmons from the Goulburn Valley

* Craig Dettling from the Western Districts

* Hans van Wees from the Macalister Irrigation District

Recently, when I spoke with Chris, Kevin, Craig and Hans for insight into how they in their individual dairy farm businesses are dealing with climatic risk, the key questions I put to them were:

How are you seeing the summer season ahead climate risk wise? What is your exposure to the risks you currently identify? What steps are you taking to deal with this level of risk? What are the stages of thinking in line with these steps? What action have you taken and or will you take? What is your longer term plans to identify and manage risk beyond this summer? What sources of information do you use or might you try to make these decisions around dealing with

climate risk?

The following pages contain key highlights from their four separate interviews .

In the third week of November, we’d had no autumn, winter or spring rain of any significance. Dams were very low, paddocks were drying out and we were desperate for the wet summer forecast, hoping it would arrive much (much) sooner rather than later. Climate risk wise, the summer ahead was looking very poor indeed.

Our first risk for the 2017/18 summer is the lack of grass silage being made; essentially, there is none! Similarly with hay, there will be no summer hay made. So we have planted maize to get summer feed. Although they’ve been planted for over a month (since mid-October), in mid Nov they were yet to germinate. And we’ve planted a lot more maize for silage than we normally do (56 Ha compared with the usual 32 Ha) to ensure we end up with enough maize harvest in late summer/early autumn.

Fodder reserves are highly depleted because we used all our feed going through the dry winter. Pasture in spring was nowhere near enough to get any excess fodder to conserve. So we will be forward contracting wheat

Case Study 5: Chris Nixon, Betebolong, VictoriaChris Nixon is a fifth generation dairy farmer who runs a 340 Ha dairy farm milking 500 dairy cows, located at Betebolong, near Orbost in coastal eastern Victoria. The milking area consists of 140 Ha of river flat country and 200 Ha of hill country. In addition to the milking area, there is a dedicated 32 Ha fodder block which is predominantly used for growing maze for silage over spring and summer and also for other fodder crops (either cereal or rye grass in winter).

this summer - which is a normal practice we do anyway. When the time comes I will purchase some bought in feed. But that’s my last option, because I’ve been there before and it’s not pleasant. I’d rather destock and run a few less stock and grow summer crops rather than be fully stocked and buy in feed.

So back in the middle of October my key risk management steps to get through this summer were as follows: 1. Identify passenger cows – earmark them for culling and sell to destock a little bit.2. Plant summer crops which hadn’t germinated by mid-November, that’s how dry it had been 3. Plant a lot more maize and on the swamp country which is a location I wouldn’t plant in normally, but

because it’s been so dry I’ve done so in the hope of getting silage crops in late autumn to help cows when I’ll have no grass at all.

4. Keep on as many dairy young stock as possible as they require less feed than passenger mature cows and will be my future milkers.

My longer term risk management plans focus on having several thousand tonnes of silage (I run beef cattle as well) in front of me, which takes out normal seasonal variable risk. In mid-November, the cows had actually consumed all that silage I have as normal reserve so the main plan to get through this summer is to destock from now on (Mid November) until we can comfortably carry what we’ve got without buying in feed. If it rains we make as much silage as we can. If it doesn’t rain enough then we’ll have destocked most likely to the point where we will need to build up our numbers again (which is covered by Step 4 of my risk management strategy above).

I use Willy Weather and the BOM as my two main weather forecast websites. We are below average rainfall and it’s one of the driest years on record. So the main crux of my risk management strategy is to get through this summer after a failed 12 month growing period basically, and the best way to do this is to continue with identified trigger points that we will hit at certain stages. By mid-November, we had destocked all our surplus young stock in the spring and kept a lot of additional dairy heifers. I focus on keeping the young heifers as they mentioned earlier, they take a lot less feed than mature cows - they’ll calve down next year and we are back to fully stocked again for the next milking season.

In mid-November my strategy was to destock until we could comfortably run what we could without buying in hay. At that stage, the paddocks were starting to dry out and heading towards pasture being at “haying off” stage which I know from experience means that we can cope pasture wise for 2 months. We identified 50 beef cows and calves that we could sell immediately and on the dairy side low producing cows were dried off and we earmarked a few to be sold at the next market.

Now in the second week of December, I am happy to report that my risk management strategy which started in earnest in mid-October has paid off. A few days ago we sold the 50 beef cows and calves and the low producing dairy cows identified back in mid-November. The maize crop planted in the usual 32 Ha paddocks is looking amazing (potential yield wise) with the other maize crop planted in the swamp area having a few poor patches due to waterlogging, but I can live with that.

Also, we received rain in these first two weeks of December as separate events of 70mm and 10mm lots. This amount of rain has freshened up and provided a bit of bulk on the river flat pastures. On the hill paddocks, the pasture is certainly greener, but no bulk has been added as all the rain soaked in and there was no run off. Even though it’s rained we haven’t really got a lot to go ahead with fresh pasture wise as even in a normal summer of a few hot days we will see that disappear pretty quickly. So another reasonable rain event before the end of December is definitely on my Christmas wish list.

My next trigger point is mid-January when we will pregnancy test the cows (both a dairy and beef) with the outcome of selling off the empty ones.

Based on the predicted climate forecasts of a greater likelihood of La Niña this year, we had plans in place for dealing(risk wise) with a wet summer. So on the first day of summer when the short term rain forecast (which is often reliable) indicated that we were going into a record rain event over the next few days including that day (being 1st Dec), we were prepared as we had held off irrigating.

With the water market the way it is nowadays, we are proactive in fortifying our water supply. When we bought the second farm next door four years ago, it came without water. So we don’t have enough water right to effectively run this farm the size it is now, as we have just less than 300 megalitres of water right entitlement. Last year we bought water to carry over at the time when the prices came down. The gamble paid off - so we’ll keep playing the water market. It’s like the share market these days, we’ve got to get our head around how the water market works; using that knowledge and experience to our advantage is key on our farm, to deal with climate variability.

Whilst the main risk on our farm this summer is it becoming waterlogged, an ongoing risk issue for us is actually irrigation water security, particularly since we increased the farm size. Irrigation water security is our biggest driver. If we haven’t got adequate water security for irrigation we can’t farm profitably. We need water to grow feed which is our cheapest option by far, so we are always looking at what the price of water is on the temporary market and following it pretty closely.

As part of our ongoing water security strategy, the farm is now 99% lasered and we collect all our recycled water. We try to keep water and nutrients on the farm as best we can to utilise that resource. Water is only going to become more expensive so we catch and reuse water as much as we can and focus on buying in as much water as we can at the cheapest price possible.

I routinely follow the climate forecasts for each season ahead fairly closely. If the various models are saying that we’re going into a wet winter for example, then I try to plan as best I can for that. For example as far as extreme winters go, to deal with them better, we put in a gravelled feed pad last year. We’ve built it to cope with up to 500 cattle at any one time if needed.

As far as extreme summers go, we put shade cloth over our yards to protect our cows. We are always looking after cow comfort and that’s another driver around the things we do. If we look after them, they look after us in terms of production. The shade cloth is sufficient, we don’t use sprinklers as from previous experience in our old dairy we know that combination creates humidity problems and cows get pneumonia. This time around when we purposefully didn’t put the sprinkler system in, we find it’s definitely cooler under the shade cloth. Also, the cows don’t appear to be under stress without the sprinklers present, even in the last summer which was pretty extreme.

Our trigger points to deal with the seasons as they progress are motivated by debt more than anything; which obviously revolves around milk price. We are always focusing on trying to reduce that debt.

We follow the BOM forecasts and the Murray Dairy newsletters that we get regularly ( that have links to useful sites like the Very Fast Break). We try to utilise all that sort of information to help with making the best risk management decisions we can. When we are irrigating we generally water every 10 to 14 days over the summer (depending on how hot it is). We constantly look at forecasts ahead and do the balancing act of weighing up on not watering for a day or two at the most to accommodate for a heavy rain event (of 4 inches or more in as short as 1 to 2 days for example); the latter choice has greater negative consequences to our management system.

Case Study 6: Kevin Fitzsimmons, Merrigum, Goulburn Valley, VictoriaKevin is a third generation dairy farmer who, with his two sons (both recently returned to the farm) currently run 260 milkers on a milking area of 140 Ha; with plans to increase herd numbers to around 300 next year. Four years ago when they expanded to include the neighbouring property it was purchased without water right, so their overall water right is somewhat limiting.

To assist in monitoring our water use efficiency and effectiveness, I constantly observe and analyse plant growth patterns on the farm and adjust to those and also draw on experience of plant growth of various species over many years. The Department years ago advised to water every 5 to 6 days in the summer and we’ve done that. More recently in summer we’ve moved to watering every 10 days to a fortnight and my thinking behind that was that the roots were becoming too shallow when we watered every 5 to 6 days and were becoming too stressed. And so I’ve tended to focus more on getting the root structure down and that’s been good in saving water. Additionally, as a direct result of reducing water frequency on our farm, I have observed that the quality of grass hasn’t deteriorated; in fact it’s probably improved due to less weeds being present. In our experience, when you’re over watering, or water too often, we tend to get a lot of nutgrass, and it just becomes too wet and when we do get a dollop of rain, everything gets over saturated.

As part of my risk management plan that I have in place, I had held off on ordering water for the first couple of days of December based on the positive short term rainfall forecasts and my bet paid off. We received around 100mm over that first full week of December. This has saved us an irrigation, which is equivalent to about 20 to 25 megalitres of irrigation water.

Our summers in Macarthur are variable as we get dry spells every year and we could get big dumps of rain as well. It’s important to have the farm set up to take advantage of the summer rain that comes as we are in a marginal non-traditional dairying area. We are a predominantly dryland farm with about 16 hectares of irrigation that we can use from an underground aquifer. We can’t get enough flow rate from this source to irrigate pasture, so we use it to supplement summer crops. Because we get dry weather every year, we usually begin culling and drying off from December until the autumn break according to feed availability (1 st April is the planned calving start date). Also we have summer crops available for cows to graze over the dry period and all of autumn.

The main crop we grow on the irrigated area have generally been rape, but changed to millet this year for a combination of reasons that made it a safer option for us this time around. It was very wet this season in August and September, so planting was going to be later than I like to get crops sown (millet copes better with later planting dates) and this time we’re using the millet as a bit of a break crop from sowing down to rape in those areas which we’ve done over the last 3 years. Also because of the way the season was looking ahead, millet seemed to be the better choice. Although millet drops off at the other end of the season going into autumn, we have of a regular supplier of vetch hay that we deal with ( from Northern Wimmera). Using vetch works well to cover our protein requirement for feed over that time (beginning of autumn) when we have freshly calved cows coming in.

We feed in the bail, but with milking only the once each day, we do not have to feed as much and grain is still our highest feed cost. The more quality feed we can grow that cows can directly graze, the less purchased feed we have to put in. We don’t make any silage. We find it cheaper (when we work out the nutrients imported with purchased hay) to buy in good quality vetch hay rather than getting contractors to turn up on time to make quality silage. When we work out the nutritional value of the bought in hay, we find it’s more reliable and a bit cheaper. In addition to buying in vetch for the milkers, we also buy in a little oaten hay for the springers. Particularly for the vetch, ideally we look for above 10 ME and 17 to 20% for protein. We work directly with one grower for the vetch and he brings it down when we need it, so we don’t have to worry about maintaining quality whist we store it, also we don’t have to find the space to store it long term.

Case Study 7: Craig Dettling, Macarthur, Western Districts, VictoriaCraig and his wife Rachael moved to Australia from New Zealand 12 years ago and have been developing their dairy farm at Macarthur since 2006. Consisting of 120 Ha of effective milking area and 80 Ha of out paddocks, the farm supports around 200 to 220 milkers, 100 dairy replacements and 100 dairy-beef cows. The milking herd is a three way cross of Jersey, Friesian and Swedish Red breeds and has been on a once-a-day, all-year-round milking regime over the last two seasons.

On our dryland area, we’ve gone down the line of growing plantain swards. The long tap and fibrous root utilises any summer moisture we get; so it lasts a bit longer into the summer. We sow the plantain spring as a pure sward and about 18 months later we over sow with perennial rye grass. About 40% of the dairying area is sown to plantain at any one time and our annual plantain planting area is usually around 10%.

Since this recent rain event early December, we are now looking for the early signs of winds as part of long range forecasts as we progress through summer, to get a better feel of what autumn is going to do and when the break is likely to come. So the advantage of this farm is that we have high ground and low ground areas. This means that we can build up feed over summer in the swamp areas - growing crops and having green feed right through summer at different times. If purchase feed is looking tight or may be going up in price we can still put a crop in in the swamp land if we have to. Even on other parts (the higher ground), we can keep long paddock feed for the dry cows to get stock off the milking area to relieve the pressure on the milking herd. Also, we are looking at reducing stocking rate overall to reduce feed demand by culling early.

Our main operating philosophy is to harvest as much feed directly by milkers and other stock as much as possible. At the moment we’ve got some of the heifers and some of the beef back on the home block on the milking area to clean up after them milkers, to maximise that pasture’s quality. The other paddocks that the non-milking animals are coming off may suffer a small feed quality loss but it’s a better pay off to keep up the quality of the milker feed ahead.

In terms of climatic forecasts and related information, basically I get as much information as I can. I follow quite a few weather forecasts and use weather apps for medium range forecasting (Morecast and YR seem to be a bit more accurate for this region). I use the BOM for longer range forecasts and as a bonus it seems to be more accurate to get a guide of what’s coming, for the real short term and seems to be a bit conservative for our area. Willy Weather is pretty accurate for us in the short term as well. Actually I got a crop in last week just before the rain came due to my trusting those short term forecast predicting that it was on its way (and on the live weather map we could see a heap of rain coming). I don’t rely on one forecast, I get a form of consensus and work on track record..

The Break Newsletter is also a great source - the climate models update helps me with an indication of what’s happening and assists me to weigh up what conditions look like they’re going to be. So early on it might look like it’s going to be a warmers summer and then models started turning to predict a definite El Nino (drier); which I take note of.

So we’ve now had that late rain early December as was predicted and that’s going to carry us through. But that’s probably why we’ve gone for the millet rather than the rape because it will better handle the warmer temperatures and we can irrigate it during any dry spells.

Looking ahead, after summer we’re already thinking about what’s going to grow best in the coming autumn, which for us can be a more unreliable climate than summer. This milking season we have mixed in red clover with the millet to boost the home grown feed quality for autumn.

In regard to my sources for obtaining information about potential crops that might suit this farm set up, I certainly don’t focus on any one particular source. I keep an eye or ear out for anything new that might be worthwhile to try and then I do my own research and then use local farmers and agronomists as sounding boards. I mostly start my information searches on the Web to get an idea of what might suit our farm and then look for more actual research results rather than opinion and I especially don’t put much value on sales-pitched research. I assess the level of risk with the new idea in the context of my situation. Like fodder beets for example, I researched into those and the level of risk for how much they cost was too high for the reliability of us getting a successful crop.

We are limited to irrigation so we can’t pile a heap of water on and it’s applied using a hard hose system so it’s less reliable. Also, due to pump and bore size issues we are limited to the water we have available over the summer. We’ve got the water licence, but the infrastructure cost to upgrade is prohibitive. Therefore, one of my key search guides is that the new crop has got to grow good volume and quality from limited water.

The biggest lesson coming out of the spring we just had is the need to be flexible with stocking rate. Before this last lot of rain (1st two weeks in December) we were probably looking at a normal summer, so would have been

destocking early December. This rain has meant we’ve held off culling stock and put the heifers and some beef stock on the milking area to keep up quality.

The key management element for best utilisation of the rain received so far in December is to keep pastures in an active ready-to-grow state. To achieve this on our farm, we keep the residual down - follow up post the milkers, to clean up. We don’t do any pre-topping as my philosophy is “if I can have other stock to clean it up after the milkers, it costs less to use other cows that also need to eat, than use fuel and machinery (which I don’t actually have anyway), to pre-cut grass.”

Our fodder harvest was 40% down on last years and our pasture growth rates were way down compared to last year until the middle of November. We might have some real risk with facial eczema this summer because of the prediction of both a warm and wet summer. I think there is a fair correlation between La Niña years and facial eczema (based on the history of its occurrence on this farm) and this summer a La Niña is highly likely. So we are on super alert for facial eczema.

We use a lot of weather data from a range of web sites to keep an eye on extreme elements such as drought and flood in regard to where and when these conditions might prevail.

Also, we keep a close eye on humidity trends over autumn and summer in particular, because facial eczema is a common occurrence on our farm during those times. We even adjust our grazing management if there’s really hot humid weather forecast to avoid even the remotest possibility of cows ingesting facial eczema spores.

I’m part of a group of eight dairy farmers in the MID who have had their pastures measured and analysed weekly by the same pasture specialist for the last five years. The eight farms range from 300 cows to 850 in herd size and represent a whole variety of management aspects such as flood irrigation, pivots, light and heavy soils etc. Every week we each receive an overview of everyone’s growth rates. We also get together once or twice a year to share who’s doing what and why some people get better or different results to others in the group.

From the pasture growth rates, quality results of all eight farms (done for all milking platform paddocks); the group can see the responses to irrigation, hot weather cold weather, lack of moisture, nitrogen, etc. , and we can also identify some of our worst performing paddocks. The results to date from these pasture measurements have shown that drainage is particularly important. All group members agree that we are really good at putting water on but we are not very good in getting water off, and we are even worse at it when rain events are involved. On our farm in particular, we have proven that better drainage alleviates water logging. On this farm we had a big rain event about two or three years ago which resulted in massive waterlogging issues. We spent about $10,000 on drainage to deal with all our poor drainage paddocks identified and it made a huge difference, and we’ve recouped all of that money invested already.

We also get soil moisture monitor (SMM) readings from the same person who does the pasture measurements. They are very useful and have certainly showed how very dry we’ve been this year in the MID. The pattern of the SMM measurements on our farm indicated that irrigation was not catching up to the soil profile. This is a handy trigger point to have, particularly given that once soils go dry, they take a long time to get back up to field capacity.

In further regard to the weather forecast links used, we look at the 4 day and 8 day forecasts on the BOM, Willy Weather and Elders websites. I also talk regularly with a local agronomist who has a couple of other good weather websites that he accesses.

I take overnight temperatures, humidity and other atmospheric conditions into account especially when conditions (both pasture condition and weather wise) may be favourable for facial eczema. Because of a high

Case Study 8: Hans van Wees, MID- Tinamba, Victoria Hans has share farmed in the MID for the one owner, Jakob Malmo, on the same farm over the last 10 years. In this successful business situation of a 40% share arrangement, Hans provides all the labour (which is currently four full time workers), tractors and bikes, pays 40% of bought in feed and nitrogen fertiliser and machinery costs. Currently Hans manages a strictly seasonal calving herd of 850 Friesian – Jersey cross bred cows (dry off in June) on 200 hectare milking platform; another 200 Ha is used for rearing calves and yearlings.

risk of facial eczema on this farm, I am registered in Dairy Australia’s Facial Eczema Alert Program, which provides another trigger for me. https://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/farm/animal-management/animal-health/facial-eczema-monitoring

I also follow the Southern Rural Water web page to see if inflows are up or down, etc. I use the Evapotranspiration (ETo) figures from Agriculture Victoria that comes out Friday of each week. We base our irrigation schedule on those ETo figures a fair bit. The figures are very useful as they help us to irrigate a bit better over summer as it takes the risk out of the decision making. For example if these ETo figures say its dry then we know it’s dry and we are more likely to irrigate on time than a few days too late.

At this stage of summer, water won’t be so limiting for us on our farm, as we received adequate rainfall early December and additional inflows into the Glenmaggie Weir since then. These events brought us back to a 100% High Water Share (HRWS) allocation for the rest of the season. So water security this summer is one less thing for me to worry about.

When I look at a variety of websites for weather forecasts and most of the models agree, then I start to take it seriously. If there’s a big variation between the models then I adjust my farm management decisions to cope with a higher risk variation. However, even if the models mostly agree that it’s a 60% to 40% chance of a wetter summer for example (as is being forecasted currently), then I see that as not being far away from a 50:50 chance. I am therefore considering the possibility of a drier than average summer climate, even though a wetter than average one is forecast as I prepare for identifying various farm management trigger points to get through the rest of this summer and beyond.