Virtual fencing, carbon emissions and improving drainage all food for thought

Seven presentations on the day covered the theme, with topics such as virtual fencing, carbon emissions and improving drainage to increase pasture production, all covered.

Speakers included Manypeaks beef producer Kent Rochester, K & M Farming; Harvest Road, head of sustainability and environment, Scott Strachan; Coles WA livestock manager Campbell Nettleton; Smarter Tourism Technology founder and chief executive officer Hamish Fell and Bell Pasture Seeds', Rob Bell, Elgin.

Kent Rochester, Manypeaks

Mr Rochester focused his presentation on the implementation of virtual fencing on his property, what it has entailed, the benefits and the setbacks he has encountered.

He said virtual fencing wasn't just new to him, but everyone.

"Virtual fencing involves fitting the cattle with a solar-powered neckband and then drawing up a virtual boundary or 'fence' on the iPad or computer," Mr Rochester said.

"It usually takes the new animals without any others to learn off, up to four days to grasp what is going on after they are fitted with the neckbands.

"When they approach the virtual fence an audio tone/beep is sounded and if they ignore that and move closer to the virtual fence, they get a small electric pulse.

"They learn really quick and about 90 per cent of them, when they hear the tone, they turn around."

When drawing up the virtual fences Mr Rochester said it was important to have a water point in the area and to not to make the paddock too small or too narrow, because if you did the animals would just keep bouncing off one beep to another.

"You really need to make sure there is at least 30 metres between the fences, so the cattle have enough space to figure it out," he said.

"Also when you allocate more area and move the virtual fences, the cattle don't know they have moved and it takes a while for them to work it out."

Mr Rochester said by using this technology, it has allowed them to intensively graze their property and move small mobs a number of times a day, to make the most of their grass.

"Last year through the grazing season, we were moving the mobs fitted with neckbands up to nine to 10 times a day, every couple of hours to give them more grass," he said.

"Through the winter and spring last year we were rotationally grazing all our cattle, something we have done for a while.

"Last year however we only had a short window to play with, but we were able to push the weight gain on the cattle fitted with the neckbands.

"We were able to increase our weight gain by 10-20pc in the period and at the same time we were using 20pc less area and 20pc less grass per animal.

"In the first 30 days the cattle had the neckbands on, they were putting on more than one kilogram per day more than the rest of the farm, which was awesome."

Currently the Rochesters are using 400 neckbands after putting their first ones on in the middle of the year last year and they haven't had many issues with the set up.

"We have only lost three or four over that time, a couple of those were screws coming loose," Mr Rochester said.

He said it would be interesting to see what the future looked like in the virtual fencing space.

"I don't think it will be very long before we will be able to set up a rolling fence that might be able to move forward at a couple of metres an hour," Mr Rochester said.

"But for us it has been so far so good, but it will still be a learning process for a while."

Scott Strachan, Harvest Road

Dr Strachan's presentation was entitled 'A beginners guide to carbon neutral'.

He discussed why we should be looking at reducing emissions, the different categories/scopes of carbon emissions, the main emissions in a farming enterprise, the Harvest Road Group Operation's Carbon Footprint and Reduction Option report published in 2022, how you can reduce carbon emissions, soil and vegetation sequestration, carbon calculations and carbon credits.

Mr Strachan said there were many reasons why producers should be looking at reducing their carbon emissions.

"The first is because it is good for business," Mr Strachan said.

"If you can improve your herd efficiency or improve the efficiency of your inputs, it is good for the bottom line.

"The second is market access, Australia exports 70pc of its agricultural outputs and in 2021 65pc of Australia's red meat exports went to countries that have requirements or starting to have requirements around joining the global methane pledge."

The third reason Mr Strachan said was customer expectations.

"Companies including the likes of Coles, Woolworths and McDonalds all have an emission target," he said

"The supply chains are beginning to ask questions and eventually to meet their targets they will have to really understand it through the supply chain.

"The last reason is government regulation."

When it came to carbon counting, Mr Strachan said emissions were broken into three scopes or categories.

Scope one is your direct emissions and they are what are produced by sources within the boundary of an organisation due to its activities.

For livestock operations, he said these were your rumen animals (cattle/sheep).

"They are your largest emissions but this category also includes things like fertiliser and manure," Mr Strachan said.

Scope two are third party organisations, which are burning emissions on your behalf.

The most common in this scope is the coal being burnt on behalf of you for the electricity you are using.

Scope three emissions are those created in your supply chain, generated by a third party.

These include things such as freight, purchased in cattle and feed production.

Mr Strachan said when carbon counting, scope three emissions easily made up 80-90pc of your emissions, but they were also the hardest to eliminate as they were the third party ones which you have no control over.

When it comes to the three main emissions in a farming enterprise, Mr Strachan explained they were nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide

He said methane from livestock was generally the main livestock emission source and it can contribute to a grazing operation up to 80-90pc of its emissions.

"Carbon dioxide usually comes from the use of fossil fuel like using a diesel generator or tractors, trucks, while nitrous oxide comes from either manure or fertilisers," Mr Strachan said.

The Harvest Road Group Operation's Carbon Footprint and Reduction Option report published in 2022 was the result of an 18-month research collaboration between the Harvest Road Group, Meat & Livestock Australia and the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

Mr Strachan said the project represented the first time that agricultural emissions from a full supply chain had been taken into account.

"The project found the WA beef supply chain emission number was 12.1kg of carbon dioxide per 1kg of liveweight (CO2-e/kg LW) which at the point of time was 13pc lower than the national average," he said.

"It also found there were a number of opportunities to be able to reduce livestock emissions.

"Improved weaning rates, growth rates, reduced mortality, reduced emissions by 10pc, improved residual feed intake saw emissions reduced by 15pc and improved genetics were found to reduce emissions by 6pc.

"Herd emissions are going to be a livestock enterprise's largest emission source on the property, so anything you can do to reduce these will not only be good for the bank balance but they will also reduce your carbon emissions."

Lotfeeding was also looked at in the project and Mr Strachan said when they just looked at grain finished animals, the emission number was 10.7kg CO2-e/kg LW, which is 20pc lower than that of a grass finished animal due to being able to get those animals to weight quicker and turning them off faster.

"When we are talking about livestock emissions it has a lot to do with the length of time that animal is on earth, the quicker we can turn it off, the less emissions we have," he said.

Mr Strachan spoke on the other sources of emissions in the Harvest Road Group supply chain, including the diesel powered generators on their stations and the biogas they produce at Harvey Beef and what they have done to reduce them.

On the stations they were replacing the diesel generators with solar and battery plants, while at Harvey Beef they have a covered anaerobic lagoon (CAL).

"All the CAL is a lined dam with a cover, by having the cover we capture the biogas, before the cover the gases just used to go into the atmosphere as emissions.

"Not only does it reduce the site's carbon emissions but we can also use the biogas created on site and this has helped reduce our natural gas use.

"We have the potential to earn carbon credits from this project."

Mr Strachan highlighted soil and vegetation sequestration opportunities they were undertaking and looking at.

At their Koojan Downs feed facility, they have a registered soil carbon project where they are taking the manure from the pen, composting it and then spreading it on other parts of the property.

"There is also the potential for us to generate carbon credits from it as well," he said.

Calculating your net carbon emissions was also covered.

"When doing your calculation, you need to think about all three categories of emissions," Mr Strachan said.

"Once you have your total emission, you can take off your sequestrations be it trees or soil and the figure left is your net carbon emissions.

"If you want to go to a carbon neutral product you then need to net that out either with additional sequestration on property or purchase carbon credits."

Campbell Nettleton, Coles

Mr Nettleton's presentation focused on where carbon fits into Coles' greater business and its Coles Finest Carbon Neutral beef range.

He highlighted where carbon fits in the Coles supply chain, particularly its scope three emissions, which is the carbon Coles takes on from its producers, as it needs to report them to the government.

Mr Nettleton said to understand Coles' scope three emissions and where they sat, it went to a cross section of its supply base and they needed to understand the carbon in their businesses.

"We asked them a range of simple questions like where does their energy come from, is it fuel or is it electricity, what their fertiliser usage was etc," he said.

"There were also questions around their herd, like weaning weights and weaning percentage, so we could ascertain how much beef they can produce.

"From that data we collected we were able to calculate a carbon footprint for these individual suppliers and we went back to them with this number."

One of the biggest things Mr Nettleton said Coles found from looking at their scope three emission, was that the producers they worked with were some of the best in Australia.

"The way our seasons run and when we calve down, means a lot of the calves we produce are processed within 12 months and in the worst case by no later than 18 months of age," he said.

"The weight we get into our cattle so quickly, puts us at the forefront of cattle production.

"The producers we are working with are very productive and there is not much they can tweak to reduce their emissions."

Mr Nettleton gave a run down on the Coles Finest Carbon Neutral Beef range, which they started selling in 2023.

He said it was supplied by three producers in WA, one of those was an owner breeder and the other two essentially trade the stock.

"It is a very small part of our offering but it is a very integral part of our offering," Mr Nettleton said.

"There are seven cuts in the carbon neutral product range.

"It makes up only 5pc of our weekly production and it is set for a certain demographic.

"The secondary cuts from the carcase that don't go into the carbon neutral range, go back into normal butcher production and are sold as an everyday product."

As it was a high value product with some of the steaks costing $22 each, Mr Nettleton said it was important they get the eating quality right each time for the consumer.

"We need to make sure our producers are supplying an animal so that every time the consumer has a steak the eating quality is the same," he said.

"One of the biggest drivers we have found in supplying a consistent quality is that the animal needs to have a daily weight gain of no less than 1kg per day for its whole life.

"And in WA we smash this figure out of the park - in WA we probably have a daily weight gain of 1.3-1.5kg depending on the time of year."

When it comes to the price the producers were getting for supplying this product, Mr Nettleton said Coles paid a premium for the product, but there was more work involved for the producers as they needed to supply Coles with a lot more information about their enterprises.

He said Coles won't ever sell all of its meat as carbon neutral as it can't do it and not every farmer wants to be carbon neutral.

Hamish Fell, Smarter Tourism Technology

Mr Fell focused his presentation on a couple of new technologies which could be used onfarm to improve efficiencies.

His presentation entitled 'Technology on the Farm: Practical Ways IoT Sensors turn Data into Dollars' looked at what Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) were and included some examples of how they can be used onfarm.

Mr Fell said IoT was any device that connected to the internet that doesn't require human input to transfer information and can be used for automation.

"They are anything like smoke alarms, security cameras, home smart switches, baby monitors etc," Mr Fell said.

LoRaWAN is a network that allows battery-operated devices to wirelessly connect and send data over the internet.

Mr Fell said LoRaWAN was awesome.

"It is a long range network which operates at a low frequency, a low power level and is encrypted so it is complete and secure," he said.

"It is a licence-free spectrum and doesn't rely on GPS.

"It has high capacity and you can run tens of thousands of sensors through these networks.

"You can mix and match sensors on it depending on what you want to do.

"The devices connect via a gateway and provide near real-time data."

He said LoRaWAN and IoT sensors were not expensive and everyone's needs for them were going to be different, but you could build-in what you wanted with them.

After explaining how IoT sensors and LoRaWAN works, Mr Fell went through a number of practical examples how they could be used onfarm - including an automated watering system.

He said you could put a sensor on the water tank and set it so when the tank reached 20pc full, it sents a message to the gateway.

"From there a message is sent to a sensor on the pump telling it to turn on," Mr Fell said.

"Then once the tank is full, the sensor sends another message back to the gateway, which then sends a message to the pump to switch off.

"A message then can be sent to the farmer to say the tank is full."

Rob Bell, Bell Pasture Seeds

The Bell family's enterprise comprises 1416 hectares set aside for seed production for its pasture seed business and in addition to this, it supplies 50 cattle a fortnight to Coles for its grassfed brand and has a small honey business producing six to seven tonnes of honey a year.

At the start of his presentation Mr Bell gave a quick run down on the family's cattle enterprise and its use of a program called Black Box to track everything.

He said Black Box was new to WA and it generatesd very important data to help run their business.

"What we do is we take all the Optimweigh data for the cattle we collect in the paddock, the Agrinous data we get from the saleyards when we buy the cattle, our kill sheets and run them through Black Box," Mr Bell said.

"It analyses the data and it can tell us everything about the cattle we have bought in, including how much weight they have put on, the dollars they have made, whose cattle are better than whose.

"We see it as vital to our business, as you need to have data behind you, to make good decisions.

"The days have gone when you can just chuck the cattle out in the paddock and hope for the best.

"It allows us to know exactly what is happening and what lines of cattle are performing."

Mr Bell focused the rest of his presentation on his experiences with tile drainage on their property and the benefits it has added.

He said having good drainage on the property was crucial to production.

"Basically because of where we farm, we get all our rainfall in a really compressed time which means the water tends to sit and doesn't drain away," Mr Bell said.

"We go from good dry paddocks we can work on to unfarmable land.

"But with the tile drainage it is dry after two inches of rain and we can go out there and get any job done."

Importantly, Mr Bell said the tile drainage took away the waterlogging stress on their pastures and crops.

"Plants in a waterlogged environment become stressed," he said

"It's not rainfall that dictates how much our crops yield or how much grass we grow, it is the stress they are under.

"If it doesn't rain the plant stresses, but if it gets too much water it stresses as well and doesn't grow.

"It is stress that does the plants in."

Mr Bell said tile drains only took away the water which was excessive in the soil profile.

"Once the soil is fully saturated then tile drains take the excess away," he said

"So you are not robbing your plants of water and you are not taking away from your growing season, you are just taking away what is excess and what the plants can't utilise.

"With the tile drainage we have put down we have seen better yields with our crops and pastures."

Mr Bell said tile drainage wasn't new, as the Romans did it - the difference is how we can do it faster and more efficiently.

"Initially we did a trial with it and found it improved our production, but it was expensive," Mr Bell said.

"So I travelled overseas to look for a machine which would do it better and cheaper and also to find out more information on the best way to do it.

"I found a machine, which is automated and does it all by itself.

"You just put in your start and stop point and it lays the pipe at 0.2pc gradient to make sure the water runs.

"I also learnt in my travels that by putting a 'sock' over the pipe, instead of leaving the pipe bare in the ground.

"The sock helps more than six times more water enter the pipe and it also helps the roots of the plant."

Mr Bell said the pipes were put in at a depth of 1.1 metres and their pipes were about 24m apart.

"It is a very low maintenance system," he said.

"If the pipe blocks, water bubbles to the surface like a spring which makes it easy to find, as the rest of the paddock is dry around it, so you just dig down.

"Not only is it low maintenance, it is also cheap to do and the pipe can be installed cost effectively.

"I install my pipe for less than $4 a metre now and that includes the cost of the pipe and 20 to 30 cents a metre installation."

Other benefits with tile drainage Mr Bell said were you get a 10-fold reduction in phosphate, and nitrates could be removed easily.

Attendees heard a short presentation from Bendigo Bank State manager Joe Emmens who discussed what farmers and pastoralists were doing across the State in terms of improving their sustainability and efficiencies to help with reducing carbon emissions.

Mr Emmens also gave a run down of what banking could look like in the future.

There was a video presentation from Colin Ford, Albany Farm Fresh Eggs and Frankland River Pork, who wasn't able to attend.

The presentation looked at the sustainability and diversification practices in his pork and egg enterprises.

Along with hearing the presentations from the various speakers, attendees also had the chance to view displays of machinery and equipment from the challenge's many sponsors.