Saving time through digital monitoring
“You can just feel from the weight and type of materials that INCYT uses that the quality is good - it’s heavy and made out of metal, not just cheap plastics.”
Size: 1,800 Hectares
Type: Irrigated & Dryland Cropping
Crops: Cotton, Faba Beans, Chickpeas, Wheat
Ben Swansbra used to spend a lot of his time during summer managing water on his property to irrigate his cotton crop. By constantly having to drive around to check weirs, ditches and channel levels, and manually recording numbers to identify trends and being able to adjust pumps, gates and valves when appropriate, he would spend all his waking hours monitoring - resulting in little sleep and no life outside of work. On top of this, he would also have to manually monitor the many fuel tanks on his property to ensure that none of them would run dry and cause issues.
When the NSW government announced the ‘Farms of the Future’ program, Ben decided to use these funds to digitise the most labor-intensive monitoring processes in his operation. After researching the different suppliers approved for this program, Ben decided to adopt INCYT’s technology as this would allow him to monitor the different field-level variables all at the same time, on the same dashboard.
Because Ben can now rely on the INCYT dashboard for monitoring his water infrastructure and fuel tanks, he spends a lot less time driving around monitoring his farm, and instead is able to focus on other tasks at hand. His ‘mental load’ has also decreased by not having to wonder what the water or fuel levels are, but instead is able to see this information instantaneously on his phone. Because of this, Ben is able to spend more time with his family and get more sleep during peak-irrigation times.
Implementing technology on a third generation farm
Third generation farmer Ben Swansbra and his family farm at ‘Lochelgin’, Wee Waa, NSW, where they crop around 1,800 hectares of mainly cotton, faba beans, chickpeas and wheat - both irrigated and dryland. Cotton is the only crop that gets irrigated, with all winter crops grown as dryland crops only. Ben has been farming since 2005, the same year the family started to use Greenstar, John Deere’s guidance control system. That wasn’t the first modern technology adopted on Lochelgin however, Ben explains: “Way before I joined the family operation, my grandfather and father started to use the John Deere four row cotton picker; from what I heard from them that was a huge change for us. The increase in efficiency and picking speed was something that revolutionised what they were doing.”
“What I can remember is when we started to use the ‘Beeline’ guidance system, that was my job and I spent a lot of time on that in my early teens!” says Ben. Greenstar, and the John Deere Operations Centre, now play an increasingly important role for Ben with most of his equipment such as tractors and cotton picker connected to the cloud, with the ability to download variable rate maps onto the tractor and upload as-applied maps back to the cloud. Ben and his agronomist also use Agworld for their digital record keeping of spray records and other information. Ben: “With having such an extensive history in using the latest technology as a family and having an innovative nature, implementing INCYT felt natural to us as we have a desire for best-in-class technology.”
Saving time
With only Ben, his father, and a small number of employees to run the farming operation year-round, certain times of the year can be really busy for everyone involved, says Ben: “Irrigating takes up a lot of time over summer, to the point where we don’t really have a life some weeks. We still irrigate with siphons, so we’re very busy managing water with the large number of different channels and weirs on the farm, all the while we’re trying to balance everything across the farm as well; you just end up spending every minute of your day driving around to check water levels and writing them down manually to keep track of what’s happening so you can pick up the trends. What it comes down to is that over Christmas and New Years, peak irrigation season, we really don’t get to sleep much. This is one of the reasons why we were so keen to start working with INCYT’s technology so we can monitor everything right from our phone.”
Ben continues: “When the New South Wales government started their ‘Farms of the Future’ program I joined one of their educational sessions to learn about the different technologies and the providers we could choose from. Next thing I knew Simon (INCYT Managing Director) came to town with his trailer (the INCYT Discovery Centre) and I got to talk to him, and hold and see the technology and the quality of it. You can just feel from the weight and type of materials that INCYT uses that the quality is good - it’s heavy and made out of metal, not just cheap plastics. Then, once I came on board, the rest of the process of getting the government rebates and getting my equipment was made very easy by INCYT’s staff."
Access to the right information at the right time
Having access to the right information at all times is key for every grower, and Ben Swansbra is no exception: “I had been craving tech for a long time, as I feel that it can help me reduce the ‘mental load’ that comes with managing a complex farming operation such as ours. Just take our diesel tanks as an example: we don’t have to fill them that often, but I often wonder how many days since a particular tank has had fuel and where its fuel level is at now. And when do I have to order fuel again? The only thing you can do then is go around the farm to dip all the fuel tanks, which takes a lot of time. It’s a mental load I don’t need and I can be doing much better things at the same time while thinking about other things that make a difference rather than doing menial jobs.”
Once INCYT delivered Ben’s equipment, the rest was easy, says Ben: “I decided I wanted to install the equipment myself as I could see from the website that it’s pretty simple. It’s all plug and play, and there really isn’t much more to it. I just made up some brackets that suit our specific farming operation, which is something easy that every farmer can do. I made the brackets so that I can easily switch them between locations, as we have four water rotations - one for each year of the four year rotation - and I wanted to use the same brackets and mounting holes for each section of the farm. With INCYT’s equipment and the way it functions, that’s all easy done. Just having those brackets and sensors in place allows me to set my custom alarms in the INCYT app, which lets me know when a ditch reaches a certain level, so I know when I need to go and shut a gate before it runs over a ditch. This allows me to go and get some sleep knowing that I’ve set a height alarm so that I get woken up if the water hasn’t settled and I need to rectify something in a hurry.”
Ben also uses an INCYT weather station and inversion tower so he no longer has to rely on information from weather stations that are located over 50 kilometers from his farm. Ben concludes with: “Just knowing the exact conditions on our farm ensures that I know when I can or can’t be out there spraying, without having to make a guess based on a far-away weather station. This gives me peace of mind that I’m doing the right thing but also gives me the backup I need should I get audited by the EPA, which is becoming more common with some of the spray drift issues experienced in the wider area. I think that really sums up the benefit of INCYT for me: Having continuous peace of mind that I know exactly what is happening on my farm, whether it’s water levels, fuel levels or weather conditions, so I can act accordingly and make sure I’m doing the right thing in every possible aspect of our operation.”