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Farming News

The farm is green, soya green

6th April 2008

Conditions remain ideal and the crop is maturing fast.

18th March 2008

The last of the herbicide and fertilizer treatments have been applied and we now wait for the crop to develop to its full potential for harvesting in approximately May this year.

28th February 2008

We discontinued updates on our modern farming programme some time ago but to our surprise many people including those focussed on our heritage activities have complained and asked if we cannot possibly bring it back. This we have now done and it will be added to from time-to-time as the situation on the farm dictates. We have indeed seen an unprecedented rise in commodity prices over the last year but that has been counter balanced by a very substantial jump in the price of fertilizer, seed, diesel and other inputs. In fact farmers gross margins have not improved significantly, particularly for wheat and maize.

At present Sandstone Estates has 1200 ha of Soya beans which are nearing maturity. This turned out to be a good tactical planting move. Not only are Soya beans an exceptional rotational crop being a legume, which means that they are net nitrogen contributors to the soil, but South African produces far less Soya beans than they consume and it will in all probability be a crop with a future at Sandstone Estates.

Our Arable team is headed up by Peter Webb, assisted by Desmond Clarke and a team of competent arable staff, mostly machine operators. We follow a biological model which means that we practise minimum tillage and limit our ground engaging activities wherever possible. We are extremely concerned about our soil structure and the need to nurture it.

The summer season that is coming to an end has been very wet which created problems with almost unprecedented weed growth. However, since we believe in maintaining a soil cover in the form of mulch strong weed growth can often be turned to our advantage because of the density of the material that can result from a fallow land. We are currently experimenting with a number of techniques to control the mulch. An expensive implement has recently been imported from Australia called a stubble cruncher but it does not cope well with the South African conditions and has been unsuccessful. Because the biological model is neither organic nor conventional we are to a very large extent breaking new ground.

Our current Soya bean crop;