Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries senior development extension officer, Anne Shepherd, said Mr Howard was an active participant in the Southern Highlands Central Queensland Sustainable Farming Systems group taking advantage of available technology to lift productivity and profitability.

Justin, a second generation farmer on the Howard family’s 4455 ha Galway Downs three-property aggregation adjoining Fairbairn Dam, began planting this year’s chickpea crop on April 25.

Planting continued through to the end of May to establish 1296ha to Moti and Jimbour varieties, the bulk of which was deep sown at 18-20cm to tap into the subsoil moisture under the predominantly open downs black soil cultivation.

With a potential 2008-09 market value of $595 a tonne, this crop is on track to repeat last year’s successful chickpea harvest which averaged 2.23 tonnes per hectare after timely in-crop rainfall of 25mm and 37mm prior to flowering.

The Howards’ aggregation of Galway Downs, Galway and Wongalea recorded a massive 575mm of flood rain over a two week period from late January plus 30mm in March.

This rain set up the initial chickpea planting push and a further 50mm in early June enabled the Howards to continue to plant another 405ha to Kyabra variety chickpeas and 200ha to wheat.

Mr Howard runs a zero till farming operation and although he has invested in a highly accurate 2cm RTK (real time kinematics) tractor guidance system, he has opted not to go down the path of permanent Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) lines.

“While this GPS guidance technology reduces the driver concentration fatigue factor and is a key component in our operational efficiency, we have opted to only use the same lines for each individual crop,” Mr Howard said.

“Most of our downs soils are just 30cm to 45cm deep overlying basalt and water erosion is an issue with permanent CTF tracks on our shallow soils.

“During a dry fallow, we blade plough to cover soil cracks to reduce subsoil moisture loss and this treatment also removes the CTF tracks from the previous crop. We then replant on a changed directional line.

“By selecting the precision 2cm RTK guidance accuracy, we now have the option of inter-row cultivating or using shielded sprayers for inter-row weed control,” Mr Howard said.

This season’s rainfall events and three significant temperature changes in the lead up to winter crop planting called for three spray treatments to tackle repeated germination of feathertop Rhodes (FTR) and star grass weed problems. Herbicides are applied with a self-propelled 36.6m Goldacre spray rig and it took up to 4 litres/ha of glyphosate (Roundup Powermax) to control patches of FTR grass.

The chickpeas were planted at 55kg/ha on 66cm row spacing with a 12.2m Excel Stubble Warrior. Coulters mounted ahead of each moisture seeking tine open up narrow fracture lines followed by press wheels to limit moisture loss.

Mr Howard has used a Brushmaster inoculation spray system for the last two years to inoculate chickpea and mungbean legume seed as it is augered into the Simplicity 9000 airseeder.

The Brushmaster uses water injection to spray the inoculant directly into the seed as it passes into the seed box so there is no exposure to sunlight. Results have been outstanding and the process replaces the messy, time consuming task of pre-mixing seed with peat-based inoculant slurry.

Following the planter, Mr Howard applied a herbicide spray mix of Balance and Simazine to effectively control wild turnip, mustard and sow thistle.

Mr Howard is not using any fertiliser on his chickpeas and mungbeans and aims to utilise the resultant soil nitrogen with primarily wheat and some sorghum grain crops in the following rotation.

“My aim to is keep mungbeans in the summer rotation but a 486ha planting in 2007 with a yield potential of 1.85t/ha yielded just 0.5t/ha after being hard-hit by TSV (Tobacco Streak Virus) carried by thrips,” Mr Howard said.