Machinery precision, operator skill key to successful transition to new irrigation system on ‘Wagaby’

With water a precious resource for Australian agriculture, it’s no wonder water storage, management and application methods are increasingly in the spotlight, and greater efficiency is being sought by farmers across the sector.

Just outside St George, in south-west Queensland, on the mixed farming property, ‘Wagaby’, Ian Todd is investing in a different water application system, which will lead to savings in terms of labour and machinery outputs, and even in the amount of water required for his 1200ha of irrigated paddocks.

Ian is in the process of converting these paddocks from a syphon to bankless, or surface, irrigation system, a practice being used by more farmers across Queensland and NSW properties.

“The bottomline for us is it takes six to eight people to make the syphon irrigation process work, and we have challenges finding the labour, so you have to find another way of irrigating,” Ian said.

“With bankless irrigation, we reduce the number of people required, cutting down the time needed to irrigate. There’s also water savings, and no impact on our yields, so it just makes sense for us.”

‘Wagaby’ staff member Chris Strickfuss is the man charged with converting the paddocks, laser-levelling these areas, and creating banks that divide the paddocks into bays of about 20ha each.

It takes him about two months for each paddock and the process has been ongoing across the property’s irrigated areas for the past few years. Chris gets the job done with a Case IH Steiger® tractor and a Horwood Bagshaw Grader Scraper, and in the past month, a new Case IH Steiger 555 and 14ft Horwood Bagshaw Grader Scraper have joined the ‘Wagaby’ machinery fleet.

Ian has always relied on Case IH tractors and sprayers, and Horwood Bagshaw implements, which he also used to sell when he had the Horwood Bagshaw (previously Alfarm) and Case IH machinery dealership in St George for 32 years.

The Case IH Steiger is the flagship of the Case IH tractor range, and Ian said the new 555hp model would assist with the additional power they needed at times, working alongside a fleet of Case IH Magnums.

Horwood Bagshaw Grader Scrapers have been at the forefront of efficient land levelling, ripping and soil management for more than 20 years, with ‘Wagaby’ relying on their revolutionary design that incorporates advanced laser technology.

Chris has been a member of Ian’s team for 27 years, working across all farming operations and clocking up, he estimates, about 100,000 hours behind the wheel of a Case IH Steiger with a Horwood Bagshaw bucket behind.

He gets particular satisfaction from the demanding, and highly precise, laser levelling task. In the time he’s worked on the property, he’s seen the equipment change dramatically, with the machinery and implements of today assisting with the precision required and making it easier to manage the likes of time and fatigue.

Chris began on a Case IH 9380 then moved to a Case IH STX375 and is now on his third 500+hp Case IH Steiger.

“We use a GPS system now for lasering, rather than a laser light … with the GPS running through the screen in our Case IH tractors. The tractors have a function now that’s linked to their hydraulics - you press a button and they work through an auto sequence where the tractor lifts the cutting edge (of the laser bucket) up and down to the height you want,” he said.

“They also have GPS steering, and there was none of that when I started. You also used a paper map, now it’s all on the screen, and colour-coded to assist with the likes of where you need to go, what you’ve done, and where the edge of your paddocks are.

“It’s obviously pretty technical now, but once you pick it up, it does assist with the tasks you’re doing, and makes it easier for people to learn the different roles,” Chris said.

The bankless system for ‘Wagaby’ has been designed by Glenn Lyons, who runs GL Water Services in St George. Glenn has been pioneering the system in the region for more than 15 years, helping adapt it to local conditions from a method used for rice growing in southern NSW.

He said about 75 per cent of farmers in the region had already, or were in the process of converting from syphons to a bankless system, with these new practices now being adopted across Queensland and NSW.

“Irrigation labour is reduced significantly, and the new layouts are much more friendly for large farming equipment. It’s probably 20 to 30 per cent more efficient on the number of hectares you get through each day,” Glenn said.

This is due to the fact the head ditch and rotobuck area needed for syphons make it necessary for the tractor to do a three-point turn at the end of each run. Whereas in a bankless system, the tractor can turn around on the service road or in some cases continue into the next field. Simpler turning around for equipment will help to bring forward the transition to autonomous tractors in the irrigation sector.

“Depending on the design, there’s also water savings of up to 15 per cent, and no yield penalty,” Glenn said.

The team at ‘Wagaby’ has planted cotton into their irrigated paddocks in the past month, and the harvesting of the wheat has begun, using the property’s own Case IH Axial-Flow 7240 and another 7240 belonging to a local contractor.

For more information on the Case IH range of machinery, contact your local dealer.