Lynford Farms is situated in a very reliable rainfall area with rich forest gravel soils suited to cropping. Our cropping operation revolves mainly around a continuous rotation of canola, barley, wheat and oats crops. A slightly cooler climate poses a minor frost risk in winter, so careful selection of varieties and crop rotations are used to minimise the risk.
Most of the canola and cereal crops are delivered to the nearby Narrakine delivery centre and sold direct through the CBH system. Lynford Farms has silo storage for 1000T and shed storage for 800T of grain so some cereals are retained for feed for our own livestock or local producers.
The canola seed produced contains a high grade oil content and most of our barley is malting grade varieties suitable for beer production.
Large parts of our oats crops are purposely sown for the production of export quality hay which is sold in large rectangular bales. The balance of the oat crops are harvested and sold for a variety of uses including domestic consumption.
Our annual cropping program includes the planting of cereal fodder crops and perennial crops. These areas are used to provide quality supplementary feed for our livestock especially during periods of high feed requirements such as lambing.
The cropping program also includes the rejuvenation of dedicated pasture paddocks. The work being done on these areas is helping us to increase our stock holding capacity and paddock productivity.
We utilise the services of specialist agronomists to help manage our crops. Each year we conduct a variety of agronomic trials to improve our cropping activities. Soil tests and plant tissue tests are taken annually to monitor the health and needs of the soils.
We also use sophisticated data and mapping systems for planning activities including geo-referenced yield maps to improve the productivity of the cropping inputs.
