Farming

Farmbot, a leading provider of remote monitoring solutions for Australian agriculture, has released the Wireless Trough Sensor, a device which connects farmers to their water supply right up to the point of consumption.

Preparations are in full swing for the upcoming Fodder Festival 2021 with booths booked, new machinery at the ready and registrations rolling in for the big day on Wednesday 17 March at the Elmore Events Centre.

Last year it was difficult to deal with the bombardment of bad news that came from COVID-19. So, hearing about the great year that the McNaul family’s paddock-to-plate agribusiness, ‘Outback Harvest’, has had was a refreshing change ... Teff is an ancient grain of Ethiopia – which offers a gluten-free, healthy alternative to the plain flours currently out there ...

Forestry Corporation of NSW is recommencing timber harvesting on the South Coast and Eden with additional environmental safeguards and restates our commitment to ecologically sustainable forest management which ensures good environmental outcomes.

Coal miners, farmers, and steel and iron workers hold the majority of the 653,600 jobs which could be destroyed by the adoption of a net zero emissions target in Australia, according to new research released by free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

To ensure northern Australia’s beef industry is equipped to be profitable and meet evolving social and environmental pressures, greater focus must be placed on optimising genetic gain through the accurate selection of nonvisual profit-driving traits. That’s according to 2019 Nuffield Scholar and Western Queensland beef producer, Rebecca Burnham, who with support from The Yulgilbar Foundation, investigated how modern technologies could be better utilised to increase measurement above the 15 per cent of bulls currently presented with breeding values in northern Australia.

Today’s decision by the ANZ Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation to slash the rating for pure, fresh Australian fruit and vegetable juices has failed Australian growers. National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) Chief Executive Tony Mahar described the decision to apply lower Health Star Ratings to fresh juices than those given to chemical-laden diet soft-drinks as baffling.

Australia has had hundreds of inquiries into natural hazards, but how can policy makers ensure that lessons from the past are not forgotten?

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) has partnered with Three Blue Ducks Restaurant Group to showcase Australian red meat producers' world class sustainable production practices and the high-quality product they produce via a new television series set to air nationally this week on Network 10.

The NFF’s climate policy is clear: farming and agriculture cannot be worse off going forward with any carbon commitments or emissions reduction schemes. The NFF has a clear climate change policy that supports an economy-wide NCZ 2050 target with two clear caveats – that there is an economically viable pathway forward and agriculture is not worse off.

Research has shown that introducing lambs to supplementary feed earlier aids in rumen development, which leads to faster weight gain and potentially earlier joining of the ewe lambs. However, to do this effectively, the ewes need to be excluded from the feeders. Over the past two years, MLA has funded a Producer Demonstration Site exploring the use of exclusion feeders with lambs. NSW farming systems group, FarmLink is running the trial with Anthony Shepherd from Sheepmatters, and a number of producers from around the south-western NSW region ...

The scarcity of seasonal workers continues to impact growers as crop losses climb to over $45 million this week. The labour shortage is a result of Federal and state government decisions to restrict the movement of people through the Australian border in order to manage the human health impacts of COVID-19. Sixty-five separate crop losses from five states and territories have now reported on the National Crop Lost Crop Register.

Western Australian grain growers will explore strategies for making their industry carbon neutral as part of the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Grains Research Update in Perth on February 22 and 23.

The worsening mouse situation in some of Australia’s key cropping regions will be addressed at a specially convened online forum. With mice ravaging freshly planted summer crops in parts of northern New South Wales and Queensland and in large numbers elsewhere across eastern and southern states, concern is mounting about further impact to summer crops ahead of grain fill and harvest and the potential threat to the 2021 winter grain crop.

The Victorian Farmers Federation is calling for the Commonwealth Minister for Water Resources to keep his word and stop on-farm water acquisition to meet the 450GL up-water target in addition to the Murray Darling Basin Plan. VFF Water Council Chair Richard Anderson said he was disappointed the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Water is continuing to pursue on-farm water recovery despite the Federal Water Minister Keith Pitt’s promise not to do so.

Grain growers in western Victoria are being urged to reduce available feed in the lead-up to sowing this season in a bid to help protect the 2021 seasons’ crops from mice. High yielding crops in the past two seasons in parts of the southern Mallee, Wimmera and Western District have created a bonanza for mice in some paddocks, according to Agriculture Victoria’s Heather Drendel.

Cape York Weekly Rusty and Bronwyn Tully have no neighbours and “wouldn’t have it any other way”. They live on Turtle Head Island, located east of...