Homeward Bound

I am on the flight home having being woken up at 3:30 by the bus company taxi who picks every one up to get to the bus station on time to catch the bus from Rosario to Buenos Aires. I was booked on the 5:30 bus but they decided to pick me up for the 4:30 one. The bus trip took longer than anticipated as someone threw a rock or brick at the bus and smashed a window. They sent for another bus and ¾ of an hour later we were “back on the road again” thanks Willie. I got off ant the airport at 10 o’clock with four hours to kill. I am glad they had a One World Lounge. The flight left at 1400 and we are following the sun so we have not had any night or sleep time. The main reason that I am writing and dribble is lack of sleep but I just saw Antarctica. There were no clouds we could even see the cracks in the ice. I think we saw the ice shelf around the Argentinean section of Antartica. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

3 Day Congress

Sponsors Section

What a fantastic conference, 2800 people with a large percentage of farmers. The whole congress was professionally run. With numbers of farmers attending, the agro-companies were out in force. They all had booths and some were very fancy with young models handing out the pamphlets and running competitions for prizes with the company logos on them. They had 3 sessions running concurrently. The topics ranged from crop nutrition to water footprints. They sessions started at 8:30am in the morning and finished between 6:30 and 8:00pm, but they did have a 2 hour lunch break.

Aerial Gymnists

The basics of ZT were not talked about as ZT is now the standard practice. There were a number of good sessions on crop nutrition and the fate of the different elements in the soil. The whole nutrient cycling system was discussed and it really only starts becoming a large component of available N:P:K after 5-7yrs of ZT. In particular Nitrogen can take longer as the now valued residue, along with the micro-organisms tie up quite a lot of this N.


A new area for benchmarking for me, was a ratio of fertilizer : yield. Fernando Garcia talked about the efficiency of crops in terms of kilograms of N:P:K applied compared to what yield was achieved. As an example he said that 1kg of N produces on average (a horrible term) 34 of Wheat where the same kg produces 144 of Maize.

As ZT has minimal disturbance the Movement of P through the profile is very slow with this eing carried out by roots when they grow and then die. This is a very small amount so it is very important to continue putting the Phosphorous in close proximity to the seed. Over time the P will be quite evenly spread through the top 5-7 centimetres as the fertilizer applied P and the P residue will be released whilst it breaks down.

There were a number of workshops on biotechnology, with Round Ready featuring well. The biotech companies are working on a number of the GM crops with drought resistance a key goal. At present a couple of companies had done this. The crops achieve good yields whilst stressed but in a normal type of season do not achieve higher yields.

The Argentinean farming is being squeezed at present by the government as they want agriculture to subsidize other industries . At present if they grow Wheat they get taxed up to an incredible 70%. This is shown as 35% tax on sales of wheat for export and then 35 cents in the peso income tax. Soybeans are not far behind. They are not even allowed to export their beef. As a result the numbers of cattle has dropped dramatically as the price has dropped sharpely.

Santa Fe & Cordoba States

City Gate for Corral de Bustos

I’ve got 5 days left then home, three will be spent at the AAPRESID congress. I am really looking forward to it. I have had a road trip for a couple of days looking over the area west of Rosario. Even though it has been relatively wet I only say one paddock of lucerne and 2 of wheat. The farmers tell me that they cannot make money on the wheat. The government actually taxes them if it is exported. That may seem a bit screwy but the government may want it internally to feed the population.

I called into another disc seeder manufacturer in Monte Maiz - Agrometal. They make both precision planters and seed drills. They did not have a lot different to the other companies with their current machines, but have some interesting prototypes, which revolves around large machines which fold or swivel for transport. The machines were well built and were typically Argentinean with a coulter then a double disc of identical sizes. All of the Brazilian machines only had coulters as an option, relying on the offset double disc of two sizes. Usually these were 15” & 16”.

Dual Swiveling Drill

For soaking up the local flavours there is a supermarket down the road that sells a lot good wine and a bottle shop 2 minutes walk the other way.It is good here, $4.50 Pesos for a Bottle of Corona ($1.50 Aussie) from the supermarket. They even have a vending machine down stairs with cold beer in it.

In Rosario

I'm back in Argentina with a bus trip from Buenos Aries to Rosario. It was a far better way to travel than car through the ludicrous traffic and mad drivers. I booked a car on line for a couple of days to do a bit of touring before the conference. On the website they were open all weekend 8-8. Today I went to pick the car up and no show, so I went for an expensive guided tour of Rosario by Taxi looking for other hire cars. I’l try again tomorrow.

Back to Argentina for AAPRESID Congress

Well, I thanked Nuffield and GRDC a bit too soon for the wonderful opportunity they have given me. With my travels accruing enough frequent flyer points I am off back to Argentina for the No-Till Congress.


My Spanish is not good enough to listen to the speakers, but after chatting with Dwayne Beck and Agustin Bianchini, I have decided to go. Whilst each speaker is doing their talks, they have three power point displays going on the screens in three different languages; Spanish, Portuguese & Australian. They also have on-the-go translators into those three languages as well. So with the expected crowd of 2000 it will be just like the United Nations.

I am really looking forward to it as I leave this Wednesday for 10 days

Family Reunion and Skiing in NZ

We got to the flight in Concepcion with lots of time to spare. Carlos had his timetable perfect from their many visitors to Chequen Farm. We were very thankful for our great stay. We got into Santiago at 9:30 but our flight out to NZ was not until 23.05 so off to the Qantas One World lounge.
But alas on the one day we need it the most. Sorry we don’t have an agreement for Ruby level Qantas Club members. So we slumped around the airport for 14 hours but we got a fair bit of work done.
We got the flight to NZ and we met the boys, Henry and Sam later in the day and then Megan on Friday. It was great to see them and we were up to 5/6 of the family. It was now off to the snow for a family get together. What a great week no matter what we say about our cousins across the Tasman, they put on a great show of scenery. We have a cabin on Lake Hawea for $140 a night and it would cost $1000 anywhere in Europe a night for the view.

Morning View From Our Balcony
We got up to Cardrona with plenty of snow on show. It only took us 45 minutes. We all got into the skiing and snowboarding for 4 days, all in the sun. We went out to Albert Town for dinner and there was a quiz night and Team Wallabies cleaned up. $50 to help pay for dinner.

Nikki, Henry, Sam & Megan

Travel Companions Enjoying the Sun and Snow

Hoare Frost On The Way Back To Lake Hawea

It is now back to Christchurch for the flight home to return from a fantastic journey. We have met a lot of really nice people and learnt a lot along the way. The people, food and hospitality has been wonderful. Now we need to put some of the learning and practices in place on our farm. Also to open our home for others to visit.

I would like to thank NUFFIELD and GRDC for the opportunity.

Carlos In Chile

Carlos is one of the few, who can be considered a pioneer of No-Till. He lives in the foothills above Concepcion in Chile a few hours south of the capital Santiago. Nikki and I caught up with Carlos and his wife Doris at their famous Chequen Farm. He runs a modest farm with a large portion of their income coming from eggs from 60,000 chickens (all white). The farm has made a miraculous comeback from devastation at the hand of the plough. He stopped ploughing in 1968 and put in permanent pasture but went back to cropping in 1978 but this time with a disc seeder from Allis Chambers’. He started but it was not without problems;

1. There Were Areas Of Erosion

Same Gully But Looking Down Gully

2. Extremely Poor Fertility.

3. No Adequate Herbicides For Weed Control, Leading to Weed Blowouts

Carlos bought himself a bulldozer and went to work on the area of gully erosion and reclaimed a lot of land. He set up his rotations to include medic and grain legumes for nitrogen fixation and grew large bulky cereal crops to start putting organic matter back into the soil but more importantly to keep residue on top of the soil and he was never going to cultivate or plough the land again.

Carlos had an ace in the hole, as he could access large amounts of chicken manure. As a diversification, Carlos has a large egg laying business. So, all of the manure from the chickens and a small feedlot goes onto the paddocks.

The Hens In The Cages

The soils on the farm are a sandy loam with a strong gravel feel in some areas. The pH is neutral. The phosphorous levels have been lifted from approximately 10 ppm to 70 ppm. He contributes this to both the manure and the rate of cycling of the organic matter by micro-organisms. The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) helps convert inorganic Phosphorous to available plant soluble Phosphorous. Carlos loves his soils and really appreciates how the soil has changed over the years to become more productive. The soil structure has returned and with it the fertility of the soil through increased levels of organic matter as this in turn has increased the Cation exchange capacity. He is always trying to increase his biomass whcig in turn increases the soil organic matter. Both above ground and below ground.

 

Multiply Years Of Crop Residue = Biomass Above Ground

Excellent Biomas Below Ground

Carlos, now, when asked about his 3 main issues included these;
1. Soil Compaction.
2. Permanent lack of Nitrogen.
3. Loss of Earthworms in some areas.

Hardy Checking Soil Compaction

He has tried doing some delving to break up the compaction in the lower soil profile, but this doesn’t seem to be very effective as we were in the paddock with a steel rod and there was no noticeable difference between the delved and non delved areas. Over time as the nutrient cycling became quicker and the yields improved, Carlos found that he still was short of nitrogen, so he has been using more manure per hectare. He likes to see his soil alive and has recently notice the absence of the once large numbers of earth worms. Carlos think that it may be due to higher levels of poultry manure???.
In their part of the world Carlos and Doris receive 1100 mm of rain per year. It mainly occurs during winter. He has constructed a couple of dams. He says he knows there is going to be runoff and as long as it is not taking soil with he may as well use it. They irrigate Corn on part of their property and it yielded 15t/hectare when reapt early this year. He uses the corn in both his chicken and cattle TMR’s.

Nikki and Hardy

We got around to talking about disc seeders and one of the good parts about being a pioneer and one who is watched by others to learn from is that companies like you to use their products. Both Semeato & Agro-metal have given Carlos seeding machines to use. Brazilian disc machines tend to have a double offset discs which are different diameters to ensure the cutting of the residue and Argentinean machines have triple discs with one coulter and two even discs, where the coulters do most of the cutting. It is an interesting argument about which the better way to go. Carlos had another guest who is a farmer in Southern Chile. Hardy used to work for Semeato for 10 years and is now an agent for Bertini in Chile. You can guess who he favours, but I like their machine as well after a visit to their factory in Rosario. Both Carlos and Hardy thought that the Bertini and Agrometal were the pick of current machines.

Argentina to Chile Across the Andes

We left Argentina to head to our last South American counrty - Chile and catching up with Carlos Crovetto. But Carlos had to wait as we got to see the Andes. Last time we saw an outline in the dusk, but this time. We only saw a small section of them as they run the entire length of South America.

Simply Awesome and Inspiring

Roads at 18,000 ft

Even Out The Window & Our Camera They Really Are Fantastic to See

AGRO URANGA

The following day I went South again to see a corporate family farm at San Nicolas and caught up with Frederico Arostegui and Jorge Staffolani. Frederico is the specialist seeds manager and Jorge is the overall farm agronomist/manager. Even though the farm is a family farm it must operate in a hard and fast business way with profits returning to the family shareholders. The farm only owns a few utes and one utility tractor. All of the operations are carried out by contractors who have been regulars over the past years. The farm pays over the award rates for these contractors which ensures that they get to Uranga at the right time. I think this is a good strategy. They also supply the contractors with letters of agreements for future contracting which helps them when buying new machinery and when seeking funding.

The Agrometal Assembly

On this particular day there were 3 different contract seeders there all seeding corn. One Bertini, one Georgio and one Agrometal. The Agrometal certainly looked the biggest and best constructed machine but I thought that the seeding positioning and singulation was not as good as the others.

 A New Planter Sowing Horizontal Precision Box

 To keep getting a good return the managers and farm company attracts a premium for the crops that it grows in its seed selling role played by Frederico. Some of the seed crops that they grow are popcorn, yellow corn, green peas, chick peas and beans. They like using these crops as they are still classed as a specialty grain and do not attract the same export tax for commodities such as wheat. This is one of the issues the farms have in that even though they are attracting money from overseas, if they grow wheat they have to pay the 30% tax to the government.
As mentioned in the APPRESID visit, there is a lot of problems with soyabean over use as it is an easy cheap crop to grow and most of the land owners want the soy beans as their payment. This means there is too much grown in the rotations in Argentina. At the Moment the specialty crops haven’t attracted this tax although Frederico feels that in the near future they will start to. The best rotations are with green peas, soy then corn or wheat, soy then corn or utilising popcorn instead of the normal yellow corn. At present 70% of the farm is double cropped and they want to have 100% double cropped by 2015. At the moment they are even getting 5 crops in 2 years in some areas. The farm is looking to find a good spring crop replacement for wheat and they feel durum might be an option but not while the US have their subsidies in place.

Back in Rosario at Garden of Flags Monument

Not too Many Flags But Some Good Statues

Bertini's in Action

Puken Alvares lives south of Rosario and due West of Buenos Aires so we set off early in the morning and went to see a number of the model 32 seeders in action on his farm. The sowing width was just over 8 metres with a seed and fertiliser box along the entire width of the machine. This would mean that for us going from a 2 compartment airseeder box which is filled from one location to needing a movable auger and truck system for loading the combine.

Filling Seeder

When viewing the machine in action it had particularly good cutting (although a bit aggressive) by the coulter through a thick corn residue with a very even sowing depth and distance between seeds. The large wavy coulter was being used and on the soft sandy soils in that area there was too much soil throw.

Definite Path to Show Some Disturbance (No Trick Photography)

Seeder With Marker Arms

The machine has an ideal length and also had a tow hitch on the end to drop the transport width down to 3.5 m. With the assemblies fully lifted it gave an excellent high clearance for transport.

High Lift for Transport

 Farm Manager, Enrico Bertini, Puken Alvares, Me (No Name to Balance Manager) 

The contractors gave the machines a good recommendation particularly in the area of low maintenance. Their rotation that we saw was corn corn legume legume winter cereal winter cereal. This type of rotation is known as a double stacked rotation. The two corns give a very good control of weeds and produce an excellent amount of biomass. It was good to see the drills in action and it gave me a good idea of what Enrique and Luis had been talking about. We made our way home late at night but the time passed quickly as we had some good discussions regarding disc drill setups.

One area of debate is the setting of the front coulter as to whether it should be set deeper than the double disc seeder unit or if it should be set shallower. As the double disc has the depth control wheels attached I feel that the front coulter should be set 5 – 10 mm shallower than the double seeding discs.

Bertini Disc Drills & Combines

We had talked to Enrique Bertini via Luis Baima prior to coming to South America as we already had a small research size combine through SANTFA and Jaques Desboiles at AMRDC at uni of SA. The two gentlemen agreed to host us for a couple of days around Rosario which included a tour of their Bertini production plant.

The Bertini Triple Disc

They produce a range of size seeders and for a range of different applications. The sizes range from 4 metres to up to 19 metres and the applications include precision planters, small grains, drills and pasture seeding renovations. The Bertini drills have a triple disc assembly, the unit is attached via a parallelogram, there is a front coulter, a paired double disc with dual depth control wheels, a seed firmer and a slot closer and fluffer. In undulating ground the machine needs between 5 and 5.5 hp per assembly. Enrique and Luis said that they would work with us to create the ideal seeder for us if we choose a Bertini. This flexibility is very appealing.

Lois Showing Off His Metering Wheel and Travel Mode He Designed

We had a good look around their facilities and it was impressive that they made all of their own parts except for the plastics and are always researching, developing and improving the quality and function of their seeders. It is interesting that Bertini don’t use a vacuum delivery system in their precision planters but use a pneumatic air pressure to press the seeds against the singulator wheel.

Precision Planter Singulator

At the moment there is something like 30000 disc machines working in Argentina and they are turned over every 3 years. Ther is approximately 30 disc maufacturers.

Enrique and Luis took Nikki & I out for tea and we enjoyed the Argentinian hospitality and their BBQ meats!!!! with red wine of course.

Scenes around Argentina

Meat For All Tastes

The BBQ's are great in all of South America. The Brazilian's rotisserie their meats and then do fruits for dessert. The Argentineans grill theirs over coals and the Uruguyans set up a mesh screen over a fire.
The Chileans use a variety of ways.

Mt Vulcun

We have done a little bit of touristy things but the countries are all beautiful once you get out of the cities.
I like the look of the horsemen and the way they control the horses.

Gaucho Family

All the Food Groups - Meat and Veg

AAPRESID

Rosario is the home of AAPRESID, the Argentinean Direct Seeding Group. They are very large group with members across the country. AAPRESID hold an annual congress and they bring in speakers from all over the world and it is attended by 2500 farmers. It would be a good opportunity to go to this year’s congress in August. They run other smaller workshops and mini conferences throughout Argentina. The group delivers regular newsletters and technical papers.


A new tool for AAPRESID is the Certified Agriculture program. According to Augustine Biachi Certified Agriculture is a quality management system for the productive processes under No Tillage. It has been designed to improve the business management and to optimize the resources-use efficiency. As a result, we obtain greater productivity within an environmentally friendly and energetically sustainable context. It constitutes a key step for the institutional life of AAPRESID.

It is supported by a 20-year experience in No Till practice –a productive system based on the absence of soil tillage, on crop rotation and the coverage of the soil surface with crop residues. This procedure allows farmers to achieve a rational, sustainable and even reparative use of the agro-ecosystem basic resources like soil, water, air and biodiversity. It seems to be a very good program. I feel this will be adopted across a number of countries.

To achieve the CA title farmers need to satisfy AAPRESID in the following areas and show good agricultural practices.
1. No Soil Disturbance / Presence of Soil Residue Cover
2. Crop Rotation
3. Integrated Pest Management
4. Efficient and Responsible Agrochemical Management
5. Strategic Crop Nutrition
6. Stockbreeding Information Management

Farmers are in the process of getting their certification for 90,000 hectares and 1 farmer has just become certified.
When I asked Augustine what the three major issues for farmers were he said:
1. Government tax on exported grain particularly wheat as it is already a low return compared to other crops so a vast percentage of farmers do not plant Wheat or any other winter or spring crops. The diversity of the rotation and maintaining ground cover is best practice, but not if the farmer could lose money or not even break even.
2. Another problem is crop based with most of the rental or lease payments being done in Soybeans. The payment is 1.6 tonne per hectare (8 Bags) per annum. This put pressure on farmers to plant a large amount of Soybeans each year. The price compounds the issue as it is also the highest return. About 85% of warm season crops in Argentina each year are Soybeans and this represents an inadequate rotation with problems like soil residue, chemicals (Glyphosate)
3. Cost of production and if land is leased satisfying owners and their payments

www.aapresid.org.ar/english/index.asp

Horrific Traffic & Bad Day for Young Wallabies

Nikki and I flew into Buenos Aires from Brazil and got through all of the checks relatively easily. Then we headed out in our new hire car. The traffic was banked up whereever we went and they were just as crazy as their Brazilian neighbours. Only this time they could go 130km/hr legally so I think they were going 145-150 and right up someones arse.

Sunday arvo Traffic Out of Buenos Aires

We headed out to Rosario which is 3 hours north of Buenos Aires. We got there Sunady arvo and settled in to the Hotel Ariston. We found out that it was public holiday on Monday and everyone and everything was closed on Monday. We found out that the World U18 Junior Rugby championships were held in Argentina and the Grand Finals were in Rosario on Monday evening. What a great score!

Springboks vs Red Roses

We bought tickets and saw South Africa give England a touch up so they were 3rd and England 4th. The final was between arch rivals NZ & Australia. The game started and the dreaded Kiwis scored inside the first 2 minutes. Things looked black and I think the organizer went out and got the trophy engraved.

One for the Girls - Winners are Grinners

The All Blacks gave us a pasting. The Wallabies had made it to the grand final which was good but the Kiwi's were just too good.

The Lovely Locals Who Spotted the Only Aussie in the Cheap Seats

The highlights were getting to see the game in the first place and then getting to meet some of the locals. At halftime I went down to the sideline to see the field and they had a womens seven a-side, which was good to watch and their skills were very good. The ground is normally used for soccer and there was big 20 metre mesh fence behind each end but then I looked over the side panels and there was 5 metre deep moat around the ground aswell. 

Holiganism at a soccer matches obviously a bit of an issue!!.

Ponta Grossa to Sao Paulo

Today we drove back to Sao Paulo. Everywhere we looked on the way back we saw plantations of Blue Gums. Our own trees here in Brazil. According to Richard they have them in for fuel for burners and steam turbines. On his farm they plant them in six rows. They are ready to pollard / cut to 1m above ground at six years and then each row is cut yearly.

Blue Gum Plantations

The roads here are crappy at best, a dogs breakfast at worst. Driving was okay until we hit the outskirts of Sao Paulo and the drivers were nuts. They change lanes at the drop of a hat and it was bumper to bumper at 120 km/hr. We took a couple of wrong turns only because we could not change lanes. Amongst all the cars were dozens of motorbikes doing 80 through the cars line up at stops and lights. It was nice to finally get to the Hotel.

RR- Ratshit Roads

Good Integrated Farming

In the afternoon we went on a farm visit with Richard Dijkstra. This was an excellent visit to see an integrated farm with a positive production model. The farm started with Richards grandfather arriving from Holland on a ship with 40 cows and 1 bull. At one point the bull jumped ship into the water and the boat had to turn around and hoik him out of the water. When his grandfather arrived he was offered 10000 acres as a trade for all of his cattle. Instead he sold 1 cow for 60 acres of land and built up from this. The bull that he bought across from Holland has provided much of the cattle genetics across the state of Parana as after he had finished using him after many years, the bull was then sold to the government and used across the state.

Nikki, Juca & Richard Atop The Effluent Screen

The size of farm is 1500 ha half of which is continuously cropped for grain production and the other half of the farm is utilized to produce feed (mainly silage) for the dairy enterprise. As well as the arable cropping there is a 480 cow dairy, and a 380 sow piggery. All of the dairy and pig effluent is firstly passed through a shit screen where the solids are removed and carted off to a compost pad out in a paddock. In this effluent there is 5% solids and 95% water. The liquid effluent goes through 2 bio digesters . it is 60 -70000 litres of liquid manure and this produces 1500 – 2000 m3 of methane. This methane is used to dry grain and to heat the piggery sheds. Once the liquid waste has passed through the bio digesters it is used for irrigation on the feed production side of the cropping property.

The composted manure is turned on average every 3rd day in winter and daily in the warmer weather. It takes a total of 40 days composting until it is ready to be spread out in the paddocks at a rate of 5-10 t / ha based on soil testing. There can be considerable loss of Nitrogen but to stop this you can apply gypsum at 5% or 50kg/t of raw manure. The compost has a pH of 5.5 -5.8 and as well as giving good N in the form of organic matter it adds .6% phosphorous to the soil as well. When this compost is applied at 5t/ha the soil receives 30 kg of elemental P. Because of the pH of the compost and his production model, lime is added at a rate of .5t -1t/ha every second year.

The Effluent Treatment & Bio-digester Bags

The crops that he grows are corn, barley, soy beans, black oats and millet. These are used as either grain, silage or cover crops. Richard cuts his corn for silage and he averages 12t dm/ha at 12% protein and does a lot of soy bean silage at 6t dm/ha and 24% protein. When these two silages are mixed with some grain and additives they make a very good total mix ration. When he uses a cover crop he seeds straight into the crop which has been given an application of Glyphosate. This was very intersting to see.

Seeding Barley Straight Into Standing Japanese Millet

Whilst we have been in Brazil we have seen a lot of successful co-operatives and I quizzed Richard on his thoughts on co-ops. His plain answer was that they make him money when selling and save him money when buying inputs. So the farmers really benefit greatly from them. The average size of a co-op farmer is 200ha so Richard farms one of the larger areas in his co-op. A number of years ago 3 co-operatives formed the ABC foundation to run the farmers own trials. Each co-op has two farms in their areas that they use for farmer owned and directed research of 45 ha each. To be involved in the foundation it costs farmers R$12.25/ha of trial site so approx R$3300/year. There are 2000 co-op members so the foundation has plenty of funds to run the trials.

Richard, Slim Guy in Blue and Juca Discussing Zero-Till

I asked Richard what problems if any had he encountered when making the shift from conventional till to no till and his major problems were the quality of the machines for cutting through residue, poor herbicide availability at the time and it took about 4 years for some of the nitrogen stored in the residue to become available so during that time he had to increase his N fertiliser rates. After corn he found the remaining residue given the high yields that he was achieving were hard to cut through for any machine. So straight after harvest he utilises a homemade knife roller made out of old discs.

Disc Cutter Bar