Tim Houston broke the drought when he returned to the family farm in late 2019 after studying for a Bachelor of Business in farm management at Marcus Oldham College in Victoria.
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Mr Houston and his parents Rob and Sally operate Sandholes Farming near Mungindi, consisting of 14,000 hectares of grain and dryland cotton cropping and Brangus cattle breeding.
Mr Houston is among a cohort of Nuffield Scholars who are completing the 14 week program which offers a chance to travel the world purposefully and meet a diverse range of people in food and fibre production.
Before Mr Houston returned home there had been a run of dry years at the property on the Queensland/New South Wales border.
"In 2019, we received 90 millimetres for the whole year," Mr Houston said.
"It looked like Mars here," Mr Houston said.
Like many growers in the region, Mr Houston spent spring last year moving cattle to higher ground, shifting grain and getting roads as ready as possible before the inevitable double-hit of floodwater and rain.
"For the past 18 months, we've faced flooding, on and off," he said.
"It has meant that on our low country we had no crops in 2022 or 2021.
"However, in 2021, the country that wasn't flooded did really well, so we made up a bit there.
"In terms of getting grain in and out, we were lucky that year. We had a break during harvest, and we weren't too wet, which meant grain got back to our silos."
Making better use of the land - socially, environmentally and economically - is a topic that the family is keen on and one that Mr Houston will investigate as part of his recently awarded Nuffield Scholarship, supported by CRDC and Cotton Australia.
About 65 per cent of Sandholes' farming operation is usually cropped, with mostly native pasture grazing making up the remaining 35pc.
On some of Sandholes' Queensland farmland, Mr Houston is hoping to explore a soil improvement process that rotates between cropping and improved pasture phases.
"Utilising cropping will help to destroy the weed bank before planting in an improved pasture," he said.
Through this process, Mr Houston wants to explore what benefits it brings to soil carbon levels.
"We plan to test our soil and get a baseline reading and then test it again in the future to see if there has been any increase," he said.
Mr Houston is interested in sustainable land intensification - growing more with existing land.
"The Global Biodiversity Framework covers sustainable intensification, and I want to explore how farmers across the world are navigating this," he said.
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