A couple of Victorian farmers are pushing against the boundaries of conventional dairy farming, taking risks to prove their long-term sustainability.
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Wilandra Farms’ owners, Sandra Jefford and Wilco Droppert, milk about 350 cows year-round off 380 hectares of sandy loam over clay soils, on flat to slightly undulating country at Clydebank in East Gippsland.
About 180ha of the farm can be irrigated. Two-thirds of the irrigation water is from bores, the remainder is from a pumping licence on the Avon River.
“We’re very reliant on irrigation,” Sandra said.
“The district’s long term average annual rainfall is about 600mm, but this is becoming more variable and unreliable.”
The herd is predominantly British Friesian and is split-calving. Cows calve from February to May, and August to mid-November.
The herd grazes multi-species pastures, including plantain and chicory, and the grain ration is 450kg/cow/year to encourage the milkers to rely on pasture for production and health.
Soil and pasture tests are used to identify plant and soil health, the level of trace elements, and what the soil microbes need for optimum performance and transferring nutrients to plants.
“We don’t yet have the Brix levels where we want them,” Sandra said.
“Some of the multi-species crops grow well, especially where we irrigate.”
Pasture is grazed to ensure groundcover and minimise the soil’s exposure to sun, wind and heavy rain; and Wilandra Farms’ herd grazes at a lower stocking rate than would normally be recommended in conventional farming.
Since moving to the Clydebank farm in 2011, and as part of their environmental focus, Sandra and Wilco have set aside three areas of their farm — altogether about 28ha — using fencing to exclude cattle and encourage natural regeneration and biodiversity restoration.
One area is a natural lagoon, one is grassland with mature red gum trees, and another is a natural saline wetland.
“They’re areas where we’re allowing nature to flourish,” Sandra said.
The couple has identified at least 90 species of birds that either visit or have made the farm their home.
Along the renewable energy journey, the couple has also realised the dams are a natural battery.
After embracing organic and regenerative practices within their farming system, Wilandra Farms sought and achieved organic accreditation for their milk. Accreditation is supported by an annual on-site audit.
Regenerating the soil is part of the couple’s plans to encourage more plant diversity and healthier soil, after decades of intensive production on the farm.
They’ve improved pasture cover and water retention in the soil and increased the soil carbon — with a focus on sequestering carbon on the farm.
They also have a project to plant 100,000 trees by 2030.
In 2017, deep in drought, Wilco and Sandra were horrified at how much money they spent irrigating.
“It was a very dry year,” Sandra said.
“We used 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 23,000 litres of diesel to irrigate pasture.
“Our energy costs were too much for a farm our size and production.
“We were responsible for massive greenhouse gas emissions, with huge energy bills — and we wanted to change both.”
So they decided to change their business model.
In 2018, they employed Rob Welke, of Water Pumping Institute, to undertake an energy audit.
“His report gave us an enormous amount of information, with recommendations for making our irrigation system more efficient, and how we could generate our own power, how we could reduce our carbon footprint, and how we can prepare the farm for the future,” Sandra said.
Those recommendations included changing the diameter of the pipeline from the bore and replacing at least one pump.
“So we installed Rob’s recommended submersible pump in the dam, with a greater flow capacity and a new pipe,” Sandra said.
“Both these changes alone were estimated to give us savings of about $18,000 per year, with a payback time of two years.
“If we hadn’t had the energy audit done, we wouldn’t have known.
“We also wanted to get away from using a diesel pump at the dam, and use two electric pumps at the dam.
“Installing the second pump at the dam gives us double the pumping capacity to previously, so we can shift as much water as we can during daylight hours.”
Then Steve Soutar, of Alternate Energy Innovations, helped Wilco and Sandra to develop a renewable energy action plan that enabled Wilandra Farms to be awarded funding through the Agriculture Energy Investment Plan, administered through Agriculture Victoria.
“That enabled us to upgrade some of our existing infrastructure and install solar panels and wind turbines within an integrated system,” Sandra said.
They also put a finance proposal to Rabobank, to enable them to reduce their energy and irrigation expenditure and acquire new equipment.
“Similar to many farms, our centre pivots had no automation, so someone had to be there to start the pivot, then go to the water sources to get the pumps started,” Sandra said.
“And the water sources are not next to the pivots, so there’s some distance and time involved.
“When pivots got stuck in wet spots, the water kept pumping so the wet spots got wetter.
“We also mainly irrigated at night, using off-peak power, so if a pivot stopped working during the night we didn’t know about it unless one of us woke up, saw the light had stopped, and then woke someone else up to say, ‘sorry, you’ve got to go outside’.”
It meant sleep was a luxury.
New infrastructure has included a new centre pivot, which means more country is under irrigation.
The pay-off for more irrigation is the cost of irrigating.
“So our power requirement has increased,” Sandra said.
“But in going to renewable energy, we don’t have to pay for as much grid power.
“Overall, our principal focus is to make tasks as energy efficient as possible, so we use less power.”
Back in 2017, Sandra and Wilco installed solar panels on the roof of the dairy.
But because all the panels face north, there is no shoulder power generated. And shoulder power generation is more optimal for milking times.
Gabriel Hakim was brought in to advise on energy efficiency in the dairy.
“We changed the timing for heating hot water,” Sandra said.
“We switched from using off-peak grid electricity to using power generated from the solar panels during the middle of the day, and that’s been a big advantage financially.”
A low vacuum pump replaced two old oil vacuum pumps. This has reduced power use and it’s a much cleaner operation, not requiring oil changes.
“Then we installed a CO2 heat pump to replace a conventional hot water service, which contributed about a 40 per cent reduction in energy use,” Sandra said.
“We added a small circulation pump to reticulate the hot water within the system. But, in hindsight and given the cost of that unit, our preference would be to install more solar panels on the dairy roof and a new conventional hot water service.
“Solar panels can do more than one job.”
They also installed a new bore to service the new heat exchanger.
“That’s worked really well and we’re monitoring it,” Sandra said.
They’ve had to install control boxes on the pivots and onto the river and bore pumps.
“We have 150 kW of solar (panels) and 20 kW of wind turbine energy (four 5kW wind turbines) at the back of the farm near the dam,” Sandra said.
“We think the wind turbines will play an important role in providing power in the afternoon and evening.
“And if it’s windy in the morning and we’re running a microgrid, that power could possibly be used in the dairy.
“The energy management system is a critical component. The system knows what to operate and when power is available, and it can juggle the load to match the power that’s available.”
They pump out of bores and the Avon River into the dam, using it as a water bank.
“The dam plays an important role for us,” Sandra said.
“If we need water into the dam, it starts pumping from a bore as soon as we have 10 kW of power available.
“As solar power increases during the day, this pump will speed up to more than 30 kW.
“As soon as we have 37 kW of power available at the dam, the bore pump turns off and the dam pump starts, and the centre pivot operates just like magic.”
The comparison in energy costs is considerable.
In the 2021 season, irrigation cost Wilandra Farms $80,000. In the 2022 season, it cost $1200.
“The huge decrease was due to energy efficient measures implemented, the rainfall last year, and the use of renewable energy,” Sandra said.
The reduced cost from electricity and fuel includes less driving, less wear and tear of the quad bikes or side-by-sides, and time saving.
“It’s less wear and tear on our bodies,” Sandra said.
“We’ve saved at least 15 hours a week.
“If a pivot does get bogged, it stops and the water pump turns off straight away.
“This new system has less damage to pivots and should lower our greenhouse gas emissions.”
Wilandra Farms has recently invested in two more pivots and brought those into the automated system.
Ultimately the couple wants to create a microgrid, and their system is geared towards accommodating this, along with battery storage.
“We’re also actively managing to increase soil carbon and we’ve registered a soil carbon project,” Sandra said.
Wilandra Farms is registered with the Victorian Government’s Farm Emissions Pilot Project, administered by Agriculture Victoria.
An emissions profile in 2021-22 identified cattle, dung, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide as major pollutants, with trees and soil health helping to balance that data.
Wilandra Farms’ principals hosted a field day on February 2 to enable farmers, agronomists and other agricultural technicians to learn more about how Sandra and Wilco have used technology to reduce irrigation energy costs by 80 per cent and labour input by about 15 hours/week, improve water efficiency, switch irrigation from night-time to daylight hours, and impact positively on Wilandra Farms’ carbon footprint.
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