Knowing he always wanted to be a farmer, Gavin Charlton along with his wife Gemma and their five children reside on the family farm in WA.
Owners/managers
Gavin and Gemma Charlton and their eldest son Jack Charlton (22) all reside on the farm.
Millie (21) and Ella Charlton (18) are currently at university in Perth.
Tully (14) and Clancy Charlton (12) are currently at boarding school.
Evette and Eric Charlton (Gavin’s parents) are both retired and living in Perth.
Community involvement
The Charlton family has had extensive involvement in local football, netball, hockey and cricket clubs as coaches and committee members, plus the local school’s Parents and Citizens (P&C).
Property name
Woodville
Rainfall
Annual district average: 330mm
Total farm area
Arable: 6000ha
Non-arable: 300ha
Owned: 6300ha
Share-farmed/leased: Nil
Soil types
Heavy loam, tamma gravel, sandplain (and everything in between).
Crops grown
Wheat (50 per cent), barley (30
per cent), legumes/canola (20 per cent).
Employees
One full-time employee, Stuart Dawson – who has worked with the Charlton family for more than seven years – and casual workers at seeding and harvest.
Machinery
Tractors: JD9570RT, JD8320R
Seed Rig: 18.3m DBS and Bourgault AirCart
Spray Rig: Goldacres G6036
Harvester: Two JD9670 and JD9650
Trucks: Road Train and B Double
When was the farming district settled?
Yorkrakine was settled in 1908.
What is the history of your farm? When was it settled and by who?
My great-grandfather, John Watson Charlton, came here from South Australia when he was 52 and was one of the 50 original settlers in Yorkrakine. My father, Eric Charlton, is well-known in WA, not only as a farmer but also as a member of Parliament for the WA National Party and a former Minister for Transport. While Dad was the Minister for Transport, my brother Michael and I managed the farm under his guidance. Tragically, Michael was killed in December 1989, so now I manage the farm with my wife Gemma and son Jack. Jack is the fifth generation of Charltons to farm Woodville.
What made you want to be a farmer?
After boarding at Aquinas College in Perth for five years, I came straight home to work on the farm. I always knew I wanted to be a farmer – I enjoyed the variety of jobs and being on the land.
What is your average crop rotation?
We grow wheat, barley, canola and lupins. We haven’t locked in a set rotation, it’s a moving target, largely dependent on weeds. Most often, we grow wheat, barley, canola, then go back to wheat. We have grown some wheat-on-wheat, barley-on-barley, and then wheat after barley, which has surprisingly gone ok.
Which grains/commodities do you tend to focus on?
We grow 50 per cent wheat, 30 per cent barley, and 20 per cent canola or lupins. This year because we had such a late start to the season and minimal sub soil moisture, we didn’t plant our canola and lupins. Because of this we’re going to take the opportunity to lime and deep rip the paddocks.
Which varieties of those grains work best in your area?
We grow mostly Scepter, which performs well for us. We have phased Mace out. This year we have also grown Magenta and Chief as Clearfield wheat. We grow mostly APW. We haven’t gone into the noodle wheats. The price is good, but if everyone gets into it the premium won’t be there and the market is showing that at the moment. We grow LaTrobe and Spartacus barley. We are in a malting region, but on average we would only get 30 per cent malt.
Can you quantify yield and quality benefits from certain varieties?
I think the newer varieties offer more potential with yield and better protein. In a good year, when everything goes right, the newer varieties have the capability to yield very well. However, when we don’t get the rain, it doesn’t matter what variety we’ve planted.
Are you 100 per cent no-till or do you use a mix of tillage practices?
We have been using knife points for 25 years and have been on controlled traffic for 15 years. There are definite benefits in using the system – the soils are very soft and we use a lot less fuel. We wear the points out on the tram lines and you can tell when the sprayer or machines are not on the tram lines because the engine loads up and starts working a lot harder. We are currently using an 18.3m DBS bar, a 36.6m sprayer and have reluctantly gone back to 9.15m header fronts to match up. It’s a compromise for us, but we are sticking at it. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Initially we weren’t sowing our 3m tram lines. We found we were controlling the weeds well in the paddock but not on the tram lines. We are now sowing the tram lines with a single disc for weed competition.
What is your fertiliser regime?
We apply 6-8 units P, 10-15 units of K, plus 15-20 units N (FlexiN) down the tube at sowing. Depending on how the season develops and rotations, we will come back with Urea or FlexiN sometime before the middle of August.
What is your normal herbicide regime?
Ryegrass, radish and brome grass are our main winter weed problems. We try to mix our chemical groups up as best we can.
How do you manage herbicide resistance?
We try to use every tool available and start at harvest time. We used a chaff cart for a couple of years – about 15 years ago – but because we were only catching what went over the sieves, we found some of the weed seeds were going out with the straw. We started windrowing all our cereals, cutting as short as we can, and burning the rows.
We would rather be saving our residue, but the weeds that make it through to harvest time are the ones you don’t want and if you can destroy a good percentage of these, it has to help. We use Paraquat wherever we can in the knockdown to prolong the effectiveness of glyphosate and try not to rely on one chemical, but rather mix the chemical groups.
What is your normal fungicide and pesticide regime?
We include Impact with the FlexiN. Tilt goes out with the radish spray on barley and the rest is on a “need to” basis.
Do you use off-farm soil and plant testing?
We do quite a bit of soil testing to keep a good bearing on levels of phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and pH.Knowing these levels can save us spending money on fertiliser when it’s not needed.
Do you belong to a farm management group?
We have a local chemical agronomy group, which is not aligned with a chemical company. An independent agronomist runs three meetings a year and helps us bounce ideas off of each other. He provides one-on-one support as well. We are not tied to a re-seller agronomist as we buy chemicals from a neighbour who has been instrumental in reducing the price of chemicals for farmers all over Australia.
What is your harvesting routine?
We have around 1500 tonne of storage on-farm. We use this for anything off-spec at harvest and sell when the opportunity arises. We have our own trucks too, so deliver the rest of our crop to our local CBH ourselves and can market that to whoever we want at any time.
How do you sell/market your crop?
We will look at forward sales if the price has
got a “three” in front of it. However, we won’t sell more than one tonne/ha early, even if the price is good, because we are never sure if we will get the grain. In the last five years we have held onto grain after harvest to wait for the prices to come good. If the price does increase then we don’t mind hanging onto it until July.
Who do you rely on for grain marketing advice?
We receive daily SMS updates from lots of different companies to keep track of the price. We have a good relationship with the people at Glencore Agriculture. If they don’t have the best price at the time, they’re happy to tell us who is paying more on the day. Because of this relationship, if Glencore Agriculture are around the money we tend to go with them.
What are the three biggest challenges/risks to your farm business?
1. Rainfall is a constant challenge and risk. Our worst year in 2002 was under one tonne/ha and we have had a few three tonne years and other years are anywhere in between.
2. Frost can be very costly. We had a very good growing season in 2016 but lost half of our yield to frost. We have had three years in the last 15 when barley has also been very badly affected by later frosts, with the fully-formed grain literally caving into nothing.
3. We are noticing significant soil pH changes with increased production which is also a big challenge.
How do you try to manage those challenges/risks?
1. We try to conserve any summer rainfall with weed spraying. Getting the crop out of the ground is our number one priority. Whilst there are risks, we have had good results from dry seeding. This year, 100 per cent of our crop went in dry, and fortunately we had 50mm come through late May-early June.
2. There is not much we can do about frost. Delaying sowing to avoid frost doesn’t seem to matter if the frost is a severe one. Because of this, we don’t delay sowing as we’ll lose too much potential in the good seasons.
3. We have been applying lime for many years to correct soil pH and have recently started to work it in to the top five-to-six inches of soil.
What technological developments do you foresee improving your family farm?
Technologies that are being developed to target specific weeds have a lot of potential for our farm, especially for summer weed spraying and potentially broadleaf in cereals. It will be interesting watching that space over the coming years.
Do you have a business diversification strategy?
We used to buy sheep in over summer and run them on our stubbles. However, with wind erosion, especially on our field peas, we were losing more in top soil than we were making out of the sheep, so we stopped doing that in 2003.We haven’t opted to invest off-farm. Our focus has been to invest back into the farm by increasing the size of the property. When I came home from school 30 years ago, our property was 800ha. Over that time, we have gradually increased the property to 6000ha. Five years ago, we bought a farm south of Tammin where there’s historically a better finish.
Do you have future expansion plans?
Not a lot of land has changed hands around here. Land is tightly held by farming families and 95 per cent of it tends to be bought by neighbours. Land values dropped off a bit five years ago after a couple of dry years but have probably picked up those losses again now.
Do you think food production has a good future in Australia?
Yes, we are confident in the future of food production in Australia. There will be challenges along the way, that’s nothing new. One of the difficulties for us is the need for casual staff at the busy times – seeding and harvest. We run our own trucks and three headers and finding capable staff for these roles is not always easy. I would like to see the government encourage Australians to remain on the land rather than have overseas corporates buying land so that the profits go overseas. The Australian farmer buying land is going to spend money in Australia which is going to provide far more benefit to our country.
Will you encourage your children to return to the farm?
We encourage all our children to do something they like doing. Whatever that may be is fine with us. Our eldest son Jack has been home since 2015 after working in Perth for a year. Five or six young lads who have come back to the area in recent years, which has been very good for the community and the footy club!
What is your retirement/succession plan?
We are not yet 50 so are not ready for retirement. However, we would like to do some travelling in the future and will have more opportunity to do that now Jack is home.
Can you tell us a little more about your community involvement?
I started playing footy while at boarding school in 1986. In 1995 Tammin and Kellerberrin amalgamated and I played for 12 years after that amalgamation, and was lucky enough to win a couple of flags and play over 320 games. I was coach of the Kellerberrin-Tammin Football Club (KATS) in 2015 and 2016 (premiers in 2016) too. Jack currently plays for and is a committee member of the KATS Football Club. Both Gemma and I have been involved for many years with various junior sporting clubs, including hockey, netball, football and cricket as well as an 18-year association with the local school P&C.
How has Kellerberrin-Tammin Football Club benefited from Glencore Agriculture’s grain sponsorship?
The Kellerberrin-Tammin Football Club has done exceptionally well out of the Glencore Agriculture grain sponsorship program, having received more than $40,000 since the program started. As it costs a lot to run a footy club, and raising the money is getting left to fewer and fewer people, sponsorship like this from Glencore Agriculture has been very well received and much appreciated.