Lentils in Western Australia - Harvesting and Agronomy

It’s harvest time for Lentil grower Ron Longbottom at his Grass Patch property near Esperance. We’ve been harvesting peas for quite a long time so lentils for us is quite similar… Grower interest in lentils is on the increase. Their popularity is well established in eastern Australia. In WA the industry’s small but developing especially in the Esperance port zone.

00:31 - The interest is prompting research, with GRDC support, into lentil agronomy, growth harvesting practices and good returns being another incentive. We’ve got the soils, and the farmers with experience in peas and then lentils are usually slightly higher priced and that’s sort of driving the change to lentils. GRDC projects include investment in measuring and monitoring ways to improve the agronomy of lentils, and highlighting some of the new and promising varieties that don’t shatter, shed or lodge. “Highlands” has just come out and I reckon that’s going to be a winner and “Hallmark” has proved very good locally. Most of our lentils are “Bolt” but the “Hallmark” and “Highland” seem to have some of their characteristic plus more herbicide options.

01:22 - The new varieties certainly have a bit more vigour about them and the other thing we do is we’re sowing them early. So one of the things that actually Ron was sort of an innovator was sowing the lentils in the middle of April and they just jump out of the ground and grow better. One of the critical things growing lentils and peas is setting up your paddock properly to start with. In years gone by we’ve tracked-chained paddocks to clean up a lot of the stumps and then rolling it straight behind the seeder which most people that grow peas do and you do the same with lentils. Modern harvester fronts are removing barriers to make harvesting lentils easier including auto on-ground pressure monitoring.

02:07 - You see here on the screen this header’s in float mode so the header is picking up off the sensor down here you see the one with the numbers on it I’ve sort of told it around about the one and a half to maintain that amount of pressure on the ground so as we’re going along the computer in the header is automatically monitoring how much pressures through that potentiometer I don’t really need to hang onto the hydrostat apart from the fact that if I see a stump that has made probably one of the biggest difference to harvesting legumes I think. Harvester setup does require added contingencies to avoid cracking the lentils in hotter weather. You’ve sort of got your concave quite open, you’ve slowed your rotor down, similar fan speed to if you were harvesting wheat cos lentils are quite heavy, you can have your sieves at a similar setting to wheat. Taking steps to minimise fire risk is important because lentil residue has a low ignition point. Ron has installed thermal blankets to reduce risk.

03:11 - This is the muffler and the exhaust, so they wrap around and then they continue down here at the turbo the manifold and the turbo themselves are the hottest parts. That’s one of the sort of the engine modifications we’ve done you know to sort of help with reducing fires. Apart from some on-farm storage Mark Seymour says upfront investment to launch into lentils doesn’t need to be overly significant. well Lentils are easy to store you don’t have to have a sealed silo. Ron and Kerry have just put this big shed up, it can hold 2000 tonnes of lentils, they tarp them up and they’re good for 6 or 7 months. Mark’s advice is to give lentils a go.

03:52 - They offer an option of another break crop in the rotation and GRDC’s project priorities are all aimed at achieving increased yields and grower returns. I think it’s not as hard as it can sound. Certainly the harvesting puts people off but as you’ve heard from Ron and other people that the harvesting with new headers it’s quite different to 10 or 15 years ago. So, don’t be scared! .