Ash Teasdale, who farms with brother Brad and father Peter at Rupanyup, run a cropping operation on 1600 hectares of predominantly heavy, black, self-mulching clay.

They started changing to no-till in 2006, after poor seasons saw their crops fail but their neighbour’s crops survived thanks to his adoption of the practice.

Mr Teasdale said the change had improved soil structure, and water penetration and retention.

Like many of the state’s crop farmers, the Teasdales had a good start to the season but it has cut out early.

Some of their neighbours have decided to cut their crops for hay, but Mr Teasdale said the family still planned to run the header over all the crops.

This season, they sowed 25 per cent lentils, 10pc chickpeas, 30pc barley and 35pc wheat; which Mr Teasdale said represented a “pretty normal” pulse to cereal ratio.

Last month, Mr Teasdale let Stock & Land do a few lengths of a paddock in the cabin of his 120-foot sprayer. The paddock was sown with lentils between rows of last year’s barley stubble.

“So far, lentils have hung in there pretty well, but in the next few days we’ll see if last week’s heat-wave will catch up to it,” he said.

“The temperature reached 37 degrees and there were 40-50km winds.”

The paddocks are mapped out with traffic laneways every 30 feet and they use a 2.5cm-accuracy RTK GPS system on the machines.

“Next year is the international year of the pulses and Rup is promoting itself as the pulse capital,” he said.

“They grow well here and make up a large percentage of our rotation.

“With prices at the moment, don’t need to harvest a lot to be profitable.”        

Mr Teasdale said if they had “average” rainfall, lentils or chickpeas could yield 2-3 tonnes/ha, wheat 3-4t and barley 4-5t on the farm.

He said there were many marketing options nearby.

The family sells pulses to Wimmera Grain Company and works with a grain marketer, whose many contacts, including in dairy and stockfeed, have proven particularly valuable whenever the weather impacts on crop quality.