TOO many times, like too many Mallee farmers, Ron Hards stood staring out his front window or was hunkered down in the machinery shed, watching his paddocks blow by on their way to points unknown but well beyond the fences of his property.
When you live in marginal country you need everything to work, on time, every time, to make a real go of it.
And of course it doesn’t.
That’s why it’s called marginal country.
“Oh, look, there’s nothing worse on a windy day than watching your paddocks go past,” Ron told the ABC a few years ago.
“It’s pretty distressing.
“I think the last year we’ve seen dust storms go through the Mallee, particularly in our area here in the Millewa, and Mildura was getting pretty fed up with it actually, because normally your strongest winds are from the south and south-west and in the west and they’re right in line for it.
“So, Mildura was blacked out a couple of days.
“Doesn’t do your image much good when you go to town next time and tell them where you come from.
“I think we owe it to everybody to make sure we try to keep things where they are and you can’t grow crops on soil if it’s gone.
“I think the most important, most valuable asset you’ve got is your soil, and the top 10cm is probably the most important part of your farm.
“If it blows away, well, you start from scratch again and it takes a long time to get that country back, if ever, if you take that top soil off.”
This is what prompted Ron to become a rural revolutionary, joining a band of likeminded individuals who simply knew there had to be a better way – or if not they would all be better off doing something else.
That desire to stop the rot, as it were, and turn the marginal Mallee into something special, or at the very least something more consistent, was the genesis of Mallee Sustainable Farming.
It was the vision of Ron and others like him who banded together to found Mallee Sustainable Farming and plug what he had seen as a glaring extension gap: the low-rainfall areas, not just of his district but right through the Mallee, from SA across Victoria and into NSW.
He says the 250-350mm rainfall belt had somehow been overlooked, but a group of farmers spearheaded by Neil Smith got together in 1997 after a public meeting at Loxton in SA and MSF was born.
It would prove, Ron recalls, a hard road to hoe, and even though it began with the support of the Grains Research and Development Corporation, he says its funding during the formative years was very hit and miss.
“It was tough,” he says.
“We were trying to run it all, at times, with barely $1 million, but things are so much better now.
“It all seems to be secure and we have a really god team and the money to keep it all going forward.”
There was also a lot of behind-the-scenes time, travel and research in building a solid foundation for MSF.
That included, Ron recalls, a lot of trips into SA with Landcare groups looking at what farmers were doing in other places.
And building on that, in the past 20 years there has also been a huge amount of research going on in the Mallee.
“Mallee Sustainable Farming, with the three states involved, SA, Victoria and NSW, has been extremely important, not only its research but its extension where we can see what we need to do,” Ron says.
“And also with the help from the Department of Ag in Victoria and the CSIRO Ron told the ABC a few years ago both have been so extremely important as well.
“I think these three organisations certainly need some accolades for getting us to where we have got today.
“When we got it established I initially stepped back because I was also president of the VFF grains group at the time.
“But when I did come back into it as a board member in 2010 it was fast becoming a stable and effective organisation and today it is going very well, with a good team at the helm.”
As well as changing the big picture, MSF was having a major impact on Ron’s own farm, where strategies such as no-till, rotations and more effective use of inputs have boosted production, cut costs and turned some of the nation’s riskiest farming country into a very viable proposition.
“On our place I guess you would say we were very traditional,” Ron says.
“We ran fallow, cultivated and used the same fertiliser program.
“No we are all no-till, are committed to rotations and are far more effective with our use of things such as urea.
“I won’t say we’re foolproof but by and large this is now a productive, solid farming area and so much better than it was before MSF came along.
“Through it all one of the main things has been the rotations.
“Apart from anything else, they are so effective in weed control.
“Grasses are a curse in any cropping area.
“If you can keep those grasses under control in your legume phases, and sometimes we might run two legumes in a row, peas and vetch or peas and lentils or whatever, however we do it, we aim to get two grass control phases in the legume crops before you get back into cereals.”
The family farm circa 2024 is nothing like the business Ron started with in the nascent days of MSF.
Today he has all but handed its future to son Nick, who has been getting to call all the shots of late (“unless I happen to be in the paddock with him”, Ron laughs).
And while he might be reluctantly passing the baton to his son, the legacy he is handing on with it will certainly prove to be the real gift.
“When Nick and I were looking at it we agreed we were going to go the whole way with no-till, not be higgledy piggledy about it, but even then it took us five years, I reckon, to get it right, get the paddocks and soils used to it, but we never looked back.”
Across the family’s 9000 acres of cropping – with trade lambs usually brought in to tidy up the paddocks after harvest – things are now going very smoothly (although there were no sheep this harvest).
“It’s a fairly intensive system and monitoring is a big thing,” Ron says.
“We probably monitor weeds in paddocks three or four times a year and make sure we know what we’ve got.
“It doesn’t take very much grass in one year if you let it seed and let it go through and do another crop.
“It’s very quick to take over so you’ve got to watch it very closely and make sure you’ve got it under control.
“The no-till has also seen nitrogen levels up.
“It’s just an added benefit, though, I think from no-till, where all the legumes you put in bring a really good dose of natural nitrogen into the soil.
“You can certainly see the benefits in the following crops, especially when you go back to cereals.
“You know, I think it’s invaluable, the fact you can do that absolutely free: just transitioning nitrogen from the air into the soil.
“It is great.”
Even greater, Ron reckons, is seeing how much of your farm stays where it belongs – in the paddocks.
He recalls there being nothing worse than being home looking through the window or out in the shed on a windy day “watching your paddocks go past”.
Now with his new management program that is more a thing of the past – and a lot of that is thanks to Mallee Sustainable Farming.
