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Innovative Farming Australia Conference - October 5 2007

The venue for Friday was the magnificent Maritime Museum on the bank of Fremantle harbour. The day started with a short and sharp AGM which was followed by a tour of the museum, the home to the famous America’s Cup winning yacht, Australia Two.

The Innovative Farming Australia Conference then began with an inspiring opening address from Imre Mencshelyi, Chief Executive Officer, CBH Group. His presentation focused on the global demand for grain for food and fuel. He also said that with ten to twelve multinational organisation’s feeding 70% of the population a company such as CBH had to make decisions how to best fit into the global food industry. The consolidation of farms in WA has also created a new environment with the number of farmers in WA reducing from 10,300 in 2000 to 5,500 in 2007.

Following Imre there were presentations from the 2006 scholars.

Andrew Bouffler presented the outcomes of his study into dual purpose maternal ewe flocks, citing key findings from his research in South Africa. Download presentation (587 K PDF)

Helen Dalton then presented on her topic of ecological goods and services, environmental stewardship programs and the future opportunities from carbon credits. Download presentation (973 K PDF)

John Gladigau made a powerful presentation on the benefits of cooperative farming models as and drew on the knowledge he gained from fruitful meetings with farmers in cooperative business structures in North America. Download presentation (1.4 MB PDF)

Catherine Harvey gave a detailed presentation on biological farming systems which included images of several alternative soil health practices such as diesel exhaust fume injection. Download presentation (800 K PDF)

David Jochinke’s presentation was a humorous and articulate talk on the roles of farmers in influencing government. His key messages were that reputations open doors and relationships are the key to success. Download presentation (305 K PDF)

Damien Smart presented the findings from his diverse range of study topics which included sub surface drip irrigation systems and prescription livestock feeding systems. His point about doing your research thoroughly prior to embarking on a new venture was best summed up by his quote “if you want to cut the tree down fast spend twice as much time sharpening the axe”. Download presentation (3.9 MB PDF)

Bruce Thompson gave a fascinating presentation on cropping rotations and unmanned machinery technology. The statistics he quoted in relationship to the significant shift of USA researchers resources from food crops to fuel crops and the flow on affects of the US mandate to supply 20% of US oil consumption with fuel from renewable sources by 2015 gave a compelling argument for the positive future prospects for grain production in Australia. Download presentation (4.7 MB PDF)

Ronald Thompson was the final presenter and gave a well researched presentation on the world wide issue of the diminishing work force in farming. After outlining the issues he spoke about some of the options for overcoming labour shortages and suggested that the rise of farm income as a result of a portion of revenue coming from the energy market could be one solution to reinvigorate Australia’s farming economy and repopulate regional areas. Download presentation (1.8 MB PDF)