ALLENDALE East farmer Rob Spehr is sure of two things.

The first is that farmers in his region, south of Mt Gambier in South Australia, can boast about an abundance of clean water.

    AT A GLANCE
  • Who: Rob Spehr
  • What: vegetables
  • Why: making the switch from dairying
  • Where: Allendale East, Victoria
  • Report: SIMONE SMITH

A close second is that there has to be a more stable way to farm than riding the ups and downs of the dairy roller coaster.

With that in mind, the former dairy sharefarmer has turned his hand to vegetables, while retaining his 200 beef cattle and 300 sheep.

Trial crops of peas and lettuce have replaced the milking cows in the paddocks close the dairy.

"We are in the best dairy country in Australia for all-year-round production. It is also good country to grow vegetables," he said.

"To do up the dairy and put another pivot in, we would be looking at $1 million. To transfer to horticulture, it was $100,000, a fraction of the cost to expand in dairy."

The dairy industry's turbulent past 12 months was the last straw for Rob, his partner Teresa and children Riley, 5 and Jacob 2.

Sharefarming with his parents, Rhonda and John, Rob knew that financially, there was little option to move forward with milking. "I could not take over," he said.

The family recently sold its 200-head registered Holstein herd made up of 50 years of breeding.

But none of the changes have been made lightly. Four years ago, Rob bought the nearby Mt Schank meatworks and he plans to use the cold-store for his vegetables.

He also studied the best vegetable varieties for the area, introduced produce buyers to the region and completed horticulture training and accreditation.

Starting on a small scale, he has 20ha planted, including 2ha of snap peas, various lettuce varieties and broccolini.

Drip irrigation has been installed to avoid crop damage that would otherwise occur if the centre pivots were used for irrigation.

Water usage has also dropped.

Rob said he previously used 5000-8000 megalitres/ha/year to grow pasture for the dairy cows but his horticultural enterprise had only used a quarter of that so far.

While harvest is yet to be completed, he estimates a yield of six tonnes per hectare for snap peas and hopes to match his production costs for the first year.

"We are adding vegetable growing to replace the milk cheque for cash-flow over the summer months," Rob said.

Rob said finding a market for the produce had been relatively easy, despite being situated half way between Adelaide and Melbourne.

"If you can grow it, we'll take it," was the attitude of some of his customers, which included supermarkets and wholesalers. He believes in time the lower cost of production in South Australia's South East will out-weigh the cost of freight to capital cities because of the abundance of water.

While enjoying the freedom from the dairy, one challenge of the new venture has been managing the short and intense picking season.

For the first year, Rob used family help as well as pickers employed through a local employment agency. However, once the operation becomes more established, Rob hopes to retain local labour from year to year.

Looking at the big picture, he believes horticulture could provide a viable supplementary income on dairy farms south of Mt Gambier.

"It's a domestic industry and not bound by the export market," Rob said.

"This area has a tendency to go boom or bust (with the Australian dollar)," he said, referring to fishing, dairying and beef industries which dominate the landscape.

Rob said horticulture was the ideal industry to diversify the region's agricultural base.

"It provides employment, gives consumer peace of mind about the quality of their vegetables and gives growers a return within six weeks," he said.