Wants GROWERS ACROSS THE GLOBE KEEP THE PIPELINE FLOWING. WHEAT By Greg Lamp W hen brothers Warwick, Miles and Ewan Read pull into their southeastern Australian fields to start planting, they’re not thinking about how they’re helping to fill a supply chain of grain that will be used to feed the world. Just like farmers in the U.S., they’re driven to get the best yield out of each acre, then the best price. “With land prices up to $3,000 an acre, we can’t afford to make mistakes,” says Warwick about their wheat, barley, canola and sheep operation. The Reads farm more than 10,000 acres near Stoneleigh on the southern tip of Victoria, Australia, a two-hour drive west from Melbourne. In the world’s third-largest wheat-producing country, Australia’s farmers aren’t so different from their American counterparts, except for their location Down Under and, of course, that Aussie accent. And seasons are flopped, so as U.S. farmers finish harvesting, Australia farmers begin planting. Producing an average of 25 million tons of wheat annually, Australia is the fourth-largest wheat exporter. With only 23 million people, the nation can’t consume all that grain, so the additional tonnage ends up in the export market. Around the world, more than 222 million acres of wheat are harvested every year, making it the most planted crop and the largest source of vegetable protein in the world. It’s also a crop that’s harvested somewhere around the globe every six weeks. In Australia, the Reads are part of that wheat-producing machine, and they are getting better at using precision agriculture technology to maximize efficiency and yield. Last year, their wheat crop averaged 72 bushels an acre. “Our biggest limitations are with rainfall and soil variability in our paddocks (fields), so we’ve been soil mapping in 2 1 / 2 -acre grids and using variable-rate fertilizer application,” Warwick says. “We used to blanket-spread lime at 2 tons per hectare, but we’ll be cutting back on that with more precise placement.” The Reads are so sold on the > Your CHS Connection 11