What a summer of extremes!
First, we had the big rainfall before Christmas which flooded a few houses in Birchip and got us all scrambling onto the sprayers before we went away for the holidays (perhaps a bit early judging by the heliotrope scattered in the paddocks when we got home).
Our family headed to Tasmania which took us out of the sweltering heat of the last two weeks of January only to chase bushfires across the Apple Isle. Sad to think that some of the beautiful Huon pine forests we walked through and marvelled at have now been decimated. I wonder how that platypus we saw in the creek at Geeveston is coping with the hot embers falling his way.
Whilst we enjoyed the cool and the forests, the Mallee and Wimmera experienced relentless heat and from all reports the local lakes and rivers provided a cool refuge to all and sundry. I might be biased but thank goodness for the pipeline.
Many of you will know our friends Lynk and Eliza McClelland who farmed in Culgoa for 15 years. They’ve just moved to Townsville where they are experiencing their second one in one-hundred-year flood (the first one of course being in the Mallee in 2010). That time, most of Culgoa township was underwater but thankfully their farmhouse was safe. They have their furniture piled up on the second floor of their new home, so here’s hoping their belongings once again stay dry.
Recognition of the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events and their impacts is finally becoming more widespread. It’s almost ten years since I did a survey of extreme weather events on the Sunraysia and Swan Hill horticulture industries in one of my last tasks with the state government.
I am about to start a leadership course with Grain Growers Limited around our ‘social licence’ to farm and as part of that I identified climate change and social licence as two of the most important challenges we farmers face in the future. With so few Australians involved in agriculture and hence the understanding of farming practices very low, our social licence is not as certain as it once was when our sheep carried the nation on its back. When extreme weather impacts everyone, then maybe people not involved with agriculture will gain some insight into what it is like for farmers, managing the vagaries and variabilities of our climate.
Time for a change
(taking Chris’s example, here’s a link to my favourite change song, ‘Ann’s song’ by Tiddas)
Each year, as my daughter’s birthday approaches in February, I recall the letter waiting for me when we came home with our newborn Sophie from the hospital; would I be interested in applying for the BCG board?
Soph’s about to turn 12 and I’ve just stepped down as BCG Chairman after seven amazing years. I’m staying on the board and I look forward to working further with our new Chairman John Ferrier. Carrying on the baton from Ian McClelland was a huge honour and challenge for me, mostly because of the incredibly high esteem and respect so many people have for the Birchip Cropping Group, its people, its science, its community, its impact and reach.
We recently received an email from an agronomist who worked in the Mallee in the nineties when BCG was just starting out. He dropped us a line of congratulations last month, and his words ring true for me “I look at the work BCG has been able to deliver over the years and I am amazed, excited and humbled by the success of BCG. Keep focussed on the future and never under estimate the social and technical value of the BCG work.”
