33 years on, back where it began
There is something even more special than usual about this year’s BCG Main Field Day.
When we gather at Curyo next week, we’ll be doing so on the farm of one of the people who helped get this whole thing started, BCG Life Member Trevor “Waffle” Grogan.
Thirty-three years ago, in September 1993, Waffle, Ian McClelland, John Ferrier, John Jones and a group of local farmers were part of something that, at the time, was really just an idea: what if we did agricultural research here, in our soils, under our conditions, answering the questions local farmers actually wanted answered?
More than 500 people turned up to that first field day.
It is interesting. To reflect on what they came to see. Canola and lentils were new crops being demonstrated in the southern Mallee. Variety performance mattered. Chemical effects on crops were being tested. The questions were practical, local and driven by farmers.
And perhaps even more remarkably, 1993 was a wet year.
So, 33 years later, with paddocks across our region carrying enormous potential following another wet winter, there is a nice symmetry in the Field Day’s returning to Waffle’s farm.
Of course, the questions have changed. Next week we will be talking about nitrogen decisions and yield potential, soil constraints, new genetics, herbicide use, integrated pest management, autonomous technology and hay production. The science has become more sophisticated, the technology almost unrecognisable and BCG’s research footprint now extends right across north-west Victoria.
Even so, the reason we gather has changed hardly at all.
Farmers still want to stand in a paddock, see something for themselves, question the researcher, compare experiences with the person beside them and work out: is this applicable to my farm?
That was the spirit of BCG in 1993, and it remains the spirit of Main Field Day today.
I think Waffle would be the first to say he could never have imagined where that first field day might lead. But perhaps that is the best part of the story. BCG wasn’t built from a grand plan. It was built by farmers prepared to ask questions, offer paddocks for science, have a go and share what they learnt.
Next Wednesday, 9th September, we get to do it all over again.
See you there.
Fiona
