2023 Spring Field Day- Sandplain Focus
The 6th of September saw us run our 2023 Spring Field Day, this year it was the Sandplain rotation. The main topics from the day were the 2023 National Variety Trials, New Wheat and Lupin Variety Releases and Machinery displays.
2023 Heavy Land Field Day
It may have been a wet and wild day Wednesday 13th of September, but we kicked on, without power, and with the phone lines down we still managed to successfully run our 2023 Heavy Land Field Day. The topics of the day included Deep Sowing Trial, Stubble Height x Herbicide Trial, Chickpea Chilling Tolerant Research and Understanding Nutritional Requirements in 2024.
Ladies Field Day
On the 25th of July we held our annual Ladies Field Day. Guest speakers for the day included - Kathy Brown (Rabobank), Chela Dempster (GrainCorp), Madi George (Great Northern Rural) and Amber Balfour-Cunningham (DPIRD/UWA). The ladies were treated to a number of interesting presentations and trial discussions before sitting down for a beautiful bubbly luncheon.
Red Card Fox Shoot
Red Card for Rabbits and Foxes is a coordinated community predator management activity.
The idea is to make a greater impact through coordinating teams to conduct baiting and shooting activities at the same time across the landscape. Red Card for Rabbits and Foxes is being sponsored by the Sporting Shooter’s Association of Australia (Western Australia). The Regional Men’s Health Initiative is a Statewide program which works toward raising awareness of men’s health in regional communities.
2022 Trials Review
Held on Wednesday the 8th of March 2023. A number of stakeholders joined us to catch up on ethe latest research from 2022. This event was a recap of the trails undertaken in 2022 and an opportunity to discuss future research and trials with members and community alike.
Heavyland Field Day
15th September 2022 - MIG hosted it’s Sandplain Field Day starting off at noon at the Polocrosse Grounds. A good crowd visited the main trial site and looked at nutrition, herbicide and variety trials. Finishing off further south looking at some larger scale nutrition demos and a blasting site which became a talking point over beers and beef and gravy rolls.
2022 Spring Field Day
7th September 2022 - MIG hosted it’s annual Spring Field Day which was a great success. The weather turned it on for the day, starting off at Holmes’ shed with a market update from Rabobank. From there we headed to the main trial site at Cobley’s and looked over the NVT’s and a number of herbicide trails. Between trials a beautiful morning tea from the P&C and barista coffee was enjoyed. Following this we looked at Safflower which had all attendees intrigued. The final 2 sites looked at were herbicide trials before heading back to the shed for woodfired pizza and formalities.
Seeding Round-Up
17 June 2022 - Our seeding round-up at the polocrosse club was a great night out. Discussions were had over about how seeding was for members, sponsors and MIG staff while enjoying a few drinks and spit roast lamb and gravy rolls by the fire..
Ladies Field Walk & Picnic Breakfast
26 July 2022 - Our first Ladies Field walk was a huge success with around 20 ladies joining us for a tour of our main trial site and an agronomy 101 session. Little Boho Events hosted a beautiful picnic breakfast for ladies back at the Polocrosse shed where they had the chance to ask our in-house agronomists questions over champagne, breaky wraps and scones.
MIG’s Crops and Hops
Red Card Fox Shoot
2022’s annual Red Card Fox Shoot was a great success with a total of 10 teams participating!
A early morning breakfast was enjoyed at Cecil Newton Park whilst a tally count was conducted. Prizes were then drawn with the winning team for the day “The Fox Terriers” taking out the Fox Shoot trophy with a total of 71 points!!
Barley Grass Breakfast 2021
Early morning on 20th September, MIG members gathered at the Soullier’s property for a breaky burger and to discuss the issues they face with Barley Grass. Catherine Borger (DPIRD) and the team at MIG have been conducting trials since 2019 at the Soullier’s property, searching for the best controls for Barley Grass in a variety of crop types.
Seroja Community Sundowner
Following the Heavyland Field Day MIG hosted a Seroja Sundowner for our local farmers and the community.
Caroline Ashby, Farmer, Mother and Ironman athlete attended to present to the women for the afternoon session, “To dream, believe, achieve, remain resilient and grateful for everything you have and remember no matter what your circumstances and that "Anything is possible". Her presentation was very motivational and was well received.
We had a special afternoon tea courtesy of Tarts & Co for the women, which allowed them to relax and unwind due to having a bouncy castle to keep the kids well entertained.
For the evening session we had great door prizes donated by various local business that caused quite a stir and the evening meal was the highlight (especially for the kids) with the Firetruck Pizzeria cooking arancini balls, pizza, and donuts on site.
Heavy Land Field Day
The Heavy Land Field Day in September started with Mark Seymour from DPIRD looking at the Lentil and Field Pea NVT’s, with a walk through on key varieties and general enquiries about lentils/field peas. Harmohinder Dhammu from DPIRD discussed broadleaf weed control in chickpea. Efficacy of new and old herbicides and herbicide mixtures on wild radish/canola and crop safety on chickpea. Our highlight of the day was Prof Kadambot Siddique from UWA talking about pulses in farming systems. The group then progressed through the Canola NVT trials and heard from the local industry specialists about the new varieties. Prof Wallace Cowling discussed Canola Breeding and heat tolerance. Again, t chickpeas with Stacey Power from DPIRD and “Tips and tricks for chickpeas” plus NVT/best practice management of chickpeas and look at new varieties.
Ron Yates and Robert Harrison DPIRD and CSIRO took the attendees through the pasture trials and discussed how the third-year trial of a five-year project is aiming to find new annual pasture legumes that fit in with mixed farming systems in the medium to low rainfall zones across southern Australia.
Dryland Pasture Legume Walk 2021
On September 8th at our heavy land field day, we made our way to see Ron Yates and Rob Harrisons work with Dryland Pasture Legume Systems at the McTaggart’s property. There was much discussion about the fit of pasture legumes into a mixed cropping rotation and the suitability of different varieties for our area.
Spring Field Day Concurrent Shed Sessions
Concurrent Sessions held as part of our NLP Training Project “back in the shed” were very popular and included:
Belinda Eastough, senior Elders agronomist and farmer, for an introduction to agronomy in the paddock.
Fiona Mann, farmer, and entrepreneur, talking about her business venture, Cold-pressed canola oil from Block 275
Chela Lamond Wheat and canola grain markets and swaps contracts with Gower Services Manager at GrainCorp
Darren Slyns from Regional Safety Services discussing Industrial Manslaughter Legislation and Considerations for NAR producers.
The concurrent sessions were part of our project “NLP Training” which was supported by the Australian Governments National Landcare Program Funding and the Mingenew Irwin Group.
Spring Field Day 2021
In September we held out main Spring Field Day. We had a “Early bird paddock walk” with Smyth Agri Services to look at Potash Rates in a nutrition trial.
Matt Willis- Market Development Agronomist, at Bayer Crop Science introduced Mateno Complete – a new herbicide from Bayer. A comparison of products for pre-emergent and early post-emergent control of annual ryegrass in wheat.
Wheat and Barley National Variety Trials were assessed and discussed with the specialists from the region.
Steve Pettenon and Murray McCartney from FMC discussed pre-emergent crop safety and efficacy, broad leaf, and ryegrass in wheat on sandplain country at their trial site.
Doug Hamilton discussed and illustrated in the paddock the workings of “CSBP Detect” a real-time nitrogen recommendation service that uses spectroscopy and machine learning to deliver actionable results to growers for faster and more informed decisions throughout the season. Knowing a crop’s nitrogen status at various sample locations allows growers to maximise their grain yield potential and quality for different rainfall scenarios.
Lupin NVT sites and Canola variety demonstration sites were visited with specialists on hand to discuss the potential and outcomes with the farmers.
Bevan Addison from Adama talked about Ultro Herbicide for grass/weed control in lupins.
Dr Michael Ashworth - UWA/ Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI) led us through a GRDC-funded project on blue lupin management in lupins