Coping with sustained drought

On Leonard Vallance’s 18,000-acre farm in southern Australia, the fields are practically a desert, with scruffy weeds poking through the sand.

It has barely rained in a year. For that matter, it has barely rained in the last 12 years over large parts of Australia.

Vallance’s 89-year-old father, who started the farm in 1936 on a plain in the Mallee region of northwest Victoria, says it is easily the worst drought he has ever seen.

Vallance, 49, is preparing to plant his crop of wheat and barley next week. The seeds are ready.

“They’ll germinate when it rains,” he said.

He runs a high-tech operation. In the last decade, he has made big investments to optimize his business in an area that has always been prone to drought.

He uses special planting machinery that drives seeds into the ground with minimal disturbance of the topsoil. He uses expensive pesticides to kill weeds so the soil is not unnecessarily turned.

Still, his most recent harvest, in October, was a tenth of normal. Over the last four years, Valance said, he has racked up more than $400,000 in debt.

About 90% of his crop is for export, and the drought has helped drive world wheat prices higher.

At times, Vallance has had to get creative. He started feeding his 500 cows a mixture of stored grain and almond hulls, a waste product from a nearby plantation. The hulls, it turns out, “are quite good roughage,” he said.

Despite the hardships of the last few years, he dismisses thoughts that the world may only grow warmer.

“We’ll get out of this,” he said. “It’ll rain.”