Something feels different the moment you drive into Wilandra Farms. The pastures are rich with different plants, there are neat belts of trees regularly spread across paddocks, there’s a plethora of bird life, solar and wind installations and some very healthy-looking British Friesian cows. This is what regenerative dairy farming looks like and it’s paying off in higher value milk, better soil health, lower energy costs and less water use.
Sandra Jefford and Wilco Droppert are the dynamic dairy duo behind Wilandra Farms, whose title is a marriage of their first names and shared philosophy. They milk around 380 cows a year on about 180 hectares irrigated with groundwater and Avon River water, and dedicate other portions of land to habitat protection and biodiversity projects.
Sandra said they became certified organic producers in 2020 after about four years of transitioning the farm to an organic system that’s led them to become regenerative farmers.
“Regenerative farming at its most simple level is about getting more life on the farm by restoring and enhancing soil health,” she said.
“We sow pastures with a variety of plants to support a diversity of soil microbes, we manage grazing to retain soil cover, and we don’t use synthetic fertilizers, insecticides or herbicides that can kill soil life,” she said.
These strategies help build organic matter and create healthy soil that holds more carbon, moisture and nutrients to make their land productive and provide the raw ingredients for milk with greater nutritive value.
Plantains, chicory, red and white clovers, lucerne and a profusion of other plants nourish Wilandra’s cows.
“They say people should eat 30 plants a week, so for an animal as big as cow she needs a huge variety in her diet and we try and provide that,” Sandra said.
In 2018, Sandra and Wilco started planting shelter belts on the property that delivered more bovine benefits and other biodiversity, business and water saving wins.
“After a bit of a false start, we got professional advice and successfully planted a mix of eucalypts, acacias and other natives that have natural anti-parasitic properties (which is good for the cows), plentiful insect habitat, agroforestry timber we can harvest and sell, and wind breaks to reduce pasture evaporation,” she said.
Both conventional and organic farmed milk provide a range of essential nutrients, but a growing body of research shows that if cows eat a broad range of healthy plants, their milk might have a better balance of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids. These fats have been shown to help support a healthy immune system, better heart health and reduced risk of cancer.
Renewable farm energy has been a big focus for Wilandra Farms over the last five years, that kicked off with an energy audit in 2019.
“You need to get an energy audit done before you think about installing wind turbines or solar panels so you know where you’re at and what changes you can make,” Wilco said.
“We were using about 500,000kWh of energy a year for our dairy and irrigation and identified several ways we could reduce power usage.
“We replaced a 500m pipeline to reduce friction loss and installed a new bore pump at one of our sites and both initiatives reduced our power use by about 37 percent at that pumping site,” he said.
Spurred by this success, Wilco and Sandra invested in a major renewable energy project with assistance from Agriculture Victoria and Alternate Energy Innovations.
“We installed 200 kW of solar, four 5kW wind turbines, replaced our K-Line pod irrigation system with fixed sprinklers and hooked it all up to a high-tech management system that’s fully automated, controlled and monitored,” Wilco said.
“The key to making renewable irrigation efficient is to get smart people who can set up clever systems that enable you to make use of the energy when it’s being generated,” he said.
For Wilandra Farms, this often means changing the time when they do things, referred to as load shifting.
“We set the system to synchronise irrigation operations to match renewable energy production, to maximise watering efficiency and minimise use of grid energy,” he said.
“This means pumping water to an on-farm dam when we have the renewable power to do so and generally not pumping water directly from bores to pivots when we want to irrigate,” he said.
Sandra said it has transformed the way they farm because everything can run from the laptop.
“All I have to do is set the hours and tell the laptop that I want to run things on solar and it will automatically start as soon as we've got enough renewable energy, which is absolutely amazing,” she said.
Not only is this reducing carbon emissions, Wilco said they’re also saving some serious coin that makes long-term business sense.
“Depending on rainfall, in a full irrigation season, we’re seeing our irrigation costs drop from between $80,000 to $100,000 a year to around $25,000,” he said.
Sandra and Wilco believe their investments make them more resilient to a changing climate and believe the challenge is getting more consumers to see the value of how they’re farming.
“More than 48 percent of the Victorian landmass is owned and managed by farmers, so as an industry we have a huge opportunity to make a positive environmental impact,” Wilco said.
“Organic farming is more labour intensive and less productive than conventional farming, so it costs a bit more for an organic product,” he said.
“When you buy organic, you’re backing food produced without chemicals in a way that supports biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. And we reckon it’s worth it,” he said.
With ambitions to plant 100,000 trees by 2030, more energy efficiency plans in the pipeline and agritourism ideas, we’re excited to see where Wilandra Farms goes in the future. From what we’ve seen, it’s somewhere we hope others are inspired to go too.