National Policy Group Candidates 2021

Ben is a rain-fed grain producer with his family at Condamine on the Western Darling Downs, Queensland growing wheat, chickpeas, sorghum, and cotton. They operate a mix of owned and leased land covering 4000ha. Ben is passionate about farming and the long-term sustainability of his family farming land and its profitability. Ben’s family have cooperated with the GRDC National Variety Trial program for many years in both the winter and summer crop areas and is a member of the Northern NVT Advisory Committee panel.

Stuart is a fourth-generation grain grower on the black soil plains of the central Darling Downs. He grows Sorghum, Wheat and Barley on his group of properties that comprise of 1600ha. Before moving back to the family farm 10 years ago, Stuart gained previous experience in Business Management (North Queensland), Accounting (Southern Queensland) and an electrical trade specialising in Solar Energy. His interests with the NPG are maintaining and improving practices in sustainability (including carbon), market access, and supporting smaller producers in a much larger industry. Affordable farming technology and input costs for the family farming enterprise are also key issues of interest.

Nina Curtis is the director of Bray Farms a mixed organic & conventional farming operation based on both the Darling Downs & Sunshine Coast. Nina grew up on the land and has run a successful cropping business for the past 11 years with her partner Mitch Bray. They have pushed the boundaries of crop production, working with soil health (not without inputs) to achieve high yields. This year they produced CSD’s highest yielding dryland cotton crop without the use of synthetic fertilisers and have been growing high yielding organic broadacre crops for over 5 years. Nina is passionate about communication and collaboration between grain growers so together we can create a sustainable and profitable industry. Nina is keen to represent the Northern region on the NPG to give back to an industry that she is passionate about.

Kelly’s family operation, Lund Grain, has farms located near Clermont in Central Queensland and in the Burdekin region of tropical North Queensland. They farm approximately 10,000 ha including approximately 700 ha of irrigation and have additional country under grazing. Prior to returning to the grains industry, Kelly spent 10 years working in communications across large Agri Corporates including Syngenta, Rabobank and GrainCorp and enjoyed a stint as an ABC rural reporter earlier on in her career. Key issues that Kelly is passionate about are better research and agronomy focussed on tropical cropping, continued work on developing international markets, particularly out of Queensland ports and women being better targeted to take on farming as a career.

Ian with his wife, Marilyn run an award-winning family farm near Quirindi NSW producing dryland and irrigated summer and winter crops with pillar crops of wheat, sorghum, and cotton. Ian was an early adopter of no till and controlled traffic farming, he is passionate about soil health & ground cover, communication and profitability & sustainability. He has always been at the leading edge of change and encourages communication between farmers and with researchers and other industry groups. He believes policies to improve connectivity in the bush are critical and the need to improve market access through grain standards and streamlined supply chain access.

Luke is a dry land and irrigated grain producer from Central Queensland operating in a family business with his wife Sophie and parents Peter and Kerrie. Producing a range of summer and winter pulses and cereals for both domestic and export markets, market access developments underpin his farms financial resilience. Having been on the NPG for the previous 3 years, Luke has assisted in developing policy that bolster Australian grain farmers reputation as world leaders in quality, sustainable produce and practices. A Nuffield graduate, Luke looked at variability in management and inputs, this experience has assisted in his role on the NPG. Rapidly increasing input costs, Luke believes working with researchers and supply chain to develop and adopt new technologies and systems to ensure profitability.

Nicole together with her husband Terry manage a 10,000ha broadacre cereal cropping business between Nyngan and Tottenham in NSW. Their winter cereal cropping program is planned and based on seasonal conditions. With Terry’s family, they manage a grain storage facility from where their produce is provided to businesses in NSW and QLD. Nicole’s interests are in research and development, learning from grain bodies and progressive farmers on varieties, approaches to management and environment, succession and taxation, and opportunities for the sustainability of families and their businesses through natural disasters.