Paddock Chat

Each year, the United Nations marks October 15th as the International Day of Rural Women. The day celebrates and honours women and girls living in rural areas. It recognizes the huge role that rural mothers, daughters and grandmothers play in producing food, and building agricultural and rural development worldwide. 

To mark this day, the WMG team have put together a special episode of PaddockChat.

On today's episode of PaddockChat,  the WMG team sat down with three incredible women; Debbie Dowden (Challa Station), Margi Weir (Executive Officer of the Southern Rangelands Pastoral Alliance) and Martha Lindstad (Yarrie Station) for a roundtable discussion about this day.

In this episode, we cover what this day means for us, our experiences as rural women, and how other women in the industry have shaped our careers, lives and communities!

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On this weeks episode of PaddockChat, Northern Agricultural Catchment Council NRMs Annabelle Garrett speaks to local farmer, Pip Bain.

They discuss Pip’s experience in the Agricultural industry, as well as what it means to farm sustainably. They also discuss cell grazing and the benefits that pasture management can have on feed availability for livestock. 

This discussion ties in with the BeefLinks Backgrounding Project, which is funded by MLA and UWA and is working to develop the northern beef cattle supply chain.

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We're previewing the biggest day of the WMG Calendar, Spring Field Day! WMG Executive Officer, Nathan Craig, walks us through the agenda of the event and what to expect for Spring Field Day. 

Guests on the podcast include: 
• Matt Willis from Bayer Crop Science presenting his work on optimum pre-emergent herbicide strategies
• Daniel Real who will be presenting his work on established crops at the field day in the main tent. 

The West Midlands Group 2021 Spring Field Day is on September 21st, and will showcase a packed agenda. Held at John and Emma Scotney's farm, 'Warialda', in Badgingarra, trial sites include break crop trials at the main site as well as the cereal site and Bayer herbicide site on Mungedar Road. 

The usual NVT's will be at the site - wheat, barley, oats, canola and lupin. These will be presented by Richard Devlin (Living Farm), Michael Hickey (Nuseed) and Dion Bennett (AGT) 

This year, West Midlands Group will be running concurrent sessions, to give attendees the opportunity to maximise value by choosing a personalised agenda that closest aligns with their interests. This allows attendees to focus on livestock, cropping, or mixed systems at their desire. There is truly something for everyone!

Topics for the day include: 
•  WMG pasture mixes and evaluation of soil biology below by Pauline Roberts
• Mike Ashworth from the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative will be sharing in the main tent how herbicides degrade in the West Midland region compared to other regions in WA. 
•  Mark Seymour will be on hand to present the evaluation of herbicide tolerance of break crops, including all the tadera, chickpea, lentil, faba beans, lupin, blue lupin to name a few. 
•  What's new in vetch varieties and their sustainability for our region. 
•  Soil amelioration: winter amelioration strategies to lower wind erosion potential, crop nutrition following amelioration
•  Cattle production with Erin O'Brien
• The keynote address for the day will be given by Cec McConnell who is the Soil and Land Commissioner and has been overseeing the development of the new Soil Health Strategy that is currently under development. 

All this, amongst more, will be followed by the Rabobank Sundowner!

Demonstrating new ideas, practices and technology will also be a big focus of this years Spring Field Day. 

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Today’s guest interviewer is Callum Love, Sustainable Agricultural co-ordinator with the Northern Agricultural Catchment Council (NACC). Callum recently caught up with Nick Eyres who has been an agronomist with Elders for nearly 5 years servicing the Midwest region of WA, mainly around the Geraldton and Mingenew areas. Nick also works closely with NACC and the Yuna Farm Improvement Group (YFIG) in many of their sustainable agriculture projects.

Callum and Nick explore some of the work with legumes in the low rainfall zones that has been recently completed between NACC and YFIG. Nick also shares his experience on his own farm, a 10-hectare property at Greenough, where tests all his new ideas for including legumes in the crop rotation.

Some of the interesting discussion points include:

·         Use of serradella to stabilise sandy soils

·         Use of legumes to improve the benefits of soil amelioration

·         What are the risks in growing alternative legumes?

·         What does sustainability really mean?

For more information visit:

Northern Agricultural Catchment Councill (NACC)

https://www.nacc.com.au/

The Northern Agricultural Region NRM strategy

https://narvis.com.au

Yuna Farm Improvement Group

https://www.yfig.org.au/

Support the show (https://www.wmgroup.org.au/become-member)

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Are you seeing a lot of grasshoppers and locusts on your farm this year? After reports of high grasshopper numbers in the area, Paddock Chat decided to chat with DPIRD entomologist Svetlana Micic to learn more about what's going on.

Local farmer Will Browne also joins the pod to talk about what he's seeing on the ground, and get advice on controlling grasshoppers for this local area.

Topics covered include:
• What is the difference between a grasshopper and a locust
• How to identify the different types of grasshopper
• Which species are present in our area at this time of the year
• How to control locusts and grasshoppers 

Emergency Permits: https://apvma.gov.au/
DPIRD: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/

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On this episode of Paddock Chat, we're tackling the topic of farm safety again. Returning guest Maree Gooch will break down and simplify the steps needed to start the process of implementing a good health and safety strategy in your business. 

We also preview the new ‘Green card for Ag safety’ which is now available to agricultural businesses to guide employees in the basic safety practices needed for your business.

Our guest, Maree Gooch is from SafeFarmsWA. She returns to the podcast after her previous episode,   "Farm safety to protect your people and your business" took a deep dive into why we need health and safety plans. 

This episode slices the topic of farm safety down into easily digestible chunks so that you can finally make a start on your health and safety plan!

If this episode is useful to you, be sure to revisit ‘Keys for a safe and successful harvest’ with Mark Drake. In that episode, Mark goes through the key steps in the implementation of a health and safety program within his own farming operation



Useful Links:

Visit the SafeFarms WA website: https://safefarms.net.au/

Your free downloadable 30 minute checklist for your business https://safefarms.net.au/p/safe-farms-checklist 

Support what we do and become a member https://wmgroup.org.au/index.php/become-member 

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Today on Paddock Chat we are talking all things feed budgeting! 

This episode continues on from our previous episode, where we caught up with Murray Grey who farms with his wife Adele, and father-in-law Colin in Yathroo. They run a cattle operation in conjunction with their family’s pastoral station in the West Pilbara. Murray is passionate about optimising feed and works hard to budget available feed accurately throughout the year.

Murray unpacked their operation, and discussed his golden rules for grazing management.

This conversation was recorded in early May 2021.

Useful resources:
Feed Budget and Rotation Planner (MLA)

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Today on Paddock Chat we are talking all things feed budgeting! 

We caught up with Murray Grey who farms with his wife Adele, and father-in-law Colin in Yathroo. They run a cattle operation in conjunction with their family’s pastoral station in the West Pilbara. Murray is passionate about optimising feed and works hard to budget available feed accurately throughout the year.

Murray unpacked their operation, giving us an insight into how exactly they budget feed, and the improvement they have made to pastures and feed sources on-farm.

This conversation was recorded in early May 2021.

Useful Resources
Feed Budget and Rotation Planner (MLA)

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Today on Paddock Chat we caught up with Danelle Smith, who is the manager of the Moora RSM branch, to discuss the upcoming changes to the superannuation payment scheme. These changes are some of the first since the inception of the current scheme in 1992.

Useful Resources
https://www.ato.gov.au/super/apra-regulated-funds/in-detail/apra-resources/superannuation-changes-industry-roadmap/

Get in Touch
RSM Moora - (08) 9651 1606

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Today on Paddock Chat we caught up with Andrew Kenny who farms a mixed enterprise of cropping and sheep with his family in Badgingarra. The Kenny's use crop grazing during the season as a way of maintaining high stocking rates. Andrew runs us through the benefits, the constraints and the management that goes into crop grazing. We also chatted about their experience with ultrasound preg scanning ewes. It’s a tool the Kenny’s have been using for a long time and they’re now considering the next steps and new technologies that could boost flock production.

Useful Resources

Get in Touch

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