Michael and Rochelle Nichols and their six children have a mixed farming enterprise at Sisters Creek in Northwest Tasmania.
The family crops Wheat, Pyrethrum, Poppies, Potatoes, Onions, Canola, Mustard, Peas, Buckwheat and run 80 Friesian steers. Michael has a contracting business which provides muck spreading, spraying and combine harvesting through which he buys local wheat and barley to on sell to local dairy farmers.
The closing of a vegetable processing plant in the state prompted the family to diversify and invest in canola oil. The canola is cold pressed and sold in cubes or bottled for retail sales.
“The oil business is ticking along nicely. We’re providing chickens with canola meal and the cold pressed canola oil is going mostly to the Japanese catering market, as they prefer the GM-free status. We go through about 120 tonnes of seed a year and produce roughly 50,000 litres of oil.”
Michael is a very passionate farmer and is using NDVI images to improve and even up crop yields with variable rate spreader applications and is verifying the results using yield data.
Michael is an invited international presenter at LandWISE 2018
Michael’s attendance at LandWISE 2018 was supported by AGMARDT