Spring Field Day Success

The West Midlands Group (WMG) annual Spring Field Day (SFD) was held on Tuesday 19 September, attended by 85 local farmers and industry representatives.
 
As the marquee event of the WMG calendar the SFD is the main opportunity for the group to showcase its hard work over the year and bring the local farming community together to experience in-person the latest and most relevant farming practices and industry advice.
 
Leading into the event, the WMG Team had the goal in mind of providing an entertaining field day that delivered something of value for everyone, whether it be cropping, livestock, pasture, or trial result related and with a key focus on soils and soil health. The WMG team feel that the day provided a successful realisation of this goal and were very pleased with both the great turnout and overall engagement.
 
With the field day split across two sides of the Velyere Farm site, the agenda consisted of the usual in-field concurrent sessions before lunch, a 50/50 split group Soil Pit Session & NVT Tour following, and a soil focused panel session in the afternoon.
 
Concurrent sessions focused on a range of topics including, herbicide packages for lupin, vetch, and chickpea (Harmohinder Dhammu, DPIRD), nitrogen and potassium crop nutrition (Isaac Gilchrist, Summit Fertilizers), Plozza ploughing 101 (Ben Plozza, Plozza Ploughs), accessing livestock markets in eastern Australia (Rob Kelly, Agora Livestock), vetch vs. serradella pasture companion species (Nathan Craig, WMG) and knowing if precision ag is right for you (Bindi Isbister, Agrarian Management).
 
After lunch the crowd was split in two, with half heading around the site on an NVT Tour with Living Farm’s Richard Devlin and representatives from crop breeding companies such as Intergrain, LongReach and Pacific Seeds. The other half of the crowd headed to what was by all accounts the highlight of the day, a 12-metre-long, 1.8-metre-deep soil pit, for a demonstration and Q&A session facilitated by Regional Soils Coordinator Jenni Clausen and featuring highly respected industry professionals Dr Stephen Davies, Wayne Parker (DPIRD) and Dr Fran Hoyle (SoilsWest).
 
The split group session was a change in the usual SFD format but was particularly successful, allowing all attendees to experience both the Soil Pit Session and NVT Tour and with plenty of time allotted for discussion and engagement. The day was rounded out with a panel session featuring presenters from throughout the day discussing the future of soil amelioration across the West Midlands region, as well as soil constraints and opportunities in general.
 
As an added bonus for those attendees that stuck around until the end of the day, local brewery Scene Brewing (funded by event sponsors Nutrien Ag Solutions) set up their tap trailer and provided fresh tap beer to accompany the usual Rabobank Sundowner and site host Peter Rathjen organised a surprise fire pit as the sun dipped below the clouds.
 
WMG would like to extend a very big thank you to site host Peter Rathjen and his team, all presenters and industry supporters, Badgingarra Fire Brigade & Community Centre for the lunch-time BBQ catering, and of course a huge thank you to those who travelled far and wide to attend the day.
 
For more information on the day, or any news on upcoming WMG events, trials and projects feel free to contact us on 9651 4008 or at comms@wmgroup.org.au.