Travelling scholars field report
Posted by: Peter Draper	Date: 2 August 2004

Global Focus Report for 2004

The Nuffield Scholarship has been an incredible learning adventure for a number of reasons. The opportunity to study my passion, agriculture, around the globe is beyond words. Highlights include the opportunity to travel with other scholars from Australia and overseas, an array of contrasts, access to areas the normal travelling public don't see and the incredible learning experience together with wonderful hospitality from hosts worldwide.

So far in my travels I have visited New Zealand, France, Brussels, Ireland, USA and Canada. I have traveled with two Queensland scholars, two Irish scholars, two Canadian scholars, a Zimbabwean scholar and am currently at the 7th World Conference on Precision Agriculture with another two Australian scholars and one English scholar.

Contrasts include speaking with key decision makers affecting European agriculture and then an hour later struggling to do laundry in a foreign language Laundromat, visiting a malt plant in a morning then discussing the finer points of its use with a brewmaster at a brewery afternoon, walking in rain then dropping one mile underground and driving seventeen kilometers in an old landcruiser and high temperature to get to the cutting face of a potash mine, talking to an enthusiastic young NZ dairyman with a twelve million dollar overdraft, no subsidies and then seeing the contrast in Ireland, talking lambs in the sheep yards morning and high end eco tourism in a superb lodge with breathtaking scenery afternoon, a day of casual exploring the New Zealand museum and the next day spending 34 hours traveling to the next destination, squeezing into a hotel room in Paris and getting lost in the king size beds in USA, driving on the left side of the road and in the next country concentrating to stay on the opposite side, breezing in off the street for a meeting in NZ and handing over passport with searches/X ray to visit US Dept of Agriculture, visit a GMO enthusiast one day and commercial organic operation the next, Indian lunch with dancing then Chinese for tea - no two days were ever the same.

The core tour for the first six weeks covered many different agricultural commodities/businesses and gave a good general overview what is happening with agriculture around the world. Brazil and China are being talked about by everyone with Russia and India in the background. Canada has a similar love/hate trade with USA that Australia has and Europe appears to have shifted away from subsidizing above domestic requirements. Their agricultural subsidy payments remain about 45% of the EU budget but have not been indexed and will be diluted with the ten new member countries. The money will be given as a single farm payment providing all environmental criteria payment have been met and not based on current production.

The disconnection between the consumer and producer appears to be increasing in Europe and North America with farmers producing cheap food and surviving on a small margin. For many of the good operators the subsidy is their profit. Some profit is capitalized in land values with large areas now rented and leased.

Alberta contains 65% of irrigation in Canada and has virtually reached its maximum allowable. As efficiencies are made some expansion is allowed to occur and I visited two new areas of 4,000 hectares each laid out to centre pivot. Half the precipitation which falls in Alberta has to be passed on to Saskatchewan who hope to expand their area although the environment, money and energy costs are against them with high lifts required.

Most irrigation in Alberta is by centre pivot with the largest area of flood occurring in the Eastern Irrigation District centred on the township of Brooks. Here the heavier flatter soils have been lasered to slopes of .1% and are irrigated using narrow border ditch from open head ditches or low pressure 30cm gated pipe. The crops irrigated by this method are mostly forage crops, seed lucerne, wheat, canola, flax, and some peas.

The Irrigation District would be the envy of irrigator's world wide with the whole area owned by the irrigators including the diversion dam on the Bow River. The water licence is a very senior one so they have access ahead of most municipalities and the environment. Irrigators are allowed to use up to a limit of sixty centimeters of water over their total area each year which is done by calculation rather than measurement. The District has a large revenue stream from oil and gas wells on large grazing areas which it owns. Last year irrigators paid zero for their water as a dividend and in sympathy for BSE. The Board has recently decided not to charge anything for water this year because of low commodity prices.

Climate change has been accepted as a major issue of concern and demonstrated clearly with the disappearance of many glaciers. They are expected to receive the same amount of water or slightly more but availability will change. Eastern Irrigation District in particular has very little storage as peak flows occur in summer as the snow pack melts. Climate change is bringing these flows forward to an earlier period when they are unable to be used.

Irrigators realize they will create difficulties if they enforce their rights in dry periods and have begun a process looking at water sharing. Alberta irrigation is trying to change the image of irrigation and talk in terms of water for food, water for towns, water for wildlife and water for fun rather than use the irrigation word which conjures up images of greed.

Canada is the largest exporter of pulses in the world most of which are grown under dryland conditions. Production has grown at an average of 20% each year over the last 20 years. The main pulses grown include peas, lentils, chick peas and dry beans. In Australia canola and pulses are rotation crops required to keep disease out of wheat which provides most of the profit. The opposite is the case in Canada with most mortgages paid by canola and peas. The removal of the freight subsidy helped drive the change to lower yielding higher value crops.

Dry beans are the most widely traded pulse crop on a global basis and the most profitable pulse crop in Canada. Dry beans are not a cool season pulse crop and current varieties require about 120 frost free days. The research effort in pulses is very strong and another pulse breeder was recently employed at Mordon Research Station. As well as an emphasis on breeding shorter maturity dry beans an effort is being reinitiated with faba beans. The Canadian's would like to compete with Australia in the Egypt market. The dry bean programme is aimed at producing varieties suitable for the Mexican market which will be tariff free in 2008 under the NAFTA agreement. The new types include yellow beans and milo beans. The limitation to dry bean production in Canada is the period of "frost free" days and they have introduced a species of bean from Mexico tolerant to temperatures down to -6 degrees Celsius to use in breeding more frost tolerant varieties.

Precision Agriculture:

Some points from the conference which still continues.

• Adoption has been slow compared to some other recent innovations such as Roundup Ready soybeans because of it's lack of "convenience".

• A lot of research is occurring with measuring in crop for "on the go" application of fertilizer with some commercially available.

• Many programs are being developed to document product from "field to fork " which includes GPS for tracking movement.

• The biggest value in PA is seen as being a service rather than a product

• Considered useful in Europe even with the small farm size to identify areas of low profitability which can now be taken out of production with the change in subsidy payment.

• There is a need to build human capacity in PA globally.