I farm at Manangatang with my husband Keith, my son Brad and his wife Donna and their two children. Our farm is 60km from the Murray River in northwest Victoria, between Swan Hill and Mildura. Our rainfall is just under 300mm, so we are in a lower rainfall area. We grow wheat, barley, lentils, and chickpeas. Our rotation is a legume crop or brown manure peas followed by one or two cereal crops. Following big rains in December/January we have excellent subsoil moisture going into this year's cropping season.
At the moment, the sprayer has been going fairly nonstop! Since harvest finished, we have nearly finished the second summer pass. It is essential to have good weed control to save as much moisture as possible for the next crop. We are starting to get ready for cropping and our disc seeder will go into the workshop soon for annual maintenance. A special purpose chemical truck is also getting a full work over and will be fitted out with equipment that will minimise handling of chemicals.
As an incoming member of the next Grains100 cohort, I'm really looking forward to meeting some switched-on farmers, I think you can learn a lot from other people and am interested to hear what others are doing. I'm hoping to improve my advocacy and public speaking skills, and hope that involvement in the course will lead to other advocacy opportunities.
At a community level, I am passionate about advocating for funding for the Robinvale-Sea Lake Road which is the main feeder route to the Calder Hwy, our main route to the port, and is not yet gazetted for HPVs. We had a double fatality on a very dangerous corner just before Christmas so it is important that we get more funding to improve this road to make it safer for cars, trucks and machinery.
I'd also like to do some more in the Council rates space - over the last 5 years, our dryland farming rates have gone up 64%, yet less than 1% of project money is spent in the small towns of the grain belt.
I am proud to be an Australian grain grower and to be part of the grains industry.
Australia grows a very good quality and sustainable product and is known for its clean and green produce. I hope that I can advocate on behalf of our industry to improve things for growers and consumers.