CROPPING more than 50 per cent of a farm when the farm is the only source of income is a "dangerous" game, according to Victorian agricultural consultant Mike Stephens.
Mr Stephens is a director of Mike Stephens and Associates, an agricultural farm management and consultation business with offices in Victoria and NSW.
"If you're totally relying on the farm as the source of income and cropping more than 50pc of it, you start to get into the danger zone," Mr Stephens said.
"Cropping more than 70pc in the same situation, makes things very dangerous."
Mr Stephens was quick to point out that he was not encouraging farmers not to crop, but merely encouraging them to have another form of investment in their enterprise.
"The cost of failure is too great," he said.
"We're not saying don't crop, but just don't go to the races with more money in your wallet than you can afford to lose."
Livestock, particularly sheep were an obvious choice for diversification given current market prices, however Mr Stephens urged farmers to be cautious about spending up big on stock given the high expense they represented.
"If you had a bare farm today, you wouldn't be rushing out and buying sheep," he said.
"I shudder at what people are paying for sheep at the moment.
"Share cropping offers a good opportunity, and so does running sheep on an agistment basis so you don't actually have to buy the stock yourself."
While the majority of his clients did not have more than 50pc of their land in crop, Mr Stephens said there were many farmers who were beginning to realise that their enterprises were overweight in crop.
He said people had been swept up in the hype of new machinery and toys and the promise of wheat prices being at an all time high.
"It's not and open and shut case and we're certainly not against cropping," Mr Stephens said.
"Some people will still be ahead of livestock with their cropping profits, although in the 2008/2009 harvest, livestock probably beat crop for some.
"In a self-replacing dual-purpose flock, meat sheep will beat cropping but wool sheep won't.
"We recommend having both.
"Even with high sheep prices, farmers can have sheep in their system and there are many ways to do it."
Putting himself in the hotseat, Mr Stephens said if he had an empty farm today he would buy some sheep, but would start slow.
"I would buy some older sheep and ease my way in," he said.
"It would be the same if I was overweighted with crop, I would ease my way out."
Dan Taylor is an agronomist and partner of DKT Rural Agencies, Kellerberrin, and said while Mr Stephens comments may be true in some areas, it was not the case for many farmers in WA.
Mr Taylor said to the west of Kellerberrin, cropping could be done quite consistently although to the east it did start to drop off.
"I would be wary of making such a sweeping comment," Mr Taylor said.
"We have a general rule of thumb for our area, whereby you have about 65pc of your farm in cereals in any year.
"We specify cereals because they are the only grain making money year in, year out compared to the others which are generally for rotational benefits."
Mr Taylor said he did agree with Mr Stephen's comments about sheep being a costly option, but there was no denying that they were profitable.
He said when you look at stocking on a basis of needing at least two ewes per hectare at current prices, farmers were looking at a cost of $200/ha.
"Sheep are definitely profitable at the moment, but I agree that it's costly," he said.
"If I had a bare farm, well if it was dirty I would look at putting 50pc in pasture, maybe some canola and depending on the season maybe try and grow some short season wheat varieties.
"But mixed farming is still looking pretty good."
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