Stuart & Helen grow Certified Sustainable Wheat, Chickpeas and Sorghum for Kialla.
“Located south of Banana, between Banana and Theodore, we have been steadily building our 2,200 hectare farming operation since 2012. We began with share farming and gradually expanded our area, a journey that has allowed us to purchase two farms of our own alongside additional share-farmed land. Both of us grew up on the land, with our families still actively farming and running livestock, which gave us a strong foundation in agriculture before moving into broadacre cropping as our main enterprise.
Today we operate as a dryland cropping business with no livestock, while our three children are still at school. We have been growing wheat for many years as part of a diverse rotation that includes Khorasan and Spelt, along with chickpeas, barley, sorghum, mungbeans and cover crops, rotating between grass and legume species.
We joined the ASP (Australian Sustainable Products) program in 2021 after already moving towards a more regenerative and sustainable farming pathway, focusing on improving soil health and structure, reducing chemical use and cutting back on synthetic fertilisers. We were seeking a system that sat between conventional and organic farming (as both had limitations we felt were not sustainable long-term), while still allowing us to maintain a zero-till system essential for protecting soil structure. Through ASP, we have continued to adopt modern technology such as robotic camera sprayers for weed control in fallow, and variable-rate fertiliser application, aligning our farming practices with our long-term vision for sustainable, productive cropping into the future.”