SIMILAR to many farm businesses in Victoria's Wimmera, the Eastwood family at Kaniva, in the far west of the region, spent the early part of the 2000s going progressively wider with their row spacings.
The conventional philosophy of the time was that getting out to around 30cm, but at least 25cm was critical in getting optimal plant numbers.
However, Sam Eastwood said in recent years the family had swung back to narrower spacings.
"We're now back on six inch (15cm), which is definitely one of the narrower configurations in the district," Mr Eastwood said.
"However, you'd probably say overall people have gone in that bit narrower again in recent years, the wide rows are probably more suited to low rainfall environments like the Mallee."
Mr Eastwood said that for him, the narrow rows were all about getting good plant numbers and good competition against weeds.
"We've got a disc seeder, which limits your options a little in terms of your pre-emergent herbicides as you probably don't get the incorporation required for products like (trifluralin-based) Treflan to really do the job properly."
"Instead, we are finding that with crops such as canola if you can get a good early break on the narrow row spacings the crop just gets up and going and doesn't give the weeds a chance to compete."
Mr Eastwood said he had been delighted with the performance of the Excel planter unit, which is combined with a Gason seed cart for cropping.
"With the narrow spacings, you've got a lot of discs on a 40 foot (13.3 metre) unit there but it has gone really well," he said.
"The disc seeders are also really good at getting in through standing stubble to plant even if there was a thick crop the year before that is useful."
He said while it was a slower return to the paddock with a disc machine rather than tines, it had not been a major problem.
"You probably have to stay off the paddock a day or two longer but often when you're going when it's a bit damp with a tined machine you can make a bit of a mess and probably could do with the extra time off anyway."
He said he was upbeat about the seasonal prospects this year.
"We don't expect the prices to be as good as they have the past couple of years and we obviously won't have that northern hay demand but things have started very well with an April break and that is all you can ask for at this stage."