The Farmer November-December 2021

The Hunter Pipeline

Floods, fires and drought

Bringing home the bacon

Land and sky farming

The people and the soil being affected

How farmers the worst hit are recovering

Supporting our pork producers

Innovations and tech on farms of today

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NOV – DEC 2021 / $ 9.95

Earth & Turf A deep dive into carbon farming

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ADVERTORIAL

WE’RE HERE WHEN IT MATTERS Local Land Services is here to help you protect against the impact of pests and weeds, grow your productivity and farm business, and connect you with like-minded landholders caring for country.

Local Land Services: the boots on the ground when you need it most.

At Local Land Services we understand the hardship you have faced in recent years. Across the state the impacts of the drought, catastrophic bushfires and then flooding in multiple regions has had lasting effects on farm businesses and regional industries. We understand because we live and work in these communities too.

The NSW Government waived Local Land Services rates for the past three years, as part of its nearly $4 billion in drought and water security support to landholders impacted by the worst drought on record. Even though you did not pay rates, the drought package meant our services remained the same. In many areas demand for assistance greatly increased, as producers like you sought help from our team with livestock health advice

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and veterinary services, agronomy and feed management, farm planning and managing the increasing need for pest and weed control.

While drought conditions have thankfully eased, ongoing support is still available through Service NSW and the Rural Assistance Authority to help landholders and homeowners recover from recent natural disasters, COVID-19 and the impacts of mice.

In 2022, Local Land Services rates will be reintroduced. Currently rates contribute 20 per cent of Local Land Services budget, and 100 per cent of rates collected are returned to you as customers through our services and support. Your rates allow us to support you to meet your General Biosecurity Duty in controlling invasive pests and reducing weed spread. Your rates also help maintain vital market access for producers and are crucial to supporting

our control programs when exotic animal or plant disease outbreaks happen, as well as other biosecurity threats to industry.

Rates also contribute to our response when emergencies happen, and the work we do in between disasters helping increase landholder and industry preparedness. Right now we are working with communities across NSW to help you better prepare for future natural disasters, and when disaster strikes we are there to help when you need it most.

Your rates notice will arrive in January. Between now and then we encourage you to visit our dedicated rates portal www.lls.nsw.gov.au/rates to understand more about our rating process and the value you receive from the work we do. Alternatively, you can talk with one of our trusted team members by calling 1300 795 299.

WE ARE BOOTS ON THE GROUND Rates contribute to our biosecurity, animal health and emergency management work which helps us, help you when you need it most.

For more information on our rates in 2022 and what they help us do, head to our website.

www.lls.nsw.gov.au/rates

Contents THE MUSTER NEWS AND VIEWS

Kids to Farm program celebrates its first year; More ambitious climate targets to bring the globe to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; The Hunter Pipeline and who it is affecting; Renewable energy and Transgrid; Border issues in agriculture; The need for diversification on farms ������� 6

TRADE COTTONING ON

AUSSIE FARMERS AND THE FUTURE

Innovation and water use efficiency remain at the heart of this challenging rotational crop ��������������������������������������� 46

OF BIOENERGY

INDUSTRY LITTLE GEMS OF GOODNESS

THE BIG PICTURE SOIL , CARBON AND CLIMATE

The ins and outs of carbon farming brings a bright, yet complex picture to light ����� 28

THE BIG ISSUE

With seemingly endless varieties popping up, the lettuce industry is thriving ��������� 52 BRINGING HOME THE BACON

With the festive season almost upon us, it’s time to support our local bacon and ham producers ��������������������������������������� 56

There is more pressure than ever on the world’s biggest 20 emitting countries to make some big changes ������������������������� 78

INTERNAIONAL INFLUENCE QATAR: FARMING HEROES TO ZEROES

How has little ol’ Qatar become one of the highest rated nations in terms of food security? ������������������������������������������������ 84

COMMUNITY COMMUNITY

ROAD TO RECOVERY

Deep drought, bushfires and record floods brought the fragility of life into sharp focus. Now, finally, resilience has a chance to shine �������������������������������������� 36

ENVIRONMENT

STORIES THAT MATTER

Community news and views continue to shine in Gwydir Shire’s trusted local newspaper ������������������������������������� 60

NEW GENERATIONS: THE OTTONS

Eight generations of Ottons have made their mark on the Bega Valley, and the children and grandchildren there today will follow in Paddy Otton’s footsteps ���� 88 MARKETPLACE: SALEYARDS

CURRENT AFFAIRS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF CRIME

NSW Farmers and NSW Police are working together to make a difference to rising rural crime � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 42

SPECIAL REPORT: INNOVATIVE FARMING

Some cool new products we’ve collated for you for this Christmas ���������������������������� 93 MEET A MEMBER

A profile on inspiring NSW Farmers’ member Terry Fishpool �������������������������� 94

FARMING ON THE LAND AND IN THE SKY

An agtech explosion on land and in the air is driving the industry forward ��������������� 66

FARM DOGS

Meet Millie the pup from Peats Ridge ���� 95 THE TAIL END

INNOVATION

Gilgandra Shire’s Coo-ee Heritage Centre gets a well deserved upgrade � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 96

R&D AND THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE

Ag and the many sectors associated with it have an astounding future ��������������������� 74

After drought, fires and floods, Rob Miller’s farm in Milton is back to being picture perfect.

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Internet Solutions for Farms of all Sizes Activ8me and parent company Australian Private Networks are leaders in remote and regional Australian connectivity.

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Switching to Activ8me and Sky Muster™ Plus can be arranged over the phone.

Call us on 13 22 88 www.a ctiv8me.net.au for full details. or visit activ8me.net.au

Solutions for Large Agriculture Australian Private Networks (APN) offers custom WiFi hardware for the agriculture industry, powered by nbn™ Business BSS and Unleashed™ business satellite services.

APN’s Solutions Include: Unlimited Data Available Choice of unlimited data on Unleashed™ or nbn™ BSS data blocks without peak and off peak times.

Vehicle, Trailer & Bespoke Hardware Portable equipment for connecting a temporary service anywhere.

Extended WiFi (WiFi to Other Buildings) We design, build and install solutions to provide wireless connectivity across a farm.

Staff/Public WiFi Offer free or Pay-As-You-Go access to WiFi for employees or visitors.

Speak to us on (03) 8566 8312 www.a or visit apn.net.au pn.net.au for more information.

Major Partner

Business Services

From the editor

THE MAGAZINE

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PUBLISHER James Wells EDITOR Michelle Hespe ART DIREC TOR Ryan Vizcarra

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EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

Michelle Hespe Email: mhespe@intermedia.com.au

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SALES DIRECTOR

Ben Payne Email: bpayne@intermedia.com.au Phone : 0403 893 668

–CONTRIBUTORS Adrian Merrgan Bethany Plint Darcy Watt Darren Baguley David Rogers Dave Smith Jeanette Severs Michael Burt Rachael Lenehan Sandra Godwin Sarah Croft Sheree Young Susan Gough Henly NSW FARMERS

CEO Pete Arkle MEDIA RELATIONS MANAGER Michael Burt MAGAZINE CONTENT TEAM

Alicia Harrison - Membership Service Manager Annabel Johnson - Head of Policy & Advocacy CONTAC T US

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MANAGING DIREC TOR Simon Grover GM OF OPERATIONS Chris Baker FINANCE MANAGER Mina Vranistas PRODUC TION MANAGER Jacqui Cooper HEAD OF DIGITAL Pauline Grech HEAD OF EVENTS Beth Tobin The Farmer magazine magazine is published for the NSW Farmers Association (ABN: 31 000 004 651) by The Intermedia Group (ABN: 94 002 583 682) 41 Bridge Rd, Glebe NSW 2037.

All rights reserved. Printed by IVE Group. Getty Images were used throughout the magazine.

his issue, we’ve shone the spotlight on something that all farmers need to grow the best possible produce – healthy soil. I remember only a decade or so ago, when the term organic was a newish thing bandied around with aplomb, and many people considered it to be another trend that would gradually lose it's power.

Yet since then, the organic produce sector has continued to exponentially expand, and now a lot of consumers will only buy organic.

We all know the difficulties with that, as the ag industry is an enormous ship to turn, but step by step, we are all coming around to the notion that in order for agriculture to be sustainable, and indeed, for the planet to keep supporting the billions of poeple relying on it, we need to embrace change. And so today, climate change and soil health are common conversations, rather than ones that quickly turn into fierce debate.

We’ve also put together an inspiring story on how some of the farmers most hard hit by fires, floods, drought, and the mice plague, have bounced back and are busily making positive changes for the future.

We also delved into how important it is for farmers to diversify. Today it’s crucial that producers have a backup plan and preferably, an alternative stream of revenue.

A meaty feature that dives deep into this, is our piece on the huge potential of biomethane for the agricultural sector. The success stories in the UK, Europe and the US are proof that there is so much more work in this area that can be done on Aussie farms, and it’s not just about the big corporations with mega dollars behind them.

In the lead up to Christmas, we’ve also covered a couple of farming sectors that go hand in hand with the festive season – pork

and lettuce. You'd be surprised by how many people don’t know that the bacon and ham they consume is from overseas. That needs rectifying. And gone are the days when iceberg lettuce was the star of any salad. Now there is so much innovation in this sector that it’s a tough task deciding which lettuce is best for your salad or sandwich!

There's plenty more in this issue, but one feature that is close to my heart is our New Generation piece on the legendary Paddy Otton from the Bega Valley. His family span back eight generations in the beautiful region where I grew up, and it’s heartening to hear that his children and grandchildren will continue to farm in the place he calls home.

Enjoy this issue and we look forward to bringing you more stories on our awesome farmers and communities soon.

MICHELLE HESPE

Editor

The Intermedia Group takes its corporate and social responsibilities seriously and is committed to reducing its impact on the environment. We continuously strive to improve our environmental performance and to initiate additional CSR based projects and activities.

As part of our company policy we ensure that the products and services used in the manufacture of this magazine are sourced from environmentally responsible suppliers.

The Hunter pipeline

Floods, fires and drought

Bringing home the bacon

Land and sky farming

The people and the soil being affected

How farmers the worst hit are recovering

Supporting our own pork producers

Innovations and tech on farms today

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Photo by FluxFactory

Our Earth & turf A deep dive into carbon farming

THE FARMER

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The wrapping used in the delivery process of this magazine is 100 per cent biodegradable.

NOV – DEC 2021 / $ 9.95

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This magazine has been printed on paper produced from sustainably sourced wood and pulp fibre and is accredited under PEFC chain of custody.

NOV - DEC 2021

DISCLAIMER: This publication is published by The Intermedia Group Pty Ltd (the “Publisher”). Materials in this publication have been created by a variety of different entities and, to the extent permitted by law, the Publisher accepts no liability for materials created by others. All materials should be considered protected by New Zealand and international intellectual property laws. Unless you are authorised by law or the copyright owner to do so, you may not copy any of the materials. The mention of a product or service, person or company in this publication does not indicate the Publisher’s endorsement. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Publisher, its agents, company officers or employees. Any use of the information contained in this publication is at the sole risk of the person using that information. The user should make independent enquiries as to the accuracy of the information before relying on that information.

All express or implied terms, conditions, warranties, statements, assurances and representations in relation to the Publisher, its publications and its services are expressly excluded. To the extent permitted by law, the Publisher will not be liable for any damages including special, exemplary, punitive or consequential damages (including but not limited to economic loss or loss of profit or revenue or loss of opportunity) or indirect loss or damage of any kind arising in contract, tort or otherwise, even if advised of the possibility of such loss of profits or damages. While we use our best endeavours to ensure accuracy of the materials we create, to the extent permitted by law, the Publisher excludes all liability for loss resulting from any inaccuracies or false or misleading statements that may appear in this publication.

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om.au

The Muster l NEWS

Bringing the outdoors in with Kids to Farms In its inaugural year, the NSW Kids to Farms program has already made its mark. Even the global pandemic hasn’t stopped the program, which helps build primary school students’ awareness of food and fibre production. Applications for future excursions and classroom incursions are already piling up, with 450 students having already taken part.

Farming is ingrained in Australia’s identity, but our connection with this vital industry weakens with each generation. The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us of the necessity of local food and fibre production, but it’s a lesson we need to keep relearning.

The ethos behind Kids to Farms – that all primary school students should have two interactions with agriculture before they turn 12 – aims to teach that lesson from a young age.

As the state reopens, primary schools will have an even better opportunity to experience this exciting program. Subsidies of up to $1,500 will remain available into 2022, making the program accessible to more schools across the state. Schools are also encouraged to bring a snippet of agriculture to the classroom on

Kids learning about how their food is made, on the Kids to Farm program.

National Ag Day through the program’s newly available Ag Packs, which include interactive items such as soil pH kits.

The excursion doesn’t even need to be held on a farm or in the classroom. One group of 100 students is set to have a virtual experience, in which they will learn about sustainable farming and design their own farm to be judged (via video) by a farmer.

The NSW Kids to Farm Project is delivered by NSW Farmers and funded by the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment as part of the Educating Kids about Agriculture: Kids to Farms program.

ADVERTORIAL

PRECISION PASTURES The Carbon Starter Report is an industry-first service led by Armidalebased soils and agronomy consultants Precision Pastures. The report is a two-part preliminary assessment of a farm’s ability to sustainably deliver a soil carbon project.

The Australian carbon market is estimated to currently be worth $6.5 billion. Precision Pastures Founder and Managing Director Milton Curkpatrick says spatial technology is used to create a prospectivity heat map. Comprehensive soil tests will then provide a summary of the potential to establish an on-farm soil carbon project.

The Federal Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) registered it’s 1,000th project in September, edging towards 100 million tonnes in emission reductions.

The carbon market in Australia is governed by the Federal Government’s Clean Energy

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Regulator, and it is one of the most trusted and comprehensive in the world, developing Australia’s Carbon Credit Units as some of the most tradable globally.

“We make recommendations on how to register a carbon farming project, once the farmer has a clear understanding of whether or not their farm has the potential to increase its soil carbon levels,” Milton says.

The Federal Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) has registered it’s 1,000th project this month, edging towards 100 million tonnes in emission reductions. The global carbon market also grew 20 per cent to $270 billion in 2020 according to S&P Global.

The Precision Pastures Carbon Starter Report costs $2000 per farm for Part A and $3000 per farm for Part B. precisionpastures.com.au 1300 107 066

The Precision Pastures team collects carbon samples using a custom-built percussion coring machine.

ADVERTORIAL

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE: TIME TO SHINE As world leaders meet in Glasgow this month, they will commit to more ambitious climate targets to bring the globe to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This will catalyse new opportunities for innovative farmers, and Australian producers are well placed to drawdown carbon at scale in regenerative landscapes.

Dr Terry McCosker, Founding Director of Resource Consulting Services (RCS), said, “There is a change in business practice underway, and it’s showing up in the markets and the money. Investors and shareholders are looking to demonstrate they are offsetting climate risk and meeting their ESG (environmental, social and governance) goals. It’s not just a tick box exercise anymore; they are looking to invest in real change.

“In the last 12 months I have regularly received calls from financial institutions, high net worth individuals, funds and emitters all asking how they can get involved in regenerative agriculture.

Food corporations, responding to consumer demand, are also wanting to source regenerative produce,” McCosker said.

After more than 30 years of running Australia’s leading education, training and advisory service in the regenerative agriculture space, McCosker sees this as an important shift. RCS trains and supports landholders to profitably transition to regenerative systems. Their

ABOVE: Dr Terry McCosker OAM Founding Director of RCS and Chairman of carbon aggregator Carbon Link; Stuart Austin and Trisha Cowley, Wilmot Cattle Co, sold $500,000 worth of soil carbon credits from their Ebor Property in NSW to Microsoft earlier this year.

approach has been well-honed and fieldtested and is now happening at scale.

Managing land regeneratively is becoming more attractive to producers as it buffers businesses against an increasingly unreliable climate. Building ground cover and soil organic matter improves productivity and profitability.

Combine these factors with more biodiversity, carbon and hydration in the landscape, and the land has more resilience to ride out future droughts.

Access to new income streams via natural capital accounting payments, carbon credits and biodiversity credits will also bolster profitability.

Stuart Austin, General Manager of Wilmot Cattle Company in NSW sold $500,000 worth of soil carbon credits to Microsoft in a pioneering deal earlier this year. He and his wife Trisha Cowley are both graduates of RCS’s Grazing for Profit School (GFP). “It’s company policy that all our staff undertake GFP within their first 12 months,” Austin said. “GFP is the single best investment we have ever made in ourselves and our staff.”

If you want to gain the skills and knowledge to regenerate your land and business while positioning yourself for emerging markets, now is the time to start.

For more information call: 1800 356 004, visit rcsaustralia.com.au or email info@rcsaustralia.com.au

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The Muster l NEWS

NSW Farmers hosts 30 by 30 roundtable Words STEPHEN MUDD

Agriculture isn’t just about dirt and livestock – it is a major sector driving economic prosperity across our state and our nation. Each year our farms not only feed and clothe the nation, we contribute billions to the economy. In NSW, farmgate output is expected to exceed $16 billion this year alone, pouring money into the state’s coffers while putting food on the table for millions and powering sister industries like freight, logistics and retail.

So when NSW Farmers set our ambitious goal of growing the NSW agricultural sector to $30 billion in farmgate output by 2030, it was clear we couldn’t do it alone. We knew we would have to consult a range of diverse voices – from banking and finance to technology, government and the private sector – to give their perspective on how we could all build this future potential.

Moderated by Richard Heath from the Australian Farm Institute, NSW Farmers’ first 30 by 30 roundtable saw NAB Agribusiness Executive Jon Meys and Agri Economist Phin Ziebell join with PwC Agribusiness Partner Greg Quinn, Department of Primary Industries Director General Scott Hansen and National Broadband Network Agriculture Head of Segment Robert Hardie to develop our strategy and identify the opportunities and challenges facing the sector.

Australia has traditionally had a largely uncoordinated approach to the growth of the industry, and we have a notoriously variable climate with droughts and flooding rains. But despite the boomand-bust cycle, the sector has grown steadily, and, with the global population predicted to hit 8.5 billion by 2030, there is a big growth opportunity for Australian agriculture.

Over the past five years we have gone from one of the worst droughts in history to record production, so even though we are in the middle of a very optimistic period, the roundtable discussion asked the important question: are farm businesses doing enough to prepare for the inevitable turnaround?

GROWING OUR FUTURE

AN AMBITIOUS GOAL

At present, NSW accounts for roughly 24 per cent of the national agricultural output, which means we not only need to increase our productivity and profitability across the board but also our share of the national farmgate output, requiring an almost doubling of the annual growth rate.

We all know modern agriculture involves more than diesel and dust, and as we move into the next decade we’ll need to see more focus on ways to use resources more efficiently, increasing workforce participation beyond the traditional image of the farmer on a tractor, and looking at a holistic production chain that goes

not only to the farmgate but beyond. This is how we will drive innovation in all markets and especially the premium products that come from agriculture.

The roundtable discussed multiple factors that farmers will need to consider when looking for ways to grow into the future. Finding markets to sell to within the global context is key, but so too is being agile enough to pivot if there are future trade disruptions. High shipping costs have always been a factor for Australian producers, but what happens if restrictions mean export is not an option? Can we afford to continue exporting raw commodities only to then import processed products made from those commodities? And how do we make sure agricultural businesses have the resources – be they workforce, infrastructure, or conditions – to succeed?

Ultimately, if agriculture can identify the risks ahead, we will be better able to navigate the challenges of the next decade and find or create those opportunities we need to grow to 30 by 30.

DIESEL BITES THE DUST

Modern Australian agriculture involves much more than diesel and dust.

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ADVERTORIAL

SMART SOLUTION FOR SINKING SILOS How our quick and cost-effective injection of resin fixed the base slabs supporting these giant silos – and saved these farmers significant future heartache

Successful agribusiness owners Phillip and Michelle Eulenstein of Dragonfly Agriculture, who run a large wheat and barley farm near Moree in Northern NSW, recently noticed stress cracking and subsidence in the concrete base slabs under two of their large grain silos.

While the steel silo shells themselves were not showing signs of damage at this stage, the uneven floor surface was causing the internal auger to drag on the concrete in places, which was damaging the blade. Furthermore, the Eulensteins were required to manually shovel lots of leftover grain into the conveyor trenches

at the end of each cycle since the auger was working on uneven ground.

Knowing that if left untreated they would likely have to remove the silos and augers, demolish the concrete slabs, re-work the foundations, replace new concrete slabs and then re-install the grain silos, the Eulensteins were keen to find a more cost-effective and timely alternative treatment.

Phillip and Michelle reached out to us after hearing about how Resinject had fixed a friend’s house foundations in Moree, and subsequently one of our experienced Structural Consultants promptly attended their farm to assess the situation and develop a tailored resin injection solution.

Resinject measured up to 60mm subsidence from original level in some areas of the silo slabs, which was primarily causing the concrete cracking. Resinject proposed to treat the underlying soil foundation using resin void-filling, which would also raise the sunken areas of concrete throughout the inside of the

silos, and to also provide an additional long-term support structure around the perimeter of the silo slabs with a series of deeper injected resin piers.

With Phillip and Michelle’s acceptance of our proposed solution, which came in at a fraction of the ‘remove and replace’ option cost, Resinject were on-site within a matter of weeks to complete the works over the course of two days.

At the completion of the works, Resinject had successfully raised the concrete slabs, filled the underlying voids, compacted the foundations, and installed stabilising piers to ensure a robust and enduring support structure remained for the future heavy loading. All of this was competed through a pattern of small diameter drill holes through the concrete, which were re-filled with grout upon completion of the works.

The Eulensteins were thrilled with Resinject’s results and are now looking forward to many more successful harvests without having to worry about this potentially very costly problem anymore.

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l PIPELINE OPP O SITION

The people vs the pipeline Farmers in the Liverpool Plains are up in arms about a plan to bury the Hunter Gas Pipeline under their highly reactive black basalt soil.

Words DAVE SMITH Photography STEVE GONSALVES

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n a previous edition of The Farmer, we visited the Namoi Region on the northern edge of the Liverpool Plains, home to some of the most productive farmland in Australia, where a battle is raging between residents and Whitehaven Coal over a $700 million extension of the Vickery coal pit.

A landmark case, in which a group of high-schoolers petitioned the Federal Court to overturn Environment Minister Susan Ley’s approval of the mine extension, failed. But with the court also ruling the Minister has a legal duty to not cause harm by exacerbating climate change and appeals on the horizon, the battle over Vickery is not over yet.

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Now a second front in the war for land use has opened up across vast swaths of the Liverpool Plains, between farmers and Hunter Gas Pipeline (HGP), a private company that wants to build a $1.2 billion 825km underground gas pipeline connecting gas fields in Roma, Queensland, to Newcastle via the plains.

The project was approved in 2009 but shovels never hit the ground. HGP blames the delay on laborious environmental procedures, though analysts believe the project just didn’t make financial sense at the time.

But the Hunter pipeline has now been kicked back into life by a series of events starting in 2017, when Santos

found natural gas fields at Narrabri on the Northern Slopes of NSW valued at $3.6 billion – a field big enough to meet half of all demand for heating, energy and manufacturing in NSW for at least 20 years.

HGP says the Narrabri Gas Project, which nearly intersects the pipeline’s planned route, isn’t why it brought the pipeline back from the dead. It points to the Federal Government’s COVID-19 manufacturing recovery plan instead – a plan fuelled almost entirely by natural gas.

Either way, with nearly $5 billion now at stake and mining companies like Santos donating vast sums of money to both major political parties, those

CRACKING P OINT

Hay and chaff producer David Wallis says the black soils of his farmland in Quirindi develop deep cracks when dry, making them unsuitable for high pressure pipelines.

opposing the pipeline are facing an almost insurmountable battle ahead.

BLACK CRACKING SOILS

The Liverpool Plains’ self-mulching soils are credited for the region’s extraordinary agricultural productivity.

But what’s good for farming isn’t necessarily good for pipelines, says Peter Wills, a cattle and crop farmer near the town of Quirindi, one of 30 farmers in the area whose land has been slated to host the pipeline. “Because our soils go from mud to concrete, we don’t build houses on them.

We build on ridges instead,” Peter says. “So when you build a pipeline on these soils you have the real risk of it failing.”

Quirindi grain farmer and processor David Wallis voices similar concerns.

“We have black cracking soils. When they dry up, cracks up to 15cm across and 1.5m deep appear, and that happens every summer. And when it floods we get serious erosion,” David says.

“This pipeline will be 600mm in diameter and buried 700mm deep, which from an agricultural point of view isn’t very deep. But our main concern is that over time the movement of the soil will create a soft point in a pipe with 1,500psi inside it – and create a crack.”

David also points out the pipeline will go under or perhaps just sit at the bottom of Borambil Creek, Quirindi’s

major water supply: “When you look at the risk and reward, destroying the town’s only reliable water supply is not a risk we’re willing to take.”

An independent report by Strategic Engineering and Environmental Consulting commissioned by HGP partially agreed, recommending the company “relocate the pipe to avoid high-risk areas” and the use of “trenchless construction techniques across higherrisk watercourses”.

And there’s a separate issue, Peter says. “The Liverpool Plains are covered by these petroleum licences owned by mining companies. They say the pipeline > is meant to bring gas from Queensland, NOV - DEC 2021

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The Muster but it’s obviously going to make drilling for gas here more attractive. And if they drill past the water table and do fracking as they do in the US, they will decimate the water supply. We’ll never be able to farm here again.”

ELECTION PROMISES

There are different levels of opposition to the pipeline on the plains. A minority want the whole thing canned because if Australia is to meet its zero-carbon energy target by 2050, natural gas, a fossil fuel, is going to have to be phased out by 2035. They fear the pipeline will become a ‘stranded asset’ in less than 20 years, that landowners will be left to deal with.

The argument is sound and NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean agrees: “Those people defending old technologies are the equivalent of defending Blockbuster in a Netflix world.”

But the vast majority of landowners say they will tolerate the pipeline so long as it is rerouted from privately owned land on the plains onto old travelling stock routes, ridgelines, public roads and Crown land.

HGP says the government initially rejected the proposal to build the pipeline along old stock routes because of the biodiversity value there, and that the company is willing to revisit the proposal. “If we can demonstrate that the human amenity impact is greater than the biodiversity impact it may be possible,” the company says.

HGP also denies weather events such as floods will move the pipeline: “It will be constructed for the conditions, and post-construction land rehabilitation will ensure that natural drainage is not affected. Bob Otjen, our pipeline expert, built a pipeline from Ballera to

Wallumbilla in Queensland that crosses Cooper Creek, which is 40km wide during floods. That was 1996 and no issues have been encountered.”

Before the pivotal Upper Hunter byelection in May, former Deputy Premier John Barilaro promised voters that if the Nationals kept their seat the party would “deal with the Hunter pipeline”.

When The Farmer asked how he was delivering on that promise, he said HGP had “assured him” it would minimise impacts on landowners “as much as it can” and was looking into using public land for the pipeline “where possible”.

But for Peter and other farmers of the Liverpool Plains, a pipeline running on their property is not negotiable.

“They’ll have to line up every single duck in a row before they can ever start.

And we are not going to be one of their ducks,” he says. l

RISKS OUTWEIGH THE BENEFITS

For David Wallis and his family, the pipeline is an unwelcome and potentially dangerous proposition. “When you look at the risk and reward, destroying the town’s only reliable water supply is not a risk we’re willing to take,” he says.

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NOV - DEC 2021

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The Muster

l TRANSMIS SION LINES

Fox in the henhouse NSW is switching to renewable energy, but farmers who ostensibly support the transformation feel their rights – and their lands – are being trampled upon.

Words DAVE SMITH Photography ADRIAN MERRIGAN

A

ustralia’s proposed journey towards ‘net zero emissions’ by 2050 is gathering pace, with the share of electricity generated from renewable sources jumping from 6 per cent in 2018, to 21 per cent in 2019, to 28 per cent last year.

NSW is at the forefront of this transformation. Over the next 15 years, the state is set to retire four of its five coal-fired power plants and replace them with five new Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) hosting wind, solar, pumped hydro and battery storage facilities.

As representatives of a sector highly exposed to climate change, NSW Farmers

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supports the decarbonisation agenda.

So do the majority of farmers – men and women with dirt under their nails who live, breathe and eat by the grace of the land and the produce it bestows upon us.

But there’s a catch: hundreds of kilometres of high transmission power lines suspended by towers taller than the lights at the Sydney Cricket Ground must be built to connect the new REZs to population centres on the eastern seaboard. And Transgrid, the company that owns a 99-year lease over the NSW transmission network, wants to build many of these towers on privately owned farmland that will significantly impact

the lands’ accessibility, productivity and resale value.

“This infrastructure is being located … on some of NSW’s most productive agricultural land,” NSW Upper House One Nation representative Rod Roberts said in parliament earlier this year.

“Surely there is more marginal country that has less productivity capacity that could house the requirements.”

A DONE DEAL

Rod also gave a stinging assessment of Transgrid’s community consultation process. “I have spoken to some of the landowners they’re dealing with and

EASY TARGET

Grazier Matt Pearce found his property in the Yaven Creek Valley earmarked to host a Transgrid transmission line as part of a new network connecting the state’s Renewable Energy Zones.

Transgrid hasn’t even stepped on their properties. It is a facade of consultation.

They should be paying them more respect instead of sitting in Sydney and doing a desktop study,” he said.

Farmers in the Merriwa Cassilis Plateau in the Upper Hunter Shire know exactly how that feels. Despite being classified as Biophysical Strategic Agricultural Land by the state because of its high levels of productivity, their farms have been targeted by Transgrid to build part of a 180km transmission line superhighway linking the Central-West Orana REZ to the main grid.

“Transgrid proposed a corridor for the

transmission lines and said a whole lot of supposed research already took place at that point to come up with the proposal,” says NSW Farmers Merriwa branch chair Pat Ryan, a mixed enterprise farmer.

“But landowners were never given the opportunity to contribute to the decision that determines the proposed corridor – only where within the corridor the towers will actually go. Our position is that the corridor is not suitable at all and there are much better options. But it’s a done deal as far as Transgrid is concerned.”

Pat says Transgrid’s planning process is fundamentally flawed as the impact study was done by the same company

that has a vested interest in building the infrastructure as cheaply as possible.

“It’s totally self-serving and us farmers are seen as being a path of least resistance. It’s mad – a classic case of the fox in the henhouse. When we first spoke to them, Transgrid admitted they had no understanding of how agriculture would be impacted in our area – that they had no assessment criteria whatsoever. And they still don’t.”

Matt Pearce is a grazier in the Yaven Creek Valley whose property was targeted to host part of a 630km transmission line connecting Australia’s largest renewable energy project Snowy 2.0 to the grid. > NOV - DEC 2021

THE FARMER

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UNWELCOME VISITOR

Matt Pearce and his family (below) joined forces with other local landowners to take on Transgrid. Fortunately an agreement was reached to reroute the transmission line.

He voices similar sentiments: “I wish Transgrid knew as much about farming as I have learned about transmission lines,” he says. “They have never viewed our farms as a constraint, just as easy targets – open, clear land where it’s easy to build transmission lines.”

SHARING THE BENEFITS

Compensation for landowners targeted to host transmission lines is another big sticking point.

Transgrid wants to pay them a one-off fee, while the company will continue to make money from the deal for the duration of its 99-year contract.

“We have called for compensation that reflects the perpetuity impacts of transmission line infrastructure,” says NSW Farmers policy advisor for the environment Julia Jelbart. “Whenever we raise this, we are told it's not possible because consumers would have to pay more for electricity.

What they're saying is that farmers are to assume the burden of a public good without adequate compensation. With the amount of wealth creation set to be generated through the energy transition we think this excuse isn’t good enough.”

Andrew Dyer, the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner, concurs: “With wind projects, farmers get $25,000 to $30,000 per turbine per year, and that adds capital value if they decide to sell. But if you have transmission lines on your land, you only get a one-off payment that pales in comparison.”

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Transgrid refused to directly answer any of the questions about landowners’ concerns for this article.

Instead, it referred us to information on the company’s website and old press releases, including one from July in which Transgrid acting CEO Brian Salter acknowledged landowners in some parts of the state “had not been satisfied with the engagement and we take their concerns seriously”.

As a fix, Transgrid engaged former Commissioner for NSW Fair Trading Rod Stowe to carry out an independent review of the company’s engagement plan from a landowner’s perspective.

Rod’s report was stinging. He found Transgrid “lacked the experience and expertise” to be conducting the consultation in some areas; that it had made some landowners feel intimidated; and that the company needed to completely “reset” its community consultation process in order to seriously re-examine all potential routes for transmission lines, including state land. And he made 20 specific recommendations on how to remedy the problems.

Transgrid promised it would implement all 20 recommendations in

Rod’s report, including the establishment of independent community consultative groups – while Rod promised to monitor the company’s progress to keep it in check. But according to landowners on the frontlines, nothing has changed.

“Their data is still inaccurate, the methodology is still done in-house, and they have not drawn a new study corridor. The list goes on and on,” says Heidi Inder, secretary of the MerriwaCassilis Alliance, one of several action groups established to take on Transgrid across the state. “They don’t listen. They don’t respect our feedback. They’ve just continued doing business as usual.

“The kind of cultural change Transgrid is now talking about has to come from the top,” Heidi says. “But they’ve turned down invitations to send executives to our two last meetings.

Instead, they send a blinkered project team – people who don’t consider highly productive cropping land to be any kind of constraint for erecting giant transmission lines.”

TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Back in the Yaven Creek Valley, Matt Pearce also says Transgrid has not changed its spots. “From my discussions

with landowners around the state, their initial consultation process appears not to have changed and the problems Rob Stowe identified in his report haven’t been solved,” he says.

“But I don’t want to be too disparaging because in our case, we had a positive outcome with Transgrid.”

Last April, as Yaven Creek and other nearby communities were starting to recover from the massive Dunns Road fire, Matt and other landowners in the area received letters from Transgrid out of the blue saying the company wanted to build transmission lines on their land.

“We were a wounded community at the time and fighting this was the last thing we wanted to do. But we had no choice,” Matt recalls. “So we got organised and started an action group to raise public awareness of what was going on.”

The Yaven Creek Lower Bago Willigobung Community Committee, as the action group is called, used an argument outlined on Transgrid’s website (“Where possible, we will plan new transmission lines on public land”) to successfully convince the company that a better route for the transmission lines existed in a state forest east of the valley that had been burned to the ground and now offered easy access for building transmission lines. Some farmers in the area are still going to be affected but most of the farmland in the valley was saved.

“While Transgrid responded positively, I put it down not so much to the company but a small number of individuals involved in the consultation and the amazing support we got from our local member Dr Joe McGirr and NSW Farmers,” Matt says. “But the whole process highlighted how flawed the system is and how Transgrid considers farmers an easy target. And given what’s about to happen across the state with the REZs, I think what is happening now is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Julia at NSW Farmers says many other farmers share the same fears.

“Ultimately, what NSW Farmers wants is broader than these specific developments. We want good strategic planning that recognises the value of agriculture and protects it for future generations. Planning decisions based on cost alone, are short sighted and will come at the expense of regional NSW.” l NOV - DEC 2021

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The Muster l STATE BORDERS

Border issues impacting on ag Farmers are used to dealing with a degree of uncertainty – not knowing if or exactly when it will rain, or how much their produce will make when it’s time to sell. But border issues due to COVID-19 have added further complexities to the logistics of farming.

Words SANDRA GODWIN

G

overnment responses to the pandemic have added another layer of unpredictability during the past 18 months, leaving farmers, farm workers and agricultural contractors grappling with hundreds of changes, some at very short notice.

It’s been especially difficult for those who operate near or across state borders to keep up with what they can and can’t do – and have the appropriate permits, when required – in a border bubble, border region or the areas outside them.

Much of the burden of extra paperwork, including preparing COVID-safe plans and obtaining permits for themselves and workers, has fallen on the shoulders of farmers.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

From the kitchen window of his farmhouse at Barooga, NSW Farmers director Chris Stillard can see the bridge over the Murray River that separates NSW and Victoria.

Chris and his wife Belinda produce persimmons, hay, prime lambs and grain on their 160-hectare property. Their three children attend Cobram Anglican Grammar School in Victoria and Chris buys most of his farm supplies in Cobram.

But should he venture outside of the border bubble, Chris can’t duck over to Cobram for a COVID test – instead he must drive to Deniliquin or Albury, which are both more than an hour away, and then isolate for 14 days before he can go back into Victoria.

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“It’s funny how things pop up that you just never really think about,” he says.

“I’ve stopped wandering out of the bubble. There were two pieces of secondhand machinery I was pretty keen on getting and I decided not to go because I would have had to do the 14 days’ quarantine when I got back.”

Depending on the rules in place at the time, it can also be impossible to make a quick trip into town to pick up spare parts, farm chemicals or fertiliser.

“We’ve had to order it, and have it delivered to the farm,” he says. “So there goes an extra two or three days when you need something in a hurry. And if you forget something, then you’ve got to go through the same process and wait for it.

And then the window you’ve got to spray in slowly closes because you’ve made small mistakes.”

Other challenges include getting specialist supplies or services from businesses in Bendigo, which was dropped out of the border bubble in September, or Melbourne, which went into its sixth lockdown on August 5.

“Even if you’ve got something that desperately needs to be looked at they won’t come because they’re not allowed out of Melbourne,” he says. “And once they’ve been in NSW, they’ve got to self-isolate when they go back.”

CHECKPOINT CONGESTION

NSW Farmers Croppa CreekNorth Star branch chair Richard Doyle, who raises cattle near

Boggabilla, is no stranger to passing through checkpoints, showing his credentials and explaining to police why he’s crossing the border to get to Goondiwindi.

But he’s uneasy about the prospect of lengthy delays during what’s expected to be a bumper grain harvest in northern NSW and southern Queensland.

At a virtual meeting with Queensland police and transport representatives in September, Richard says they expressed confidence that every vehicle could be checked to ensure occupants had the right permit and proof of having had at least one vaccine jab.

“I admire their optimism,” he says. “We’re about to have the largest harvest in memory.

There could be queues hours’ long just to get across the border before you get to the hours’ long queue at the grain terminal to drop off your grain.”

A Queensland police spokesperson says an extra 200 heavy vehicle movements a day were expected during harvest.

Plans to alleviate congestion include a slip lane at the Goondiwindi border checkpoint and the opening of an extra checkpoint at Tallwood, 90km west of Goondiwindi, which would operate 12 hours a day until harvest ends in December.

BUBBLE FARMING

For the past two years, Victorian grain harvesting contractor Peter Stephens and his team of header and chaser bin drivers have hit the road north in late September >

ROAD TO NOWHERE

Complex testing rules and ever-changing border restrictions are causing angst for farmers ahead of the harvest season.

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CRO S SING THE MURRAY

Barooga farmer Chris Stillard (above) has been trapped in the NSW/Victoria border bubble, with his children going to school in Cobram.

Photo by Simon Dallinger.

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not knowing if they would be allowed to get to their first stop, a farm near Goondiwindi.

Last year’s permits were approved the day before harvest. Conditions included 14 days of isolation when not working, and COVID-19 tests on days five and 12.

During a stopover at West Wyalong, the conditions include a mandatory first vaccination and negative COVID-19 tests on arrival, day one, day five and day 12. They must again stay in isolation for 14 days, except when working.

Once they’ve wrapped up at Goondiwindi, the Stephens Harvesting crew will head south to jobs at Moree and Temora, before returning to Victoria.

Peter, who’s been a harvest contractor for 12 years, says he worries about the possibility that he or a worker might test NOV - DEC 2021

positive for COVID-19 or be deemed a close contact of a positive case.

“That could mean, at the end of the day, our business coming to a complete standstill for 14 days,” he says.

“Hopefully not, but you’d be naive not to think that at some point someone’s going to come in contact with it somewhere.”

To reduce that risk, Peter’s plan is to isolate all of his workers in their own bubble as much as they can, eliminate contact with truck drivers and minimise interaction with farmers.

Livestock Bulk and Rural Carriers Association (NSW) president Paul Pulver says the system has improved since last year, when a rapid rule change by the Queensland Government left several loaded livestock trucks sitting at the

Goondiwindi checkpoint unable to cross until the Chief Health Officer approved an emergency exemption.

“They’re the sorts of things that have been major issues on the day for the operators,” he says. “We all understand why the decisions are being made, but it makes it very, very difficult.”

Paul says most livestock trucks travel interstate at times, but they’re not in the same category as regular freight or logistics drivers, who are on a rolling sevenday testing program.

“The main issue for us has been getting access to testing,” he says. “We’re only a minority, and the problem has been with our people in NSW having to have tests done before they get to Queensland, Victoria or South Australia.” l

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Tudor House

The Muster l TRADE TARIFFS

China who?

How beef and barley found new homes overseas A deal with the world’s second largest beer producer and growth in Southeast Asia and Saudi Arabia has cushioned the blow of Chinese trade sanctions on Australian beef and barley farmers.

Words DAVE SMITH

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A

billion dollars a month.

That’s how much researchers from the University of Adelaide estimated Australian farmers would lose in revenue to China after it levelled a wave of official and unofficial trade sanctions to punish Australia for insisting on an independent inquiry into the source of COVID-19.

However, “more than one year after Chinese authorities began using trade to punish Australia over political disagreements, it seems Beijing has been able to inflict only limited damage our country,” says Professor James Laurenceson, Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute in Sydney.

How? By rapidly diversifying export markets in key industries such as barley and beef.

BARELY NOTICED THE BARLEY

“Devastating.” That’s how Brett Hosking, chair of GrainGrowers, described China’s announcement in April last year of a new 80.5 per cent tariff on Australian barely. With the country buying about 80 per cent of Australian barley at the time, finding new buyers would be “hard, but not impossible,” Hosking said. “It would take time,” he said, adding that it would mean a difference for growers up to $40 per tonne.

He was half right.

“Most of the barley that was destined for China – about 85 per cent – quickly found its way into the Saudi Arabia market through open tenders,” says Pat O’Shannassy, CEO of Grain Trade Australia. “It was a simple case of demand and supply.

China was the highest paying market and Saudi Arabia is the lowest-paying

market. The price difference between the two is US$33 – $US40 per tonne.

If you multiply that dollar value by the quantity of barley exported, that is the value that has drained out of Australian barley exports as a result of China’s tariffs.”

In January an entirely new market for Australian barley opened up after the CBH Group in Western Australia sent its first shipment of 35,000 tonnes of malt barley to Heineken in Mexico. Mexico is the world’s fourth-largest producer of beer, producing 139 million hectolitres a year. Australia, in comparison, produces only 16 million hectolitres per year.

“Our strong relationships with Heineken have allowed us to find new destinations for Western Australian barley,” CBH chief marketing and trading officer

Jason Craig said. “While it’s early days, this shipment to Mexico signals a potential new market for malting barley.”

Southeast Asia is also consuming more Australian grains. IKON Commodities predict barley exports to Thailand and Vietnam will double this financial year, while some of the barley that previously went to China has worked its way into the domestic feed market too. “Again,” says Pat, “it’s all about supply and demand.

That’s the irony of Chinese tariffs and why their impact has not been as profound as first feared.”

BEEFING UP MARKETS

China was the world’s biggest buyer of Australian red meat in 2019, accounting for 25 per cent of volume.

But after eight major Australian abattoirs were blacklisted for >

Aussie lobsters go grey Last November, Chinese authorities began deliberately delaying air cargo of highly perishable Australian rock lobsters, causing tonnes of produce to rot on the tarmac. Exports ground to a halt and it seemed the end was near for Australia’s lobster industry, which last year exported 93 per cent of its produce to China.

But the industry is still around and Chinese consumers are still eating Australian lobster. How is this possible?

Figures released by the Western Rock Lobster Council in April showed exports to Hong Kong had increased 50 times since the ban came into effect. Most of this produce was then exported to China as ‘grey exports’ – a practice where products and services are acquired in one country and then brought into another country and sold. While not technically illegal, authorities can move quickly to shut down grey trade routes.

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The Muster

mislabelling products, exports to China fell 15 per cent in value and China slid to third place. Historically the number one volume market, Japan recaptured the lead, buying 27 per cent of Australian beef exports compared to 23 per cent in 2019. South Korea also upped the ante, buying 18 per cent last year compared to only 15 per cent in 2019.

“China came out of nowhere to become our biggest market in 2019, and we are still bullish about the long-term opportunities,” says Andrew Cox, international business manager for Meat & Livestock Australia. “But the key point is that we were already diversified with well-established markets all over the world. So when China went off the boil, we had customers willing to buy in Japan and Korea.

Southeast Asia also saw growth with record sales of Australian chilled beef exports, particularly in Thailand and Vietnam. “There is great opportunity in the region as younger buyers move away from buying meat at wet markets and towards modern supermarkets

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that suit our packaging and safety standards,” Andrew says.

Meat sales in Thailand and Vietnam are expected to get even stronger after MLA secured a $1.5 million Federal Government grant in July it will use to set up shop and hire business development specialists in these two countries. “As we’ve learnt from COVID-19, access to a diverse range of markets is critical to our exporters,” Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said. “We’re futureproofing our industries against significant market shocks.”

MLA will also use the grant to open an office in Saudi Arabia. “The Middle East is traditionally more of a sheep meat market, but there are new wealthy Arab populations

looking for fine-dining experiences, and that is where we aim to sell prime cuts,” Andrew says.

Last but not least is the new free trade deal with the UK. “Tariffs on Australian beef in the UK will be phased out over the next 10 years. But from minute one we will have better access to British supermarkets than at any point in the past 50 years,” Andrew says.

“Before the UK joined the European Union, Australia was a major source for protein and fibre for the Brits, and it was very difficult for our farmers when they locked us out of the market by joining the EU. But we found new markets closer to our doorstep, and now we’re very excited about the prospect of supplying them again.” l

PASTURES NEW

Australian farmers have found new markets for their barley (previous page and above) in Mexico. Japan, South Korea and the UK are emerging as growth markets for beef.

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The Big Picture

SOIL, CARBON AND CLIMATE Sifting the hubris from the hard facts regarding the ins and outs of carbon farming brings a bright, yet complex, picture to light.

–

Words SUSAN GOUGH HENLY

T

he potential of soil carbon to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is generating considerable enthusiasm. Now is the time for farmers in NSW to weigh up whether carbon farming will benefit their farm business.

Last September the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, released the Federal Government’s Te c h n o l o g y I n v e s t m e n t Roadmap, which highlighted soil carbon as one of five priority technologies to benefit from $18 billion of government investment.

To make it easier for farmers to be rewarded for undertaking soil carbon farming, the Federal Government recently released a new draft soil carbon method for the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) administered by the Clean Energy Regulator (CER).

The new method will reduce measurement costs, by allowing modelled estimates of soil carbon change in combination with measurement approaches, as well as broaden the range of agricultural activities that contribute to soil carbon storage, including improving fertiliser application, re-establishing pasture and modifying grazing practices.

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There’s some concern about the effectiveness of soil carbon sequestration in a drought-prone country with some of the world’s oldest, most poorly structured soils. The debate involves a complex stew of science, policy, politics, money, technology, hard work and hope against the backdrop of the pressing need to explore every avenue to meet the challenges posed by climate change, especially in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference (Cop26) in Glasgow.

At the very least, improving soil health (including soil carbon) benefits farm productivity and resilience in the face of an increasingly erratic climate. But, as we’ve learned from dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to follow the science. Yet science sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, especially in a developing market with emerging technologies and divergent viewpoints.

A DEEP DIVE INTO CARBON CREDITS IN AUSTRALIA

According to A landholder’s guide to participate in soil carbon farming in Australia (an August 2021 paper by Richard Eckard, Robert White and Brian Davidson for the Australian Farm Institute) the ERF offers the main avenue >

NOV - DEC 2021

D OWN TO EARTH

Australia has some of the world’s oldest, most poorly structured soils. Putting in the hard yards to improve these soils may help solve the world’s newest problem, and could have far-reaching benefits for farmers.

NOV - DEC 2021

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29

for landholders to earn income from soil carbon farming. Participants create carbon abatements through approved land management practices to bid for offsets called Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), with one ACCU providing one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent of abatement.

Landholders can choose to sell their offsets to the government, which counts as an offset to Australia’s reported emissions, or sell them in the more flexible voluntary market, where companies often use non-conforming methodologies that may not have the integrity of the rigorously vetted ACCUs. Carbon credits sold to overseas investors cannot be counted as offsets to Australian emissions.

The CER is also close to choosing a consortium to operate the highly anticipated online commercial Australian Carbon Exchange (where brokers, companies and individuals will be able to buy and sell emissions offsets), which will increase market transparency and reduce transaction costs and red tape.

MEASURING SOIL CARBON

Lorraine Gordon (pictured above) does soil testing with Southern Cross University’s Environmental Analysis Laboratory.

Below: Hone Carbon's wireless Bluetooth phone-controlled spectrometer.

THE CARBON MARKET INSTITUTE

John Connor is the CEO of the Carbon Market Institute (CMI) – an independent industry association that is

New technologies Part of the ERF’s new method to reduce the cost of measuring soil carbon involves modelling in addition to soil measurement through laboratory analysis.

The CER has approved spectroscopy as a new technology, and Newcastle-based start-up Hone Carbon has developed a suite of hardware and software including an affordable wireless Bluetooth phone-controlled spectrometer (pictured) that shines light against soil core samples to measure changes not only in soil organic carbon but also moisture, nitrogen, pH and much more. According to CEO and co-founder Phil Ireland, this is

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contributing to Australia’s transition to a net-zero emission economy. It is the steward of Australia’s carbon market, the developer of the world’s first carbon industry code of conduct and the creator of the Carbon Farming Industry Roadmap.

According to John, carbon farming is a critical source of negative emissions solutions that can be deployed at scale across Australia.

“While the Federal Government has been effective in using its taxpayer-supported ERF to help develop a carbon market that is based on integrity and transparency, it has not been ambitious enough with its goals to reduce GHG emissions,” he says.

“What’s interesting is that increasing corporate demand means the ERF’s future may be acting more as a de-risker of investments rather than a driver.

disruption in the truest sense of the word.

Microbially-mediated soil carbon is one of many new areas of soil research. Agronomist Guy Webb and partners have created Soil Carbon Co, located in Orange, to commercialise a technology based around endophytic microbes which can be used as seed dressings that will ideally allow farmers to draw down excess carbon from the atmosphere to deposit in their soils long-term. Field trials are currently underway to prove the technology at scale.

But Richard Eckard has reservations about the biosecurity of introducing microbes into established ecosystems as well as the effectiveness of adding new microbes to soils which already have billions of competitive microbes in situ.

THE BIG PICTURE

Pressure on corporates from global capital and consumers to demonstrate a transition to net-zero emissions is the greatest motivator for driving up the price of carbon, and the agricultural industry can benefit from that.

“Foreign markets are also increasingly demanding that agricultural products are carbon neutral, so managing carbon is increasingly core business for Australian farmers.”

THE SCIENCE BIT

Analysing soil through laboratory procedures (below) and onsite testing (left) is part of the ERF’s new method of measuring carbon sequestration.

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RAINFALL IN AUSTRALIA IS KEY TO SOIL CARBON

LET IT GROW

Richard Eckard is Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Primary Industries Climate Challenges Centre – a research centre addressing the impacts of a changing climate on agriculture. He is a science advisor to the Australian, New Zealand, UK and EU governments, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, and the International Livestock Research Institute.

“Soil carbon is a direct function of plant growth, as plants capture carbon through photosynthesis,” he explains. “In Australia, rainfall has a 95 per cent impact on soil carbon, so the most reliable areas to focus on increasing soil carbon are farms on good clay soils (sandy soils do not hold carbon) with relatively high consistent rainfall.

“Unfortunately, climate change patterns are quite clear. Over the last 20 years there has been a consistent reduction in growing season rainfall, which directly impacts crop growth and soil carbon levels. Farmers should be aware that the exaggerated claims made by some carbon aggregators are not necessarily achievable.”

Carbon farming practices have helped David Fisher (above, with Carbon Market Institute CEO John Connor, on his left) create healthier soils on his property north west of Bourke.

THE ROLE OF CARBON AGGREGATORS

Matthew Warnken is the founder and managing director of AgriProve – one of the earliest soil carbon project developers in Australia and one of the signatories to CMI’s carbon industry code of conduct.

AgriProve currently has 140 agricultural soil carbon projects countrywide. According to Warnken, the soil carbon market is the fastest growing market in Australia, and Australia has the highest number of soil carbon projects in the world.

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“After speaking to a range of farmers across kitchen tables, we have worked to ensure our interests are aligned,” he says. “Farmers receive 75 per cent of the project carbon credits and we receive 25 per cent, which is only paid with project success. We’re keen to remove barriers to participation in carbon farming. We have a partnership model with a cashfree alternative that covers sampling costs via a risk-adjusted allocation of future ACCUs based on the project type, soil type and rainfall on each farm.”

One client is Nathan Simpson, the CEO of Binginbar Farms, a mixed cropping and lamb-finishing farm near Dubbo, which is the 1,000th registered ERF project.

“Over the last 20 years there has been a consistent reduction in growing season rainfall, which directly impacts crop growth and soil carbon level.”

– RICHARD ECKARD – PROFESSOR OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE AND DIRECTOR OF THE PRIMARY INDUSTRIES CLIMATE CHALLENGES CENTRE.

THE BIG PICTURE

“The 2017-19 drought was the worst and longest in the 153 years since our family has owned this property, and we wanted to do everything we could to minimise future drought repercussions,” Nathan says.

“This involved a significant mindset change, which is particularly difficult with the older generation, but it was also a business productivity decision. We decided to keep our ground cover and change to multi-species pasture so there’s always something growing when there’s enough moisture. This organic matter will not only sequester carbon but also dramatically improve the soil’s water holding capacity.

We’ll do a rotation of perennial pastures for five years and cropping for five years as well, with full stubble retention. This means a bit of investment is required.

We’ve already bought a new $600,000 air-seeder.”

According to AgriProve’s projections, with appropriate farm-management improvements, a pasture-based farm with an annual rainfall of 300-600mm (Dubbo’s mean annual rainfall is 553mm) could >

RETAINING CARBON

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THE BIG PICTURE

PRO S AND CONS

Below: University of Melbourne’s Professor Richard Eckard warns against believing the hype when it comes to carbon aggregators.

Below right: David and Kylie Fisher have been carbon farming on their property for five years.

accrue 3.0 ACCUs per hectare, while the soil organic carbon sequestration under cropping could accrue 1.6 ACCUs per hectare.

Climate Friendly is another leading carbon project service provider and a carbon industry code of conduct signatory. It is supporting partners to develop 130 carbon farming processes across Australia, one third of which are in NSW. “These figures are the top end of what we think could be feasible based on the current available science. It would be challenging to sustain this rate over 25 years,” says co-CEO Skye Glenday. “Typically,

we undertake soil carbon feasibility in regions with higher average rainfall. Soil projects may also be viable in lower-rainfall regions if combined with activities that also store carbon in vegetation.”

Richard Eckard from the University of Melbourne is clear about the science. Low and variable rainfall in large areas of Australia limits plant growth, therefore sustained increases in stored soil carbon of 1.0 tonne per hectare per year, even under the most favourable land management, are difficult to achieve. Soil carbon is a big input/output equation. In a drought plants stop growing, so the carbon inputs decline, but the

Soil Carbon 101 for farmers considering entering the carbon trading market Lorraine Gordon is a third-generation beef trader in optimal high-rainfall basalt country in Ebor. She’s the first farmer to register for ACCUs in Northern NSW. If all goes well according to her management plan, and a 1 per cent carbon increase is achieved per hectare over 400 hectares, it would result in 49,600 ACCUs at $30 a tonne of C0₂ equivalent, which has the potential to earn $1.5 million within five years.

“Carbon trading gives my farm another income stream. In the future, I see myself as a carbon farmer that uses cattle fattening to sequester carbon,” she says.

Here’s Lorraine’s suggested carbon farming checklist, with or without a carbon aggregator.

1. Get a carbon ready initial farm assessment and appraisal.

2. Complete a carbon management plan to increase soil carbon. Lorraine is adding gypsum, composting across the farm, increasing her stock density across smaller

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paddocks, and introducing multi-species pasture cropping.

Register the project with CER before making any changes.

Do not lock in any contracts as the price of carbon is going up. To get the best price, wait to sell on the spot market in the future.

5. Complete baseline documentation to establish the history of your previous practice.

6. Baseline soil testing and auditing includes mapping, recording, analysis and record keeping.

7. Review your management plan annually.

8. Get external independent audits.

9. You can sell your ACCUs within three to five years to either the government or a corporate/voluntary market.

10. There is also the possibility of carbon stacking by building on a range of ecosystem services including soil carbon, biodiversity offsets, and methane reduction.

3.

4.

With careful management under the right conditions, carbon farming may offer farmers new income streams.

“Farmers receive 75 per cent of the project carbon credits and we receive 25 per cent, which is only paid with project success. We’re keen to remove barriers to participation in carbon farming.”

– MATTHEW WARNKEN IS THE FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF AGRIPROV

soil microbes keep eating carbon and releasing it as carbon dioxide, thus soil carbon is lost.

Richard believes AgriProve’s figures are generally overblown. For instance, “Their projected storage of 2.7 tonnes of carbon in high rainfall area pasture management implies that a farmer can grow 200 tonnes of pasture per hectare. The only way to achieve this would be to import organic matter or use a machine to bury surface organic matter,” he says.

“There’s no upside for us in overpromising,” says Matthew from AgriProve. “We’re only going to be commercially successful as a credible partner to farmers if we deliver on what is achievable. I’ve read past soil literature that NSW soils could only yield one carbon credit per hectare a year, but I think the potential is better than that. This is an emerging field and new data proof points are also emerging. The real opportunity is far greater than studies based on 20-year-old meta data averages.”

At the end of the day, farmers will need to weigh the long-term costs and time commitment of establishing carbon farming projects as well as the associated costs of changed management practices against the benefits of increased productivity, and the co-benefits of improved soil structure and better water holding capacity, increased biodiversity and ecosystem services.

In the short term these may be more significant than the net income earned from the sale of carbon credits. Yet, with careful management under the right conditions, this emerging market may offer farmers new income streams.

New investment and new technology will likely see better soil carbon tools become available beside a mixed suite of options that reward farmers for wholeof-farm improvements, combining soil and vegetation carbon storage in a single method, alongside biodiversity stewardships through the government’s pilot program for carbon and biodiversity. l

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Road to recovery

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Deep drought, horrific bushfires and record floods brought the fragility of life into sharp focus. Now, as the recovery continues, resilience has a chance to shine.

–

Words SHEREE YOUNG

THE BIG ISSUE RECOVERY

F

ires, floods and drought are natural disasters that farmers and those living in rural and regional areas are well acquainted with.

But five years of deep drought, which was compounded by the devastating ‘Black Summer’ bushfires that started in northern NSW in late 2019 and then widespread flooding in NSW this year, significantly raised the bar The drought hit everyone and every farm to varying degrees.

Farmers de-stocked and hand-fed their livestock at great financial, physical and mental cost, while some grain growers didn’t even get the header out of the shed.

Many experienced the trifecta – drought, fire and flood – while others endured the drought and flood combo, which brings huge challenges as drenching rain has nowhere to go when it hits bonedry ground.

Throw in a mouse plague and a COVID-induced worker shortage and the challenges deepen.

But, like much in life, when there is a down there is also an up.

Cattle and lamb prices have gone through the roof, which is great if you are selling – although not so good if you’re buying – and good weather is creating a positive outlook.

Farmers may have a few more lines etched in their faces, but they are pushing on and preparing for what comes next.

A TRIFECTA OF CHALLENGES

A TRIFECTA OF CHALLENGES

After drought, bushfires and floods, Rob Miller’s farm in Milton is back to being picture-perfect (Photo by Sarah Croft); Raymond Grant with his Black Angus cows in Bega; Chris Carrigan uses a dozer to clean up after the flood washed cropping stubble from neighbouring properties.

(Photo by Helen Carrigan).

Rob Miller from Milton on the NSW South Coast suffered the trifecta – drought, bushfire and flood – and he says it’s taken 18 months to recover both mentally and physically.

He runs dairy cattle on 2,000 acres at Milton and lost about 150 cows, plus fencing and water infrastructure, when a series of bushfires decimated his property in January 2019.

He says the fires just kept returning as winds changed and temperatures soared beyond 40 degrees.

The drought also left him with no stockfeed and with the fires closing highways it was difficult to have it trucked in, creating another headache.

“The fire hit us four times, and I guess we were too good at firefighting,” Rob says. “We kept holding it back, but because there was still something to burn it just kept setting off again. It’s taken 18 months to really get my mental and physical strength back, and during that time we had three or four floods as well.”

Rob is grateful for the community assistance and the $75,000 NSW Government disaster grant he received.

“BlazeAid were just brilliant, we were the first farm they came to in Milton and they did a great job helping re-build fencing,” he says.

“We also had a group of farmers come up from Deniliquin who helped me pull up all the burnt fencing. I was physically exhausted and quite traumatised, but they just came in and stayed on the farm in our tourist cottages and did the clean-up. There was great help for us.

“A lot of people talk about resilience, but what these disasters tell us is just how fragile we are. Life is fragile, farming is fragile, and under the cost pressures we face today it is nearly enough to break people. We may be resilient and bounce back, but a lot don’t.”

As part of his bounce back, Rob has rebuilt his herd back to 1,000. “The farm is so picture perfect now. We are probably having > our best season in 20 years, so it’s a nice change,” he says.

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Rob’s other focus is trees. Before the bushfires he had planted thousands of eucalypts and wattles, but after watching them combust in minutes, he is replanting deciduous maples and oaks. “It is a bit against the trend, but it’s what we’re doing,” he says.

Rob and his partner, Carey-Anne Jackson, also supplement their income with an online store called ‘Hunter and Pumpkin’ – named after their two ginger farm cats.

AFTER FEROCIOUS FLOODS

If Helen Carrigan, a sheep farmer on the Welbon Plains in northern NSW, could choose she would take drought over flood.

Neither are great options, but Helen says it is easier to proactively de-stock or hand feed where you have some control.

“A flood is different – you can’t control a flood,” Helen said.

When floodwaters transformed their property into an inland ocean in March, Helen and her husband, Chris, had done all they could to save their stock.

“All we can really do is keep our eye on the weather prediction and move stock far away from the creeks to higher ground. Our paddocks are big and the stock have time to move. We just hope not to receive eight

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FROM THEN TILL NOW

Clockwise from top left: Kevin and Janelle Tongue; Rob Miller on his Narrawilly Farm in Milton (Photo by Sarah Croft); Chooks in the dog house keeping safe (Photo courtesy of Helen Carrigan).

or 12 inches of rain in one night. If the wind changes the sheep may walk, ending up boxed up against a fence and trapped,” she said.

Despite their efforts stock losses were high, although they haven’t been able to do a proper headcount as some paddocks have been too wet to access.

In a further blow, the Carrigans’ maiden ewes were lambing as the flood hit.

“We normally join in late November or December and are lambing at the end of May or June, but Chris decided to join our maiden ewes earlier, and so they were lambing in March. This meant they were starting to lamb the night the flood hit,” Helen said.

“Some were heavily pregnant so that was pretty devastating.”

But recovery is happening.

“The sun is shining now, surface water has finally dried up, the farm is looking great, and we can move sheep around,” she said.

“We’ve sold wethers at a good price, the sheep and meat market is strong, there is an abundance of pastures, we have lambs on the ground, so there are a lot of positive things happening.

“We appreciate the support available with the NSW Government Flood Recovery Grant, this has made a huge difference in recovery with flood damage as compared to previous years after flooding.”

THINGS ARE LOOKING GOOD

At 71 years of age, grazier Kevin Tongue from Loomberah is no stranger to drought.

But he says this drought was “longer and harder” because there was no stockfeed to be found.

“In 1964 when I left school, we were in drought,

THE BIG ISSUE RECOVERY

but we were able to get our own feed whereas a couple of years ago we never got the header out of the shed as we had nothing to harvest,” he says.

Kevin runs his farm with his wife Janelle, sons Paul and Ben, and their families. To keep operating during the drought they bought hay and paid $400 a tonne for grain.

“We bought 15 road trains of hay from South Australia, and we had to pay for it before we got it, so we wrote out a cheque for $120,000 and hoped the hay was good,” Kevin says.

“It was a gamble, but it paid off. The people we bought the hay off and the transporters stuck to their word with the price, which was a blessing to us.”

Kevin says that keeping the animals fed was gruelling, but all hands were on deck.

“It was constant, we did it every day, for two years. The grandkids were great – they got in and helped, they knew what was going on and what had to be done.”

Now as the recovery and rebuild continues, they are preparing for the next big dry. They’ve built a new 1,000-tonne >

NSW Farmers supports oyster industry To help the oyster industry recover from bushfires, flooding and COVID-19, NSW Farmers is rolling out three NSW Government-funded projects.

PROFESSIONALISING THE OYSTER INDUSTRY

Through the ‘Responsible Oyster Farming Program’ oyster farmers can up-skill by completing a series of short online or face-to-face modules which are aligned with industry code of practice. After each module is completed, farmers can then apply for funds to implement the recommendations they have learned about.

MARKETING NSW OYSTERS

This consumer marketing campaign is about boosting oyster sales after drought, fires, floods and COVID-19, which meant many farmers missed the peak summer and Easter sales periods. It dovetails with a Seafood Industry Australia campaign and involves NSW Farmers, OceanWatch and Sapphire Coast Wilderness Oysters working together to produce posters, recipe cards, tray labels and social media posts to promote oysters over the next 18 months.

REAL-TIME WATER MONITORING

Environmental monitoring in 13 NSW estuaries by the Food Agility CRC and its partners is already showing that real-time data may increase the number of harvest days for oyster farmers.

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x.com.au

THE BIG ISSUE RECOVERY

grain storage shed, cleaned out the dams and are testing a new bore.

So, are things on the up, then? “The canola is in flower and looks a picture. We’ve got barley starting to break head which could be a little bit early with some of these frosts that are about, but we’ve got to run that risk, so it is looking really good,” Kevin says.

NOT TAKING THINGS FOR GRANTED IN BEGA

Cattle drifting down flooded rivers was a common sight on TV screens earlier this year, and this was the reality for Raymond Grant when 24 of his 36 Black Angus cows were swept away.

Knowing the flood was coming Raymond had moved his herd to a neighbouring property, but when the Bega River rose five metres in one and a half hours, his plan unravelled.

“By the time I got over there the water was up to their bellies and it was moving so fast. They started to go down and I was following them in water up to my armpits trying to get them to cross over,” he says.

“Then I dropped under a couple of times, and I thought ‘I think I’d better get out of here’. It was about 8pm and pitch dark.”

The next day 16 of Raymond’s cows were found loitering in town. Two days later four more showed

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up three kilometres downstream, and then after that two more were recovered nine kilometres away after a very long swim.

Two were never found and are presumed to have been washed out to sea.

“I hadn’t seen a flood like that before, but I’ve only been doing this for five years,” Raymond says.

We’ve been in drought since I started, then we had horrendous fires and then the flood.”

Getting back on track hasn’t been easy with kilometres of fencing down and still needing repair.

“There was also a lot of debris scattered everywhere.

Everything gets washed down the river, and when it comes up that high it takes everything – pieces of tin, board, whatever is in its way.” l

AFTER THE FLO OD

Clockwise from top: Aerial checks are the only way Helen Carrigan has been able to determine her stock levels; Silos on the Carrigans’ farm; The Carrigans’ flooded farm with stranded sheep.

(Photos courtesy of Helen Carrigan)

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FROM THE

frontline crime OF

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CURRENT AFFAIRS RURAL CRIME

Farmers are targeted by criminals for a variety of reasons, sometimes repeatedly.

NSW Farmers Association and NSW Police are working together to make a difference, but they need farmers’ support.

–

Words JEANETTE SEVERS

A

ccording to research in the NSW Farm Crime Survey 2020, 81 per cent of NSW farmers are feeling victimised by crime. To combat this, an initiative to embed police with backgrounds in primary production into rural communities is showing positive results. However, successfully solving criminal activity relies on farmers reporting the offences, and for it to be even more effective there needs to be solid evidence to support a prosecution.

Detective Chief Inspector Cameron Whiteside is the first to admit police have made mistakes in the past. He is the State Rural Crime Coordinator, heading up the Rural Crime Prevention Team (RCPT), a specialist unit of detectives in the NSW Police, supported by forensic criminology analysts. RCPT detectives are recruited into rural police districts.

“The uniformed officers will always be the first responders, but the RCPT detectives follow up when it’s identified as a crime related to pastoral, agricultural and aquaculture activities,” Cameron says.

A NEW WAY OF SUPPORTING FARMERS

CRIME CAUSING ANXIETY

According to the NSW Farm Crime Survey, research undertaken through the University of New England shows trespass, illegal shooting and hunting and livestock theft create a high level of anxiety for farmers.

“We recognised farmers in general have a history of negative experiences with police,” Cameron says.

“In recruiting detectives to our team, we have specifically targeted men and women with backgrounds demonstrating they understand the industries. They have been jillaroos or jackaroos, commercial fishermen, shearers, cattle breeders, livestock agents, and farmers themselves.”

As well as identifying a new policing model, especially as its momentum and engagement with local community has been affected by coronavirus restrictions, NSW Police has had to carefully manage the willingness of occasionally suspicious rural communities to engage with police. > NOV - DEC 2021

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CURRENT AFFAIRS RURAL CRIME

“The uniformed officers will always be the first responders, but the RCPT detectives follow up when it’s identified as a crime related to pastoral, agricultural and aquaculture activities.”

– DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR CAMERON WHITESIDE

An additional initiative was to establish a Rural Crime Advisory Group with representation from NSW Farmers, RSPCA, NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, the Department of Primary Industries – specifically hunting and fishing officers, Local Land Services, government stakeholders, and police.

EDUCATION AND REPORTING OF CRIMES

NSW Farmers Regional Service Managers and members of the RCPT held workshops in 2018, meeting directly with farmers to build local connections. One of the biggest challenges is gathering enough evidence, and so the workshops focused on understanding how to preserve a crime scene.

However, often by the time a farmer is aware of, for instance, theft, the stolen fuel, livestock, wool, machinery or equipment could have been taken weeks or even months prior.

James and Rachel Foster, livestock graziers at Westleigh near Walgett, have experienced the theft of sheep and goats many times – including 90 per cent of lambs from one flock a week before they were planning to mark them. Sometimes James has reported the crime to police, other times he hasn’t.

Sometimes he has recognised the perpetrator as a local person. Although the livestock loss is something he can’t recoup, he has taken the option of “having a chat” with the thief’s father about getting that person to realise the error of their behaviour.

“You look for motorbike or quad bike tracks,” James says. “I’d say with good dogs to hold the flock, the thieves go in and pick out the best lambs.”

Sometimes he or his neighbours have seen evidence of a temporary set of yards erected alongside a gravel road, and tyre marks from a truck or trailer.

“You can see on the shire road where they’ve pulled up with a trailer, and they have good dogs,” James says. “Everything is tagged and earmarked, but they cut the tag out and put another one in.”

Three years ago, James noticed a fence was lifted and 90 sheep were missing from the paddock it surrounded. With up to three weeks between checking

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A DIVERSE TEAM

Top left then above: NSW Police Rural Crime Prevention Team detectives; Second from left, Detective Chief Inspector Cameron Whiteside, State Rural Crime Coordinator, Rural Crime Prevention Team, NSW Police, with RCPT colleagues, Detective Senior Constable Adam MacDougall, DSC Robert Newman and Detective Sergeant Andrew McLean.

livestock, he realised this meant a lack of forensic evidence to help investigating police.

Since the RCPT began, James hasn’t had any livestock thefts, and progress has been made.

In September, police charged two men after seven heavy vehicle trailers and a prime mover – all reported stolen by their owners – were recovered in the Monaro and Hume districts.

Detectives charged a Kooringal man with 77 offences after investigations into trespass and hunting offences.

The New England RCPT are investigating the theft of mixed age Dorper and Aussie White ewes from a Bukkulla property. The sheep are tagged and earmarked and were due to lamb in late September.

In August, 200 one-year-old ear-tagged Merino lambs were reported stolen from Euston. The best guess of the owner is the lambs went missing between April and August.

Winter and the beginning of spring bring more trespass offences as people cut paddock fences to hunt illegally on properties. Farmers across mid-western

Farmers has set up monthly meetings with the Rural Crime investigation Group to exchange rural crime insights and organise more local engagement. The NSW Farmers’ Yass Branch will be the first to hold an event in November with the Hume District Rural Crime Investigators coming to update members on local crime activity and prevention.

“NSW Farmers worked tirelessly to bring focus to rural crime and it is great to see the expanded resourcing and hear of the team’s success – we look forward to seeing them at branch meetings,” said NSW Farmers Regional Service and Sales Manager Jonathan Tuckfield.

NSW FARMERS’ MEMBERS CAN CHIP IN

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF CRIME

Above then below: James Foster has experienced sheep and goat thefts; NSW Police Rural Crime Prevention Team detectives are chosen for recruitment into the RCPT, in order to understand the impacts of criminal behaviour on primary producers.

NSW, Richmond, Hume, Hunter Valley, Central West, and Chifley police districts began reporting offences in June, August and September.

RCPT detectives have been able to charge some offenders, while other reported instances are still being investigated.

According to the NSW Farm Crime Survey, research undertaken through the University of New England shows trespass, illegal shooting and hunting and livestock theft create a high level of anxiety for farmers. This anxiety is tied in with farmers’ responsibility for guaranteeing biosecurity with consumers and Australia’s food and fibre trading partners.

“We found 30 per cent of farmers experienced multiple criminal offences against them,” says Kyle Mulrooney, lead researcher from UNE’s Centre for Rural Criminology.

But interaction between farmers and RCPT detectives was building confidence in their concerns about being seen and heard, Kyle said.

The Regional Services Managers team at NSW

NSW Farmers wants its members to report crimes, whether they occur today or months ago. This call to farmers is supported by Cameron Whiteside.

“When farmers report crimes against them, we may not be able to help immediately but it helps to build a picture of what is happening in the local area, and that may connect to crimes committed in other areas,” Cameron says.

“The seven heavy vehicle trailers and a prime mover – all reported stolen by their owners across NSW – were recovered in Monaro and Hume districts.

“Our detectives also raise awareness among their uniformed colleagues in rural areas. Uniformed patrol officers can be confident about explaining why they’re stopping the driver of a horse trailer or campervan at 2am – that the vehicle could contain stolen livestock.

Their explanation builds better rapport with the general public.”

The RCPT also employs sworn forensic analysts who ‘data-crunch’ – when one farmer in the south reported 200 stolen sheep, the report matched another farmer’s theft in another, northern, district. The link, apart from the same number of sheep, was a stockman who had worked for both farmers.

“We also work with interstate colleagues, tracing livestock and rural equipment theft across State and Territory borders,” Cameron says.

In the meantime, the NSW Police Minister, David Elliott, said the government remains committed to supporting the RCPT unit, with a dedicated skilled workforce of police spread across the State.

“The positions within the Rural Crime Prevention Team are placed in the police districts most in need across NSW,” Minister Elliott says. l

The NSW Farmers partnership with Bunnings has you covered when looking for safety and security equipment for your farm, home or business. As a member of NSW Farmers with an ABN, you can join the NSW Farmers’ Bunnings Trade PowerPass program, which gives you access to an exclusive pricelist. Check out their extensive range either in-store or visit www.bunnings.com.au To join this program, visit nswfarmers.org.au/bunnings

NOV - DEC 2021

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TRADE COTTON

COTTONING ON As Australian cotton continues to climb the ranks of the world market, innovation and water use efficiency still remain at the heart of this challenging rotational crop.

–

Words JEANETTE SEVERS Photography ANT ONG

> NOV - DEC 2021

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TRADE COTTON

D

ry land, irrigation, integrated pest management, crop rotation.

Most of these words and terms are not part of the common parlance when people talk about the cotton industry.

Often cotton is a crop farmers decide to plant if the soil moisture profile enables it, and if rainfall allows it. It is a break crop and one to create fertility. And this is against a national reputation for producing the best cotton in the world.

Australian-grown ginned cotton is predominantly exported to be made into clothing and other apparel, but that market competes against a growing demand for cottonseed oil from the hospitality sector – locally and overseas – and cotton meal from Australia’s feedlot industry.

IMPROVING WATER USE EFFICIENCY

Executive Director of the International Cotton Advisory Committee Kai Hughes recently said Australia is one of the few countries in the world at the cutting edge of cotton research. NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSWDPI) has led a benchmarking research

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project since 2006, analysing water use efficiency against production. It builds on benchmarking research from 1992 to 2006.

Research from NSWDPI and Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) revealed water usage had fallen from 1.43 Ml/bale in 1995, to 0.74 Ml/bale in 2020. Cotton growers have decided their next challenge is to benchmark against a 2024 target of 0.71 Ml a bale.

Production efficiencies are driven primarily through improvements in irrigation infrastructure and management efficiencies, underpinned by research and development. From the industry’s perspective, change includes informing public debate about cotton growing and water use.

CRDC Executive Director Dr Ian Taylor says Australian cotton growers are committed to continuously improve their water use efficiency.

When calculating water use and implementation over time, researchers took into account all the water used on the farm to produce the crop.

“This includes all water coming onto the farm from rivers and bores, all rain falling directly on the crop, harvested rainfall runoff, all soil moisture used

THE WHITE STUFF

Previous page and above: Charles Boileau surveys the cotton crop on his Delungra farm in north-west NSW; Charles and his wife Celia (right) say conditions are looking favourable to plant again this year.

“Our decision to plant is based on price forecasts, commodity drivers and the weather conditions. In particular what subsoil moisture we have in the country after the wheat is harvested.”

– COTTON FARMER CHARLES BOILEAU

by the crop, and water lost through evaporation and seepage during storage in dams and delivery to the paddock,” Ian says.

Levels of water withdrawals for irrigation in Australia are regulated by governments to deliver sustainable water use from healthy river systems.

There are clear limits on the volume of water that can be used, and this changes each year based on seasonal conditions. Within this regulatory framework that limits water use, Australian farmers work to increase the efficiency of water allocated to them, and part of that is choosing which crop to grow each year with the available water.

COTTON AS A PILLAR CROP

At Boggabri, Andrew and Heike Watson grow cotton as part of a summer crop rotation, but they use Namoi River seasonal irrigation licences, groundwater, supplementary high flow allocations and re-use dams to drive their decision.

“Cotton is our pillar crop,” Andrew says. “It comes into rotation every four or five years, depending on water availability, and it helps in weed and nutrition management. Its water use is equivalent to corn or fully irrigated sorghum.”

Andrew says he allocates 7.1 Ml/ha to grow cotton or corn, compared to 3.1 Ml/ha for wheat.

“We only grow canola or sorghum when we have supplementary irrigation available,” he explains.

COTTON FROM WHEAT STUBBLE

Charles and Celia Boileau, who grow cotton crops on dryland country near Delungra, utilise the watersaving efficiency of last season’s wheat stubble to plant cotton. But their decision to grow cotton is still dependent on sufficient rainfall and the soil moisture profile. They grow cotton in rotation with wheat, sorghum or chickpeas.

“Our decision to plant is based on price forecasts, commodity drivers and the weather conditions. In particular what subsoil moisture we have in the country after the wheat is harvested,” Charles says. “I focus on maintaining good ground cover on the country, so the cotton seed is protected after planting.”

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TRADE COTTON

“The cotton industry has historically had a reputation for high insecticide use. IPM is a game changer for the cotton industry.”

– COTTON FARMER CHARLES BOILEAU

He farms in a high rainfall zone, with an annual average of 71cm, on land that is sloping with rollover contours. Paddocks are deep self-mulching black soils with a reasonably high clay content.

Charles expects to plant cotton this year, given the soil moisture profile is full after winter.

The couple also grow cotton as a partner in seed trials, to measure emergent, growth and yield of these seeds against quality and growth per area, and environmental impact.

“Last year we grew a CSD seed trial and have another one this year. It gives you more flexibility in weed control. The varieties we sow have Roundup Ready genes in them,” Charles says. “We usually put some pre-emergent on the country straight after we sow; then spraying occurs based on rainfall and what weeds emerge and survive the pre-emergent herbicide. This year we only applied weed control twice, and used only one insecticide spray, to take out the mirids but not the beneficial and predator insects.”

He also utilises the cold conditions of wintertime to avoid bacterial growth problems in the crop.

NEW INNOVATIONS IN COTTON

Other innovations led by researchers in collaboration with CRDC and NSWDPI have been the use of integrated pest management and other ways to reduce the use of chemical pest control methods.

This research has led to the development of DAT11 (Metarhizium sp.), an entomopathogenic fungal isolate demonstrating effective control of insect pests in cotton – including Helicoverpa spp., and sucking insects like green mirids, silverleaf whitefly, green vegetable bugs, Rutherglen bugs, fruit fly and mealy bugs.

More recently, botanical products have also been identified as effective in controlling Helicoverpa spp., green mirids, green vegetable bugs and silverleaf whitefly.

Research is focussed on increasing the use of biologicals and biopesticides to help drive production efficiencies, and reduce growers’ reliance on synthetic crop protection chemicals – annual insecticide use in Australia is currently valued at more than $8 billion.

Andrew Watson has been using integrated pest management (IPM) to encourage beneficial insects and biological control across all of his crops. He has

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OLD D O GS, NEW TRICKS

Australia is at the cutting edge of cotton farming research, with a focus on water efficiency and pest control. “This year we only applied weed control twice, and only used one insecticide spray,” says Charles of his crop.

been planting vegetation belts since the 1990s to build habitat for beneficial insects.

“The cotton industry has historically had a reputation for high insecticide use. IPM is a game changer for us,” Andrew says. “As each year went by, we measured the insect population and as we saw the pest insect population rise up, the predators and beneficial insect population also rose.”

In the past couple of years he has turned to technology to support the beneficial insect population, using drones to seed predators into his cotton and corn crops. Drone seeding Eretmocerus hayati wasps into his crops has been successful in controlling silverleaf whitefly and green mirids.

While he still uses a granular insecticide at sowing to protect the newly emerging plant shoots from insects, he said releasing beneficial insects into the cotton and corn crop had been effective in reducing insecticide use.

“It’s been quite effective in reducing our insecticide use to almost nothing,” Andrew says.

“Before we began using drones, our yield averaged 11.5-12 bales per hectare (prior to the drought). Last year we averaged just under 14 bales per hectare.

“Whole farm water efficiency, minimising nutrient flows and IPM underpin our environmental management systems, and are making Australian cotton a world standard, which drives premium pricing,” Andrew says. l

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Serious Isuzu savings.

Little gems of goodness Choosing a lettuce is a complicated business these days, with an explosion of varieties offering different flavours and colours to suit every taste.

–

Words SHEREE YOUNG

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INDUSTRY LETTUCE

T

he salad was once a domain owned by the iceberg, but these days an array of new, petite and more colourful contenders have joined the field.

What these new types have in common is their size, as consumers increasingly look for a smaller delicate leaf that doesn’t take up the whole plate, require as much cutting and has a longer shelf life than more compacted varieties.

Enter the hugely popular red and green gems, baby cos, coral, oak and butter lettuce varieties, which are now a common feature at farmers’ markets, fruit and vegetable shops and supermarkets, and a staple on the weekly shopping list.

Lettuce is predominantly grown in the Sydney Basin, but there are also production pockets on the north coast of New South Wales, as well as in the central and far west regions, with 7 per cent of national production coming from the state.

According to figures from the 2019/2020 Hort Innovation Statistics Handbook in total, Australian farmers grew 135,000 tonnes of lettuce in 2020, at a value of $241 million.

Of this, 116,000 tonnes, valued at $208 million was sold at retail level, with $34 million or 19,000 tonnes sold into the food service sector. On the export front, 427 tonnes of lettuce were sent offshore, valued at $1 million.

Prices are also looking good with year-on-year value growing 19 per cent to $1.53 per kilogram, despite volumes dropping by 1.32 per cent in 2020. >

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INDUSTRY LETTUCE

BEST IN FIELD

STAND ASIDE ICEBERG

Australian farmers grew 135,000 tonnes of lettuce in 2020, with 7 per cent of production in New South Wales. Seems like we’re a nation who eats our greens!

Frances Tolson is the Account Manager, Retail & Trade, with seed breeding company Rijk Zwaan Australia, which is a family-owned business that originated in Holland in 1924. It focuses purely on vegetables and has 25 different crops and over 1,000 commercial varieties which have been bred for four climatic zones.

Frances says lettuce has been on quite a journey since iceberg had to share the lettuce limelight with more fancy alternatives.

To keep up with this shift and diversify the types of lettuce that are available for farmers to grow, Rijk Zwaan is constantly researching new seed types that it can offer to growers in all climatic zones and for all seasons.

This involves cross-pollinating existing lettuce types with naturally reoccurring seeds, grasses and thistles that have been found in the wild overseas and in Australia. The eventual result is a new lettuce variety with its own individual set of characteristics.

“Over 20 years is required for the breeding program behind new types of lettuce,” Frances says, adding each new variety also goes through a validation process plus a series of on-farm trials before a decision can be made about whether it will be commercialised or not.

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“Breeding is quite fast now because we are constantly breeding for stronger resistances, better yield and improved taste, so there is something for the consumer as well.”

LEAFY SUCCESS

One success story has been the development of the Salanova range of lettuces, with the new Salanova Butter now available in supermarkets around Australia, as well as on the menus of top restaurants.

“It used to be the iceberg, and then came fancy leaves that were the size of your hand, and now the leaves have changed to crispy, oaky and buttery types,” Frances says. “Now they are increasingly becoming bite-sized, and that is where the Salanova range is a cut above the rest.”

Salanova Butter is grown predominantly for pillow pack salads and whole head Salanova Butter is currently grown for the food service sector.

A similar process was undertaken to refine, or shrink, cos lettuce, which not that long ago was quite sizeable and would take up most of a crisper.

“Cos started quite large and then we started breeding the baby cos, which reduced it down to a medium size,” explains Frances. “From there we started breeding the twin-pack baby cos which reduced it even further. Then we started on the red and green gems as well, and soon a new crunchy cos will be available so that is also very exciting.”

HYDROPONIC LETTUCE FROM THE SYDNEY BASIN

Peter Muscat grows about 70,000 lettuces, including Salanova Butter, iceberg, cos, coral and oak varieties, on his one-hectare all-lettuce hydroponic farm at South Windsor in the Sydney Basin.

The seedlings are planted in raised plastic pipes which are perfect for drainage and also very useful for preventing weed growth. This means he doesn’t need to use any herbicides on his crops, which are also protected from the elements by hail nets.

The speed at which the lettuces grow means caterpillars also don’t have time to get in and munch their way through his crop.

“The growing times differ for each type, and caterpillars are not a problem because the lettuce just grows too quick. In summer we are about 40 days from seedling to harvest in the exotic green and red oak and coral varieties, whereas an iceberg will be around 60 days,” Peter says.

“The biggest seller is green oak leaf, which I sell a lot of to Asian supermarkets. The Korean markets tend to like coral, and growing wise they are very similar, around the 40-day growth period, which is good for us.

SIZE MATTERS

Top: Frances Tolson selecting lettuce varieties from one of the many trials; New types such as the Salanova Butter (right) have been bred specifically for their smaller, sweeter leaves and longer shelf life, perfect for prepackaged salads.

“We grow all year round and it can take an extra 10 days in the middle of winter to get them to the right size.”

Peter also conducts summer and winter farm trials for new Rijk Zwaan varieties, and enjoys seeing the new types of lettuce that are coming through.

“What is popular certainly does change,” he says. “Thirty years ago it was all about traditional butter and red mignonettes, but today people want an open lettuce – one that is all leaves like oak or coral varieties. And these new red and green Salanova Butter varieties have very forkable leaves that are perfect for salads.

“These types also have a great shelf life, and seed companies are working tirelessly to bring out products that will last for up to 10 days.”

One tip Peter offers is to keep the roots on your lettuce for as long as you can. “We sell our lettuce with the roots on and that helps with shelf life. We tell our customers: don’t cut the stems off until you need to.”

FIELD PRODUCER FROM CAMDEN

The Vella family have spent 50 years growing vegetables, and in 2017 opened a substantial commercial market garden specialising in field lettuce production at Razorback and Elderslie near Camden in Western Sydney.

The farm business has direct supply lines into national supermarkets through a wholesale network, and also supplies food service processors as well as fast food chain McDonald’s.

John Vella runs the farm, with his father Joe and brother Matthew. Together they grow red and green gems, baby cos, large cos and iceberg lettuce types.

John says that each type requires a different farming methodology, but all the beds are raised for draining purposes and planting widths vary from between 150mm to 240mm depending on the type.

“There’s a lot more per acre of the gems compared to the baby cos, and a lot more again of the baby gems.

The large cos and the iceberg are planted on three rows instead of four,” he says.

“We used to grow a lot more iceberg and large cos, but we swung over to baby cos about eight years ago and that has gone really well for us. In the last year we started the new little gem cos and that is also going very well.

“We find the old traditional lines of iceberg and cos now tend to be more for food processing, and the baby cos is more for restaurants and domestic use.

They are just that little bit sweeter and they also last longer in the household.”

A fair amount of John’s produce is sold to food service companies and ends up in convenient and increasingly popular ready-to-eat meals.

Given his supply is predominantly to supermarkets, chain restaurants and food service companies, he hasn’t noticed a drop due to COVID. “The chain stores are going gang busters, and the processors aren’t too bad, but if you were growing for the restaurants, it has been harder,” he says. l NOV - DEC 2021

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Bringing home the bacon

With Christmas nearly upon us, this is the perfect time to put labelling under the microscope and help consumers buy Australian ham and bacon.

–

Words SHEREE YOUNG

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INDUSTRY PORK

D

id you know the majority of ham and bacon consumed in Australia is made using imported pig meat?

If you didn’t, don’t worry – you are not alone.

A recent study of 1,500 people

by Australian Pork Limited found a staggering 76 per cent of consumers thought they were buying Australian ham and bacon, when really the products were made using imported meat.

Often the only Australian-grown ingredient in a packet of bacon or ham is the water and brine used for curing. But despite this the packaging includes the iconic kangaroo logo, which for many automatically tells us the product is made in Australia.

Whilst this is correct – as bacon and ham made using imported pig meat is cured, smoked, and finished in Australia – it is often the case that the amount of Australian ingredients is marginal, around the 10 per cent mark.

Many, including Australian Pork Limited CEO Margo Andrae and NSW Farmers Pork Committee chair and pig farmer Ean Pollard, say the appearance of the kangaroo logo could be confusing for consumers even though it has every right to be there.

New research from Australian Pork Limited backs this sentiment, with three in five Australian consumers, or 61 per cent of respondents, reporting they find current labelling confusing.

Whilst all fresh pork sold in Australia is 100 per cent Australian,

it is not the same when it comes to smallgoods.

To make sure you are buying Australian-grown bacon and ham, shoppers need to check the bar chart that appears under the kangaroo logo.

This shows the portion of ingredients that are grown in Australia. The less shaded in the bar chart is, the less the amount of Australian ingredients used.

This number fluctuates between 10 and 30 per cent. But to be assured you are buying Australian grown bacon and ham, it needs to be 90 per cent or higher.

The other way to be sure that what you are buying is Australian grown is if the packaging carries the pink square Australian Pork logo.

Another way to check – especially if you are looking for a nice ham for your Christmas lunch table – is one favoured by Ean. “If you buy a ham and it comes off the bone or it is on the bone, it will be Australian,” Ean says. “We like to say, ‘if it is on the bone, it is one of our own’. We feel that is a nice and simple way to help consumers understand.

“Importers of pig meat from Denmark and North America cannot import bone. They can only import the meat, not the bone, so that means any ham that was connected to a bone must be Australian because that bone could not have been imported.”

Country of Origin Labelling (CoOL) came into force in 2016. Last year, NSW Farmers recommended to a review of the scheme that the bar chart be made more prominent on packaging to help consumers. It also called for the chart to be shown in a >

How to spot Australian ham and bacon and support local pork producers ➤ Look for the pink square Australian Pork logo ➤ Make sure the bar chart shows 90 per cent or more Australian ingredients ➤ If ham has come off a bone or is on a bone, then it is 100 per cent Australian ➤ Remember the kangaroo logo doesn’t prove it is fully Australian grown NOV - DEC 2021

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Colin Fassnidge's roast pork leg recipe Serves 6 INGREDIENTS:

1 pork leg rolled and tided 1.5-2kg Skin On*** ***Purchase pork leg three days in advance, keep uncovered and sprinkle liberally with salt on a plate in the fridge near the fan to allow skin to dry, which will help with resulting crackling.

Take out of fridge 1 hour before using to allow to come back up to room temperature.

MARINADE:

2 cloves garlic, peeled Sprigs from bunch sage, leaves kept aside ½ teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon ground coriander ½ teaspoon ginger powder 100ml olive oil METHOD:

• Blend ingredients in a blender.

• Day before cooking baste the pork meat in the marinade, avoiding the skin. Allow to sit prior to cooking.

POTATO BOULANGÈRE: INGREDIENTS:

• 5 medium-size Desirée potatoes, finely sliced • 2 white onions, peeled and finely sliced • 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped • 1 bunch sage leaves, chopped (sprigs used in marinade)

• 1 bulb fennel, finely sliced • 100ml olive oil • 300ml chicken stock • 2 bay leaves • Salt and pepper to season METHOD:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C fan forced.

2. In a large bowl add all the ingredients apart from the chicken stock, and give a good mix through.

3. In a medium-sized baking tray layer the mix halfway up the dish.

4. Pour the chicken stock over the potato mix.

5. Place the marinated pork on top of the potato boulangère.

6. Pour any excess marinade over the potatoes.

7. Place in preheated oven for 20 minutes at 200°C to start the crackling process.

8. Reduce temperature to 160°C for a further 20 minutes or until centre of pork is 58°C. 9. Remove pork and rest.

10. Place the potato bake back in the oven for a further 20-25 minutes, or until golden on top and cooked underneath.

11. Pork should now be rested and ready to slice.

12. Lay slices on top of potato, season with salt and pepper, add a squeeze of lemon juice and serve.

Chef’s hint: If you have not attained the desired level of crackling, in a frying pan with hot oil roll the cooked pork skin-side down until crackling happens. Remove and slice.

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larger, easier-to-read format and that products with no Australian ingredients should be banned from displaying the Australian Made standard logo at all.

LOOKING INTO THE STATS

Australia produces 450,000 tonnes of pork each year, with the majority of this consumed domestically as fresh pork bought from butchers and supermarkets.

Around 10 per cent is exported, with Singapore and Hong Kong our biggest markets. Demand for Australian pork is on the rise, as African Swine Fever wipes out herds around the world.

On the flipside, around 250,000 tonnes of pig meat are imported each year by smallgoods manufacturers. On average, each week this equates to $13.8 million-worth of imported pork arriving on our shores.

It is this imported meat that ends up as bacon and ham. While this number is high, the good news is that it is decreasing – slowly but surely.

Margo says there has been a slight uptick in the number of smallgoods processors using Australian pig meat for their bacon and ham production, which is great news for the industry.

“Volume wise we have definitely seen a small percentage growth in manufacturers of smallgoods using Australian pork. We believe we have gone from 20 per cent of your ham, bacon and smallgoods being Australian to about 24 per cent,” Margo says.

“If the bacon you are buying is produced in

INDUSTRY PORK

Australia, you can be sure the pork has met our incredibly high standards, and it tastes pretty amazing too.”

Ean adds, “Australia has the cleanest pig herd health in the world. There are diseases in North America and the pig producers there either have to vaccinate their pigs or do certain things to avoid those diseases.”

“As those diseases aren’t present in Australia, we don’t have to do that. This means we don’t have to vaccinate as the diseases are not in Australia.”

Last year during COVID, Australian Pork hired several chefs to produce a series of easy-to-follow cooking videos to teach everyday consumers how to cook pork.

Margo said this really helped lift pork’s profile as a standard ‘go-to’ meal.

“The nutritional value of pork is amazing when it comes to being a great source of protein, iron, minerals and vitamins, so we wanted to show people how to cook it,” she says.

Margo adds that an increasing number of smallgoods manufacturers are seeking supply deals with Australian pig farmers so they can market ridgydidge Australian made bacon and ham.

“I think most people don’t realise where their ingredients come from. They are just put together in Australia – so that is why we are working on a campaign to promote Country of Origin labelling to help consumers understand how to read that label,” she says.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY

Consumers might think they’re buying Aussie pork, but confusing labelling standards disguise the fact much of our ham, bacon and smallgoods comes from imported meat.

“I think the green and gold kangaroo logo is confusing for consumers. Our research told us that 76 per cent of consumers thought they were buying bacon made with Australian pork, so it is confusing for a label that is meant to clarify things.”

Margo thinks it will take time to see more Australian grown ham and bacon on our supermarket shelves.

“We can’t just turn the tap on and suddenly be able to supply 100 per cent of our ham and bacon.

It’s going to be a collaboration with the smallgoods manufacturers on becoming a reliable supply partner.

We lost it over a couple of decades, but it is now a case of how quickly can we reclaim a fair share of the market given that we are slightly more expensive,” she says.

Australian pig producers have capacity for greater volumes over time. Ean says it is vital to take advantage of this given the disruption bacon and ham supply could suffer if there was a supply chain breakdown, or further disease outbreaks overseas.

“It becomes a delicate situation when we start relying on our food source from overseas. If we can secure more of our food source inside of Australia, then surely that has got to be a safer option for consumers moving forward,” Ean says.

“It is a big growth area for Australian pork producers, but if all imports stop coming in tomorrow, we will have a national shortage of ham and bacon.”

For more information, please visit pork.com.au. l NOV - DEC 2021

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COMMUNITY LOCAL NEWS

STORIES THAT MATTER

TALES FROM THE TOWNS

The printing press remains in the same historic building on Maitland Street in Bingara (pictured above) as it is too cumbersome to move.

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Since 1894, the Gwydir Shire in North Western NSW has had a publication that unites the local community and ensures the stories of its residents live on.

–

Words DARCY WATT

> NOV - DEC 2021

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COMMUNITY LOCAL NEWS

T

he first edition of The Warialda Standard was printed on May 4, 1894. Priced at sixpence, the newspaper informed residents about things such as new products, local sales and updates in the wool market. Readers were also informed of when a travelling doctor was in town.

Mr Robert Buist was the editor of The Warialda Standard until his passing in 1902. In the following years it had multiple editors and various owners.

A newspaper from nearby Bingara – The Bingara Advocate – was established in 1934 by editor Samuel

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HOT OFF THE PRES S

In 1978, hot-lead Linotype was the production method used to print The Bingara Advocate.

This changed in 1983 with the introduction of offset printing.

Dickson, and it was printed for a long time on the original printing press for The Warialda Standard.

The paper kept citizens informed throughout many defining historical moments such as World War II, and when the first man landed on the moon. Samuel ran the publication until his son Rex took over, and then later he returned as editor when Rex served the country during the war. The paper cost one penny for a weekly edition.

In 1983, Doug Wilson became the owner and editor of The Warialda Standard, and for the next 25 years he ran the newspaper. His wife Pattie Wilson was also heavily involved, working on her two-page weekly spread titled ‘Pattie’s Page’. The popular piece included news from the locals, household tips and tricks, recipes and, more famously, her section titled ‘A lady should know.’

A fire in the 1970s destroyed the newspaper’s office, along with many of the archives. Luckily some examples can still be found online through The National Library of Australia website, Trove.

To this day, the historic printing press remains in the same building on Maitland Street in Bingara. Because it’s so big and cumbersome, the only way to get it out would be via a crane through the roof.

“The ongoing support for The Gwydir News emerges directly from the strong community spirit of Gwydir Shire, and some of the subscribers are people who once lived in the shire, and want to stay in touch with what’s happening in the region.”

A NEW ERA OF NEWS

In 2015 Nancy Capel, who owned The Bingara Advocate, purchased The Warialda Standard and the two papers merged in 2018 to form The Gwydir News.

The Gwydir Shire Council took on a caretaker role in 2019 after Nancy’s retirement, as a buyer couldn’t be found. It ran as a weekly newspaper until the end of 2020, and was then reformatted into a monthly newsletter-style publication.

Kim Miller has been the editor of The Gwydir News since the beginning of 2021, and she runs it with the help of a small communications team within council. There was much discussion about whether it was the role of the council to keep it going, and eventually it was decided that it was an important service for the community, and so should stay.

sales@redearth.energy

“There are around 6,000 people in the 9,121 square kilometre region, so it’s a big area to keep on top of,” Kim says. “The news is hyper-local content and covers things that are happening in the community as opposed to only about the community. So there was a lot of concern about potentially losing that. Our country towns are already losing enough elements of what has kept them going.”

Nowadays locals are encouraged to download the newspaper free online. It’s also available in a magazine-style format on the Issuu platform that many publishers use. Hard paper copies are still available for $2.50 per month, which covers the shipping cost.

The costs to produce the publication are covered by council and advertising. “A lot of our advertisers were carried across when the publications merged from weekly news into the current monthly newsletter,” says Kim. “They have been very loyal to us.”

The ongoing support for The Gwydir News emerges directly from the strong community spirit of Gwydir Shire, and some of the subscribers are people who once lived in the shire, and want to stay in touch with what’s happening in the region.

“The towns here are heavily based on generational families that have been here for a very long time,” says Kim. “It’s a place where everybody knows everyone by name, and we’re lucky that people know who to look out for and who to look after. I think that’s something that draws people to living in smaller communities.

“It’s so nice to be able to share people’s stories in our newsletter each month, and some locals contribute regularly. We encourage others to get in touch and share their stories with us.” l

https://redearth.en erg

y

NOV - DEC 2021

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SOIL HEALTH TESTING YIELDS SIMPLE SOLUTIONS

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Australian farmers manage approximately 60% of the Australian landscape and witness firsthand the role soil health plays in driving the productivity and sustainability of Australian farm businesses.

With an increasing national focus on the importance of soil health, the question that’s front of mind for many farmers is how best to achieve and maintain healthy soils within a productive and profitable farming system.

For senior agronomist with Incitec Pivot Fertilisers (IPF), Jim Laycock, the ability to measure and monitor the soil’s key biological, chemical and physical characteristics is essential to understanding and improving soil health.

Based at Cowra in Central West New South Wales, Jim has worked as an agronomist for 26 years, specialising in broadacre cereal and legume crop production.

He has been instrumental in the development of a new soil health test package from the Nutrient Advantage Laboratory, designed to help farmers better measure and manage their soil health.

ADVERTORIAL

“The more you can grow, the higher your yields will be but you’re also then able to achieve greater levels of biomass which retains and builds carbon and nitrogen levels in your soil. It’s a simple equation, but higher nitrogen and carbon levels lead to higher rates of microbial activity, and ultimately healthier soils.”

SUPPORTED DECISION MAKING “The package comprises four tests and looks at the total carbon and total nitrogen, and C:N ratio of soils, as well as aggregate slaking and dispersion, active carbon and microbial respiration,” Jim says.

“These four quite simple tests, when taken together, can yield very useful insights that can be addressed in both the short term and over time, in the long term as well.”

With soil health being linked to total nitrogen, total carbon and active carbon levels, these tests can alert farmers to shortcomings in their overall soil health, prompting practice changes to fix any problem areas.

TRIAL RESULTS

Recent results from IPF’s trial site near Grenfell, NSW show how inputs and management can impact soil health over time.

Selected treatments were sampled and compared active carbon, organic carbon and total nitrogen in soil with just phosphorous applied versus with both phosphorous and nitrogen applied.

The results show both organic carbon and active carbon levels increased by 28% with the addition of nitrogen, and an increase in total nitrogen from 0.09% to 0.115%.

“Total nitrogen measures all the nitrogen in the soil, including both inorganic or plant available nitrogen and nitrogen in the form of organic matter that will mineralise into plant available nitrogen over time,” Jim says.

“The higher the total nitrogen levels in the soil profile, the more potential there is for mineral nitrogen cycling.

While increasing data on overall soil health is the first step to improving it, Jim sees the recommendations and guidance that comes with that data as critical.

“The real value for farmers is in having support around their decision making,” Jim says.

“The Nutrient Advantage soil health package delivers tailored recommendations alongside its laboratory data test results.

“The decision support system is invaluable for farmers as they go about both identifying and then correcting any issues or barriers to soil health, both in the short and long term.”

Nutrient Advantage – Soil Health Package For over 50 years, Nutrient Advantage has been Australia’s leading provider of nutrient analysis and expertise, helping farmers cost-effectively manage their input requirements.

The Soil Health Package has been developed to help farmers better measure and manage their soil health, boosting their productivity today while safeguarding the sustainability of their businesses into the future.

The first in a series of soil health tests, the new package comprises four test components: • Total Carbon & Total Nitrogen & C:N ratio (combustion) • Aggregate Slaking & Dispersion (Loveday & Pyle) • Active (labile) Carbon (0.033M KMnO4) • Microbial Respiration (1 day Solvita CO2 burst) It is recommended the tests be repeated every two to three years at the same time of year.

Using the Health1 code, they can be ordered as a standalone package for $80, or added to any existing Nutrient Advantage test order for $70.

To order or find out more, visit www. soilhealthtesting.com.au or call 1800 803 453.

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SPECIAL REPORT INNOVATIVE FARMING

Farming: on the land and in the sky Agriculture is playing catchup when it comes to collecting and using big data but an agtech explosion on land and in the air is driving the industry forward.

–

Words DARREN BAGULEY

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A

gtech in Australia is big and getting bigger; it seems every week there is a new product coming onto the market showcasing Aussie farm ingenuity at its very best. Government agencies and think tanks alike have also identified the booming sector as an industry where Australia has a competitive advantage in the global marketplace and are widely promoting our capabilities.

On-farm take up of agtech on Australian farms has been slow – partially caused by our poor telecommunications infrastructure – but now more farms and agricultural operations are relying on both ground and sky technology including drones, farming software and remote sensors to keep ahead of the production game.

THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT

Drones are one of the most obvious manifestations of agtech and the technology has advanced so rapidly that today’s highend consumer drone is more capable than a commercial drone of several years ago.

Bralca is a Central West-based company that provides unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone pilots, training and consulting services. It has recently partnered with NSW Farmers and Tocal Ag College to run a series of UAV field workshops to help farmers get to grips with the technology.

According to the company’s founder and agribusiness specialist, Ben Watts, sensor capabilities are constantly improving, and farmers are collecting increasing amounts of data. “A broad trend we’ve noticed in agriculture is that it’s all about collecting data on a landscape scale, that is using interconnected sensors otherwise known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Information such as Elders weather, weaner prices etc. can be obtained from Google by farmers – however what they really want is what’s happening on their farm.

“We can collect very high-resolution crop maps at any stage of the crop’s lifecycle – it’s being done in Western Australia, the USA and parts of NSW – and that technology will be the difference between good yields and good profits or high yield and high costs.

Farmers are taking almost real time, high-res crop maps, processing the data in the cloud and downloading a shape file to MyJohnDeere within 12 to 24 hours to produce a spray map.”

Ben says UAV technology is now

pushing into horticulture and it is “working brilliantly in citrus, vineyards and macadamias. Interestingly it’s often just a few trees in a row so the UAV is saving time, money and pesticides because the grower is not paying for a machine to go up every row for a few trees.”

UAVs are also proving to be a boon for farmers implementing adaptive multipaddock grazing and other regenerative ag practices.

“The tasks for most livestock producers are pretty simple,” says Ben. “Check my stock, check my water, check my fences and a good quality consumer drone meets 90 per cent of that need. However, livestock producers at the cutting edge are using thermal cameras on drones to check on the welfare of their stock. And as a side benefit, thermal cameras can find water leaks as they show up as a cool area in summer and a warm area in winter.”

ACTIONABLE INFORMATION

At a more micro level, the MEQ Probe gives meat processors the ability to make objective measurements of the quality of the meat whilst it is being processed.

MEQ Probe is a new solution that utilises spectral analysis to determine the eating quality of meat on a carcase-by-carcase basis. The technology utilises a blend of physics, chemistry and biology coupled

with Machine Learning to provide meat processors with an objective measure for meat quality. MEQ Probe provides real-time information to meat processors which can be shared up the supply chain (distributors, butchers, consumers) and down the supply chain (on-farm growers).

MEQ CEO, Remo Carbone, believes that a key element of the AgTech revolution is that information must be actionable. “If information is actionable, it creates a loop of value. Good information drives better decisions, which in turn drives more information and better decisions.

Objective data that can be relied upon is key to providing the proper signals to drive better on-farm outcomes. Supply chain demands for higher transparency, faster information and tighter margins are also pushing this trend.

“MEQ Probe provides objective IMF data on a carcase-by-carcase basis and this feedback enables farmers to understand their product at an individual lamb and mob level. Their performance informs decision-making on-farm and improves productivity. This data is objective information that, when paired with our newly launched producer portal, will enable better management of their mobs and help to inform breeding plans. Our producer portal brings together not only the MEQ IMF value from the lamb processed, but

OVERCOMING REMOTENES S AND CONNECTIVITY WITH SKY AND LAND TECH

Investment in NBN technology which has improved speed, reliability and download limits means that satellite is now a viable option for remote farms.

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SPECIAL REPORT INNOVATIVE FARMING

several other data points collected to give a proper overview of the performance of the mob. It also allows the farmer to benchmark their own performance over time and see how they are faring relative to their peers.

We expect to do the same as we deploy our probe to the beef industry in 2022.”

MEANINGFUL DATA

While farmers are getting better at collecting data whether it is from UAVs, paddock sensors, crush side tools or in-field/paddock sensors they are lagging when it comes to using that data in meaningful ways. BlackBoxCo co-founder, Emma Black, puts it this way: “Data is like garbage – it’s useless until you know what you want to do with it”.

Founded by Emma and research vet, Shannon Speight, BlackBoxCo is a cloud computing powered web-based app that uses the latest machine learning and predictive algorithm technology to interrogate an expanding database of animal records and display the results on an interactive dashboard.

“A lot of producers ranging from family farms to large corporates have been collecting data for years, but they get a bit overwhelmed when they think of trying to do something with that data because they’re thinking of Excel spreadsheets and the like.

“Our app ingests raw production data from a range of sources including crush side units, Excel spreadsheets, data from

feedlots and abattoirs. It then cleans the input and links and analyses fragmented data sets to display a range of metrics on an interactive dashboard that producers can use to drive productive actions.”

Emma adds that the dashboards have been built with beef industry and producer input specifically to produce the insights the industry needs. “Our aim has been to take away the pain. We take raw production data as well as feedlot and abattoir performance data, analyse and display it all back in a visual chart.”

Users can set alerts around that data – for example a shift in calving pattern or change in average daily gain (ADG) – so they’re notified as soon as the trend is starting to show. All dashboards are interactive so producers can filter by different data points which vary according to the operation. A breeding operation will focus on metrics such as calving loss and foetal age while a fattening operation will focus on data points around ADG and discounts through the supply chain which meant they didn’t achieve optimum spot on the grid.

CONNECTIVITY ISSUES

While Australian farmers are making strong progress when it comes to adopting agtech, a major factor holding back adoption of the technology is poor telecommunications in rural areas. According to the NSW Farmers Telecommunications Survey conducted

earlier this year: 72 per cent of respondents indicated that the quality of their internet service limits their ability to adopt new farm productivity technologies while 55 per cent of respondents are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their internet service.

The majority of respondents rated quality, speed and reliability of their internet service on their property (outside the main residence) as very poor to poor.

In addition, the majority have invested in technology such as boosters and aerials to enhance their signal. Of these, 41 per cent have invested in 3G boosters, 58 per cent in 4G boosters, and 74 per cent in external aerials. Over the last two years respondents have spent $90–$15,000 to improve the quality of their service (mobile and/or data) through technology boosting products.

Over the last 10 years affordable satellite connectivity has improved in both speed, quality and download allowance.

This significant improvement is primarily down to huge government investment in NBN satellites.

“Due to the increase in connectivity and smart technology, there is now even greater need for accessible satellite solutions. For example, farmers using agtech to monitor water levels, stock prices and compliance reporting, not to mention normal home internet usage such as streaming and video calling. The message is clear – the need for data is here to stay,” says David Townsend,

CONNECTING EVEN THE MO ST REMOTE FARMS

Left to right: Farmdeck software provides critical information seamlessly across PC, Android and iOS platforms; One well sited LoRaWAN – a form of Low power, Wide Area Network – station can connect a whole farm independent of 3G/4G.

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SPECIAL REPORT INNOVATIVE FARMING

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David adds that providers such as IPSTAR are not standing still – they’re constantly providing new offerings and refining the technology available to farmers and their families.

“Delivering connectivity to rural and remote Australians is the core focus of IPSTAR. We understand the challenges farmers and their families face and we are constantly working to provide an experience as similar to that in the city as possible,” notes David.

“Remote communities across Australia have had a particularly tough three years with drought, fires, floods and COVID-19.

Technology can help Australians maximise potential output, whether that be improved crop quality or better pricing at market. But to do this, you need a reliable connection supporting the tech,” David says.

With a growing global population, there is pressure on the farming industry to step up and produce more food.

“One way to significantly increase efficiency is the application of 21st century technologies. At IPSTAR we are championing this notion, whether that be smart water management, drone crop monitoring or anything that requires internet connection. Essentially, we want to support the government’s mission on the growth of Australia as a global food bowl,” says David.

SOUGHT OUT SOLUTIONS

While telecommunications are a major factor when it comes to implementing agtech on Australian farms, companies such as Farmdeck have accepted the reality of Australia’s poor telecommunications infrastructure and have sought to provide solutions that don’t require 3G/4G in the field. Farmdeck provides an all-in-one offering that includes the sensors, the network connectivity and the Farmdeck application available online or downloadable on any Android and iOS devices.

Farmdeck’s IoT Technology Lead, Luca Palermo, sees three main trends in AgTech: software to replace paper-based note taking and help gather information in one place; sensor technology which enables farmers to remotely track assets whether it’s a water trough, cow, tractor – whether an electric fence is up or down; and satellite sensing which has advanced to the point where it can tell how paddocks are performing and taking detailed measurements of pasture.

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“The sensor technology is driven quite simply by time savings. A farmer near Tamworth installed our solution in 2017/18 and he has 17 tanks and about 2,000 head of cattle. It used to take two days to do a trough run. Now he can see it on a dashboard and can track water usage to find problems.

Farmdeck manufactures its own sensors – tank, trough and fence etc – so they integrate directly to our software. It’s virtually plug and play.

“Note taking may not sound very important but it is important for new generations who are taking over the farm.

They’re very tech savvy, they know how to use a computer and phone and they want to get the information out of dad’s head so they and everyone else who needs it can access it. Once the farm goes electronic it’s easy to go back in time and see if there is a trend or check if something was done and where, and there are big-time savings when it comes to going through paper records.”

When it comes to the barriers affecting agtech take up, Luca cites awareness and connectivity.

“Agtech is becoming more common, but connectivity is an issue or more correctly connectivity is perceived as a barrier. To solve that problem, we use LoRaWAN – a form of Low power, Wide Area Network which means one station can cover an entire farm, for connectivity to the outside world. If the farm doesn’t have 4G it can use satellite.”

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

With farms becoming increasingly reliant on technology, there is a concomitant reliance on electricity, and farmers are looking more and more at the possibilities of energy independence.

Red Earth Energy are specialists in the

field of energy storage, engineering and assembling affordable battery systems to improve sustainability for retail and commercial clients. The company prides itself on being Australian owned and operated with all its products designed and manufactured locally.

Red Earth Energy CEO, Charles Walker, sees electrification as a major trend in agriculture. “Everything is electrifying, there are electric tractors, trucks, utes, ATVs that are either already available now or coming soon. There is the spread of the Internet of Things which is leading to sensors being everywhere. Even if the sensors themselves are battery powered, the stations receiving the data aren’t.

“By the same token power on the edge of the grid – or on SWIR lines – which most farms are on, is unreliable with the grid delivering inconsistent dirty power that has lots of voltage variation which is bad for equipment. Farmers have solar or see other people that have solar and can see the merging of the two in the future. They’re asking the question: ‘How do I run the farm on solar panels’.”

Charles identifies capital cost as an issue for farmers, but adds that the advantage of solar is that it can run a farm anywhere.

“With diesel generators costing $100 or more a day to run, plus the challenges of getting fuel to remote locations, replacing a genset with solar and batteries can pay for itself in as little as four years.

“Another issue is trust. Farmers ask: ‘When it breaks, who is coming to fix it, and how long will it take them to get here, and then how long before it breaks?’

Our systems are remotely monitored and controlled and have a 10-year no questions asked warranty.” l

TURNING RAW DATA INTO ACTIONABLE TASKS

Research vet, Shannon Speight (left) and beef industry veteran, Emma Black founded BlackBoxCo (above) – a cloud-based AI-powered app that turns raw production data into an actionable dashboard.

sales@redearth.energy

https://redearth.en erg

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When it comes time to check your harvester, consider checking your insurance cover too.

Harvest season is almost here. And with that comes an increased risk of fire. At WFI, we want to make sure you get through the season safely. Consider the tips provided, and don’t forget to check your insurance cover as well, to help ensure you’re adequately insured should something go wrong.

www Speak with your local WFI Area Manager by calling 1300 934 934 or visit.wfi. wfi.com.au com.au Alternatively, call NSW Farmers on (02) 9478 1042 or visitww nswfarmers.org.au/wfi to w.nswfarmers.org.au/wfi be referred to your local WFI Area Manager.

Insurance issued by Insurance Australia Limited ABN 11 000 016 722 AFSL 227681 trading as WFI (WFI). This is general advice only and does not take into account your individual objectives, financial situation or needs (“your personal circumstances”). Before using this advice to decide whether to purchase a product, you should consider your personal circumstances and the relevant Product Disclosure Statement and Target Market Determinations available from wfi.com. au. NSW Farmers Association is an alliance partner of WFI and does not make any recommendation or provide an opinion about WFI’s products. NSW Farmers Association has a referral relationship with WFI, and if you acquire a product issued

by WFI, NSW Farmers Association receives a commission payment between 5% and 10% of the annual base premium. In relation to the referral arrangement. *Grains Research and Development Corporation Adelaide Office 2017, Ten tips for reducing the risk of harvester fires, GRDC, viewed 17 September 2021, https://grdc.com.au/news-and-media/news-and-media-releases/south/2017/12/ten-tips-for-reducing-the-risk-of-harvester-fires.

Fire safety tips for harvest season* • Clean your harvester regularly, starting at the front and working from the top down.

• Consider checking and recording your harvester’s bearing temperature using an infra-red gun or thermal imager to help identify at-risk bearings.

• Adhere to state-based grain harvesting codes of practice and be aware of harvest bans. Look out for high fire risk days and abide by the Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) protocol.

• Have water and a fire-fighting equipment in the paddock you’re harvesting.

• Consider storing both a water and an A/B/E extinguisher at the cab entry and near the back of your harvester.

• Put a fire plan in place and make sure your harvest team is aware of it and understands it.

• Keep a list of emergency numbers or uhf channels in the cab.

Illustration by ilbusca

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INNOVATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

R&D and the bright future of agriculture Agriculture and the many sectors linked to it have come on in leaps and bounds over the past 10 years due to technological advances and clever thinking – but the future is even more astounding.

–

Words SANDRA GODWIN

A

gricultural research and development has come a long way since the former NSW Department of Agriculture was set up in 1890.

Experimental farms were established across the state and wheat research began in 1893, with trials of more than 200 varieties at Wagga Wagga by plant pathologist Nathan Cobb.

Celebrated plant breeder William Farrer, who was appointed the department’s Wheat Experimentalist in 1898, went on to release numerous Australian-bred wheat varieties. Uptake of the first – the rust-proof and drought-resistant Federation variety – was swift.

It helped quadruple the area of wheat grown in NSW and held the title of the most widely planted wheat in the country from 1910 to 1925.

Tools and techniques developed since then revolutionised agriculture, and the productivity of our farms steadily increased until the late 1990s – when it stalled. This prompted much discussion about how to reinvigorate productivity growth once the Millennium drought had broken.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2030

In 2017 the National Farmers’ Federation announced an industry-wide target to grow the value of Australian agricultural production to $100 billion by 2030.

The NSW Farmers Association last year released its own blueprint for reaching $30 billion in output by 2030, and Meat & Livestock Australia launched its CN30 Roadmap for achieving carbon neutrality in the red meat industry by 2030.

The NSW Government is backing those goals, so far committing almost $100 million towards the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) world-class Food and Fibre Program.

NSW DPI Director General Scott Hansen says the program recognises that incremental change will not be enough to achieve the ambitious 2030 targets.

Scott says achieving that kind of growth will require step changes – significant shifts – in production systems, as well as developing new products and opening new markets.

“R&D is going to be a critical component to this,” he says. “It’s not going to be enough to continue to make small gains with current technology. We’re going to need some big step changes to bring our industries forward in leaps and bounds.”

NSW Farmers CEO Pete Arkle agrees, saying the ambitious 30 by 30 target will not be reached without leading edge R&D and extension.

“We are fortunate to have the DPI in NSW, with over 600 DPI scientist and technical staff, many who are ranked in the top 1 per cent of world research in ag science,” Pete says.

“If we are to reach 30 by 30, it is critical that strong support is maintained for DPI’s R&D. We also need to ensure our extension systems are effectively cascading new innovations onto farm.

“NSW Farmers still has policy on its books from 1995 that we conduct a militant campaign to protest any forecast cuts to NSW Agriculture – let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Pete says that the Association has been supporting members to embrace agtech innovation in a number of ways.

“So far in 2021, 250 farmers have attended a NSW-Farmers run drone course,” he says.

“Pleasingly the NSW Government also supported NSW Farmers’ Agtech Rebate proposal, with $48 million being committed in the recent State Budget and we continue to advocate for improved digital connectivity through both State and Federal investment."

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upgrades for research infrastructure that has, in some cases, been in use for more than 130 years.

It will fund new glasshouses, exotic disease diagnostic instruments, on-farm sensor and data technology networks across DPI institutes, and new facilities for aquaculture and fish breeding research, and plant pathology laboratories.

The aim is to deliver a new generation of scientific breakthroughs in drought tolerant crop varieties, datadriven on-farm decision making, fast-tracked genetic improvements in beef and lambs, and new biological methods of pest control.

Scott is especially excited by the rollout of controlled environment facilities, including glasshouses and greenhouses, which will help accelerate research into horticulture, grain and pasture crops.

Already an experimental line of desi chickpeas, CBA2061, which has novel herbicide tolerance, has made it into the National Variety Trials in four years, almost half the usual time.

“The facilities allow us to remove the variability of seasons in our research projects,” Scott says. “We can have growth in plants 24 hours a day, seven days a week, regardless of the season they’re in, enabling us to do what would otherwise be up to seven years’ worth of work within a one-year period.”

Releasing breakthroughs for adoption “in a

Case study: breeding engagement and fishing for talent The Gaden Trout Hatchery, on the banks of the Thredbo River near Jindabyne, has been a popular tourist attraction for more than 50 years.

Officially opened in 1953, it was run by volunteers from the Monaro Acclimatisation Society until NSW Fisheries took it over in 1959.

The hatchery breeds and grows out five species of freshwater fish for restocking the state’s inland waterways: rainbow trout, brown trout (pictured), brook trout, tiger trout and Atlantic salmon.

The key research objective is to understand the effectiveness of re-stocking with hatcheryreared trout in NSW. This includes investigating the impact of timing and fish size on the success of restocking dams and rivers for recreational fishing.

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Funds from the DPI Food and Fibre Program have been earmarked for increasing the hatchery’s capacity and boosting the number of species it can house to include small native fish, such as galaxiids.

Additional funding will revitalise the visitors’ centre and enhance its value as an educational facility for schools and tourists, who can see the work involved in breeding research and take part in practical fishing clinics.

It’s a community engagement role NSW DPI Director General Scott Hansen is keen to see replicated

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at other research stations across the state.

“Producers can see with their own two eyes and talk to the researchers involved to understand new breakthroughs or new tools and technologies that are being produced,” he says.

“Equally, we want the local community to visit so they can keep in touch with the new things our farmers and our primary industries are doing.”

Scott says pandemicrelated border closures and lockdowns have fostered a reconnection between city and country, as urban dwellers unable to travel overseas have spent more time exploring and

holidaying in regional NSW. This has provided a tremendous opportunity for agriculture to claim its identity as a modern, sophisticated data-driven industry.

“We think there are opportunities to encourage students into thinking about careers as no longer just an agricultural career, or a science, engineering, technology, teaching or arts career,” Scott says.

“Whatever career path they choose, at some stage that career path will provide valuable contributions for our primary industries sector.

“We want students to have an early appreciation of that, so it increases the chances of us getting the right people thinking about agriculture at the right stages in their career.”

INNOVATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

timeframe that’s never been seen before” has become one of the hallmarks of the 21st Century.

Scott says agriculture has always had its share of early adopters – farmers prepared to embrace new and proven methods of doing things better or faster, and responding to changes in customer requirements.

“There aren’t many farmers who are still farming today the way they did 10 years ago,” he says. “And the tools that we’re hoping to produce will find a way into the hands of a farming fraternity who are equally looking for new and different ways to keep themselves moving forward.”

While the DPI has evolved since its inception 131 years ago, Scott says one thing hasn’t changed: its role in helping to solve some of the community’s more significant challenges.

“Once upon a time the big challenge was food security,” he says. “Back when our department was first started, the challenge was to come up with production systems, techniques and varieties and livestock genetics, to enable a growing colony and a growing population to be able to be self-sustaining.

Obviously, we’re a long way away from that.”

Modern challenges include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, offsetting them with carbon sequestration and making progress towards net zero carbon.

There’s also the increasing prevalence of health conditions such as diabetes, nutrient deficiencies, food intolerances and allergies.

Scott says this opens up opportunities for NSW

SMART FUTURE

Clockwise from left: from drought-tolerant crop varieties to robots that harvest fruit and tractors that drive themselves, the mission to develop smarter farming tech is front and centre for the NSW DPI.

scientists using genetic tools to selectively enhance and produce new foods that can act as medicine to treat or prevent disease.

Researchers using genetic selection and gene technologies have worked with growers to successfully breed chickpea varieties that can mature in one-third of the time, avoiding frost and heat stress, and using less water.

“We can now turn our incredible science capacity to working with health professionals and coming up with solutions to some of the community’s big challenges,” Scott says. “We know primary industries have the tools, the smarts and the solutions to be able to do it, so that’s a really exciting space for us to expand into.”

Instead of adding vitamins, minerals and other additives to processed food – think Vitamin D in margarine, thiamin and folic acid in bread, or iodine in table salt – the crops themselves could produce a high performing raw food. This might include glutenfree wheat, allergen-free eggs, nuts and seeds, or fruit and vegetables containing stimulants that help the body regulate blood sugar.

Scott says another challenge will be making sure NSW DPI research also delivers benefits for the broader community, not just farmers and rural and regional communities, and addresses big picture problems such as climate change.

A run of emergencies and natural disasters – drought, bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic – in recent years has put pressure on the state government’s coffers. Also strapped for cash are universities, private research organisations and peak industry bodies experiencing a decline in statutory levies.

“We need to make sure everyone sees the merit in continuing to co-invest with industry and the federal government in providing funds for rural R&D,” Scott says. “The taxpayer and the general community are wanting to ensure that the work we do in partnership with industry is not just improving the productivity and efficiency of production systems and thereby helping farmers achieve their economic goals, but also that we’re doing so in a way that helps achieve the targets of carbon neutrality by 2030.” l

ABOUT THE NSW DEPARTMENT OF PRIMARY INDUSTRIES

➤ The largest provider of rural R&D in Australia, with a portfolio of about $100 million annually (half externally sourced); employs more than 600 scientific and technical staff. ➤ Injects more than $500 million into rural and regional NSW economies annually through salaries, operations, and investment in world-leading research. ➤ Ranked in the top 1 per cent of institutions around the world in the fields of research in plant and animal sciences, agricultural science, and environment and ecology. ➤ Ranked 14th globally among government organisations responsible for agricultural, plant and animal science.

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BIOENERGY With the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) August 2021 report stating that climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying, there is more pressure than ever on the world’s biggest 20 emitting countries to act before the Cop26 November summit in Glasgow.

–

Words SUSAN GOUGH HENLY

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ENVIRONMENT BIOENERGY

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hen it comes to climate change, here in Australia it’s clearly no longer business as usual – at least at the business end of town. BHP announced in August that it is exiting from all its oil and gas projects, while the treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the Guardian Australia’s politics podcast that the assessment of carbon risk was now “influencing global capital markets in a significant way”.

In response to the IPCC report, the World Biogas Association (WBA) – the global trade association for the biogas, landfill gas and anaerobic digestion sectors – stated that anaerobic digestion is “dangerously overlooked” as an immediate climate solution.

The WBA has renewed its call for the potential of the biogas industry to be “urgently unlocked’ so that it can help deliver the “rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and, in particular, methane” that the IPCC says is needed to address the climate emergency.

Indeed, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) forecasted renewables report identified bioenergy as an “overlooked giant” within the renewables space.

While bioenergy already contributes about 7 per cent of the energy production in other OECD countries, it wasn’t until November 2019 that the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced that it would begin work on development of a Bioenergy Roadmap to identify the role the bioenergy sector can play in Australia’s energy transition to help us meet our emission reduction obligations.

MAS S BENEFITS

Biomass – organic matter derived from agriculture and other waste streams – can be converted into renewable energy, not only reducing carbon emissions but also offering farmers a new income stream.

For more than 15 years, farmers across the EU, the UK and the US have benefitted from government incentives and subsidies that have developed their biogas and biomethane industries.

Today, ARENA’s completed but yet-to-be-released roadmap could have the potential to offer Australian farmers a similar opportunity to not only make a significant reduction to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions but also to create new income streams by converting methane into green bioenergy. This could dovetail well with the National Farmers Federation >

What is bioenergy?

Bioenergy is a form of renewable energy generated from the conversion of biomass into heat, electricity, biogas and liquid fuels. Biomass is organic matter derived from agriculture, forestry or waste streams including combustible components of municipal solid waste.

Biomass can be converted to bioenergy using a range of technologies depending on the type of raw material, scale/size of the project, and form of energy to be produced. For the agricultural sector, benefits not only include emissions reductions but also involve turning waste into valuable resources including organic fertiliser, creating additional income streams from power generation, and improving air quality.

While biogas can be used to power farms on site, purified biomethane is a renewable alternative to natural gas that can be injected into the gas grid as well as providing renewable fuel for the transport sector, especially heavy vehicles and vessels.

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(NFF) target that 5 per cent of the agricultural sector’s income will be derived from environmental services by 2030, and the entire sector will be carbon neutral by 2050. However, early indications are that ARENA’s Bioenergy Roadmap will have limited benefits for the agricultural sector, which is a huge missed opportunity for Australian farmers.

THE BIOENERGY STORY OVERSEAS

WASTE NOT WANT NOT

Some crop waste – such as burning sugarcane – itself produces emissions, so converting that waste to biomethane also contributes to carbon abatement.

The experience in Europe, the UK and the US shows that the bioenergy industry, as with many nascent technologies, needs government support and favourable policy settings to be competitive, at least in the developmental phase.

Australian-first biogas plant will use ‘poo power’ to generate electricity With $3 million of federal government funding, a $17 million biogas plant is being built by Innovating Energy on a dairy farm near Nowra. It will convert manure from 19 dairy farms as well as food waste from the surrounding community into methane gas, which will generate electricity to help power the participating farms as well as providing them with organic fertiliser and purified water. The project will take around 12 months to become fully operational. Minister Taylor recently visited the site and announced the second round of funding ($15 million) for 20 similar energy projects across Australia.

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The EU is the largest producer of biogas and biomethane in the world today. According to Harmen Dekker, Director of the European Biogas Association, in 2019 – 19,668 biogas conversion plants (725 of which are biomethane plants) produced 193TWh of energy (as much as the natural gas consumption of Belgium).

About 60 per cent of these plants convert residue from the agricultural industry, including animal effluent, residual crops and agricultural waste.

With more than 11,000 plants (of which about 10,000 are farm-based), Germany has the highest concentration of biogas plants in Europe. It also has the highest share of biomethane plants (232), followed

by France (131) and the UK (80). Biomethane is primarily used for transport (BioCNG/BioLNG), heating and industry.

“The agricultural sector is playing an important role, not only in providing the needed sustainable feedstock but also because biogas and biomethane production contributes to ecological farming and carbon sequestration in the soil,” says Harmen. “As such, it is a true circular model with many added benefits, which many other renewable energy sources do not possess.”

In the UK, according to Jocelyne Bia, Senior Communications Consultant with the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA), 380 of the country’s 640 anaerobic digestion plants accept agricultural waste, and 74 of these are upgrading biogas to biomethane.

Patrick Serfass, Executive Director of the American Biogas Council, says that there are 2,200 sites producing biogas in all 50 states of the USA, 270 of which are anaerobic digesters on farms. These range from small farms such as a 130-cow dairy in Wisconsin and a 400-cow dairy in California to a

ENVIRONMENT BIOENERGY

650-swine piggery in Utah and a 2,400-herd cattle ranch in Indiana to a 160,000-bird poultry farm that co-digests agricultural residues, beverage and distillery wastes, dairy processing wastes, fats, oils, greases, food processing wastes, and slaughterhouse waste.

More than 70 per cent of these digesters are located on dairy farms.

A 2019 report commissioned by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development BioPreferred program stated that the total contribution of the bio-based products industry to the US economy was $470 billion in 2017. It also offered data that bio-based products displace about 9.4 million barrels of oil a year in the US. According to the American Biogas Council, the construction and operation of biogas plants in 2016 supported around 7,000 jobs in the country.

CREDIT CRUNCH

Of the five waste methods recognised by the Emissions Reduction Fund, only animal effluent is relevant to the agricultural industry.

And only effluent from piggeries and dairies will qualify for ERF carbon credits.

That method builds on the five existing ERF waste methods: from landfill gas, source-separated organic waste, wastewater treatment, alternative waste treatment, and finally animal effluent (the only one relevant to the agricultural industry).

Eighty-six percent of the agricultural waste produced in Australia will not qualify for credits under the ERF, according to a Deloitte report on decarbonising Australia’s gas distribution networks. And only effluent from piggeries and dairies qualify for ERF credits, in addition to abattoir waste. While about 20 piggeries in Australia (15 per cent of the national pig herd) have operating biogas (not clean biomethane) systems, the >

CURRENT STATE OF PLAY IN AUSTRALIA

In April 2020, ARENA announced that it was seeking input from stakeholders in Australia’s bioenergy sector to underpin the development of the Bioenergy Roadmap to help inform the next series of investment and policy decisions in the Australian bioenergy sector.

In late 2020, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, prioritised the development of an Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) for biomethane to help facilitate the Bioenergy Roadmap. Using a co-design approach involving industry, end-users and scientists, the Federal Government’s Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has led the work to develop a method to enable crediting of carbon abatement from biomethane produced from organic waste and its use as a natural gas substitute.

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“Biogas companies look for feedstock with the highest gas yield to make the biogas facility more financially viable. Agricultural waste can have very good gas yields.” dairy industry has just one trial biogas project using waste from 19 dairies in Nowra on the South Coast.

Under the current parameters of the ERF waste methods, there will effectively be no carbon abatement credits for biomethane produced from poultry waste, beef cattle and other animal effluent, or from other agricultural waste such as sugarcane, cotton, wheat, canola, sorghum, and other grains and pulses.

After a wide range of public consultation facilitated through Bioenergy Australia (the national industry association) the Bioenergy Roadmap has now been completed, but no date has been announced for its release. On 1 October 2021, the Minister announced that the government will undertake research to enhance the biomethane method to include agricultural waste in future revisions of the method. While a step in the right direction, more needs to be done to accelerate the potential benefit that this resource can provide industry participants.

Mark Jonker, CEO of Helmont Energy, a bioenergy consulting firm based in Brisbane, worked for many years developing bioenergy projects in the US. He has been a key industry advisor for Bioenergy Australia and has supported the CER through the co-design process under the ERF. “If I didn’t have first-hand experience with the bioenergy sector in America, I would never have known the scale of opportunities that are available,” he says.

“It’s a bit like the Wild West there all over again. I’m passionate about Australians being able to benefit from these innovations.

“The CER has focused on broad categories of organic waste but has excluded a large amount of agricultural waste, such as poultry and cropping waste, because it would take time to develop methods to process these in Australia, even though these systems are already available and operational in Europe and the US,” he says.

“The Minister has established a very tight timeline to develop the ERF and is focusing mainly on landfill, sewerage and alternative waste. Sadly, this is a one-off opportunity for Australian agriculture, and much of this industry is going to miss the boat.

“The creation of energy from all agricultural waste reduces the emissions otherwise produced from fossil fuels. In addition, some crop waste (for example when sugarcane is burned) produces emissions. Therefore,

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CREDIT CRUNCH

Of the five waste methods recognised by the Emissions Reduction Fund, only animal effluent is relevant to the agricultural industry.

And only effluent from piggeries and dairies will qualify for ERF carbon credits.

converting that waste into biomethane also contributes to carbon abatement,” he explains. “Biomethane production also needs scale to be economic. Expanding the sources of agricultural waste helps the sector become more commercially viable.”

Trip Allen is Director of BTS Biogas Asia Pacific.

BTS Biogas is a veteran 20-year-old biogas technology and services company headquartered in Italy, with more than 200 projects across the world. Trip has three new projects in the works in Australia, two in Japan and two in Indonesia.

“There are no barriers in Europe or the US on the conversion of any agricultural waste to attract carbon credits and there are also plenty of carbon credits available across these regions,” he says. He believes a similar approach is necessary for the bioenergy sector to reach its full potential in the Australian agricultural industry.

“While BTS has, in Europe, historically worked on single-farm agricultural projects combining animal effluent with agricultural crop waste, larger bio-hubs that source feedstock from multiple farms and other sources are becoming more common,” explains Trip.

ENVIRONMENT BIOENERGY

Examples include a project in the UK that combines poultry litter, rye silage, and sugar beet waste into biomethane, and a project in France that converts pig slurry and food waste into biomethane.

“The problem with animal (especially pig) effluent as a feedstock is that it is very watery. You really need to combine it with other drier feedstocks rather than having to process a lot of water, which is expensive and requires large, multiple tanks,” says Trip.

“Biogas companies look for feedstock with the highest gas yield to make the biogas facility more financially viable. Agricultural waste can have very good gas yields.”

In Australia, to date, the Federal Government has taken the approach of funding bespoke projects in the green energy space under the policy of pushing technology, not taxes. Indeed, over the past eight years ARENA has provided about $118 million in funding towards bioenergy projects across Australia.

However, there will be little replication of these new technologies unless the government also provides industry incentives (such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard in the US, or by guaranteeing a premium purchase price for biomethane as in France) to support a market mechanism for new green entrepreneurs to thrive.

As BTS’s Trip says, “International biogas companies are a bit hesitant to invest too much in Australia because of the feedstock restrictions on agricultural

ROADMAP TO NEUTRAL

Disposal of agricultural waste has long been a burden for farmers.

Now the demand for innovation driven by climate change gives farmers the opportunity to reimagine this process.

waste. It gives the impression that the Australian market is not ready.”

There is also currently a lack of consistent policy support at the federal, state, agency and local council level, with bioenergy straddling several portfolios.

For the bioenergy sector to really take off in Australia, bureaucratic foot dragging and regulatory barriers need to be replaced by fresh thinking and incentive support. Agricultural waste, for instance, should no longer be classified as industrial waste; natural gas pipelines should be able to accept green natural gas; and biomethane should be classified as a zero emissions gas.

Equally significant is the importance of raising awareness across the agricultural sector not only about the carbon emissions abatement value of bioenergy, but also the possibility of additional income streams for the farming sector, with detailed examples of what is already happening overseas.

The disposal of agricultural waste has long been viewed as a logistical, financial and environmental burden for farmers. With the demands for innovation presented by climate change, Australia’s increasingly nimble and technologically sophisticated agricultural sector should have the opportunity to reimagine how these waste streams could be converted into biomethane, electricity, and bio-fertiliser, thereby reducing carbon emissions as well as creating economic growth for regional Australia. l NOV - DEC 2021

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QATAR:

farming zeroes to heroes Farmers in Qatar face some of the hottest and most arid conditions on earth, with annual rainfall of less than 100mm.

So how has this small country become one of the highest rated nations in terms of food security?

–

Words DAVE SMITH

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CURRENT AFFAIR INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE

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f you think farming where you live is challenging, take a minute to think about the farmers in Qatar. One of the hottest and most arid places on earth, temperatures there can reach 50°C and solar radiation is off the charts.

Rainfall amounts to less than 100mm per year while high humidity makes working outside a nightmare from June to October. During the short sharp winter from December to January, winds that regularly blow up to 35 knots bring walls of dust called ‘haboobs’ that block out the sun.

For most of recorded history, the only thing this peninsula on the Persian Gulf the size of Hong Kong was good for was raising goats and growing dates. That all changed with the start of oil drilling in 1939, and that helped turn Qatar from a desolate backwater into the fourth richest country in the world, with GDP per capita of $87,000, according to the World Bank. Australia, the world’s 12th richest country, has a per capita GDP of $78,000.

The oil boom was not good for local food production. The number of Qataris working in agriculture declined and the country started to import large amounts of food. By 1974, agriculture only accounted for 0.65 per cent of GDP. As food prices began rising, the government began pondering the importance of food selfsufficiency, and sent its people on fact-finding missions around the world to learn how to boost agriculture output. >

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CURRENT AFFAIR INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE

From 1980 to 2015, the amount of arable land in Qatar was expanded from 2,256 hectares to 28,000 hectares. But the value of agricultural output increased only marginally over this time, accounting for about 1 per cent of GDP, while more than 90 per cent of food requirements were imported.

But that was about to change. An imports blockade imposed by its neighbours in 2017 made Qataris critically aware that they can’t rely on other countries for their food basket, and that they finally had to get serious about farming.

LET THE FARMING BEGIN

Within two years, Qatar increased horticultural, fisheries, livestock and dairy production by a whopping 400 per cent to become the 13th most food-secure country in the world, according to the 2019 Global Food Security Index. And it’s still growing strong.

Valued at $200 million last year, Qatar’s agricultural market is projected to reach $290 million by 2028, according to Verified Market Research, a projected annual compound growth rate of 4.87 per cent.

Another US market research firm, Mordor Intelligence, projects annual growth of 6.3 per cent.

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GREENING THE DESERT

Huge investment in farming techniques such as irrigation (above and previous page) has helped turn around Qatar’s reliance on imported food; oil refineries in Doha (above right).

“Qatar after 5 June 2017 is not like Qatar before.

We now don’t want or need anyone,” says Saba al-Fadala, spokesperson for Baladna, a former Qatari sheep and goat farm that is now one of the largest dairy producers in the Middle East.

So how did the Qataris go from farming zeros to heroes in such a short space of time?

Mordor Intelligence credits the adoption of “sustainable and smart agricultural techniques such as hydroponics, smart irrigation and aquaponics that have improved the optimum utilisation of arable land and the quality of fruits and vegetables”.

Hydroponics, or vertical farming in polycarbonate greenhouses that protect seedlings from the harsh desert climate, has played a particularly crucial role in growing food using scarce water resources. Qatar’s greenhouse market, which was valued at $136 million in 2018, is expected to be worth $300 million by 2024, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com.

“Two years ago, the local production for fruits and vegetables did not exceed 10 per cent of demand,” Nasser Al Khalaf, CEO of the Agrico Agriculture Company, which grows tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms and eggplants in greenhouses outside

the capital Doha, told Al Jazeera last year. “Now it’s almost 30 per cent.”

Agrico is about to open a 350-tonne freshwater shrimp farm that will meet one-third of domestic demand and is experimenting with ‘aquaponics’ – an ancient farming technique that collects nutrientrich waste from fish and transports it to the roots of hydroponically grown plants.

In the dairy sector, Qatar has generated even more dazzling success. Before the embargo the country produced only 20 per cent of its domestic dairy needs. Now it produces 106 per cent, and exports dairy products to 11 countries, including Pakistan and Oman. It did so by airlifting 4,000 Holstein cows from Germany five weeks after the embargo was announced, and another 10,000 the following year.

Dairy producer Baladna now boasts a herd of 20,000 cows that live in vast air-conditioned sheds, where Qatari schoolchildren are brought to learn about the importance of self-sufficiency and food security.

TECHNOLOGY AND INVESTMENT

Research and development in water-conserving irrigation techniques and advanced cooling technologies that increase the shelf life of perishable foods have also played their part in Qatar’s turnaround. The country is also investing $50 billion in long-distance passenger freight rail projects that

will eventually connect six countries in the region, and spent $10 billion on a new port designed to become a regional transport hub.

Micro investments in farming have made an impact too. “We helped many farmers by providing them with seeds, we increased the number of greenhouses and offered financial assistance in the form of loans from the development bank,” says Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani at Qatar’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Qatar is not out of the woods yet: the country is still totally dependent on foreign workers for its manual labour. Before the pandemic, they accounted for 88 per cent of the country’s population. COVID19 border closures and travel bans slowed the flow of workers into the country and created a labour shortage that last year hampered agricultural production.

With no water resources for carbon sinks or to plant forests, Qatar is also especially vulnerable to climate change. According to the Wilson Centre, a US thinktank, Qatar is among the 10 countries that would be most impacted by sea level rises in terms of the amount of land and wetlands affected.

Nevertheless, Qatar’s leaders are confident they will surmount these and other challenges with good governance and science-backed action plans. “Since the technology is available and the know-how is available locally, there is nothing to stop us from reaching our targets,” says Nasser at Agrico. l

A DATED VIEW

Before 2017’s import blockade, Qatar’s agriculture revolved around growing dates (above) and rearing goats.

Two years later it rated no.13 in the Global Food Security Index, and today even exports dairy products overseas.

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Man of the land Eight generations of Ottons have made their mark on Bega, priding themselves on champion horses, quality cattle and a long-held stewardship of the land.

Words BETHANY PLINT Photography DAVID ROGERS

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COMMUNITY NEW GENERATIONS

RATI ON HOM ESTE AD FOR THE NEW GENE

When Paddy’s father took over the homestead (pictured below) it was the third house to be built on the red original slab, which was first pou y back in the 1800s. Since then, man e. ther e mad n bee memories have

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f there’s one thing Richard ‘Paddy’ Otton loves more than a yarn and an afternoon kip, it’s schooling horses. Since winning his first hunt at Candelo Show at the age of 12 atop a horse named All Black, Paddy has been immersed in the equestrian world.

These days, he leaves the professional show jumping to his successors – children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – who each carry on the Otton tradition, immortalised in everything from gold medals to Pony Club ribbons.

But you’ll still see him galloping through the fields of his family’s Bega property on one of his “old faithfuls” – who he reckons could enter a show any day of the week and still do “pretty bloody good”.

THE FIRST GENERATION

THE OTTONS AT HOME

Paddy, Roslyn, granddaughter Jodie, and great granddaughters Isabella and Thea on the front porch of their homestead Numerella.

“In those days, the best way to get folks over to Australia to work for you was to set them up with a crime and have them shipped over as convicts.”

Paddy Otton

Paddy represents the fifth generation of Ottons in Australia. The original head of the family, John Otton, came here in the 1800s, under rather scandalous circumstances. He was a skilled horse husbandman, employed by an English lord on a Devonshire farm just north of Exeter. This particular lord – Alexander Berry – took a trip to Australia and set his sights on establishing a European settlement on what we now know to be the Shoalhaven region of the NSW South Coast.

“In those days, the best way to get folks over to Australia to work for you was to set them up with a crime and have them shipped out as convicts,” Paddy says. Apparently John Otton was at the top of Lord Berry’s list, and so a plot to have him framed for stealing a horse unfurled. In November 1829, he was convicted of a crime he did not commit and given an ultimatum: face the gallows or go to Australia. The seven generations of Ottons that followed provide something of a spoiler to that story.

Clearly the first John Otton made an impression on his employer, who showed great remorse for his deceitful ploy and arranged to have Otton’s family – a wife and five children – brought out to Australia aboard the Layton shortly after.

“From what I know, he always had a shilling in his pocket and became a well-recognised man,” Paddy says.

John Otton established himself as a superior master plowman and shearer, and began amassing great parcels of land around the South Coast region.

By 1839 he had leased some 5,000 acres of land between Berry and Bargo, in Southern NSW. THE FOURTH GENERATION

Over the decades, the generations of Ottons that followed held onto much of the plentiful land across the South Coast hinterland. However, when Paddy’s father Murray passed away in 1963, just two years after Paddy and his wife Roslyn married, the government acquired half the land in death duties. >

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“We’d head off with five or six horses… We did Parkes Show for 17 years running, which is something of a record, so I’m told.”

Paddy Otton Murray had a great affinity with horses, having been involved in camp drafting and rodeos most of his life. He was also a proud supporter and a trustee for the Bega Show – a position Paddy took over after his passing.

“Dad always had a couple of sturdy stock horses that I managed to turn into jumping horses,” Paddy says.

“That’s really where it all began; going along to shows with my dad.”

When Paddy’s father took over the homestead it was the third house to be built on the original slab, which was first poured back in the 1800s. Today, Paddy and Roslyn live in the gorgeous, five-bedroom farmhouse that has seen a handful of renovations over the years.

“It’s a wonderful old home,” Paddy says. “Roslyn and I did it up when we got married. My mum lived with us for a while before shifting to a nursing home. She always had wild stories to tell.”

THE FIFTH GENERATION

The Ottons are equestrian royalty in the Bega district, though Paddy is far too humble to admit such a thing.

“I’ve always been involved with horses right from a very young age,” he says. “If Bega Show goes on next year, I’ll have 78 years under my belt.”

Throughout the years, Paddy and his family travelled as much as they could, competing in shows across NSW and Victoria.

“We’d head off with five or six horses in the cattle truck with a tarpaulin thrown over the top,” Paddy says. “We did Parkes Show for 17 years running, which is something of a record, so I’m told.

“I always loved jumping hurdles. It was called Olympic jumping back in those days. They were solid hurdles and not particularly forgiving if you missed a step.”

Paddy lists off dozens of locations around the state where he either competed himself or took his successors to ride. “Young, Cowra, Grenfell – there’s a hell of a good run of shows out there,” he says.

“Back in the day, we’d do two shows per week and hope to sell a couple of horses along the way to cover our travel costs.

“The best part about doing the show jumping circuit was always having a whisky or a cup of tea after the shows and having a yarn with the other jumpers.”

In 1997 Paddy competed at the Masters Games in Canberra, where he cleaned up in all but two events.

“I oiled myself up a bit around the property, doing some fair dinkum jumping in the lead-up,” Paddy says. It must’ve paid off as he came home with a stack of gold, silver and bronze medals. “That was my last time being a competitor.”

In the early 1960s, Paddy and his friend Charlie

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Smith founded a show jumping club in Bega to support the up-and-comers, which grew to become one of the strongest clubs on the scene.

“We held the first show jumping championships in Tathra in the Christmas holidays, and I won on a black horse called Kuala – a thoroughbred mare, who I held onto and bred a few foals from.”

The Ottons are still heavily involved in the club today – Paddy’s youngest son Jeffrey was club president and his grandchildren continue to carry the family name over the highest hurdles and into the history books.

THE SIXTH GENERATION

Paddy and Roslyn had four children: Sue, Murray, Jane and Jeffrey. Three of their kids live on the farm with families of their own, spread out in cottages across the property.

“All four of our kids were involved in horses in some way, but it was Poss who really took off with it,” Paddy says, referring to his youngest son, Jeffrey.

“Way back, he got a call from a friend who got smashed up competing at a show in Queensland, and they asked him to fly up and take over the team. They went on to Cairns and took out a couple of titles up there.”

The Queensland run took roughly three months but Poss couldn’t get enough. He took his own horses back up and continued to compete for five years, taking out titles and breaking records all over the state. But the World Cup show jumper now lends a lot of his time to another breed altogether.

The Ottons run cattle on their property, and Paddy admits Poss does a lot of the grunt work these days.

“We’ve had a fair bit of success with cattle. We won a beef breeders competition a few years back with some great Herefords, which was a nice feather in our cap,” Paddy says.

Poss travels a lot as a private buyer for an abattoir and a few feedlots around the state, but he also looks after the 500-odd black cattle and Friesian steers on the property.

“He’s got a pretty good name now,” Paddy says proudly.

“He can look at a cow, guess the weight and be spot on.

“He works directly with buyers, and everything is done via telephone and a virtual handshake. Not long ago, four black cows snatched $2,000 a head, which was pretty good at the time.”

More recently, Poss has found unique ways to manage the property. With fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) ravaging the entire region and putting the cattle at risk, he brought in sheep – who love the stuff – to keep it at bay.

“Poss has got two mobs of sheep that he shifts about.

The good old ewes will eat the fireweed like a camel – they’ll munch it right up.”

COMMUNITY NEW GENERATIONS

HORSING AROUND

The Ottons have had success raising cattle (far left) and sheep on their property, but horses remain Paddy’s first love.

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COMMUNITY NEW GENERATIONS

“Our daughter married a champion rally car driver for Toyota. Their two boys – my grandkids – are making their way up the ranks too. Horses or cars: it doesn’t matter. I’m chuffed either way.”

Paddy Otton

IN THE FAMILY WAY

Top: the five-bedroom Numerella homestead nestles into the Bega hinterland. Above and right: Paddy and his family keep a watchful eye on the property, ready for generations of Ottons to come.

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As an added bonus, the sheep fetch a decent price for their fleece, too. Paddy reckons that last season, the wool from their 150-or-so sheep brought in around $7,000.

THE SEVENTH GENERATION

Paddy’s eight grandchildren have all inherited his love of the land, and some remain entrenched in the show jumping world.

“A few of them used to be great hack riders at the top of their field,” Paddy says proudly.

One of his grandsons, Todd, has been the Chef d’Equipe for various champion show jumping teams over the years. He was appointed the High Performance Jumping Manager for the Australian Olympic team that competed at the recent Tokyo games. He continues to work with the Australian Olympic Committee, keeping a close eye on the top performers in Australia and overseas.

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Paddy tells me how proud he is that some of his successors have taken up the sport, but doesn’t hold it against the others who have gone down a different path.

“Our daughter, Jane, married Neal Bates – a champion rally car driver for Toyota,” Paddy says.

“Their two boys – my grandkids – Harry and Lewis are both making their way up the ranks too. Horses or cars: it doesn’t matter. I’m chuffed either way” THE EIGHTH GENERATION

With his family close by, Paddy spends plenty of time with his four great-granddaughters and one grandson – two of whom live on the property.

“We’ve got a couple of hellish ponies that keep them holding those reins tight,” Paddy says with a chuckle. “They go to Pony Club, and they’ve come back with a few ribbons, but it’s not about that for me. I just love to see them giving it a good crack.” l

MARKETPLACE

The saleyards We’ve wrapped up some lovely Christmas ideas for you and the family in the lead-up to the festive season.

Compiled by MICHELLE HESPE

ROLL OUT THE ROBOVAC

Introducing the world’s first twin-turbine powered RoboVac, with laser-guided laser navigation. The robot vacuum improves airflow by 80 per cent and generates 2 x 2000pa of suction for smarter cleaning. Suitable for pet owners, removing up to 57.6 per cent more pet hair.

X8: $1,099; X8 Hybrid (with mop): $1,299. myeufy.com.au

CANDLES FROM QUEEN B

Light up the lives of your loved ones (and our regional communities by supporting local beekeepers) with the golden light and natural honey aroma of these pure Australian beeswax candles.

Large Pine Cone: $34.95 Medium Pine Cones (box of 2): $39.95 queenb.com.au

MAGGIE MAKING A MARK

Melbourne designer Trudy Rice’s 100 per cent linen tea towels are manufactured in Australia. We love the Magpie, Silver Princess and Blue Kookaburra prints. $39.00 kedesign.com.au

CHEWS FOR YOUR POOCH

INDIGENOUS FLAIR BY MIM COLE

Nude Pets Moo Chews are handmade in small batches using premium quality Australian beef. Designed to keep your dog’s teeth and gums healthy, as well as deliver protein and nutrition, they are completely free from artificial flavours and added fats, and contain no preservatives or added sugar or salt.

Also available in Roo Chews. $10.00 (five units per pack) nudepets.com.au

These beautiful purses come in prints from Catherine Manuell Design’s Aboriginal women artist’s project. The Mim Cole collection is also wonderfully practical and they make perfect Christmas gifts. All artists directly receive a percentage of sales. $22.50 catherinemanuelldesign.com

MAKES GOOD SCENTS

Eco-friendly Munch laundry soap contains no nasties and is safe for sensitive skin, $8.99; a set of Munch stainless steel pegs are $24.99. munchcupboard.com

GIVE BACK WITH A HAT

LUXURIOUS WOOL

The Andy hat is made for minimalists with its simple aesthetic. This staple pays tribute to the outback fedora style, featuring a brim edge and a teardrop-shaped crown. With each purchase you can give back to our natural world, as Will & Bear will plant 10 trees for each hat sold. $149.00 willandbear.com

ALL YEAR ROUND

Jude Australia has released this sweet, pure Australian Merino blanket featuring lambs grazing in a paddock.

Knitted in Melbourne, it is a keepsake piece for generations to come. $395.00 (100 x 80cm) judeaustralia.com

Do you have a great product you’d like us to consider for the page? Email an image and details to: mhespe@intermedia.com.au

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COMMUNITY MEET A MEMBER

Terry spoons out support NSW Farmers Member Terry Fishpool started the social media #hangaspoon movement to send a message of support and solidarity to Australians living in lockdown.

Words MICHAEL BURT

Name: Terry Fishpool NSW Farmers Branch: Tottenham Years as a Member: More than 50 years

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n the bitter throes of drought and more recently, the mouse plague, Tottenham farmer Terry Fishpool was touched by the support he received from city folks across the country.

“For us, it was the drought that was the worst – 2019 was an absolute disaster and lot of farmers were really at the end of their tether.

“Over that period we got lots of support from people in other rural areas and in Sydney. There was house water being trucked in, loads of hay donated and little parcels of gifts and food for the families.

“The compassion that was shown to us was really wonderful and made us feel that we weren’t alone. I am sure many farmers who were affected by the recent

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bushfires and floods would feel the same.

“We had a recovery year last year. For most people it was a good year, and that recovery has continued this year. I thought now is the time to say thank you.”

And so, in early September 2021, Terry started thinking about all the people living in lockdown in cities such as Sydney and Canberra. He wondered how he could pass on thoughts of support from the relative freedom of living on his 810-hectare family farm called Minara (run by son Eric and his wife Lisa), where he and his wife Laurie have ‘retired’.

It had to be something simple, affordable, and something that other farmers could do.

“I came up with the idea of hanging a spoon on the front gate. A spoon often

Why I am a member of NSW Farmers “I’m one of the greatest defenders of farming organisations such as NSW Farmers you will ever find, because together we stand, united we fall. All farmers in the state need NSW Farmers to be able to take a united stand on issues that matter to us. And you get great individual support from NSW Farmers’ staff, with absolute gems such as Policy Director Kathy Rankin.”

gives the first mouthful of solids for a child and signals the next step into the journey of their life. It also represents the delivery of food and the hope that no one goes hungry,” Terry says.

“Everyone has a spoon, so it represents solidarity for those finding life challenging.

People in the city could also hang a spoon on their front gate or in their window to let people know they are okay.”

With a little help from daughter Fiona, who farms next door with husband Brett Starr, the 75-year-old farmer hit social media with the hashtag #hangaspoon as a call to action to his fellow farmers to hang a spoon on their farm gate or mailbox.

“It can be any sort of spoon and the bigger the better. Wooden spoons, steel spoons, it doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the message to our friends in the city,” Terry says.

“It’s a simple way to send a message to city folk and everyone in lockdown that you are not alone. Even if people laugh and think it’s a bit silly, then I have achieved my goal of making someone smile.

“You might not see a smile behind a mask, but I’ve heard people say that you also smile through your eyes, so the joy still spreads.”

For Terry, #hangaspoon is an important reminder that, no matter where Australians are located, they recognise each other’s challenges and stand together during difficult times.

“We’ve got to remember that we’re in one country and we believe in the Australian dream,” he says.

“The hope is that we can get through this together and we can rebuild our hopes and dreams again – endeavouring to provide a brighter future for all our children.” l

COMMUNITY FARM DOGS

Millie, the pup from Peats Ridge Words MICHAEL BURT Edited by MICHELLE HESPE

REAL NAME AND NICKNAMES

My name is Millie but sometimes I’m called Mills.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING TO DO ON THE FARM?

I love to chase anything that tries to run away from me. I also like going for a ride in the ute to check out what’s going on in the avocado farm.

HAVE YOU EVER DONE SOMETHING REALLY NAUGHTY?

One day I was a bit bored and got in big trouble for heading over to the neighbour’s place, uninvited, and helping myself to their food. I still pay them a visit sometimes, but I don’t eat their food anymore.

WHAT IS YOUR WORST HABIT?

I’m told that I get a bit overexcited with my play biting and can be a bit rough. I can be a bit full-on for some other dogs but, really, I just want to play!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FOOD?

Anything that isn’t put in my dish. Including other dogs’ food, avocados and anything that really stinks. The stinkier the food, the better, I say!

Who doesn’t love blue cheese?

IF YOU BECAME FAMOUS FOR ONE THING, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I’m no greyhound but I can run pretty fast – and I look really good while doing it.

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT DRIVES YOUR PARENTS MAD?

I know when I mess up and normally learn pretty quick smart not to do it again. Then again, I only just turned one, so Mum and Dad do give me a bit of a break.

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANOTHER ANIMAL AS A FRIEND, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

I would love to have another dog as a friend. We could run everywhere together and wear each other out. My parents thought about it, but then said that they don’t think they could handle two of me.

FAVOURITE TOY OR THING TO PLAY WITH?

I love chasing an old footy. I’ve been known to destroy one or two, or maybe even three, because it’s just too much fun.

WHAT DOES EVERYONE LOVE ABOUT YOU?

I just love to have fun. I’m always nice to new people, even though I try too hard sometimes.

ANY LAST WORDS?

I came from the pound so I feel pretty lucky to be living the farm life.

Dreams really do come true.

Do you have a great photo of your farm dog? Send it along to mhespe@intermedia.com.au and you never know, they might be a star like Millie!

NOV - DEC 2021

THE FARMER

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THE TAIL END

“Coo-ee!

Won’t you come?”

2021 marks the 106th anniversary of the Coo-ee March, and Gilgandra Shire is busy preparing its Coo-ee Heritage Centre for a grand reopening.

Words DARCY WATT

I

n 1915, the first WWI recruitment march was organised in New South Wales by two brothers from Gilgandra – William and Richard Hitchen. Along the route that began at their front gate, 263 men joined the march to Sydney answering the famous call – “Coo-ee! Won’t you come?” thus agreeing to join the ANZACS. The Coo-ee March Gallery first opened its doors in August 2015 to honour the men who took part in the march. Then, in 2019, Gilgandra Shire Council was successful in its application for the NSW Government’s Regional Cultural Fund Grant for the Gilgandra Cultural Precinct, meaning renovations could commence.

CALL TO ARMS

Gilgandra’s Coo-ee March was the first of many recruitment marches across NSW to encourage young men to enlist. Above: many recruiting posters of the time used the “Coo-ee” call to arms.

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Shirley Marks is the Curator and Archivist at the Gilgandra Museum and Historical Society, and she says that the gallery is an amazing attraction for Gilgandra. “A lot of people have heard the story, but most aren’t aware of the Coo-ee March, and they are quite taken by it all when they come here. They explore the gallery and say that it’s fantastic.”

Shirley explains that the men who left were mostly from farming families. “They went without thinking of themselves – they were doing the best they could for their family and for their country.

“I think it just goes to show you the comradeship and the community spirit that the young men here obviously had,” she says. “We were at war and they thought – this might be an adventure. They didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, and off they marched, stopping for a recruiting speech in each town along the way to Sydney.”

A penny was given to the families of men who didn’t return. “One particular family received a Death Penny and donated it,” Shirley says. “They thought Gilgandra was where he started off, so they thought it belongs here.”

A cushion featured in the gallery is one of the more poignant items for Shirley – sewn together from numerous cigarette cards from WWI. “They were sent from France by Coo-ee L Maguire,” she explains. “They’re a silktype material that was used in cigarette packets long ago.

They display images of all the different flags of various regiments. This young fellow sent them back to his family and a lady I knew sewed them together beautifully on the cushion. There are many very special things here.”

The Coo-ee March came back into focus for Gilgandra when, in 1987, three men decided they would like to do a re-enactment. Graham Chase directed a documentary simply titled Coo-ee, with Film Australia, and it was first shown in Gilgandra Shire Hall.

“From then on for quite

a few years we had an annual Coo-ee Festival, which brought families of Coo-ees and lots of other people to Gilgandra,” says Shirley. “There was a fair in the park and it was quite amazing.”

The Coo-ee Festival ceased operating due to a lack of volunteers, and Shirley couldn’t keep up with the demands. “It’s a great shame,” she says.

There are many other WWI artefacts on display in the Coo-ee March Gallery.

“It’s important to recognise there were others who weren’t Coo-ees serving during the war,” says Shirley. “The march

was only one part of WWI, and other men went with the same intentions.”

In 2015, to recognise the 100-year anniversary of the Coo-ee march, a coach travelled to Martin Place for another re-enactment. It rained on the day, but that didn’t dampen the spirits of those in attendance.

“There were beautiful smiles everywhere because we marched again,” says Shirley. “I don’t know what it was like back in 1915, but it was amazing in 2015, even in the rain.” l

NSW FARMERS COMMITTEES – CONTACTS & CHAIRS AG SCIENCE

Alan Brown agvetcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au ANIMAL WELFARE

Robert McIntosh animalwelfarecommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au BIOSECURITY

Ian McColl biosecuritycommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au BUSINESS, ECONOMICS & TRADE

Bill McDonell beatcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au CATTLE

Deborah Willis cattlecommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au CONSERVATION & RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Bronwyn Petrie crmcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au

CONTRACT POULTRY MEAT

Peter Wojcicki poultrymeatcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au DAIRY

Colin Thompson dairycommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au EGG

Brett Langfield eggcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au GOATS

Felicity McLeod goatcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au GRAINS

Justin Everitt grainscommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au HORTICULTURE

Guy Gaeta horticulturecommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au OYSTER

Todd Graham oystercommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au PORK

Ean Pollard porkcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au RURAL AFFAIRS

Garry Grant ruralaffairscommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au SHEEPMEATS

Jenny Bradley sheepmeatscommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au WESTERN DIVISION COUNCIL

Greg Rogers wdc@nswfarmers.org.au WOOL

Helen Carrigan woolcommittee@ nswfarmers.org.au HATS OFF TO GILGANDRA

YOUNG FARMERS

Top: Gilgandra today has a population of around 3,000. Bottom left: A plaque commemorating the original Coo-ee volunteers who joined the march in 1915. Bottom right: a local family donated this Death Penny.

Mitch Highett yfc@nswfarmers.org.au

NOV - DEC 2021

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