International

As a committed mountain and trail runner, Maldon resident Matthew Crehan has been part of an elite Australian team competing in the 2023 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Innsbruck ... Matthew has only been running for about eight years ... "Last year I was named Australian Ultra Runner of the year and was absolutely stoked”: Matthew Crehan.

The first group of workers from Papua New Guinea to be employed in Australia’s aged care sector under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme has arrived in regional Queensland. The eight workers from PNG provinces including Western Highlands, New Ireland and Morobe will be employed by Southern Cross Care at aged care facilities at Chinchilla, Murgon and Taroom in Southeast Queensland, where local aged care staff have been hard to find.

A renowned sustainable river ecologist has identified water management in the Murray–Darling Basin as a model for other countries seeking to support communities and healthy rivers into the future. Addressing the MDBA's annual  River reflections  regional water conference in Narrabri, Professor N LeRoy Poff from the University of Canberra and Colorado State University said the Murray–Darling Basin Plan was a beacon for other nations on how integrated water management at the Basin scale can work.

When John McFadden gave up a promising career as an NRL player aged 14, his parents Bob and Bernice never imagined he would be crowned World Food Champion, but they were determined to support him to pursue his dreams ... John said. John decided to become a chef and started as a kitchen hand at a restaurant at Long Jetty on the Central Coast called Dominic’s Manor...

As Australia looks towards exploring new export markets, the MENA region presents a wealth of trading and investment potential for Australian regional businesses.

Mountain and Moorland ponies may be native to the British Isles but there is a healthy population growing in Australia. New promotional group Mountain and Moorland (M&M) Australia has taken on the job of raising awareness of the breeds in this country and recently combined with two other breed societies to run the Victorian Winter Fair at Tatura.

Wiradjuri man Buddy Oldman is about to be immortalised in the history books. Under the guidance of the Guinness World Records, the World Champion Masters Boxer is proud to confirm that he will be punching a boxing bag for 72 hours to set a new world record to raise awareness for mental health ... Buddy answers a few questions from ARR.News.

In January this year, a freak hailstorm hit Maldon and surrounds, bringing billiard ball sized hailstones causing distress to livestock and damaging roofs, windows and cars. The largest reported hailstones fell in Maldon, with some of them exceeding 70 mm in diameter and exhibiting unusual shapes. The shapes and sizes made them of great interest to hail researchers.

The Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals today said the offshoring of Australia’s food processing capability must be reversed ... “The last three decades have seen more and more of our food processing offshored and a steady decline in Australian owned agricultural supply chains,” said BCCM CEO Melina Morrison.

As she prepares to head overseas to represent her country as the newly crowned 2023 Rodeo Queen of Australia, Grafton resident Jessica Hicks, reveals it all still feels like a dream ... Ms Hicks will travel to Canada and the USA next month ... representing Australia alongside other rodeo queens from around the world at the Calgary Stampede and then following up events in Dallas, Texas over a fiveweek period.

The independent, global Gender Representation in the Meat Industry 2023 report draws on international data from more than 50 major meat organisations ... Australia's OBE Organic - whose MD Dalene Wray is herself a notable woman in the meat business - featured as a case study in the report ... ARR.News asked some questions about women in the meat business of Dalene and Laura Ryan, Founder and Global Chair of Meat Business Women.

The NFF Horticulture Council has rung the alarm bells loud and clear that the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme is now heading toward calamity ... Horticulture Council spokesperson Rachel Chambers said it was increasingly clear relevant ministers aren’t working together to ensure the scheme meets the long-terms interests of the Pacific and Australian industries it’s meant to serve. 

Singapore-based Nutrition Technologies has launched their new bioactive organic fertiliser, Diptiaâ„¢, specifically designed and formulated to combat fungal plant diseases, and protect soil from infection. Diptiaâ„¢ is a patent pending Nutrition Technologies product derived from Black Soldier Fly frass ... ARR.News asked Rezuwan Zakaria, Nutrition Technologies R&D Manager, some further questions about the product, Diptiaâ„¢ and the company itself.

A fresh study on the environmental impacts of lab-grown meat has led an internationally recognised expert on the future of cell-based protein, Professor Paul Wood, AO, to confirm the economics of producing lab-grown meat at scale “just won’t work” and will be less sustainable than traditional red meat production systems. The new study from the University of California, Davis, argues the global warming potential of cell-based meat production could be up to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.

When we look at the Australian teams competing for us at the Olympics and world championships, older riders feature prominently. Fair enough, because with age comes experience, but times are changing and many other country’s Olympic teams are far younger than ours ... in all Olympic disciplines, there is beginning to be a changing of the guard.

Lockhart's Jackson Strong became the most dominant rider in Moto X Best Trick History after winning at the X Games at Chiba, Japan, last month ... "Everyone’s been riding amazing tonight. I’m glad I was able to get the trick I’ve been practising...": Jackson Strong.

The nation is on track to plant an impressive 23.48 million hectare winter crop this year – up slightly on last year’s crop area – Rabobank says in its newly-released 2023/24 Australian Winter Crop Outlook ... overall harvest totals are forecast to be lower than last season, with expectations of drier growing conditions due to the likely transition to an El Nino climate cycle, the specialist agribusiness bank says.

So far in May, the S&P GSCI Agriculture Index has declined a modest 0.6% amid the renewal of the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) and ample grain and oilseed supplies ... Losses across most G&O markets (-2.6% on average) were largely offset by gains across softs (+2.2%).

Australia has handed over 500,000 doses of lumpy skin disease (LSD) vaccines to Indonesia as part of the Australian Government’s work to fight exotic animal diseases before they reach our shores. The vaccines are part of 1 million doses the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is providing to assist Indonesia to control LSD.

"Australia is the sixth most forested country in the world but is a net importer of timber products. The current approach is not working if we want to continue to provide local timber products to support affordable housing and flow-on benefits to meet society’s needs. We are in effect, exporting our forest management challenges to other nations, when we have high environmental standards and highly skilled professionals and scientists to appropriately manage our resources locally": Dr Michelle Freeman, President of Forestry Australia.

Denmark aims to gain international tourism exposure by luring the Danish women’s soccer team to the town before the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July and August. The FIFA Women’s World Cup will be held in Australia and New Zealand with two of three group stage matches in Perth/Boorloo.

A joint Consortium Agreement has been adopted to help progress Moonta Mines’ world heritage bid. The Australian Cornish Mining Sites World Heritage Consortium will enable Copper Coast Council, Regional Council of Goyder (encompassing Burra) and the National Trust of South Australia to work towards their final step in gaining World Heritage Listing.