Lighting a fire in WA

SALT PANS SCATTERED ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE IN WA

Louisa and I flew to Western Australia to speak at the Western Australia No Till Farming Association conference at Perth (outside Perth at the Vines Resort). We flew over a drought ravaged land with thin ground cover or none. We landed to meet some of the most courageous people we have ever met. More than half the farmers in the West are facing the last throw of the dice in the coming season. Dr Tim Wiley of the Department of Agriculture said we lit a fire in WA about soil carbon. It is now top of the agenda for WANTFA. (Shades of NZ. BTW, we didn't light a fire with the Ministry of Ag in NZ re the tender. We missed out. Sadly, it appears the Kiwis have delivered the project to the scientists, which is the kiss of death for a market mechanism to emerge.)

With the mulesing issue burning hot after the latest blunder by the wool industry, we spent a day working on marketing strategies with the Multi Purpose Merino breeders group. These innovators have developed a wrinkle-free sheep that needs no mulesing. (We have bought 9 MPM rams to breed mulesing out of our flock.) One of those breeders is Bob McFarlane, the man behind CharleyCarp, the fertiliser made from the caro that are destroying our waterways. He is a man of ideas.

We were also honoured to address a gathering of progressive farmers at the Department of Agriculture in Geraldton, thanks to Jane Bradly. While there we saw a presentation by Bob Wilson of Evergreen Consulting on his experiments with perennial grasses and tagasaste.
The perennials scored 23 tonnes CO2e/Ha more than the annual pasture and the Tagasaste 67 tonnes CO2e. (Samples were taken from deep sands under an old annual pasture, a 3 ½ year old Rhodes grass stand and an 18 year old tagasaste stand in adjoining paddocks.) The hand emerging from the gloom is Bob's.