Speaking
Steve at your next field day.
Grower group nights, conferences, workshops and walks through the crop. Steve talks the way he would over the fence: straight, practical, and usually with an analogy you'll still remember on the drive home.
The talks
From the Plant’s Perspective.
Steve’s talks and his Course are one series. Each comes back to the same idea: Healthy Plants are the Root of your Profit. Pick the one that suits your growers, or ask Steve to shape a talk around your crop.
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What the onion has been trying to tell you. Its ceiling is set weeks before there’s a bulb to see, so the talk follows its five stages, not the calendar, and shows how a sap test lets you hear it in time.
- Take home
- Five stages, not a calendar.
- Good for
- Onion growers and their agronomists.
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The talk everything else hangs off. Why yield isn't the profit, it's the recoveries on the yield, and why the plant, not the soil test, is the scorecard for health.
- Take home
- Two levers: yield and quality. Pull both.
- Good for
- Any grower audience. A good opener for a field day.
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What happens to nitrogen between the bag and the crop. Total versus free nitrogen, why all nitrogen is not equal, and what that means for a program.
- Take home
- All nitrogen is not equal.
- Good for
- Vegetable and broadacre growers, and the agronomists who work with them.
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Quality is set up early, while the fruit is dividing its cells. What the crop needs in that window, and why it lasts days in some row crops and weeks in tree crops.
- Take home
- The window for quality opens early and shuts early. Be ready before it does.
- Good for
- Orchardists and tree-crop growers: avocados, apples and the rest.
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Steve's concrete foundation. Calcium, boron and silicon are the three amigos; potassium is the lone wolf. Change the recipe in the bag, then ask whether you'd build a house on it.
- Take home
- Build the foundation first. Potassium comes after.
- Good for
- Growers and advisers rethinking their fertiliser program.
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Every crop has a few stages where a small push makes a big difference. How Steve reads them, and how he builds a season's flight plan around them.
- Take home
- Put your effort where the crop can use it: at its critical stages.
- Good for
- Growers planning next season, and anyone who has seen a flight plan and wants the thinking behind it.
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Before reaching for the spray, ask what the pest is telling you. Pests and disease as signs of plant health, and a crop's defences as something that comes with being healthy.
- Take home
- Ask why before you spray.
- Good for
- Growers and agronomists, especially where the spray program is up for discussion.
Where
Paddock, shed or stage.
Steve's a farmer first, but he'll take a microphone. The talk changes shape to suit the place and the people in it.
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In the paddock
Field days and crop walks. The talk happens with the crop right there, so there's always a plant to pull up and look at.
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In the shed
Grower group nights and workshops. A trestle table, a flip chart, a cuppa, and plenty of time for questions.
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On stage
Conferences and industry days. The same plain talk, with slides if you'd like them and a time slot he'll stick to.
For organisers
Making it easy on the day.
A few things that help Steve plan, and one way a half day could run. None of it is set in stone.
What Steve needs from you
- The date, and a back-up date if you have one.
- Where it is, and whether there's a paddock to walk.
- Who's coming: growers, agronomists, and which crops.
- How long you'd like him to talk.
- What you'd like people to go home with.
Fees and travel: ask Steve. He'll quote once he knows the date and the place.
A half day, for example
Example · shape it with Steve- 9:30Walk the crop. Steve and the host grower take the group through a paddock and read the plants together.
- 10:30Smoko. Tea, coffee, and the questions people won't ask in front of everyone.
- 11:00The talk. In the shed. One from the series, shaped around what the group just saw in the paddock.
- 12:00Questions over lunch. Then everyone heads home with one thing to try.
Book Steve
Got a date in mind?
Tell Steve the date, the place and who's coming. He'll get back to you, usually with a phone call once he's out of the paddock.
Ask Steve about a dateGrower field day
Guest speaker Steve Martin
Learn to Listen
- When
- your date
- Where
- your shed
- Smoko
- provided