Reduced tillage
By Sonia Copley RWUE2 Officer North Queensland
Reduced tillage and green work pays off in the Herbert
The family: Herbert grower Lucio Mastrippolito grew up on the family farm in the Macknade area and has been involved in running it for 30 years. He and his wife Trish have raised two daughters on the farm and Mr Mastrippolito continues to strive for sustainability and productivity in an environmentally sound way.
The farm: Located at Macknade, 20 km east of Ingham, in the Herbert Valley region of North Queensland, Mr Mastrippolito farms 125 ha in a flood-prone area. In the last five years a neighbouring prawn farm has been developed down stream. Cane from his farm is supplied to Macknade Mill, one of the two mills in CSR’s Herbert River group.
Farm management system: Because he farms in a flood-prone area, Mr Mastrippolito views drainage as an integral part of his farm plan. He has changed drill direction on all of his cane blocks to get optimum drainage and harvesting management. Attempts to improve sub-surface drainage began many years ago, when Mr Mastrippolito and his father laid underground seepage pipes
“We’d be out here for days digging with shovels,” Mr Mastrippolito recalls. Surface drainage improvement is ongoing with Mr Mastrippolito making use of Herbert Cane Productivity Services Ltd and BSES advice for surface drainage design and placement.
Mr Mastrippolito has reduced tillage practices and has trialled planting after only one pass with the offset and one rip/grub. This saves him time and reduces diesel costs, as well as wear and tear on his machinery.
In Mr Mastrippolito’s opinion “the results are favourable”. The farm’s yield has increased by about 4000 tonnes in the past 30 years, largely due to management strategies such as variety adoption, drainage and nutrition program refinement.
Environmental management: Mr Mastrippolito is active in environmental management, both on his farm and in the wider sugar industry as well as the local community. He is an active Landcare committee member, a board member for the Hinchinbrook Resource Information Centre, and also sits on canegrowers Herbert River Board.
He recently took on the role of investigator in a Sugar Research and Development Corporation-funded project to assist local cane growers to improve water quality.
Mr Mastrippolito recently established a large wetland area that has now become home to wildlife such as turtles, fish and birds. He is planting trees around the area. In another section of the farm he has improved water quality by cleaning out weeds such as paragrass and de-silting sediment traps.
Some of the work has been funded through the SIIP scheme, however a lot has been done by Mr Mastrippolito himself at his own cost, but it is all starting to pay off.
