If a ladybird crawls out of your celery or wombok when you bring it home from the shops, treat this little beetle as a gift from nature.
Every Monday at Harslett Farm in the Granite Belt of south-east Queensland, Denise Harslett does the rounds of the salad crops to check for holes in the leaves and which insects are active.
Continue reading Ladybirds at work on salad-greens farm in SEQ →
As well as being food producers, farmers are innovators always looking for new ways to be more efficient – as exemplified by RIRDC Rural Women’s Award Australian winner Sue Middleton from Western Australia.
Sue’s family grow grain, citrus and pigs at Wongan Hills outside Perth and her RIRDC project is to commercialise technology that produces power using the waste products (effluent) from piggeries.
This effluent produces methane which can be captured in an anaerobic digestion process and then converted to electricity and organic fertiliser.
Westpac is principal sponsor of the 2011 RIRDC Rural Women’s Award, and entries are open until October 15. This website is part of a project which saw Jane Milburn named as this year’s Queensland runner-up.
The Heatley family graze about 14,000 head of cattle in far north Queensland, based at Byrne Valley near Home Hill on the Burdekin River and on two other properties in the rangelands around Charters Towers.
Continue reading Ground cover ensures sustainable grazing in NQ →
You can’t be green if you are in the red – which is why north Queensland cattle producer Michael Lyons has created a diversified business at Wambiana Station near Charters Towers that has been in the family for five generations.
At an environmental debate at The University of Queensland Can red meat be green? Michael said using camels for weed control, leasing land for a grazing trial over the past 13 years and hosting students are all part of the family business.
It is nearly a decade since Dianne and Frank Sciacca began their ‘farming with nature’ journey by growing and marketing a unique brand of eco-bananas, identified by the distinctive red wax tip.
Plants, weeds, grasses, animals and insects all have a role in their ecological farming system which values biodiversity and natural resources, and doesn’t use chemicals on the soil.
They have international environmental accreditation in ISO14001, aim to continually improve farming practices through research and have registered the term ‘ecoganic’ as a way of differentiating their product.
Continue reading Eco-banana growers farming with nature in NQ →
By Jane Milburn
Well Adam Liaw is the man, and MasterChef is the phenomenon which has rejuvenated mainstream interest in food and culinary skills while sending TV ratings through the roof.
It has been an exciting and mouth-watering season, yet I’m intrigued by the missing link. It is as if all the raw ingredients just fall out of the sky and, magically appear in fully-stocked fridges and pantries, courtesy of the supermarket.
What of the MasterProducers growing the food? We all eat, and yet give only a passing thought to agriculture as the source of food. Farms are not glamorous because there is something, well, agricultural, about them that doesn’t sell in the city.
Eating food is something we do every day because it is essential for our survival. Where the food comes from and whether it will keep on coming, are issues for society as the environmental impacts of feeding the world become more apparent.
Deb McLucas grows food in central Queensland with partner Rob Bauman on two farms – one at Dysart growing cereal crops such as sorghum, wheat and chickpeas and the other an irrigated cane and grazing farm closer to Mackay. Continue reading Farming a different way in central Queensland →
For two decades, Terry McCosker has been empowering farmers to work with the natural environment, soils and water to produce food and make a profit – at the same time as sustaining and regenerating the land. As a co-founder of RCS, Terry’s vision is to have profitable agricultural families working farms that are productive without the need for chemical maintenance. Continue reading Farming with the future in mind →
The incidence of cancer is increasing at an alarming rate, yet it is an almost entirely preventable illness according to cancer survivor Jerry Brunetti from Pennsylvania in the United States.
Speaking to farmers on the topic of cancer, cows and consciousness at the RCS Farmers … Heroes of the Future conference in Brisbane, Jerry said only about 5-10 percent of cancers are caused by defective genes. Continue reading Food as medicine →
Global demand for food will more than double in the next half century and a new style of eco-agriculture – efficient, low-input farming – must be developed to meet the demand, says Adjunct Professor Julian Cribb. Speaking at the RCS Farmers … Heroes of the Future conference, Prof Cribb said the challenge for farmers is to double food production using half the water, far less land, with no fossil fuels, scarce fertilisers amid drought and changing climate. Continue reading The coming famine and challenges for agriculture →
Recent food and farming ABC headlines