Hi there, I’m Tom Simson and I farm with my wife and two children on the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales. Our family farm “The Plantation” is located near Premer and Bundella, where we run a mixed farming enterprise.
The breakdown of our 5,700ha property consists of 3,900ha of dryland farming, 315ha of overhead irrigation and 1,480ha of grazing country. We crop bread wheat, faba beans and chickpeas in our winter rotation and grain sorghum as part of our summer rotation. Our average rainfall is hard to pick these days, generally we sit around 550mm with most of our rainfall being summer dominant.
Our season so far is going great, we have been lucky to get under a few storms of which none have been overly damaging to our summer program. Sadly, others in the area have not been so lucky and have been heavily affected by hail.
We have had a busy summer on farm keeping fallows clean, heavily targeting weeds such as Milk Thistle, Barnyard Grass, and Feathertop Rhodes. Other than fallow management, we have been pre-applying fertiliser for our winter cereals and preparing for our upcoming sorghum harvest.
Some of the challenges we are currently facing are chemical resistance to problematic weeds and the continued rise in machinery costs. Farm input costs are a concern when managing the long-term economic sustainability of our business.
In comparison, I feel that the opportunities within the farming industry and for myself personally to be endless! That is why I am proud to be an Aussie grain grower. It’s just a thriving time for Aussie Ag, as an industry we have been forced to become super-efficient with our major inputs. The drive for innovation continues to push new limits to our production models, matched with an ever-growing technology industry, there really seems to limitless opportunities for us.