Ifarm along with my wife Kylie around 250km south east of Perth in Western Australia.

We haven’t been hit as hard as farmers on the east from the fires this summer. Make no mistake, it has been very dry, but thankfully we haven’t had any fires. When I say it has been dry, I mean it has been very dry. Our rainfall for 2019 was about half of what the norm is.

This is very much grain and sheep country here. We have 6,000ac, which might seem like a lot, but in reality, we’re quite a small-to-average farm. We are a family farm and my wife, Kylie and I get all our income from farming.

It has been a good spell for grain and sheep farmers in Western Australia. Prices have been pretty steady for a few years now, but the cost of farming is an expense that doesn’t want to slow down.

On the sheep side of things, we lamb around 4,500 ewes between April and May. It’s hard old time of it, with just us two and one farm staff member. Michael has been with us a while now. He’s South African and came to us after previously working on a farm in England. He’s great.

The sheep are 50% Merino and 50% Suffolk. All the ewes are Merino, as they’re good maternal animals and we breed Suffolk for terminal traits. The lambs all go to the WAMCO meat factory in Katanning, which is just down the road from us. The last batch of lambs we sent were somewhere around 10 months of age and made AUS$150 (€92) each.

Wool prices are pretty OK too. We get AUS100c/kg for the wool and the shearer costs, on average, AUS$7 per head. When all the costs are taken out, we work out at AUS$53 (€32.56)/sheep for their wool. The wool goes to Wagin, which is a trading town for wool and then on to Perth for export. I believe all the wool goes to China, where there is a strong demand.

The big challenge with sheep is blowfly. If you’re not on top of your game, you could lose hundreds to it every year.

On the grain side of the business, we grow wheat, oats, barley and canola (rapeseed). We harvest every November and December. The yields for the last harvest were good. The oats did 3.5t/ac, the wheat did 4t/ac, the barley averaged 4.5t/c and the canola did 1.5t/ac.

The prices vary from crop to crop and where you sold them, but we got AUS£370/t (€227/t) for the wheat – the canola is more than that. We mainly sell our crops through CBH (Co-operative Bulk Handling), who do all the marketing and selling of the product.

The fertilisers and sprays are very expensive. At an application rate of 110kg/ac, you’re looking at a fertiliser price of about AUS$700/t (€430/t).

The fertiliser prices have been rising every year. No one seems to be able to tell us why, but we keep on paying it no matter what because we have no choice.

We usually spread a compound of phosphorous and potassium and then we go in with urea after that.

Back to the weather and the climate to finish on. Climate change is real. We can’t go about with our heads buried in the sand thinking any different. But we have to be practical about it and not just radically change something for the sake of it. We can be more efficient and use better technology.

It’s not a case of me going out tomorrow and selling my tractors and replacing them with a horse. That won’t work. All farmers have to become more aware of their responsibilities and the general public need to be aware that farmers are doing right by the environment.