A truck full of hay drives onto the weighbridge on a cloudy autumn morning in Caldwell, NSW Riverina.
Peter Gardiner momentarily leaves the nearby office and to press some buttons to weigh the load and catch the driver. The truck soon started its journey. It turned out of the red dirt driveway and moved slowly onto the quiet bitumen road. A supplier will deliver this fresh smelling oaten hay to a dairy farm at Corryong, in Victoria’s north east.
The hay trade for Peter and his brother Adam has been slow this season. This is because of plenty of homegrown feed in eastern Australia and fewer livestock because of the drought. Riding the supply and deman is a challenging balance for any farmer.d wave of the Australian fodder industry is just part and parcel of the business.
“If it’s green everywhere, domestically, you are just sitting and have to wait,” Peter said. “It’s a game of patience.” “You either sell everything in a dry year or you cannot sell anything,” Adam added. Traditionally, the hay export market has assisted Gardiner Bros Farms to somewhat mitigate the risk of fluctuating domestic demand.
Adam described it as a “back-up”. But like many things in agriculture, even the best laid plans can go awry.
“This year we had planned to take 5000 tonnes directly off the paddock (to the exporter),” Adam said. “We have storage capacity for 20,000 hay bales here. This would help with cash flow and storage.
However, because of the rain, everyone was confused. They didn’t know what was happening.” They didn’t take the 5000 tonne, they took 17 tonne.” What the brothers did next has laid the foundations for the future of their business.
Adam and Peter bought 6000 Dorper sheep and 400 cattle, mostly cows and calves. They keep the latter in a new feedlot on the property. The former will enter pens to prevent them from grazing on crops.
Livestock will be how Adam and Peter will add value to their hay and diversify their business risk. Or, as they like to put it – it’s their “insurance”.
“This year there will be more return feeding it (the hay) to sheep and cattle as opposed to giving it away,” Adam said. “We needed to create our own options, which is what we are trying to do with buying livestock.”
Someone stored other Gardiner hay in paddocks. Caps protect the fodder from the weather.
However, the best quality hay is under three large open front Entegra hay shed designs. Each shed size is 9m or 10 large square bales high, with a total of 3300 fitting under the steel building. Farmers usually build 6m or 7.5m hay sheds facing the east with storage for 1700 to 2500 bales. These sheds face to the north to allow faster drying and easier loading.
In March, hay began to go to exporters. However, Adam and Peter still had to wait for demand to increase. “We will be cash negative for the first six months and hopefully be back in the positive,” Adam said. “We do it every other year, in this case it will just be an 18-month cycle, not 12 months.”
Adam and Peter discuss the hay sector and its ups and downs like experts. Hard to believe they are just 32 and 29 years old. But fodder production is in their blood.
Growing up at Bamawm in northern Victoria, their dad Greg grew Lucerne. At 19 years old, Adam moved to the NSW Riverina and bought a farm.
A few years later, Peter followed. The brothers have slowly built their landholding to 15,000 acres, which is like having 10 farms. Hay wasn’t initially part of the brother’s cropping rotation at Caldwell, NSW.
In their first few years in the Riverina, they were hesitant to change. They stuck to the usual rice and wheat mix, with or without sheep.
The area gets about 350mm of rain each year. However, dry spells have begun to affect grain yields. Also, relying on the temporary irrigation water market is less reliable than the uneven rainfall.
Growing hay on their new farms made sense for the brothers, but it was harder to get local service providers onside. “(Agronomists) were all anti-hay back then,” Adam said. “They were ready to grow a grain crop, but the costs are lower for hay.” “After a hay crop, there are fewer weeds. Our chemical use would be half of what a grain farmer uses.”
They kept going, and now they grow both hay and grain. They also raise livestock. The type of crop they plant depends on the season. “It’s not hard to see what’s better: growing one and a half tons of grain or cutting four to five tons of hay from the same field,” Peter said.
Adam said, “The main costs of hay happen during harvest. If you aren’t prepared, it can get exorbitantly expensive. “It can turn a lot of people off, especially if you don’t have hay storage.”
Part of their farm conversion plan included removing rice banks and about 15,000 acres (6070ha) of irrigation infrastructure. “We’ve got substantial piles of pipes and stops and things lying around,” Peter joked.
“In case we discuss irrigation again,” Adam said with a laugh. “Never say never,” his brother concluded. You get the impression; these brother’s never rule anything out completely.
Adam and Peter used some of their dad’s hay clients. These clients were dairy farmers from the Bamawm area. They did this when they first started production.
Later, they decided to supply the export market. Volume and quality were the key to their “foot in the door” with hay exporters. In the first year, they sent 15,000 large, rectangular square bales to the export market. These bales were green and had a good sugar content after a great season.
Last year, a different story unfolded. During the 2020 harvest the business produced about 40,000 bales of hay, but untimely rains affected quality.
It rained for three-to-four weeks – every weekend- while the hay was curing. The brothers didn’t touch the hay during this time.
“We leave it until we are ready to bale it,” Adam said. “We don’t touch it, don’t rake it. Because we have a fairly extensive program we can’t just go and flick all the rows over.”
“Then (doing that) you lose what colour you have got,” Peter said. “Our weather damaged hay still has remarkably good colour.”
It had been six months since Gardiner Bros Farms began cutting hay. In March, trucks just started delivering some bales to exporters.
“Peter said, ‘A couple of years ago, it was dry. We took hay straight from the paddock to exporters.’” “The exporters though, they generally pay us for storage as well”.
The brothers explained that exporters always request a feed test for the hay they buy. However, 80 percent of the quality grading depends on how the fodder looks. “You could have the best feed test with an exporter, but if it visually falls out of spec, they will knock it down,” Adam said.
“This year we had exceptionally good feed tested hay, but visually it was not good enough for them.” It would fit a second-grade hay, but visually it’s a fifth-grade hay, and that’s what they will pay you on.”
Managing this business risk is how Adam and Peter’s sheds and livestock fit into their farm strategy. “With the farm storage, we can sit it there, we are not price takers,” Adam said. “Exporters prefer shed items over outside items any day. This is especially true in June, July, and August.”
“The bales we have started moving now – to export – they were all shedded,” Peter said. “We always put what we think is our better hay into storage sheds for obvious reasons. Now, the hay quality outside is still okay, but as soon as bays in the sheds start emptying, we will refill them.”
“If we do get substantial rainfall on it, then we will take the top bale off and shed the rest,” Adam said. These “waste” bales – which can also include the bottom bale from a stack – go directly into the brother’s livestock operation.
New blocks added into the Gardiner Bros Farms rotation generally get sown to barley for a couple of years. After that, they move into oats, for a “good clean up of weeds”. This system gives the brothers the option to cut barley for hay to supplement their oaten fodder production. Paddock preparation has been key to ensuring quality hay and a smoother harvest.
Disc-chaining oaten hay paddocks helps remove stubble by mulching it back into the soil. It also flattens the ground after seeding, which prevents soil clods in hay. “We had a 12-inch air seeder when we grew more grain, but we switched back to a 10-inch seeder, so we sow it and then roll it after sowing,” Peter said.
“It gets another pass with a heavy roller to flatten the clogs. We usually flatten it by about 2 inches.” This means there’s no dust in the cutter bar and no dust in the hay. The cutter bar doesn’t gum-up and we don’t have to clean it every two hours, plus there’s no clods in the hay.”
Depending on the season, Adam and Peter top-dress their crops as soon as they are out of the ground to encourage more tillering. Farmers generally begin cutting hay in September, and they bale all hay at less than 14 percent moisture. Producers do not use preservatives for fodder conservation.
Like all agriculture, hay production comes with its share of challenges. Dealing with rain events is still exceptionally challenging. A wet harvest needs a backup plan for hay. This is important if the hay is no longer good for the export market.
“There’s a lot of people this year caught out, first time growers,” Peter said. “Their hay has fallen out of spec and they haven’t got sheds and there’s stacks of hay sitting everywhere.” But risks exist that farmers can’t control from inside the farmgate.
In March 2021, the industry learned that 25 of Australia’s 28 hay export plants lost their registration to export to China. The registrations for these plants expired on February 28, 2021. The General Administration of Chinese Customs received applications to re-register them. This news followed unofficial Chinese customs bans on some Australian produce including barley, beef and cotton.
Global trade tensions haven’t concerned Adam and Peter. “Whether it doesn’t come from us, it comes from another country and we just fill that gap,” Adam said. “It’s like playing Tetris.”
The brothers create their own opportunities. They have many ideas to bring more certainty to their business. Continual growth’s also on the cards with scale efficiencies proving cost effective and a way to maintain staff.
Gardiner Bros Farms employs seven full time staff, year-round, with numbers increasing up to 20 during harvest. “Management is certainly a lot easier when you have scale,” Peter said. “Say we’ve got 5000 bales to go and stack, we can give someone that job and they can go out there for a week. Were as if you had 500 bales they would be back asking for the next job.”
“We now have six months of carting to the port for two workers this season. Two other workers will cart hay for the rest of the year,” Adam added. “We can set the whole year up.”
The brothers have accomplished a lot in just over ten years. Now, with all their needed machines and tools, it will be easier to grow. They do not tie themselves to any specific production system. Their plans can change based on what nature or the market brings.
“We always have a finger in a few different pies,” Adam said. “We haven’t come up with the right solution yet (for risk management) but we are always working on something.”
“We can sit and wait,” Peter added. “After a good year, there’s a bad year on the way and after a bad year there’s a good year on the way.” This cyclical nature of their industry keeps them on their toes.
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