Oli Le Lievre  00:04

G'day. I'm Oli Le Lievre, and welcome to GRDC In Conversation as we've traveled across Australia sharing these different stories of people involved in the Aussie grain sector. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional lands on which the podcast is produced and recorded. We pay our respects to First Nations Australians and use the art of storytelling to help us understand the stories of different people involved in the grain sector, sharing wisdom and understanding that they're going to shape our future. This series is a GRDC investment that takes you behind the scenes with the people shaping our grain sector, uncovering their stories, learning more about their passions and highlighting the projects that are part of their everyday our journey continues in Western Australia to meet some of the Southern Communities the innovation through growers advisors and people that are shaping the area in South West WA. So welcome to the conversation.

Oli Le Lievre  00:59

When it comes to this series, we say that we're talking with growers, advisors, innovators and everything, few and far between. This next person is honestly on top of being an innovator, he'll call himself an innovator, but he's an inventor. Ray Harrington has created the Harrington Seed Destructor, but it's not the only thing that his family created. They've worked on creating sheep handlers, and he's even been recognized with a Thomas Edison Award for Innovation in Agriculture. That's bloody something. It's changed the game in terms of how he and also other farmers have been able to manage weeds across southern areas of Australia. So we chat about how he's approaching the farming business that he's ultimately passing forward and onto the next generation, and also just their approach to the type of gear they run, the way they run their business. And what's getting them excited about the future?

Oli Le Lievre  01:50

Really excited to sit down with you and chat, obviously, for the GRDC In Conversation podcast. And we've been chatting for probably the last half an hour, and I was thinking the whole time. I was like, God, we should be recording. That's normally the nature of how these things go. Yeah, I guess, yeah. Firstly, I'd love to know, when you look at agriculture today, what is it that's still exciting you as much today as when you started?

Ray Harrington  02:12

It's probably more exciting I'm if I go back this, this just harvested my 62nd crop. So, so, so I've seen a huge change, not quite as much change as my father saw, but I've seen a huge change. But what I like now, what I enjoy now, Oli is working with these young fellas. They they are just so switched on. They've got so much knowledge that we didn't have back in the 90s. They've got a team around them. And and they are really, they are really showing the production performance. And that's the bit I'm enjoying. They're doubling the yields when I sold all my sheep in 94 they're doubling the yields then two and a half ton on one, and then now they're looking at five ton and less rain, sometimes more rain, sometimes. But it's exciting to be tangled up with these young fellas. There's there's Tim and and two or three of his mates, two or three of his mates. It's really exciting to be nearly a silent partner, to be sitting in the background, sharing it with them. It's, it's, it's huge.

Oli Le Lievre  03:28

And when you look around the farm today, like, how much has it changed over those 62 years of harvest?

Ray Harrington  03:33

Well, the first thing I remember dad, Brian, and then my oldest brother, David and I we used to grow 250 300 ton of man. Now we're going 2000-3000. there's still the same bloke sitting in the middle of the machine. My original seeder was a little bit wider than that. You know, it was a 15 run. Was a 15 run combine. And now we're under 60 rungs. So they're the change with the same one bloke in the middle. And it's just the sheer expanse of numbers. And I look, I look at WA, when I left, I spent 21 years at the state level of the grain industry as director of grain pool and what have you. And I remember when I left, it was a 10 point 3 million ton average with 14,000 farmers. Delivery, well, now I know there's 3800 farmers delivery, 15 years later, with, I reckon the average got to be close to 18, half, 19 million ton. And that's the same change I'm seeing in the business now that Tim runs my business at Tim's business. That's the same change that's happened here, and it's happening with these with these mates are getting together and and it's really. Good to be part of where it's gone to I don't know where it's going to go from here, but I'm sure they're going to still keep creeping it up.

Oli Le Lievre  05:08

I was going to ask you, because it like, it really interests me. Obviously, you've seen that kind of exponential growth over 20 odd years. Like, would you say have been some of like, the consequences? Like, I've been negative.

Ray Harrington  05:22

Community, our community is just decimated. When I'm 70 I'm 78 in a few weeks, when I finished playing football and when I was 44 right? We had two teams. I was playing basketball the same time, we had six teams in Darkan. We got basically no football team, no basketball, a few blokes playing footy with amalgamation with wage. I know at one stage through there, there was 200 members of the bowling club. And I played bowls for 34 years, and now we've got 15, which is real good, which is real good, even though it's a very small number, we're going right compared to a lot of other club. But that's the negative. Is the loss of that 10,000 the loss of those 10,000 fathers, 10,000 mothers, 15,000 kids, all gone out of WA is cropping-cropping belt, yeah. So that's that's a big, negative.

Oli Le Lievre  06:21

Huge impact, isn't it?

Ray Harrington  06:22

It's huge. It's huge, you know? And also that comes to the voting side. There's, there's 20,000 there's 20,000 votes, 10,000 dads and mums. There's 20,000 votes that have gone out of rural in WA we've got no voice at all.

Oli Le Lievre  06:39

Yeah, yeah. It is. It's yeah, because I think it's so easy to look at it from the efficiencies that have been gained, but then it's this, it's the double edged sword, isn't it?

Ray Harrington  06:48

Yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about the efficiencies. I saw a graph in the farm weekly a couple of weeks ago from 1624 with the population growth of the world and the production of wheat, and it's sat the tons of wheat have sat neatly under the population growth, and that's why the price of wheats has been the same for 40 years. Yep, I follow Chicago wheat price. Well, it's been $5 for bloody 35 years. $5 US A bushal, sure, it varies but, but, and that's what's happened if, if that population growth had to go on, and the production of wheat had to go on this way, it'd be worth a whole lot more money. There'd be a lot of starving people. But yeah, so it's it's exciting. We need to feed the world. Ah, the pushback against my real pet hates this regen. Ag, and I'm gonna say it, I hate the bloody word regen. AG, if we haven't been doing regen ag, since, since we changed our cropping system to no till, and all the changes we've gone and done, and we're producing twice as much if we aren't in regen AG, I don't know what we're in. And if we hadn't have done that, and being part of that change, imagine the amount of crop would be growing if we're ripping up, working back and sowing now, we'll be back to bloody 10 million ton.

Oli Le Lievre  08:20

So I want, I want, I want you to, yeah, take me back, because it was a little bit before I was born. The big change, obviously, your business changed over the years. It was heavily sheep orientated. When did, when did the no till piece start to come in, or even taking a step back? Was the move to cropping before all of-

Oli Le Lievre  08:37

Yeah, tell me what like obviously, we know farmers are problem solvers. What's the difference between problem solvers and problem solvers and inventors?

Ray Harrington    08:37

Well, we cleared all this country. We we cleared all this country. And course, you'd crop it after you cleared it. And we came from, we came from wheat belt, Mum and Dad, we came from Miling in in we came from Miling in 1961 dad wanted to run more sheep, right? And of course, our Miling Farm, uh, wheatbelt Farm, was going salty. You had all these salt lakes on it. And of course, now you should see it. It's a big Salt Lake. And dad moved down here. But to clear this country, David and I cleared probably six or 7000 acres, and we had a couple of bulldozers, and spent my youth on bulldozers and whatever. And that was all put in crop, and then, I guess we've only ever had a 30% cropping program, and with like we were leasing farms and everything, at one stage, we're running 25,000 sheep and and about three, I remember, we about 3000 acres of crop, and we built our own first tandem tractor and built her own seeder bar and all that sort of thing. Got a seeder box from under the hill, under a tree, out at bloody knives, and that was the change. But we never had the production, and that was the change. Well, David and I farmed through the era I call Armstrong Holland, there was no hydraulics. I remember the first lot of hydraulics and things like that. It was all done, was all done with muscle, same as all the sheep where it was all done with muscle. That's why we developed the crutch and cradle and the jetting race. The jetting race was developed after a neighbor, we believe, got poisoned with Lucijet and killed him, and we were jetting 25,000 sheep. Then we said, this is not good, so we built the automatic machine.

Ray Harrington  10:43

Though? Because you don't family, you don't invent anything. You innovate. Okay, different altogether. The Seed Destructor, the the technology of using the seed destructor, was made by a man named Steadman in America. Oh, well, it's bloody 110 years ago. Now, 108 years ago, you don't invent, you innovate. There's a bit of difference.

Oli Le Lievre  11:05

There's no new ideas.

Ray Harrington  11:06

There's no idea. There's no new ideas. You just use different stuff, different ways of going about things.

Oli Le Lievre  11:15

So look for your family, though, hugely, huge innovators. Like where, where were you looking for ideas and where, how were you just identifying problems, and then you just go as wide as you could?

Ray Harrington  11:27

My mother used to say, necessity is the mother of invention. 25,000 sheep, dragging them over the board, crunching them. We had to do something. And at that stage, we used to, we used to do a lot of work around the district as well. We basically, we basically had to, we had to take the urk out of work. It was simple as that. And that's basically where the invention came from. The sheep handling equipment. You know, the crutch and cradle. Like I said, the jetting race was handling, handling the the toxic, bloody, chemical. The sheep machine was the same doing, doing sheep in a race, the matter. And then they just get propelled to you, put your foot on the pedal, and up they come and that sort of thing. And then, of course, the Seed Destructor was fairly simple. Oh, well, I'll go back to the philosophy when I started. So when I, when I saw sold my 12 and a half 1000 sheep in 94 and I was going to go total crop at that stage, I was in 30% crop, right? And I needed to make a change financially. And I knew that, I knew that there was harvest weed seed being done by two farmers in Wongan hills. Oh, names just slip. My head flip, uh, my name's just slip. And I knew about, I knew about resistance way back then. I knew about resistance 45-50 years ago, and when I decided that I had to go total crop here at Courtney, I knew that I wasn't any smarter than the rest of the farmers in this state and Graham Shields and Mark Hyde right they had already had a rye grass problem with their wheat loop and rotation. They had already gone down the path. So my idea was, No, I'm not going to burn. I'm going to Big Sea for chaff, off the header, catch it, cook it, cut it, crush it, or cremate it. So I went with the crush. And that's really how, that's really how it all started. It's catching the chaff, material around the header, which Shields and Hyde's mark, Hyde his name's come. They worked out they could deal with it if they caught the chaff. And because they that, they had a hay they had a pallet factory, and they put it in through there. So innovate again, not invent because they'd already, already gone down the path. It was just a matter of, how am I going to do it? Slightly different?

Oli Le Lievre  11:49

So for someone who maybe knows, say nothing about it before it happened. So people would just spread the seed across the paddock. Resistance issues were popping up everywhere. Then these guys were dropping it into basically a bale and, yeah, capturing it...

Ray Harrington  14:27

Yeah, they're dropping it into chaff cart.

Oli Le Lievre  14:30

Gotcha.

Ray Harrington  14:30

No, they started with chaff cuts, and then they dropped into bail. You're right. It came whatever it was called bail, direct, uh, whatever, yeah. They dropped it into a bail and they use the straw to wrap the chaff up and cart it into Wongan Hills and process it that way. Yeah? So then it was a matter of, I didn't want to deal with the straw. Yeah. It was a matter of saying, How can I how can I do that different? Yeah, and that's what we're talking about, innovating. Inventing, yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  15:01

And so if I knew nothing about it, if you were to explain how the Seed Destructor works, can you, can you tell me that,

Ray Harrington  15:07

Oh, very simply, it's, um, so you got, you've got the stuff. The header takes the crop into three, three pieces, grain, straw and chaff. Now we call, we call a chaff MOG, material other than grain, MOG, right? Yep, that's where, that's where 90% of the weed seeds are. Now that's the bit you want to deal with. You can burn it. And when we do, they started row burning. They started row burning. A bit of that happens, but then you get a shower rain at the bottom of the bloody road gets wet, of course, then weeds are all viable, yep. And basically, I decided, I decided I wasn't burning sided I wasn't burning. And imagine, imagine if, with Friday, whether we just had, with this huge, big fire, if we had half the shire or light with that's the bit that I said, I'm not going to do that. So how am I going to do it different? So, so basically, what - And I looked at I looked at crushing it. I looked at crushing it. Then I went to Phil Bereford at Macco feeds, who, who makes Phil's been making pellets for years. And I said, I want to use a hammer mill. And he said, Nah, Ray, don't waste your bloody time. He said, Because the hammer mill will absolutely smash hell out of some but it's its percentage is low. It'll reduce it to make pellets, but it won't, won't destroy at all. He said, No, no, don't waste your time doing that. I looked at microwave, yes. And I stumbled on an article in The Sunday Times of a professor Vinden from Victoria who was microwaving timber. Anyway, rang him. I found him. I rang him up, found him, and I said, I want to do this. Well we we embarked on the course together. And I never, ever met the man was all over the telephone. We embarked on a thing together about putting microwave on the header. Anyway, rang me one day and he said, Oh, Ray, what percentage moisture do you think's in that chaff? I said, Ah, just give it nine for Number No, it's a game over. It's gotta be 14 plus to have enough moisture in it to boil. That was the end of it. Never spoke to him again. Never ever met him. Yeah, because I just remember his name. So then I realized I had to, had to go crush now, I worked with ag master for a long time with Mike and Jeff Glenn and and Steve King, who I mentioned earlier anyway, and Steve was a big, innovative Cropper out Lake Grace, we decided then that we're going to find something to crush it. Then Jeff Glenn from ag master rang me, said, Ray, I've found what you want in the briquette factory in Collie now, if you know the barbecue briquettes you buy, yep, they're made out of coal, right? And coal to Collie place. Collies, the coal place anyway. He said, come in, have a look. So Jeff's a maintenance engineer in Collie so in I go and have a look at this thing, this huge mill. It's called a cage mill. It's, you can Google it. You render anything. It'll render tungsten carbide. It'll, it'll render blue metal. Yeah, right, yeah. So it's a big contra rotating mill, yep. Anyway, had that running, they could see the coal coming down in the in the chute, you know, big lumps of coal like that, and wasn't making a sound, and out, out was coming this dust about the same as the dust off the top of your bloody wardrobe. Yeah, seriously. And I looked, and anyway, Jeff had organized the bloke to stop it so I could have a look and open it up, Jeff, open it up. And I said, Jeff, nothing's going to live in there. And that was a beginning. Then, then Jeff built the first cage mill. We had the cage Bill was tractor driven. It was sitting over there by that silo. Anyway, I went away and got chaff. So it was, was, was this huge, big mill, like this. They're that wide. I went away and got some chaff at the wheat belt wing. Got a bin full of chaff. Anyway, put it through the put it through the mill, because I didn't know what speed to run it. So I had it was PDO, driven by a tractor. Anyway. I thought, Oh, that'll do. Poured some chaff in, and then I planted into my Mrs. Garden. Went and planted it all. Nah, nothing come up. No idea. Well, it sat there for six years. It sat there anyway, we had a reunion of the West Australian no till Association, which I was the founding chair and my older brother, David was the one that was the driver with Kevin Bly. So we'd started this no till stuff, and we got tangled up with the new Kevin Bly from the heat department. They were the key drivers of setting up the no the West, the no till Association, and I ended up the chairman of that's, how it was, and yet, David and Kevin were the drivers to get it going. Now we had the reunion in Kojonup of the 20 years, I suppose it was anyway, there was only, it was only a dozen there. And we had a a gentleman out of the University of WA Professor Steve Powells was organized for the for this, for the speaker. And it turned out he was a reluctant guest speaker, because he he'd come down knowing full well from Perth to Kojonup, knowing full well there was only going to be about six or eight of us there, and he was a reluctant guest speaker. Anyway, I had a I had a short speaking role when we had the little do where I was, where I'd come from, where I was and where I was going was, what I what I set up little thing so it would gone into no till see. Anyway, I went where I was going was I'd already started trying to build this destructor. Its thing was sitting down there. Well, that's all right. I said where I was going. Well, that's all fine. Steve goes home. Well, he rings me next day. This man has just been recognized. I spoke at a conference in Denver, Colorado, about five years ago, the only farmer off the planet, and Steve Powells was recognized as the global authority on herbicide resistance, and he was the very man that was there. He rang me, and he said, Ray. He said, I thought about you all the way home and and you kept me awake last night. Doesn't matter. He said, Have you got any product you put through that machine? I said, Yeah, as a matter of fact, I've got some in the office. He said, we'll bring it up to the university and we'll have a look. So up I went armed with this bag of busted rye grass seed, because Jeff had bought some bird seed, straight out bird seed. We put that through. And anyway, the long and the short of it with a with a DR. Michael Walsh, we've done a lot of work with Michael Walsh since then, he'll go down to the annals of history as the man that took harvest. We'd seed control to the world. Sat and talked to them for about an hour. Steve Powells, probably never even changed the bloody car time, let alone, let alone Look at this. So anyway, after about an hour, he's looking at the product. He looked at Michael Walsh, and he said, Michael, what do you reckon? And Michael, been the deputy. Didn't say much. He said, Well, Michael, I go with my gut, and we're going to go with this. So he then put a student on, Jason Allison, to come down and do the proper replicated trial of of how the Seed Destructor works. So he ran it at 700-900-110-113 revs, and we got a kill curve anyway. He went away with a falcon ute full of brown paper bags of so we so he had 40 liters of chaff, and they salted 1000 colored rye grass seeds in the 40 liters, they colored them blue so they could see him under old violet light. Anyway, the students had to pick rye grass seeds out, and he went away with a falcon, you full of bags. Anyway. Next thing, my fax goes back in the fax days and the results of the thing. So then, course, the phone goes, and Steve Powells. He said, you got that? You got that document? I said, Yeah, I see Yeah, it looks alright to me. I said, does a pretty good job, but does a pretty good job at 1300 revs. He said, Yeah, but could you see that h on its side? And I said, Yeah, I think you better get your bloody typewriter fixed. He said, that's the coefficient of variation, which I didn't know, yeah, and it was nearly zero.

Ray Harrington    24:22

So we were getting, we were getting 99, 99 and a half. You know, 99 the whole time. And he said, his exact words, right? These results are too good. You better do it again. You can't caught all the rye grass. He said, It must escape. It can't be that good. So they come and did it again. The next time they made a pollen cloth sock to fit on the outlet of the mill, because a huge amount of air generated, and they got the same result. And then that was just game on. So Steve gave me some money out of his budget. I think it was $20,000 for me to put that original. You know, it was tow behind. Yeah. I. And he gave me $20,000 well, that was just like bait the big shark cook. It cost me bloody $100,000 after that. And we actually got it on the header. And if you look back, the header I had then, was the biggest header you could buy in the world was only 280 horsepower. 283 horsepower or something, because that's why we had to have it driven by its own motor and with all its own muddy hassle. But I always wanted it. I remembered being up the shed up there with a 14 inch car tire under the back of the header saying, well, I need it under here. I need it in the header. And I was going to hang the motor on the side of the header. Fuel tank sat on one side, motor on the other side to drive the mill in the back of the header. And I'll tell you the story. So so I had, I had the the toe behind going out the back paddock, and Steve Powells rocks up, and Michael Walsh had been down. So we actually put material through the header, and we had a poly pipe down the front end of the broad elevator, pouring a rye grass in, and we were catching the chaff and back it was gone again. The students were counting again. This went on and on for three years. So Steve Powells rocked up one day when we're doing it's one of those stinking 42 degree days. Anyway, he spent all day sitting in the header with Tim with this distructor, working behind it. Anyway, he'll laugh if he sees this. He decides about four o'clock to go home. Anyway, he'd been sitting with Tim in the header, and so we got two headers working, one with and one without. Anyway, Tim called me up. Said, Oh, Steve's on his way home. I'll drop him up, but his cars up under the tree. So I went up there where to yarn for half an hour, and he had his car running, cooling off, and he got back in his car. And I always smile about this. He got back in his car. He was about to go on a tap on the window, and he let the window down about that far. He said, Yeah, Ray. What I said, Steve, I said, I've got a destructor working over there on that header, 400 hectare paddock. And I said, I got another header over there with no destructor. I said, I'm going to build another one, and that's the end of it. I said, I'm right. Jack, wow. The door opened and door opened. He bowled out of the car, and he stood up. Ball stood up against me like that. And I thought, hell, are you going to whack me? What do you mean? I'm all right, Jack. And I slowly put my hand up like that. And I said, Steve, I need a partner. This is going to cost me a million dollars to do something with it. And I said, I am not going to outlay a million dollars. I need a partner. And we shook hands on the partnership, and that was where it all started, that's it. So then, so this all must have been just bloody weeks before crop updates.

Oli Le Lievre  28:05

How many years were you working on it? Up until this stage?

Ray Harrington  28:08

High 20s, you know it's it's been since 94, it took 18 years or something, 16 years or something, to get it off the ground. Oh, a lot of headache and heart age and I wish it all happened quicker, yeah, yeah, but, but, yeah. Steve was the key. Once it got the scientists Tick it was game on. If you're going to do something and you can't get a scientist involved that says this will work, you're wasting your time. So once they give it the tick of approval. So Steve, I said, well, I need this partner. I said, if, if I put an application in the GRDC for money, it'll go in the round filing cabinet by the Secretary's leg. I said, if you put an application in, they'll look at it. So Steve, put an application in for funding, and anyway, it must have all just been before crop updates. So I had a meeting with Steve. Rang me the night before we had a meeting with Vince Logan at crop updates. Anyway, he rang me the night before. He said, Look, I can't make this meeting. And I still don't know whether he set me up or not. He said, I just can't make this meeting. I said, Right, oh. He said, you'll have to do it on your own. I said, it's not a problem. So that obviously read it and it got to the stage of having the meeting. And I did have a problem. I just went and sat down with Vince Logan and put the case around what Steve had written. We were funded in six weeks, and that was the beginning of it. We blew the funding out. We had it built in, Kojinup. We had a manufacturing Kojinup, yeah and yeah. It was game on. It was game on. But the interesting thing we built, yeah, the green one, the. One the interesting thing out of it, all the testing then, then the university actually bought a header and put the green one on, and then they went all around Australia testing it, and then we're getting such good results. That's where, where we decided then it needed the header. The header horsepower had suddenly gone where we could pinch some horsepower out of it over that period, and then GRDC, call for expressions of interest to manufacture it after the the University of South Australia engineering division, they were employed to take it from where I had it, to get it in the header. And that was to go from a contra rotating mill to a to a stator, and a mill doing 3000 revs instead of 1400 revs. It was simple. It was just, it's just an impact. It's not grind, it's just whack and and really, it's all just gone from there, yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  31:06

Working on something for 20 odd years. Like, what was it that kept you just, like, plugging away and hammering away?

Ray Harrington  31:13

Resistance. Like, I've done a lot of presentations around Australia and actually America and Canada and all the rest of it. And I always say, who's managing your farm? And they say, Oh, I'm a manager. I said, No, you're not the weeds are? You do this because of weeds. You do that because of weeds. You do that because of weeds. You do that because of weeds. Resistance is just going to kill us, and that's what kept driving me, is the fact that I was going to lose this silent war of resistance. Now I have this resistance tested every year, and at this stage, we're beating the silence. And I knew, given enough time with the Shields and Hyde were in trouble with resistance. I knew if we didn't do something, we were going to lose a fight. And it's only a game, it's only a it's only a war, a war on weeds. I'm ex-military. Did national service and and, you know, you don't win a war. You win all the battles, you know. And that was part of the thinking is, I've got to make this battle work. There was times bloody hard, yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  31:22

And when you look at this, this war on weed resistance. Now, you were saying before about all these one percenters, what does it actually take to run and stay on top of resistant weeds on an operation like yours? Not

Ray Harrington  32:38

a lot if you, if you just decide, if you decide on the one percenters, I won't let the weed seeds go back on the ground. I won't, I won't have this crop where I'll just go and spray that patch. Got weeds. You spray the whole bloody paddock. Don't cut the rates. High water rate. Have an efficient boom spray, you know. And and just do it well, knowing that everything we got at the moment available is helping us and and there's going to be a big improvement come along to help us as well. I was fortunate enough to be invited with Michael Walsh to to be the on the early days of the IA, the green on green, I was on the committee. Michael took me over East, on a committee looking at the the weed recognition and what you can do. And there'll be a whole new there'll be a whole new lot come out of that. You know. RNAi and things like that. This the worlds scientists can't afford to let the food chain be overrun with weeds. The Americans, I did, I did 35 or something field days across the US. They're in big trouble, in big trouble, A because they won't listen, B because they're wet nursed, um, their, their palmer amaranth is really, that's called pigweed. That's really rocking. There's a million seeds on a plant, yeah, and that. And of course, it's just become roundup resistant and and of course, if their researchers don't find it, the farmers aren't doing anything. They just do what the researchers say, Yep. So the last time I was there, it was serious stuff, and it's just spreading like a fire. Yeah?

Oli Le Lievre  34:45

So when you look at that progression since 1994 when you guys got really serious, serious around no till on, that continual evolution, you said before, can you, can you touch on, what were your initial goals when it came to. Yeah, like really ramping up your cropping in terms of yields. And where are you guys at today?

Ray Harrington  35:05

Well, I guess I introduced lime in 94 when I sold the sheep, you know, had a big lime operator, so basically didn't know anything about pH I said to you earlier, total lack of knowledge. You know, just put a crop in and harvest the bloody thing was how he used to go. And and weeds weren't a real problem. Then rye grass. We sowed 1000s of hectares of rye grass for sheep feed. So the key to the change was understanding pH was a big thing. We were down the four threes. See, I farm, I farm what I call sh-1t, gravel. Well, it is, it's water repellent, high reactive iron, yeah, high, high phosphorus retention index, low pH. What else we're going to go? High aluminum. Now we're just smacking the crops well now with the introduction of lime. So we started, I started basically every fourth year. Every fourth year I was putting a ton of lime on that was a systematic four year program. And then we've now got the pH is just up over the five and we'll hold them there. But then also we had some real dramatic trials with with potash out on the Hillman flats. And I mean dramatic trials. And then potash really became the key. I used to put 200 kilos on every four years or something. Now all the fertilizer gets potash with it, and all the rest of it, but they were the changes that then I recognized I needed to start on when I went total prop. But I did say to you I wanted to average two and a half ton to the hectare. Well, I achieved that. But now the change since then, it's now, we just said about five ton and that's all, all the one percenters I look at that's going on today. Yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  37:07

Do you look at anything across your career over those 62 seasons of growing crops, something that you're most proud of?

Ray Harrington  37:14

Oh, the innovation, the no till, you know, I told you, I spent a month over East this year with farmers from South Australia. Big joy in New South Wales. One of my mates invited me. I was hell of a month sharing in the success. Wasn't going over there, trying to sell, I've never tried to sell anything anyway. Tried to sell the concept, but not the product and and I was so proud when I come I didn't really want to go, and I came home so proud of being tangled up with those farms. Just had to have a look at their faces and look at the bloody infrastructure they build to know the prosperity. Yeah, and I guess that's, that's the first bit was David and I have moved into sheep here. We're still built in Darkan. They still make four or five crutch and cradles a year. And it's still manufactured in Darkan and that. But then the no till thing that that was a huge change. We both had a philosophy that they've been they've been cultivating for 2000 years. We couldn't change that. That's why we cultivated under the seed in a narrow band, and then we really didn't know what we're doing. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. But we stuck with that philosophy, that that that spray seed had come out to kill the weeds. Luckily, Roundup came out close behind it. We had huge success. We had a huge failure too, yeah, but basically that that's really stood the test of time. And then working with the two Glenn boys with ag master was that's been a wonderful journey for someone off the farm to be able to go public speaking around the world and all over, you know, all around the world, and that we won the global award with the destructor, the partner Heather and I had went to New York to pick up the the Edison award.

Oli Le Lievre  39:24

I wasn't asking about that, yeah. What is the Edison award?

Ray Harrington  39:27

Well, Thomas Edison made the light globe, yeah. So this, the Americans run this Edison award for for medical, dental, engineering, agriculture, the whole lot. So we won the Ag section one, no one was more proud than I was. I stood up. Most 1200 people said, Yeah, cocky from Down Under.

Oli Le Lievre  39:50

Do you remember what you said?

Ray Harrington  39:51

No, I had no there was no speech. There was no reply. I was the only one that was still up, because there was 1200 in there that all, all got. They're all first, second, third. You didn't know you're going to get the award out of the three nominations.

Oli Le Lievre  40:05

Yeah, you obviously elated with it. What if you think back to, like, what was running through your head? It was, it was recognition of...

Ray Harrington  40:13

Oh, sense of achievement. Probably, sense of achievement. Yeah, probably like, winning the singles in bowls and things like that. You know what I mean, whatever. Grand Final footy, yeah. But it was a lot of hard slog. Was a lot of hard slog. I remember one day I got a staff gym, been with me since 94-96 and he come out with 20 liter drum one day we're out there, and he put it, he said, Here go and sit under the tree on that for a while. We're having a bit of I was having a bit of a bad day and I don't get angry, but, but fees weren't going right, trying to get this thing right, slow and harvest down and all sorts of things. So I guess many other people would have given up.

Oli Le Lievre  40:55

Yeah, it's a hell of a lot of persistence.

Ray Harrington  40:57

Oh, it was a lot of persistence. Yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  41:00

What do you think it is about agriculture that just makes people so doggedly determined and passionate about what they do?

Ray Harrington  41:07

I feed three or 4 million people. None of the buggers say thank you.

Oli Le Lievre  41:12

Do they need to?

Ray Harrington  41:14

No, they don't need to. They don't need to. And I don't need to be a billionaire to the reward is the production. We've had a hell of a year this year, and I'm not going to say what. They have broken all sorts of records from from a tough year. And it's a bit like when you run a lot of sheep and another road train load goes off. It's it's sense of achievement. And then, because beauty, the farmer your own boss. And yeah, I am, I am this. I am disappointed with the political community and what have you. They won't, they won't get the they won't get their ass off the off the coastal strip and get out to where it's at. I'm getting more disappointed by the day. You know, other things can happen, you know, yeah, but, oh, it's been a journey that I wouldn't change for anything. I probably could have made a lot more money as an engineer, although I was dumb at school, failed thing. Didn't go to university and all the rest of it. But probably could have been quite a successful bloody engineer, or whatever you. Yeah, but I've enjoyed my farm life. Worked hard. It's kept me fit. I really do enjoy working with the young fellas. Got nephews and never had a son of mine, got a daughter and a couple of granddaughters who worked their butts off. Say, good, good people, but I worked very closely with Tim and his with his two brothers. Yeah, we actually farmed together for 13 years as a as a corporate farm, the two family businesses. I'm a great believer in succession planning, written succession plans. Yeah.

Oli Le Lievre  43:08

And how did you approach that with your business? How have you approached that succession piece?

Ray Harrington  43:14

Well, so originally, if we go, if we go back, originally, there was Dad and my older brother, Dave and I working together, and then we needed to have a succession plan. Because I don't know whether you've heard of the consultant, Bob Hall. He's one of the originals. My dad was one of the chairman of that group that got him out from England. And we sat down in the table and we drew up a succession plan. So that plan said that when the eldest of either my brothers or my marriage, came onto the farm. It was decide that I would have a business and my brother would have a business, and dad was retiring. So that stage when you use kids are growing up, right? You can see it coming. We got organized where we had four farms, and there was two here and two two in Darkan. And then we started working towards how we were going to do that. And then, of course, when the first young bloke, we even had a method of deciding who was going to go where, because one's 30 K's out of town and won seven K's out of town. And because Bob, came up with a simple idea, the eldest one, Bob was going to toss the coin, and the eldest one had the call headers or tails. And when it came to that time, when it came to that time, we didn't, we didn't toss the coin because I said to my older brother, for, for, for a lot of different reasons. I said, Well, you, you stay close to town. I said, I'm going out to Courtney. I'll come and live out here. I came out here, and I never even I had one tap with running water, so but I knew what I was doing, and that's what happened with that succession plan. Then, course, the whole setup was valued, and the original company gave me $20,000 then, because I never I couldn't even change the tire. They gave me $20,000 to buy tools and all the rest of it, and set up out here. And I really did come out. I had one tap with running one of it was one over there. And yeah, I started again. But that was decision made. Now it talk about succession plans. Then I got divorced, plenty of them happen. And I was working on my own. I was putting 1300 acres in on my own, running 12 and a half 1000 sheep on my own. And I needed, I needed a staff. And Tim's the youngest of four boys, and I said to his father one day, I said, if that that young fellow wants a job with me, he better come out and ask his grumpy old uncle, we have a job. So one Saturday morning, Tim rocked up and said, Oh, Dad said, there's a job out here with a grumpy old uncle. And I said, Yep. Now I set up a plan with a written plan. So there's 2600 acres on this farm, and you can divide 13 into 2600 quite easily. So the plan was he had to work for me for half a wage for 13 years. And if any stage during the 13 years, he pulled the pin, I would pay the other half the wage. I would give the 13 the 13 years divided into 2600 I would give him the value of the land. If I sacked him, I would give him the value of the land. And I slanted the whole thing against myself. Imagine the cost of halfway through, I had to pay him the value of the land, and that was all written down and signed, and that was agreement, yeah, right, yes. And when that matured, when that matured, Tim was married with a couple of kids, and we became joint, joint tenants in common, so he had security, yeah? And that was written down, wow, so both of you sign it. And what's the document I would have had to shell out, I would have had to sell out, if I'd pay him off. And I think he's been, oh, he must have been with me now for bloody 25 years, or something.

Oli Le Lievre  48:08

When you look at now and it's probably coming full circle to where we started the conversation. But what is it that gets you pretty excited for the next generation that are coming in into it?

Ray Harrington  48:18

Oh, the production they can get and the production they need, man, the bloody costs long and the bloody fertilizers going through the roof, chemicals going machinery is absurd. It's a problem, all right, and I'm going to say it. It's a real problem. I look at the machinery I've got, and I'm proud of Tim because he's followed, my father said to my brother and I, when we started taking over him. I don't care what you buy, as long as you pay cash for it. You can't go wrong. Can't go wrong. Then when I started total crop, I needed a bit of gear, so I gave myself $100,000 a year. Limit. You got to get your wants sorted out from your needs. That was my mother's say. And Tim's carried on with with that. And I haven't forced it on him, he's carried on. So you won't see any well, there's no headers. There's still all out in the other farm. We don't buy new gear. We just keep it going. And you look, you look, we run class aid headers, right? We've just gone through a bit of a change. We run class eight editors. We bought number one. We've got we bought that five years ago, with 300 hours on the clock. For 350,000 I can buy the same class eight red headed today, with 300 hours on the clock, 900,000. Exactly the same. It's got a new seat and a new paint job. Oh, I got a few more horsepower bloody. They all crap on about that, but the rest of it is identical. It's $900,000.

Oli Le Lievre  48:54

lot of money.

Ray Harrington  48:56

It's just ridiculous.

Oli Le Lievre  48:58

A lot of crop to grow

Ray Harrington  48:59

Four years to go from 350 to 900 it is a rip off. Tim went and found one. Tim went and found one, exactly the same age, few less hours, had a destructor in it for $170,000 now we got two, and we put the second one through this workshop. Workshop pretty untidy at the moment, and we run a preventative maintenance program. And we had two we had two hiccups with the new one, and it was funny. We finished the finished Christmas Eve at two o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the morning, and on the Thursday before Christmas, Tim said to me, we're actually half white number one header had done half half the heck, as you said, We're halfway. We would have been still hours in the middle of January. The tractor I've got up in the shed, right? Oh, It's done nearly 10,000 hours now. I bought that with 1100 hours on the clock. It's a four wheel drive case. I can buy the same tractor today with the same transmission, the same diffs, same motor, right? I bought it with 1100 hours on the clock for a 415,000 the same one today is 700,000.

Oli Le Lievre  51:22

Good money, isn't it?

Ray Harrington  51:32

Well, you can't, you can't just, I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know where it's going to go.

Oli Le Lievre  51:37

Have to hit a limit.

Ray Harrington  51:40

I think they're doing it just because they can. They want to blame COVID Or that's all bullshit. A new a new class 11 is 1.9 million.

Oli Le Lievre  51:52

It's crazy.

Ray Harrington  51:53

Wheels go around once and they're worth half. Yeah. So that's a big issue in the industry. Seeder bars, 550,000 the one up there is 17 years old. We bought a second hand and done 17 seasons. Yeah? Because young Louis 17 Yeah. God, so you've got to have that constraint there. And I just look around and I'm, I was talking to the biggest grain grower in West Australia, Bob Wolf, 90th birthday. Take part of the other night. He said, I've got 13 headers stopped and six Moon phrases up and going. And I said to him, how the hell do you make ends meet? He said, Ray, it's not sustainable. That side of it is not sustainable. Yeah. And, and I'm fearful of where this is going to go, Yeah, yep, yeah. I really am. So like, with us now with two headers, they're going to do half as many hours, but that's, that's just kicking the can down the road. Yeah, yeah, it's kicking the can down the road. So that is one of the things I'm very fearful for this industry. You just can't keep you can't do 20,000 hours with a tractor. You know, I am very fearful of that side of it. The costs are gonna be the cost, but that side of it just doesn't make sense to me. Price of steel hasn't gone up that much. Yeah, can I say I feel we've been ripped off?

Oli Le Lievre  53:26

You can Yeah, if you want to.

Ray Harrington  53:28

That's how I feel. Because it just doesn't make sense. Why is the tractor going up five times, and why is the header going up five times? Yeah, yeah, because it can. That's That's my feeling. Either the manufacturer is ripping off an X bike, I don't know.

Oli Le Lievre  53:48

Yeah, I do have, um, one final question, because you've, you've, I guess, come up with a couple of different quotes at different or bits of advice that have been given to at different stages of your life. But is there one piece of advice that you live by or that really sticks out to you in terms of how you've tried to live your life?

Ray Harrington  54:04

I we've just talked about succession plans. I just feel is so important with with the value of land and lots going my business now is worth 30 million for God's sake, with the price of the land, it was not mine and Tim. Tim and Vicky have bought the bought the other farms, but 30 million bucks, and you really got to have some planning. You got to be able to, well, the cash poor. You got to be able to retire the parents. So that's always going to happen. That's always going to happen. Yeah, yeah

Oli Le Lievre  54:45

Yeah. So that's your advice around succession. Always have a plan?

Ray Harrington  54:49

Have a plan. Sit down around the table and have a plan. If it's if it's a if it's a bum fight, well, you really got problems. If you can't sit down and work out how it's going to happen.

Oli Le Lievre  54:59

It's all for nothing, really.

Ray Harrington  55:01

Yeah, we'll get someone to help you. That'll, Bob Hall's famous quote to me when I do what he says, I keep both sides slightly unhappy.

Oli Le Lievre  55:09

Isn't that what they say, renegotiation, keep both sides. Each side feels a little bit hard done by it. You've had a fair negotiation. So it's a hell of hell of a career in life you've lived so far, right and amazing the contribution you had to the grain sector.

Ray Harrington  55:28

And it's going to go on. Same with jawing. I was, I was in South Australia in July with Heather, my partner, and I had a phone call from South Africa. It's an agronomist. I said, oh yeah. And he said, Oh, have you built the have you the builder of the destructor? And I said, Yeah. Why? Well, he said, I've got a heap of a agronomists under me, and I've got a heap of farmer clients, and they're in the shit. And I said, what he said all my clients in the shit. I said, why? He said they got two chemicals left, Sakura and Axial I see you're not under shit. It's worse than that. So anyway, the long and the short of it is, we've got a couple of distructors in there. Interesting thing is, Pierre's, he's you know he said, I don't want to make money out of this. He said, I've got to keep my farmers successful. That keeps me successful. He said, I don't want to make any money, but I want to. Facili- he's been over to crop updates a couple of times, right? And they're coming over to crop updates this year, five of them. Anyway. We talk on WhatsApp. Anyway. We're talking about it anyway. One of the later conversations, he said, Oh, the farmers over here have gone into this new slot seeding system. I said, Oh, yeah. I Yeah. What's the slot seeding? Oh, we dig this trench like this and we put the seed in. I said, You're not talking the no till in WA Oh yeah. I said, Oh well, you're only 40 years behind the eight ball.

Oli Le Lievre  57:19

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

Ray Harrington  57:21

But he said, The trouble is all the gear to do it is too expensive. Yeah. And I said, Well, if you had a look at what ag Master is doing, I'm using the same thing on the bottom my machine that we built in bloody 78 we've been around a full circle, going back to where we where we started. There you go, there you go,

Oli Le Lievre  57:44

And it continues.

Ray Harrington  57:45

Yeah. So he got on the Google and then he then he rang me back and said, yeah. So we've got a crop updates on Monday, Tuesday, then we're meeting with ag master at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, five of them looking at what I've got to get a list of machinery they're using over there for ag master, and they'll make up the plastic. They can make up the plastic points with their printer of what they'll need. And then they're coming down here, and then I'm invited over to with Pierre, over to South Africa, and he just keeps saying, I don't want to make money. I want to get my farm was successful. So I'm going to be the front of a I'm going to be the front man for for a campaign through South Africa.

Oli Le Lievre  58:36

That's unreal. That's a worldwide so, so the show continues, right?

Ray Harrington  58:42

Well, I'm just finding that quite exciting. Absolutely. Who knows what's going to transpire out of it all? Yeah, might just come home and say, Well, that's it. I've been to South Africa.

Oli Le Lievre  58:51

Well, that's it. Where's my license to go?

Ray Harrington  58:53

Yeah, and, and Steve Powell's had a bit to do with the Michael Walsh has got. I've had a couple of side just contact me since from over there. I don't know what's going on. Apparently, their soil is magnificent. I don't know what the hell's going on that they can't make make some money out of? Yeah, I'll find out, I guess. Yeah. So so that that's an interesting, an interesting little venture that'll keep me amused for a while to check back in.

Oli Le Lievre  59:25

Oh, Ray, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and have a chat, because it is just an incredible journey. Sofar.

Ray Harrington  59:31

It's, oh yeah, it's been a it's been a life journey, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. I've it's not very often you can, you can work with scientists, with with engineers, with marketing campaigns. And when I went to Denver, Colorado, Michael Walsh took me out, stood up in front of bloody 600 of the best people in the world, and I got stuck into them. They're all they're all chemical manufacturers and all the rest. I said, You blokes, knew about bloody resistance long before I did, and I've known about it for 40 years. But I said, you're letting the bloody ship sink. I said, You've left us in the manure. After I finished, American bloke named Ford come up with me, said, guy You sure did give it to'em. But that that makes the world go round, you know. So we're trying to do something in America, but we got, we got problems with moisture, too much harvest. I've been over there in water up to the top of my boots, and they harvest. But there is a shining light on the horizon. We've got the prototype. We've got the prototype in in the University in Perth, yes, through, through the contacts I had in the in America, and through Michael Walsh. And this thing will use next to no horse power. And it's, it's, it's, it's the next, it's the next thing, and it's human nature. It will keep evolving. And Michael just come down the last few weeks and got chaff to do the final testing with it. Okay? And it's right out of the left field, virtually no energy to run it, and mid drop, the kill rate that's that's all would be that'll Yeah, and the cost of it'll just crash and around, yeah. So anyway, it keeps it keeps going. That that's what keeps me excited dealing with people like Michael and Steve and and Mike and Jeff and yeah, yeah. So.

Oli Le Lievre  1:00:41

Wow, all the best. It's okay. Watching, okay, watching and cheering. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Harrington  1:00:44

It won't go for many years.

Oli Le Lievre  1:00:46

God. Thank you.

Ray Harrington  1:00:49

Not a problem Oli.

Oli Le Lievre  1:00:51

Now we hope you're loving these GRDC in conversation episodes as we continue to roll on, the conversation right around the country, we'd love for you to get in touch with anyone that you think's got a story worth sharing, interesting projects that are happening on their farm. Please reach out to the GRDC across any of your social panels. Get in touch with one of their team, because the grain sector in. In Australia is an absolute powerhouse. There is no shortage of people doing incredible things. So let's talk about it. See ya.