CANFA Comment

1 Sept: New Orleans & Mexico City
Since our last update we spent a couple of days in the old French quarter of New Orleans - managed a swamp tour and dinner on a paddle steamer on the Mississippi, which was quite memorable.

We flew into Mexico a couple of days ago and had lunch at a beautiful old villa.It was very posh - the men had to wear a tie at least! We were treated like royalty but it was a wonderful experience. We didn't realise it at the time but we had 1942 tequila as a pre-lunch drink. It cost as much as the meal! Luckily, it was very nice!

Yesterday had a tour of the Presidential Palace frescos and cathedral (built on top of an Aztec pyramid). A lot of the buildings are leaning because Mexico City is built on top of a lake. It doesn't seem to stop 29 million people living here though. In the afternoon, we toured the ancient pyramids of the sun and the moon,set in beautiful countryside. Ray climbed both and I surprised myself in climbing the moon pyramid (feeling it now though).

Last night we went to the opera building and saw traditional folk dancing, which was very colourful and interesting.

We're off to Cimmyt at Teluco today. Unfortunately we couldn't line up Ken Sayre (the researcher we met in Germany and came to CANFA's conference in 2007), but we spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He is retired now but still coming in to work. We will meet up with David Bonnett, who Ray and I met last week while we were here.

From Teluco we're heading north into the countryside, visiting farms. We've only 10 days left of this wonderful trip, but we're missing everyone.

Anne Williams

27 - 29 August: Chicago, Kentucky, Memphis, New Orleans (USA)

Since Chiciago we have seen farms along the way mostly growing corn and soybeans with some wheat as we move further down. All we saw were working closely with university extension officers to try to extend their yields. In that race they may have lost sight of optiminising gross margins due to excessive inputs (seed and high land costs). Land prices have sky-rocketed with higher commodity prices.

We were enlighted by Dr Rattan Lal who was head researcher into carbon sequestration and a government advisor. He said that he was keen to come to our place to see large areas of chickpeas growing because back in India, where he grew up, the largest paddock was 0.5 ha.

We also went to a farm promoting cover crops after grain crops where we met Dr Rafiq Islam, who gave us a better insight into biological farming nitrogen utilisation. We are keen to keep in contact with this researcher as he was willing to discuss our sap tests results.

Progressing further down to Kentucky, the soils are very much more challenging with impervious clay layers only 12 inches down. They are trying to overcome it with rye grass as a cover crop as the roots may break through this layer.

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Well here we are in New Orleans! After leaving Kentucky we travelled down to Nashville and then on to Memphis. In Nashville we toured the music museum which was very good and that night went to the Grand Old Ophry. This was live country music going out over radio (and has been since 1925). It was a great night and found a new love in the music.

In Memphis we had a tour of Gracelands, through the house and gardens - certainly worth a visit. We stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel which was decked out in 1950/60 decore and watched The King live play in a few concerts in the dining room.

The interstate highways are an extremely efficient transport system, all dual carriage ways making travelling very easy.

Having a great time but will be heading back off to Mexico again after tomorrow for a couple of weeks, which should be great.

Anne Williams

24 Aug: Columbus via Chicago, USA
Ray and I left Cimmyt and the group earlier in a chaufer driven car to arrive at Mexico Airport to find that they upgraded us to business class (they said that they needed to redistribute the weight in the plane? Ask no questions - just accept it all. As a consequence we had a great flight to Chicago. We were up at 3.10 am though to catch up with John Lawrie's group.

We had a long way to come here to Columbus but managed to fit in a couple of farm visits on the way. John and the crew tried to make us envious of the week we missed with them. The visit to Dwyne Beck in south Dakota and to Edwin Blosser (compost making) were apparently the two outstanding visits.

Tonight we are off to dinner at the Ihio University with Dr Randal Reeder (who spent four months with Neville Gould at Trangie some years ago) and Professor Rattan Lal (a soil carbon specialist), and a few others who we are yet to meet. We are looking forward to it.

Anne Williams

19 Aug: Dallas, Texas
After another couple of flights, here we are in Dallas ready to leave tomorrow for Mexico. We're having a great time!

In St Louis we saw Monsanto's headquarters - 2,500 employees and 5,000 all up in St Louis.They spend more on ag research than the USDA does.

We went to Gavilon Grain Elevators, after which a couple of Texans lead us on a visit to their farms - pretty impressive. They are having more than a month of temps above 100F and in the midst of a serious drought which they are starting to compare to the 1930's Dust Bowl, but this time without the dust storms. Despite the dry they are still harvesting some crops such as sunflowers and cotton.

We had lunch at a real Texan bar at the Fort Worth Stock Yards - they had saddles as bar stools!

A free day tomorrow before another flight to Mexico which we are all greatly looking forward to.

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22 Aug: Cimmyt, Mexico
Hi there from Mexico City, our last visit on the GRDC’s The way we were trip.

Yesterday we went to Cimmyt and met the farm manager Fernando Delgardo (pictured here in wheat trials at Cimmyt) who ran an excellent experimental station with a lot of emphasis on breeding wheat and corn for international partners, but always kept in mind his obligation to improve the local farming systems that are around 1 acre per farmer (with livestock included). The chief breeder, Dr Ravi Singh from Sydney Uni, gave us an excellent insight into how plant breeding for wheat works and their ambition to be ahead of the next global catastrophe in wheat diseases. He was able to quote wheat breeds, like Cook and Hartog, that we direct descendants of Mexican Cimmyt breeding programs.

Australian, Dr David Bonnett showed us his trials pre-breeding to bring back the genetics of ancient grasses and durum wheats to bring more diversity into the genome pool, bringing hybrid vigour back into the breeding program so that they may be selected to put into the main line of breeding. We are privledged to met such clever people as we have travelled.

We are visiting the Australian Ambassador this afternoon and back to the headquarters of Cimmyt tomorrow before we fly back to Chicago to catch up with John Lawrie's tour of USA and Mexico. It will be great to catch up with them.

Anne Williams

CANFA was recently sent a Youtube link showing the Cross Slot in action. The email gave the following details:

On 10 July, Kevin Larson, Willow City, North Dakota (USA) seeded a cover crop into standing yellow sweet clover residue. The sweet clover had been sprayed three days before seeding. Seeding rates (per acre) were:
Tank #1- 40lbs millet; 1lb yellow sweet clover; 2lbs pea innoculant

• Tank #2 - 40 lbs spring wheat
• Tank #3 - 50lbs yellow peas

Welcome to the new-look CANFA website and the CANFA Comment, a forum where we can discuss some of the issues generating discussion in the industry. We would encourage your feedback in this forum.

When the issue of stubble burning came up a few months ago, we had some interesting correspondence and comments forwarded to CANFA. CANFA Comment is another avenue for letting us know what you think about some of the big issues impacting on your farming business and your day-to-day activities.

Coming up in a couple of weeks is our annual conference and dinner. This is another great forum in our annual calendar for discussing the challenges, technology and progress being made in conservation farming practice. We’re privileged to have Phil Needham attending as a guest speaker this year – a man who has helped grain growers in Kentucky (USA) double their wheat yields over the past 20 years. Phil will be holding a planter school on CANFA’s block, “Cadonia”, Wellington the day before the conference, where he will look at the set-up criteria for various planters, seed and fertiliser placement, straw and chaff spreading and other factors critical to streamlining crop and stubble management. There’s more information available about the planter school on the the website – it’d be great to see you there.

Obviously, the Federal Government’s carbon tax has taken the headlines lately and there’s also been some keen interest in what’s happening in the Lachlan catchment with the State Government-sponsored trial soil carbon trading scheme. Governments (and farmers) throughout Australia will be closely watching the NSW trial as it could influence a national scheme for sequestering carbon in soil. These are some of the happenings and issues we’ll be writing about in future CANFA Comments.

Finally, the USA/Mexico no-till tour is not far away and we still have some places left to fill. The books are open on this trip until 2 August – check out the itinerary on the website and let us know ASAP if you’re interested in going. We’ll be using the CANFA Comment to report back on highlights of the trip as it happens between 13 August – 11 September.

- Neville Gould