Resources for farmers to increase productivity.

The team with Jeff at the Farm

We invited Jeff White to come and talk to us about his work as an agricultural consultant in our region. The Shoalhaven region is predominantly a Dairy farming area because of high rainfall and pockets of rich alluvial and volcanic soils which allow for good pasture growth for most of the year.



Jeff provides a range of services to farmers to assist them in making their soils and pastures more productive, so that they can increase their outputs from their farms. At the end of the day our farmers have to work long hard hours and invest huge amounts of money to earn an income, so any help to make a profit is welcomed.

Jeff talked about the importance of good soil fertility and structure to increasing the output of pastures. This is particularly important on Dairy farms where the nutritive value of the food that cows eat is linked directly to the quantity and quality of milk that they produce.

Jeff told us that there has been a huge shift away from the use of inorganic fertilisers to the use of organic fertilisers such as chicken manure to improve soil fertility. This makes sense as we now understand the importance of organic matter in soils for increasing soil microbial activity and water retention. Inorganic fertilisers can reduce the soil structure over long-rem use.

Jeff explained how important it is for farmers to have plans so that the farm runs in a sustainable way. Sometimes farmers have to invest up to $800 per hectare to implement a soil fertility improvement program and then have to wait to reap the benefits in the long term.

Jeff also spoke about how much the local farming landscape has changed over the past 30 years. The deregulation of the Dairy industry and the end of the quota system saw many of the smaller dairy farms close or become part of larger farms as they could no longer make a profit.  Additionally in recent years, prime agricultural land has been developed for housing to meet the demands of growing populations.
A huge thanks to Jeff for coming to talk to us and sharing his wealth of knowledge.


There have been lots of newspaper artlicles in our local paper The South Coast Register over the past few months about the impact of the supermarket price wars on local dairy farmers where reduced milk prices along with the rising costs had increased pressures on farmers trying to make a living off the land.

Interestingly is the most recent which shows that the consumer has a lot of power and that:
In the age of the supermarket ''milk wars'', where the major stores discount milk to $1 a litre, many dairy farmers have been forced to run at a loss or get out of the industry. But the milk wars have produced an unlikely victor: tiny, independent dairies are re-entering the market and thriving.
With just 100 milking-age cows and a prescient 2004 investment in a small bottling factory on their farm near Picton on Sydney's south-western outskirts, the Fairley dairy's revenue has risen 45 per cent since the supermarkets began discounting.
''We all have [had that growth]; all the small people up and down the coast,'' John Fairley said.
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1712711/small-dairy-farmers-are-the-surprise-winners/

We will be highlighting the ABC Cheese Factory at Tilba which bottles its own milk straight from the cows in the paddocks next door in a future blog. Talk about low carbon footprint milk!! Also South Coast Milk at Berry is about to expand its operations and we will be reporting on this as well.
Other local news stories, all of which interview local farmers, can be found at the following links:

http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1443878/dairy-farmers-cut-out-the-middleman/
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1313763/dairy-free/
www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/.../farmer-warns-of-dairy-free-future/?
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1405721/farmers-keep-eye-on-woolworths-milk-deal/
 http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1429841/coles-dairy-deal-in-sour-taste-for-sa-farmers/

A visit from our Young Eco Champion Megan Rowlatt

The delightful Megan Rowlatt winner of the National Young Landcare Leader Award 2012, at Shoalhaven High School.

Megan is our Young Eco Champion for the Archibull Prize. Funded by Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority and hosted by Conservation Volunteers Australia, as the Landcare Community Support Officer for the Illawarra region, her role is to assist Landcare volunteers, private landholders and farmers, as well as the wider community to develop skills and knowledge around natural resource management. This includes delivering training to build capacity of volunteers and individuals working in natural areas to carry out quality on-ground activities, engaging new volunteers into Landcare, managing and distributing online resources through newsletters, social media and a range of websites, and applying for a variety of grants to carry out environmental projects in the Illawarra region.

 

 

With the support of Caring for Our Country program funding Art4Agriculture has recruited 5 exciting young women for the Young Eco Champion program for 2012/13. This program will train a team of 5 young natural resource management professionals from Southern Rivers region of NSW. They will be trained to develop leadership and communication skills and become local faces of sustainable primary production and natural resource management.

 Deborah interviewing Megan for the Archibull Prize

       Mrs McNeil, Megan and Ms Hargraves         

Three of out team members wrote their own recount of Megan's visit: Kirsty, Rochelle and Kristy.

Kirsty's recount:

On Tuesday the 6th of August, Megan Rowlatt a Young Eco Champion, visited our Archibull team at Shoalhaven High School. She explained to us that Natural Resource Management is "the management of all the resources we need to survive". These resources include water, air and soil.

After Megan completed a degree in Ecotourism, she returned to the Illawarra where she had grown up and worked for National Parks and Wildlife. Shortly after she joined Conservation Volunteers Australia which is funded by a Catchment Area Management Group. She then moved on to become a Landcare Officer.

She loves her job where she runs special community events in Landcare, special tree planting events, seed collection days, field days, Illawarra Youth Landcare Group and workshops for farmers. The workshops assist farmers to improve their landcare practises, regenerate native vegetation and identify weeds which can be toxic to livestock and outcompete native pasture species.

After Megan gave her presentation we took her for a tour of our fabulous farm where she got to meet our dairy calves. We then quickly interviewed her before she had to leave. It was a great afternoon and we learnt lots of information about Natural Resource Management.

Showing Megan around our school farm

Rochelle's recount:

During Megan's visit to our school, she shared a lot of information about her job in Natural resource Management.

She went to University on the Gold Coast and studied teaching for a year. She didn't like it at all. So  after that she changed her studies to Ecotourism. She told us that she was perfect for her job because she loves the outdoors. She learns a lot about plants and animals in her work. She needs to be able to identify plant types so that she knows if they can be pulled from the ground or not. She explained that some plants can be harmful to animals and other native plant types.

Megan enjoyed meeting Creamy our cow and some of our sheep at the school's farm. She left us some eco friendly bags with hand prints on them. It was a great visit.

                      Megan giving her presentation to the Archibull Team at Shoalhaven High

Kristy's recount:

Megan Rowlatt came to my school and talked about her life and work. Megan completed a degree in Ecotourism. She then worked for National Parks and Wildlife and then moved into conservation. In her job she runs special community events involved in Landcare and tree planting. She runs workshops for farmers to help them regenerate native plants, collect seeds and identify weeds. Megan also works with young people and runs the Illawarra Youth Landcare group.She has won awards for her work.
Megan has travelled the world and learnt a lot about the land that we all live on. I enjoyed listening to Megan talk about what she did. Her work is important for future generations.

Using Innovation to produce food - 2 great videos from Catalyst

We wanted to share two very important videos that we think people should watch, that have been shown recently on the ABC's Catalyst program.

The first is about an amazing agricultural project in a remote Australian location on the edge of a desert. This highly productive farm is run by solar power and desalinates water from the abundant salt water sources. This amazingly innovative and sustainable way of producing food could be the future for Australia.

The second is about using flies and their maggots to recycle waste food and produce nutritious feed for animals.

We think that there are some amazing innovative ideas out there that make the challenge of feeding a growing world population all the more possible. WE CAN DO IT SUSTAINABLY - we just need to be innovative!!!!!!