Rupanyup Agriculture and Pastoral Society organised the competition.

Society president Barry Baker said lentils were important to the town’s economy. 

“The Wimmera Agricultural Societies Association run a wheat crop competition each year, but because lentils are an important part of Rupanyup’s economy and cropping in this part of the Wimmera, we thought it was important to have a competition just for lentils,” he said.

He said lentil crops were judge last month, before harvest started.

“We had someone from Birchip Cropping Group judge the competition for us,” he said. 

“Estimated yields were between about 0.3 to 0.75 tonnes a hectare.

“With lentil prices the way they are, it has turned into a very profitable crop for some farmers.”

Mr Baker said Mr Teasdale’s crop yielded 0.75 tonnes a hectare.

”He was successful because of last year’s stubble, which was about 10 inches high,” he said.

“There were a lot of lentils sown in the region this year, but they varied from either not being harvesting, yielding nothing up to yielding 0.75 tonnes a hectare.”

Mr Teasdale said he was pretty happy with the result of his lentil crop, despite the dry season.

“We obviously could have done with more rain but we were pleased with the result,” he said.

“We only had 153mm of rain for the season, so there isn’t a lot you can do with that.”

Mr Teasdale said the paddock that won the competition had more residue than other crops because barley had been grown in it the year before.  “It had wheat in it the year before last,” he said.

Mr Teasdale said the winning lentil paddock had been harvest.

“It wasn’t a huge crop by any standard,” he said.

“But it was a handy result and we ended up with a profitable crop.”

Mr Teasdale said Mr Baker asked him to enter the competition.

“Barry wanted to get the competition going and was proactive about it,” he said.

”He was keen to use the competition to show off the different farming practices.”

“We are fully no-till, controlled traffic farming.”

Mr Teasdale said in dry seasons like this year, no-till farming has made all the difference.

“Looking back even 10 years, if we didn’t have the same practices we do now, we would have had no harvest at all this year,” he said

“It really is a testament to the new systems and methods of farming.”