Wilco Droppert and Sandra Jefford are feeling over-exposed in the dairy industry, but it is for good reasons.
They are the principals of Wilandra Farms and they have been taking risks to improve the viability of their farm, as they work towards becoming a carbon neutral business.
In the process, they have been hosting multiple field days and attending speaking engagements, to explain their business model.
Wilco and Sandra were dairy farming in another region of Victoria’s Gippsland, where rainfall was plentiful and regular; when they decided they wanted a bigger challenge.
They bought a dryland dairy farm at Clydebank, and over several years they have converted a substantial percentage of the property to irrigation, and adopted technology to considerably improve their efficiency and reduce their emissions footprint.
It is a progressive journey that is challenging and rewarding, and they are embracing it.
Since 2011, Wilco and Sandra have implemented significant renewable energy solutions and technology on their farm.
The farm is 370 hectares of sandy loam over clay soils on flat to slight undulating country, across eight titles.
They milk 380 cows year-round, an increase of 30 head in recent years as more irrigation country is developed and re-pastured.
Wilco and Sandra began farming organically as soon as possible after purchase, and their farm has been certified organic since 2020.
“We’ve been certified organic milk producers for five years, but because we farmed organically prior to certification, no synthetic fertiliser is used on the farm,” Sandra said.
In recent years, they have invested in four wind turbines and a considerable number of solar panels to harness renewable energy, which enables them to power pumps to irrigate paddocks during the daytime.
This change alone has improved their wellbeing; with no irrigation at night they have excluded occupational risk around operating machinery in the dark.
They now identify and resolve irrigation problems during the day. Operating costs are cheaper than grid power. The couple also sleep better.
“We irrigate 185ha with pivots, and we were using K-line sprinklers on other paddocks, but now we’ve converted to permanent sprayers,” Wilco said.
Water is directed from the nearby Avon River and two bores, into storage dams, and pumps and management control systems use renewable energy to irrigate their pastures and crops.
As more water storage points are built, Wilco and Sandra add more renewable energy to enable more irrigation to occur.
They have 249 kilowatts of solar panels and 20kW of wind turbines.
Their journey in using renewable energy began with the first installation of 29kW of solar panels, in 2017, on their dairy shed roof.
They installed a CO2 heat pump to replace a conventional hot water service, and use solar power during the middle of the day — the alignment of the panels enables solar power generation in the middle of the day.
Both changes achieved about a 40 per cent energy reduction.
Sandra said, in hindsight, they may have been better off installing more solar panels, improved the orientation for energy generation, and continue to use a conventional hot water service.
Other modifications included replacing old vacuum pumps with a low vacuum pump in the dairy.
What Wilco and Sandra didn’t know, was how much irrigation cost them in real terms.
“In 2017, a very dry year, we used approximately 500,000 kW hours of electricity and 23,000 litres of diesel for irrigation,” Sandra said.
“This resulted in massive greenhouse gas emissions and huge energy bills.”
Wilco and Sandra realised they wanted to change the way they were farming, and to invest in technology that would reduce their energy bills and their farm’s emissions and carbon footprint.
There are further complications because each of their eight titles has its own electricity meter, which means they are paying multiple times for the right to use grid power. It also prevents them from balancing the use of renewable energy on one title against grid power on another title.
A farm-scale change needed to occur.
“In 2018, we conducted an energy audit and received recommendations about reducing energy use in the dairy,” Sandra said.
These recommendations included changing their submersible pump to one that would more efficiently work in their system, producing greater flow capacity; and they installed wider piping, again to improve efficiency. Those changes reduced their energy use by 38 per cent, and the return on investment was final within 4.5 years.
Wilco said some of the inefficiencies were around friction loss through irrigation pipe that was the wrong diameter and using the wrong pumps.
“Once we changed to a submersible pump, the power used went down to 25 per cent of what we were originally using per megalitre,” he said.
They also replaced a diesel pump with two electric pumps and, because these were powered by solar panels, utilised daytime hours to move water around their property.
“Under the audit, it was estimated we would save about $18,000 a year, with a payback period of 2.4 years,” Sandra said.
“Before we even look at solar, we saved so much money. When we did that energy audit, we had a 55 kW bore pump in one bore, which is more suited to a 37 kW pump,” Wilco said.
“We learned to look at the efficiency point at each pump and then basically figure out what we want.
“We want to be most efficient when we’re using the most amount of power, when all the sprinklers are working; and turn off all those pumps that operate at lower speeds when there’s only one bay running.
“So we spent a bit of time just figuring out what pump we were going with to make sure we got the right pump for the job, and use it as efficient as we can.”
Wilco and Sandra successfully applied for funding through Agriculture Victoria’s Agriculture Energy Investment Plan, to help them to upgrade their infrastructure and install 200kW of solar panels and 20kW of wind turbines along with an energy management system that automatically controls water pumping based on the available renewable energy.
Their bank provided them with a loan package that recognised how their investment in technology improved the carbon footprint of their agribusiness.
Through on-farm experimentation and trial, Wilco and Sandra have realised solar power is the energy source with the most valuable return on investment.
Irrigation costs dropped from $80,000 in 2021, to about $1200 in 2022. They also put power back into the grid, so their cost per kW hour has reduced from 24 cents to -3 cents.
They have also saved themselves time — about 15 hours a week — and are considerably less hands-on with their irrigation system, especially since installing fixed sprinklers in paddocks where a K-line system was used.
At a field day hosted by Wilandra Farms, Wilco discussed a project to utilise surplus power they were generating from a bank of solar panels, to change the K-line system to a fixed sprinkler system across 20ha of paddocks, at a cost of close to $6000/acre.
The project received 10 per cent funding from the West Gippsland Catchment Management Service, which Wilco said justified he and Sandra’s intent to proceed with their plans.
These paddocks had been problematic, with insufficient water flow to justify laser graded irrigation. The K-line sprinkler pods required significant labour and were often left to flow while other work took priority elsewhere on the farm.
“At this bore we have 50kW of solar panels and we wanted to mop up some of that surplus power — which was going into the grid — and use it to pump water for fixed sprinklers on this part of the farm,” Sandra said.
As a result of their water audit, the couple had already increased the diameter of the pipeline that was moving the water from the bore to a dam.
A major infrastructure change saw Wilco build a bigger storage dam to support the new irrigation system. At its centre, the dam is five metres deep.
To maximise efficiency, Wilco decided to float the pump on the dam. He said this decision minimised energy requirements to the pump, because it was so close to the water source.
A new pump house was built beside the dam, which is all close by the already-installed solar panels.
“With using solar energy, it’s just a different thought process because you don’t have constant power generation,” Wilco said.
The irrigation system is designed to maximise how much solar power is available.
The management system divides sprinklers into banks; and on a good solar day, enough power is generated to run multiple banks of sprinklers and pump water from the bore into the holding dam.
The system is programmed to prioritise filling the dam, then with sufficient power generation the sprinklers are activated.
“In the morning, the irrigation pump is running at 14 to 15 kW, and we’ll have a valve open and one bank of sprinklers are spraying,” Wilco said.
“Then after about an hour, the bore pump comes on at around 15 kW, when there’s enough excess solar here; and the second lot of sprinklers come on.
“During the middle of the day, we’ll have three valves open, and the system will keep running the rest of the day to absorb all of the solar energy.”
There was no intention to use these paddocks for silage, which complemented the grid of fixed sprinklers. These paddocks are close to the dairy and ideal for grazing.
The fixed sprinklers are laid out in a rectangular pattern, at 35-metre spacing.
“Clydebank bore water is pretty harsh, so we also wanted the spacing to make sure we didn’t coat the sprinklers with the harsh water and reduce the risk of corrosion,” Wilco said.
“So we’ve actually spread the distance between sprinklers out an extra metre to try and look after the infrastructure.”
Wilco chose to use large diameter pipes to reduce the pressure requirements in the new system. Water from the dam initially travels along 200mm diameter pipes that split into six-inch and then 100mm pipes near the sprinkler valves. Each sprinkler rig is designed to use five litres/second of water.
The sprinklers work to ensure at least two and up to eight millimetres of water is sprayed across the paddocks on each shift.
“When I look at the pasture I can’t see any difference from one spot to another, and I think that’s good enough for me,” Wilco said.
He now intends to apply the same principles to another area of the farm that Wilco and Sandra want to bring on with irrigation.
“This system has to be low maintenance, we’ve got to get away from the labour component of irrigating the farm,” Wilco said.
Wilco said that in considering what to do on this part of the farm, choosing a fixed sprinkler system over a mobile lateral spray also enabled them to include 12 rows of trees, incorporating 10 ha of the farm.
Wilco and Sandra support renewable energy production and expanding irrigation with a philosophy based around regenerative farming techniques, that includes revegetation.
“We plant trees to provide cattle with shelter and shade, and to support biodiversity on the farm,” Sandra said.
A forestry consultant has guided them to achieve successfully planting 11,000 trees, including 9000 agroforestry plantings using a mix of yellow stringybark, red ironbark, spotted gum, coastal grey box, sheoak and sugar gum.
They have committed to planting 20,000 trees by 2030, to provide shade, create windbreaks and sequester carbon.
Wilco and Sandra are actively managing their land to increase soil carbon — they have learned as much as they can about soil biology and planting for biodiversity. They have also started a registered soil carbon project.
“We can see a lot of future benefits in planting the trees the way we’re doing it now,” Wilco said.
“We’ll get shelter and shade for the cows, biodiversity for birds on the farm – we’ve got 98 species of birds here now, so we expect to get more.
“And it’s a more pleasant place to work.
“Having the sprinklers has enabled us to integrate more trees and that’s just going to be an ongoing thing for us.”