Doesn’t it stink that strong grain prices have to be soured by price rises in many other sectors such as fuel, power, groceries etc. It means we have to think hard about doing a little cost cutting here and there.
Naturally, there are acceptable ways to cut costs: use junk mail for toilet paper, replace apples in kids lunch boxes with paddy melons, turn the ute off to read the paper at the mail box, home brewed beer is suddenly tasting good or you might even find yourself throwing chicken pieces from leftover sandwiches in the freezer to make soup with one day.
It would not be acceptable to slip monopoly money onto the church collection plate or to draw postage stamps onto envelopes.

On the farm, cutting fertiliser costs will be weighing on most people’s minds. 2007 trials at Minnipa looked at the effects of cutting back fertiliser and being a Grain & Graze trial, the assessment was on dry matter production of cereals sown for feed. Increasing seed and fertiliser rates should generally result in increased dry matter production but we wanted to assess how much we cut back on the costs of sowing feed before we caused a dramatic reduction in production. We looked at all the combinations of district practice, double and triple seeding rates with 60 kg/ha DAP (district practice), half fertiliser and nil fertiliser.

The table of results shows a slight trend toward increased production from increased inputs, however the statistics show there was no difference in dry matter production from increasing seed or decreasing fertiliser at each of the crop growth stages.

Dry matter production (kg/ha), Minnipa 2007

What this indicates is that plenty of livestock feed can be produced at low cost and therefore low risk. The added benefit of a sown cereal feed is the increased organic matter available to the soil. So if you want to target higher production and lower costs in cereal feed crops at a time when cash flow is tight and input costs are high, then sowing cereals without fertiliser and/or with higher seeding rates are options.

Grain & Graze recently help a series of Grazing Crops Workshops across South Australia - publications of the national Grazing Winter Crops booklet are available from the Minnipa Ag Centre, 8680 5104.  Contact Emma McInerney
Researcher, for further information.

AUTHOR: Brian Ashton, Senior Livestock Consultant, Rural Solutions SA
CONTACT: Brian Ashton, PIRSA/ Rural Solutions SA Pt Lincoln office, Telephone: 08 8688 3400 Email: ashton.brian@saugov.sa.gov.au