This week I had the pleasure of Robbie Sefton joining me on AgTalk.

Robbie is the founder and managing director of Seftons, a communication agency providing services in corporate affairs, government and media relations, strategic communications and marketing, digital and social media, event management, facilitation and community consultation programs.

Robbie specialises in facilitating groups through contentious and challenging issues.

A producer of wool, meat and grains, Robbie is a graduate of the Australian Rural Leadership Program, the 2002 RIRDC NSW Rural Woman of the Year and a member of numerous boards and advisory groups for governments, businesses and not-for-profits. Since 1990 she has lived, worked and traveled all over regional, rural and remote Australia as a rural leader and advocate. She is known and respected by farmers, agribusiness, Ministers, and people at all levels in between.

Robbie was listed in 2015 as a Westpac Women of Influence and last but not least we had the pleasure of Robbie's presentation at the 2018 Marcus Oldham Rural Leadership Dinner. I consider myself fortunate on several occasions to have spent some time with Robbie discussing the issues of rural Australia and have always found her engaging and insightful and who best to invite on to the 20th episode of Marcus AgTalk podcast to discuss why farmers need to care about social license and how Australian agriculture need to position itself in a post COVID-19 world.

Today we are joined by Ian Robinson, director and co-founder of Robinson and Sewell partners. 

 Ian grew up on a 28,000 acre sheep station near Hay running 15,000 merino sheep and 1,000 acres of irrigated cereal and oil-seed cropping. Ian has had over 15 years of banking experience across a broad range of disciplines including business banking at a regional and corporate level in Australia with a strong agribusiness focus. His tertiary qualifications include a Bachelor of Resource Economics and Grad Diploma in Finance & Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia; and a Bachelor of Business majoring in accounting.  Robinson Sewell Partners; is an Agribusiness Debt Advisory firm that has settled in excess of $500,000,000 of transactions over the past 2.5 years.  

He is passionate about corporate finance and agribusiness investment. You can get in contact with Ian by visiting https://robinsonsewell.com.au/who-we-are/ian-robinson/ 

The discussions on this podcast are for general information and education use only. These discussions should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the either AgTalk, Marcus Oldham College or our guests. Marcus Oldham College, AgTalk or our podcasts guests are not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by listening to this podcast.

In this weeks episode we speak with Dr Frank Mitloehner

Dr. Frank Mitloehner is a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis. As such, he shares his knowledge and research, both domestically and abroad, with students, scientists, farmers and ranchers, policy makers, and the public at large.

He is passionate about understanding and mitigating air emissions from livestock operations, as well as studying the implications of these emissions on the health of farm workers and neighbouring communities. In addition, he is focusing on the food production challenge that will become a global issue as the world’s population grows to nearly 10 billion by 2050.

Frank is also director of the CLEAR Centre, which has two cores – research and communications. The CLEAR Centre brings clarity to the intersection of animal agriculture and the environment, helping our global community understand the environmental and human health impacts of livestock, so we can make informed decisions about the foods we eat and while reducing environmental impacts.

Frank received a Master of Science degree in animal science and agricultural engineering from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and a doctoral degree in animal science from Texas Tech University.

He was also awarded in 2019, the prestigious Borlaug CAST Communication Award for outstanding communication efforts in the field of agricultural field.

You can follow Frank (@AGHGGuru) on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/GHGGuru

It is my pleasure today to introduce to you Jason Trompf. Jason is the inaugural winner of the Marcus Oldham Flock Leader award, part of the Lambition awards that were kick of this year

Jason grew up on sheep properties and developed from an early age a passion of the Sheep Industry. I first ran into Jason many years ago when he was completing his PhD. What stuck out for me about that PhD and I believe has underpinned Jason journey to date has been around the issue of communication and the uptake of science in a practical setting.

One of Jason’s key abilities is to take science and make it understandable and usable for everyday farmers. To me this is such an important skill that we need to encourage if the industry is going to continue to move forward.

Jason has been a major driver in the sheep industry extension program having made a significant contribution to Life Time Ewe Management Course (Which I rate as one of the best course I have ever done) Bred Well Fed Well and now the founder of the Lambs Alive program whose core aim is lift production rates resulting in more profit and better welfare outcomes for the animals and the farmer. It brings together a large group of like-minded farmers who are keen to impact their lot in life by producing more from less.

Along with his wife Penny and her parents, He now manages a significant livestock enterprise near Glenrowan in north east Victoria, with 3000 ewes and 250 cows. This self-replacing high productivity operation provides him with a great practical background and a constant reality check with the challenges that all producers are facing on a day to day basis. A key focus for the last 10 years or more has been to improve lamb survival, with the flock now achieving 90% survival rates of fetuses scanned.

My guest speaker this week has had a very long and illustrious career in agriculture. Mike's ag management journey started out in Narrabri NSW where for thirty years He managed a cotton operation. In that time he was instrumental in the development of the Cotton industry Best management Practice guide. The Cotton Industry Best Management practice program is recognised as world leader in industry wide environmental programs.

Various industries have benefited from Mike’s experience. He was the Chief Executive Officer of Dairy Connect, Chairman of Cotton Research & Development Corporation and has served on the boards for numerous organisations, including the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation which delivers the ARLP.

In 2019 Mike Logan was recognised in the Australian honours as a Member of the Order of Australia for service to primary industry through rural research and sustainable development in the fields of cotton, dairy and water conservation.

Mike is now a Professional Advisory Board Chairman, Business Coach and Author.

You can buy a copy of Mike's book, "The Asking Leader", here.

One of the main themes running through this podcast series is the concept around good decision making. In this podcast episode, I want to explore decision making in a little bit more depth. To help me with this I am joined by Zoe Creelman

Zoe's a freelancing agriculturalist based in south west Victoria. She cut her teeth with Southern Farming Systems, working on the Grain and Graze project that looked at mixed farming practices.

Whilst working on the project, she completed her honours thesis looking at some of the complexities around making decisions on mixed farms, and contributed to the 'Decision Making book' published through the Grain and Graze project.

In recent years, her work has ranged from working with small scale producers, consulting with an environmental agency, making agricultural instructional videos, and working with a youth justice centre to incorporate farming in their vocational training of inmates.

The issue of leadership is an ever-increasing topic of discussion around the world especially in these times of covid. You often here someone say ‘All we need is better leadership and we wouldn’t be in this situation’.

But what is leadership? It’s a question that has interested me for a long time. Many years ago I was fortunate enough to be a participant in the Australian Rural Leadership Course. We were given several books to read most of which I have long forgotten about except for one in particular. 

That Book was called the Leadership Challenge written by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. What stood out for me about this book was that it, was evidence based and broke the concept of leadership down into tangible parts that frankly just made sense to a boy from the bush.

So today I want to introduce you to the Leadership Challenge as I believe it is a key resource in this area and one we use here at the College in our leadership course. To guide us through we are lucky to have Debbie Nicol join us who is  the Managing Director of Business en motion, based out of Dubai. 

Debbie is certified Master facilitator in the delivery of the Leadership Challenge content and has had over 28 years of experience in international human resources, organisational development and strategic change management.

Welcome to the Marcus Oldham AgTalk podcast. My guest this week is Dr Harm Van Rees.

In the early 1990s Harm began consulting to growers across the Victorian Wimmera and Mallee.

He became well known and highly regarded throughout the farming industry for his instrumental roles in the MEYCheck (Maximum Economic Yield) and Top Crop programs which were transformative in the 1990s in terms of driving understanding around production constraints such as water use efficiency and nitrogen management.

He was instrumental in the use of farmer groups in the region to assist farmers improving the understanding of crop and pasture production techniques. Bringing growers and researchers together to solve production issues was his focus.

In being awarded the GRDC2020 Excellence award the judges stated that “Cropping in that region of Victoria has come a long way thanks to Harm. And as a result, the community has benefited tremendously."

Join us this week as we discuss meat and wool commodity markets with Robert Herrmann .

Robert is the Managing Director of Mecardo, a specialist in agricultural advisory with a focus firmly on the financial enhancement of primary production and price risk management.

 Join us this week as we discuss meat and wool commodity markets with Robert Herrmann .

Robert is the Managing Director of Mecardo, a specialist in agricultural advisory with a focus firmly on the financial enhancement of primary production and price risk management.

The company was established by Robert in Adelaide in 1996 under the Ag Concepts Advisory brand. With a longstanding background in agriculture, Robert’s commitment was to deliver a high quality proactive risk analysis and management service to clients.

Robert has in excess of thirty years’ experience in agriculture, including eleven years as a senior wool specialist with Elders Ltd advising in the marketing and risk management of agricultural commodities. You can learn more about Mercardo here.

The discussions on this podcast are for general information and education use only. These discussions should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the either AgTalk, Marcus Oldham College or our guests.

Marcus Oldham College, AgTalk or our podcasts guests are not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by listening to this podcast.