The Editor

Victorian farmers are encouraging international travellers to enact simple preventative measures to help keep the potentially devastating Foot and Mouth (FMD) livestock disease out of Australia. Victorian Farmers Federation President Emma Germano said that news of the disease reaching the popular holiday island of Bali in neighbouring Indonesia is very concerning for farmers.

Peak industry organisation CANEGROWERS is ready and willing to lead the way to a more profitable and diversified future for sugarcane outlined in a new roadmap. “This document has been two and a half years in the making. It is exciting as a cane grower to be at the starting point of a new chapter in our sugarcane industry’s story,” CANEGROWERS Chairman Owen Menkens said. “We are ready to lead the transition, working with existing and new investors.”

Organisations representing the Australian sugarcane industry will form a series of working groups to implement their first whole-of-industry vision and roadmap. The Sugar Plus vision released at the Developing Northern Australia Conference, positions the industry as Fuelling the Future of Food, Energy and Fabrication.

“The sugarcane industry has identified an exciting and transformational future of sustainably producing sugar and bioproducts at the heart of regional communities. The roadmap outlines opportunities for a substantially larger industry. A growing bioeconomy industry will enable Australia to become increasingly self-sufficient, improving economic resilience and national security”: Anne Stünzner, CRCNA CEO.

The state’s peak agricultural body says the Varroa mite outbreak is a stark example of the failures in the national biosecurity system. NSW Farmers Biosecurity Chair Ian McColl said it was clear biosecurity screening protocols at our borders were clearly not at the standard required, and it was time for the federal government to urgently fix the system before it was too late.

Farmers across the state are once again being hit by wild weather creating fresh concerns about food supply chains ... The impacts of the torrential rain are being felt out into the central west, and vegetable growers in the Hunter Valley have had paddocks drowned for a third time this year.

Local Government Minister John Carey has announced the final package of reforms to the Local Government Act 1995, following a review of public submissions. The reforms are based on the findings and recommendations of a number of reports and consultation undertaken over the past five years, and represent the most significant change to local government in Western Australia since the Local Government Act 1995 was introduced more than 25 years ago.

Identification and development of novel hard seeded pasture legumes teamed with cost reducing management practices and dedicated extension efforts are heralding a revolutionary change for growers in South Australia and Victoria’s low to medium rainfall regions.

Rachel Kennedy stood out on a wild frontier dominated by men ... her extraordinary and unputdownable pioneering story is told for the first time ... Rachel Kennedy was a colonial folk hero. Born in the wild and remote Warrumbungle mountains of western New South Wales in 1845, she was described by Duke Tritton of The Bulletin as Australia's greatest pioneer woman of them all.

A moving and hilarious fish-out-of-water memoir of a millennial leaving his inner-city life to take over the family farm. Sam Vincent is a twenty-something writer in the inner suburbs, scrabbling to make ends meet, when he gets a call from his mother: his father has stuck his hand in a woodchipper, but ‘not to worry – it wasn’t like that scene in Fargo or anything’.