Case Study - Teamed Up with Tanks for Maximum Efficiency

Efficiency is about reducing the cost of growing and it is a reflection of farmer’s bottom lines. You need water to put a crop in. That is no secret. However, with limited water as a result of drought, shrinking groundwater reserves, drying rivers, and inefficient farming methods, what measures are you taking to make your cropping operation more efficient? Read on to find out how J & B Sawyer and HJ Hyde & Co have teamed up together to get the most efficient setup for their spraying operations.

How you capture or source water is as important as how you store water. This opportunity has been realised for the Sawyers and Hydes at a particular location where their farms are close to each other. They have opted to get their water into one location which is sourced from some windmills and topped up with scheme water. You may be catching water in your dams on your property however have you thought about how much of this valuable resource is evaporating in the warmer months? A better and more efficient way is to get this precious water from your dams and into tanks where the evaporation is almost nothing. 

The Best Water Catchment Methods in Australia

This leads us onto the next point of efficiency that the Sawyers and Hydes have capitalised on. When you commit to moving water from your sources to strategic locations on your property it costs money. It costs in time and labour to dig and install, in some cases kilometers of piping. Then it costs to keep the water moving. You either need to invest in and maintain windmills or solar pumps or electric pumps, unless you are lucky enough to have gravity on your side. Either way the Sawyers and Hydes have joined up and strategically placed a number of tanks all in one location meaning less costs to get this water from their point A to point B. 

A good example of efficiency and its misconception is big farm equipment. Yes, a larger tractor with larger additions costs more money to buy. However, there are plenty of solid arguments about why such a setup is actually cheaper - and they are. The reason being is that you can do more with a larger tractor towing larger or wider add-ons than you can with a smaller version of the same. Now with spraying on the adjoining property's of Sawyers and Hydes, Sawyers have three Hydra Boom setups while Hydes have two spraying rigs. For this many spray rigs you need a lot of water - 280,000 ltr of water and 100,000 ltrs of Liquid Fertiliser in fact. This ensures that the Sawyer's and Hydes never have the issue of water holding up their spraying operations.

The 3 questions we have for your are:

• Could you seriously reduce the amount of water you are losing from evaporation out of dams?
• Have you thought about teaming up with your neighbor to reduce the cost of piping water to a strategic location on your farms?
• Do you have to move around to multiple locations on your farm to secure enough water to ensure you can get your spraying in what is often a short window of time?