1 part conventional, 2 parts biological and a dash of biodynamics

Today I arrived at the wonderfully warm home of Cam and Rocky McKellar's - a suggestion by a fellow Nuffield Lindsay Hargreaves, and what a great one. Cam and Rocky farm in New South Wales, cropping corn, chickpeas, wheat, sunflowers and cattle. Cam and Rocky also have a large farm scale compost operation. Cam uses a mixture of 'conventional', biological and is now experimenting with biodynamic farming methods.

Cam makes good use of the cattle to strip graze forages and stubbles as part of the weed attack, cultivation and nutrient cycling.

Cam adds some bulky solid nutrients such as lime into the compost which is spread at around 3t/ha with a conventional muck spreader. Cam makes his own liquid nutrient blend to apply through a sprayer +/- any pesticides as necessary as the crop requires it. Based on leaf tissue analysis and brix meter readings.

They're also using kelp and zinc treated seed for an initial crop boost and fulvic and humic acids in with roundup and fertiliser application. Organic matters have been rising and soil life building whilst inorganic inputs have been diminishing.

Cam also showed me the old wool shed and shearers accomodation - unused for around 20 years, it was really interesting to see some of the areas farming history still alive on farm.

Culture and Cartoons

Due to flight scheduling I have been in Rio for the last few days adn have taken the opportunity to read some more soil books on the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches in the morning and begin writing my report when the sun gets too hot in the afternoon. It also gets very humid here which makes things a bit uncomfortable - orchids happily grow on trees here it's so hot and humid. Anyway, we had Lukes last day covering the cultural scene. Lapa steps Christ the Redeemer statue, and Sugar Loaf Mountain.

The Lapa Steps were created by an artist who couldn't sell his work because he lived in a dangerous part of town. He decided to create something to bring tourists to the area to buy his work. He started to tile the steps outside his studio and has been at it ever since. There are tiles from all over the world. There are even tiles with the beetles, a red telephone box and the simpsons on.

Christ the Redeemer was just as you'd imagine, a big statue on the top of a very hot rock. He has the best views of the city from the top of his mountain and it's a very steep journey up to him. He was built by the church to show any visitors they are a Catholic country, which many Brazilians dispute as they are a very cultural melting pot.

Sugar Loaf Mountain is not the biggest mountain in the Rio bay by any means but the cable car project was always planned for this one - Christ didn't bag his hill 'till much later, but any way, it's a two cable car hop and was the third cable car in the world. It has been running since 1912 and the mayor only finally granted planning permission on the premise that it would only count if the project was going in 100 years time! An impressive feet of engineering - the first mountain can be hiked up but the second, the true sugar loaf has to be climbed, it's faces are incredibly steep and not a single man (was recorded) to have died on this project.

So off now to Australia...

A crash by any other name just ain't the same!

Heading up through Paraguay towards Filadelphia and the Mennonite farming colonies the road threats have changed a little, no longer just pots holes, great chunks of road missing and cows not teathered by the road, lose along side / in the road - all made for a pretty interesting 450kms - which only started after a girl ran into the back of our hire Mitsubishi 4x4 in here Suzuki Swift. It's strange having a car accident in a hire car with all the drama being acted out in another language - you don't really feel part of it!

The Mennonites are a peaceful religious group from all over the world. Those that settled in the 'Chaco' (northern Paraguay, known as the thorny dessert) were largely from Canada and Germany hoping to escape conscription and compulsory service in the 1970's they were offered the chance to colonize a new promised farmland to protect the area from Bolivian invaision. In return they were aloud to set up their own communities and laws (still today they don't have to pay taxes). Obviously the first settlers had to build an awful lot, from houses to farm machinery to railroads -largely out of planks of wood - saw anyone?

The area is hot, windy and dry. Rains do come but unpredictably and bush fires and frequent. The soil is sandy which compounds the problems further, however the mennonites have been determined to succeed and in 40 years have established prosperous towns and businesses, large dairy co-ops and grow a mirriad of crops and raise a range of animals including dairy & beef cattle, goats and pigs. The crops are largely grass for grazing and forage, soyabeans, cotton, cassava and some maize / sorghum -as a visiting agronomist it amazed me they could grow anything and all without irrigation.

Wind and water erosion are big problems, shelter belts of trees have been and still are being planted to help alleviate the issue, however the evidence suggests they're only contributing a small amount. On the other hand their is no topsoil to blow away as there never has been any!

On the way home we stopped in at the Pecurray pig rehab project - the sound these guys make with their jaws is like hearing a man trap snap shut - scarry stuff - they handle them with a small scale cattle coural system. can't balme them either!

And purely for your entertainment - a sign from a toilet door at the Mennonite museum!

Gears 2, 4 and window glass need not apply

Today was a simple task: travel on abus from Puerto Iguazu to Asuncion. We got to the bus station with plenty of time, let them know we were there and enquired 'will the bus wait for us to get our passports stamped?' A strange look came over the tellers face -'hold on', rapid phonecall in frantic spanish = 'a car will come and get you, the border is very busy today and the bus will not wait'. OK. The car came, we got to the Argentine border, que, stamp, continue. Over the bridge, que some more, stamp - brazilian border. Pull up at the Brazilian bus station, driver points at the empty booth for his bus company and disappears.

We ascertain that the booth will be manned from 3pm post siesta, about 45 mins time. 3.15pm (not bad) man with no english appears - I convey the issue and task left to complete, he understands, more frantic spanish phone calls - 'follow me' grab bags, bundle (with him) into a taxi, head to??? -Ah Brazilian exit border. Exit taxi, power walk in 40 degrees with all luggage across the traffic lanes (who don't stop) to the border, stamp = out of brazil. Our friend jumps on a bus, we follow, standing with the huge bags of domestic traffic waiting to be filled with cheap electricals duty free in Paraguay - huge stocking density and virtually not moving for half an hour over the bridge.

Get off the bus, cross back over the steadily moving (still not stopping) traffic lanes laden with bags at high speed to the Paraguay border -strict rule here - Jolly foreigner will wait, all locals will be given priority! Eventually our friend appears and things speed up - stamp = into Paraguay. Back across the road, into moving taxi??? (decided a policy of throwing my bag in and jumping in behind it swiftly followed by Lukes bag and then him was best).

This taxi was unreal -safe to say it would've been scrapped on UK roads back in the late 80's. The area we are now in is crazy - proper South America. This city is billed as the duty free electrical goods capital of south america and is crammed full of taxi bikes, buses, children, rubbish, stalls, beeping horns and smoggy traffic.

We finally get to the bus station and our friend leaves us propped up against boxes of chicken sweating in the sun, bags of sugar and flasks stacked up waiting to be shipped on a bus. He assures us not long and disappears - 'our hope of reaching Asuncion with him' I'm beginning to wonder? But no, a bus arrives and we climb aboard reaching Asuncion just shy of 1.5hrs later than we first thought - not bad considering.

The night was topped off by our taxi ride from the bus station to the hotel - our taxi (well, it's probably quicker tpo mention what it DID have) found gears 1,3 and 5 unnecceassary, equally un necessary are glass in the windows, door handles, window switches, door liners, boot liner, outside door handle, hand brake - two gears and brakes were fine by me by that point - a little glass to keep the street kids out would've been nice but that's probably me being a hoity toity western woman!

So now, goodnight after one of the most taxing journeys I 've ever made.

Soil Erosion on a truely MASSIVE scale

Today was a day off farm touring as we head from Arable Argentina to Paraguay - we were under strict instructions from Dan Simms to go to the Iguazu falls. The largest falls in the world - they create the border from Brazil to Argentina. You can view them from either side but the Argentinian one is supposed to be the most spectacular - and it certainly lived up to it. 100% humidity and 45 degrees but well worth it -we were both after the lastest new diet craze and this is sure to do it having walked about 5km's in these 'juicy' conditions - in long clothes and swamped in mozzi repellant and sun cream - painting a nice picture eh?

This was all topped off on our way home by our first tropical storm which cleared the air nicely. -Got a little bit exciting though when the bus drivers windscreen wipers stopped working - he wasn't worried, just went a bit faster.

The water at the falls was once clear -now it is reddy brown like all the water we have seen in South America - why? since they have been clearing the rainforest in Brazil all the water flowing from their has picked up soil along the way -soil which used to be held by the forest cover and is now washed away every time there is rainfall, washing it's way through the continent, silting and clouding up every water way it passes through. -Soil erosion on a truly MASSIVE scale.

There was plenty of wildlife to see at the falls, from the swallows flying through the sheets of water to the spectacular aray of butterflies and lizards, even two inch long ants - fancy those in your pants?

The north of Argentina (where we are now) is very tropical, growing all sorts of fruits -mangoes, limes, pineapples, olives, tomatoes etc. It has a very warm and humid climate and makes booking a hostel with a swimming pool a necessity! We head for Paraquay tommorrow, another long bus journey to the capital - Asuncion and from there out to the Mennonite farming colonies - a group of farmers who have successfully tammed some of the harshest farmland on earth.

Farming next to the big boys

Two days, two farms. The largest first ‘El Descanso’ 12,000 acres - a mere minnow compared to it’s neighbour ‘La Catalina’ a 100,000 acre farm. These land masses all in one lump are so hard to get your head around – ‘’it goes on for 10km in that direction, and 5 in that’’ I won’t even try!

El Descanso has the few (250) suckler cattle that the farm owns. All the land would once have been cattle land, the fund have removed all the fences on the farms – the only signs remaining of the cattle are the massive water tanks and troughs that stand at the corner of four fields. The boundaries are now dictated by soil type and rotations by what crops they can grow on the soil types.

At the main holding we saw a contractor waiting to start soyabean seeding. A 10m drill with only a 220hp tractor on the front – such a low requirement because of both the topography and the extremely shallow depth the machine is working at.

Neither of these farms had irrigation with El Descanso receiving 950mm of rain a year.
The farms don’t have tramlines as they stop running through the crop at any early stage (because of the roundup and few fungicides programme). The contractors use GPS for the early spray and fertiliser applications and the crop can close back over and compensate later. Wheat is the exception –non GM and sprayed later so tram lining may come in here in time.

GM soyabean is the key to the system here. It is a legume – so fixing N. It’s roundup ready – so cleans weeds out. It’s a short growing season – so 3 crops in 2 years. It’ll grow in very poor soil types. In rotation with conventional wheat, and triple stacked GM corn and the possibilities of sunflower, linseed, lucerne… the system –the rotation works. Crops that encourage plenty of soil life and trash return that acts as moisture saving mulch, crops with excellent financial returns (without yields like ours).

Argentina has turned my perspective on GM – a bit. The system the US are using is frightening and extremely unsustainable – here in Argentina it is a well placed tool. If we could just have roundup ready OSR my god life would be different. Just one total cleaning crop, in conjunction with conventional cropping to ‘save’ the soil life.

We have been extremley fortunate during our stay to sample the beef from the farm on both nights. The first cooked for us by their Gaucho on a traditional barbeque and the second with a simple pasta dish which was absolutely to die for - bigger clothes are going to be needed all round! We can't establish what they do to their beef over here but it is by far the best I have ever tasted in the world - accompanied off course by copious amounts of Malbec red wine.

We've learnt so many things over these three days about so many aspects of farming and business I can't begin to list them all. The main themes, people, education and drive. I know this trip will have a huge effect on me and the way I farm / run my business. So about 1400km's later, a ridiculous number of empty bottles, copious mossy bites and three road kill dogs (observed), it's back to Buenos Aires now and reality -firstly in the shape of a youth hostel, secondly in the shape of burger and chips for tea, thirdly in the shape of booking a 20hour bus journey!

All aboard RyanAir

Today saw the culmination of a trip I have been planning for over eight months -to Jim McCarthy's farm. We are not being lucky enough just to see one farm however! Last niht before Jim flew he rung us to say, guys hire a car -so we did, well we tried when we turned up it transpired my hiring on a Spanish website hadn't gone so well, hey ho it was OK. We have by now met up with Julian Hughes an Irish scholar and his partner Val, so we packed the four of us and all of our luggage into a Peugot 207 -at least we had air con this time!

(above - rice in the newly contoured fields)

We got to Jims office in Buenos Aires and sitting on the step had to be an Aussie - shades on, tanned and brown R. M. Wiliams. - Murray, and he was to join us with Jim. 5 minutes later a very pastey looking gentleman approaches who Julian immediately greets - Thomas an irish Nuffield, also joining the tour, and last but by no means least a taxi arrives and out jumps the ever charismatic irishman, Mr Jim McCarthy.

Quick change of clothes for Jim, tour of his office for us and on the road to farm number one. We will be visiting 3 in 3 days, several hundred miles apart. The farm is 3000ha and immaculate. Growing soyabeans, maize, wheat and now rice in rotation the farm has recently been contoured (gently graded with the natural slopes) to allow water management primarily for the rice but also the soyabeans. The maize is mostly centre point irrigated. No livestock which is unusual for Argentina. They are generally achieving three crops every two years with warmth, sunshine and adequate water this place appears to be 'the' perfect farm. Jim has an excellent manager - Hogey who's job it is to organise the running of the farm. They own only two tractors -all operations are carried out by specialist contractors. A central database allows information to move between Buenos aires, the investors and the farms.

The soil was fantastic. About 1.5m of topsoil, a little phosphate deficient with about 3% OM. Everything (Julian and I check out the rooting)

was direct drilled to combat wind and water erosion

(when it rains it really lets rip) and in fairness we didn't see and signs of compaction except for the occasional headland. GM maize and soyabean in the rotation is obviously a help for now but we will see how it affects them in the future. -This is a very much more sustainable use of GM than I saw in the states.