Forbes farmers with sodic soils

The Allwrights are in their second year of leasing 1000-hectare block Riversleigh at Jemalong.

Transcript

00:00This soil we're standing in is quite sodic.

00:03We have put gypsum in here last year

00:05and the nature of the sodic soil becomes very cloddy.

00:11So we've had to really work it to get it to a seed bed.

00:15So he probably took five passes to get it into a condition

00:20that we were happy enough to plant into.

00:23So the nature of the water on the soil

00:27compacts very tightly in the furrow.

00:30So it becomes nearly, becomes unpenetrable to plants.

00:35It is nature of the soil, it gets better down that end.

00:38But the impact is that if we were down there,

00:42it is still very hard in the furrow.