A group of 17 Victorian farmers travelled to Western Australia this month as part of a Birchip Cropping Group, BCG, study tour focused on soil management, farming systems and innovation.

The group included participants aged from 17 to over 50, representing a range of farming backgrounds and experience levels.

With Western Australian growers facing some of Australia’s most challenging soils and amassing decades of innovation in soil amelioration and machinery development, the tour gave participants an opportunity to see how long-term investment, research and practical innovation could transform the soils into productive cropping land.

Across the week-long tour, participants visited leading growers, researchers, grower groups and machinery manufacturers, including Andrew and Todd Kenny; Ben and Sean Plozza; Ben Cripps; Waringa Farming; the Yuna Farm Improvement Group; Brad Smith; the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, DPIRD; NuFab Engineering; the CBH Geraldton Port; Daniel and Dylan Birch; and Liebe Group.

The visits explored topics including soil amelioration, controlled-traffic farming, deep ripping, time of sowing, machinery innovation and integrated weed management.

Participants also saw how purpose-built machinery and practical innovation helped growers overcome challenging soil constraints while improving productivity and profitability.

While soil amelioration was a focus of the tour, one of the strongest themes to emerge was decision making behind farming systems.

Rather than looking for practices to replicate at home, the tour encouraged participants to understand why growers made particular investments, what problems they were trying to solve and how their farming systems had evolved over time.

A takeaway was the value of identifying areas for incremental improvement, rather than attempting to adopt every new technology or practice.

Participant Bill Lee said one of his biggest takeaways from the tour was the long-term value of investing in soil.

“One of the biggest takeaways was the importance of soil amelioration,” he said.

“While the process is both time consuming and costly, growers consistently demonstrated that the long-term return on investment can be substantial through improved soil productivity and resilience.”

The tour also provided opportunities for grower-to-grower learning, such as an afternoon with the Yuna Farm Improvement Group, which brought Victorian and Western Australian growers together to compare farming systems, seasonal conditions and shared challenges.

Conversations between the groups continued throughout the tour, creating two-way knowledge exchange and new connections between regions.

The tour, funded by Grains Research and Development Corporation, also strengthened relationships between BCG and Western Australian growers, grower groups, DPIRD and industry, creating opportunities for continued knowledge sharing between regions.

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