He also doesn’t like getting out of the cab to fill up the tank too often, so when technology that reduced this by about half finally became commercially available, he was always going to be a quick adopter.
Particularly having gained an early insight into the technology several years ago,
The Bammanns, based at their home farm Akeringa, near Cleve, continuously crop 6070 hectares to wheat, barley, canola, lentils, peas and lupins.
Due to the dry conditions this season, 1215ha of non-wetting sand and shallow, stony country was not sown to lupins and peas.
A disc sowing system has placed pressure on weed control and management of herbicide-resistant weeds, so careful crop rotation has been important.
Barley grass is the main problem weed and has shown strong resistance to Group A FOP chemistry and some resistance to Group A DIM herbicides.
Mr Bammann said seed-set control at harvest was difficult because barley grass sheds.
Brome grass is another difficult weed on non-wetting sands and while ryegrass is under control, other weeds to manage can include turnips, Indian hedge mustard and sow thistle broadleaf species, as well as melons, fleabane, potato weed, caltrop and silverleaf nightshade, during summer.
“In lentils we can have two summer sprays, a knockdown with a pre-emergent and sometimes a double knock, then a grass herbicide and possibly a second grass spray, a bug spray, up to three fungicide applications, then crop-topping,’’ Mr Bammann said.
“We can have up to nine to 10 passes.
“In cereals, we generally have a couple of summer sprays, knockdowns, pre-emergents and then broadleaf sprays, so we can have four to five applications.’’
The Bammanns have been controlled traffic farming since 2002, initially set on two metre centres using a home-made marker arm before moving out to 3m centres.
