Gerri the NVT Guru breaks down Australian grain farming's biggest problem: weeds cost the sector $3 billion a year out of $13.5 billion total. Bayer is testing new herbicides in Australia, while farmers are betting on automation and driverless tractors to cut costs and manage regional challenges from crown rot to acidic soils.
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Look, when we talk to growers through our regional panels and through our regional cropping solution groups, weeds always come up as one of the top three issues that growers are grappling with. It's not just controlling weeds more increasingly, it's about herbicide resistance and chemicals just not working any longer. The cost of weeds to Australian grain growers is about $3 billion in the 13.5 billion dollar sector. So it's really substantial in looking at how we might go about developing new herbicides. Obviously, Australia is a tiny marketplace, costs something like $250 million to get one new Active to market. The deal that we've done with Bayer lifts Australia up to a tier one country. So the weeds that we do our first selections on in the laboratories with these tiny amounts of new Actives are done on Australian weeds. The very first screening in the field will be done here in Australia. Our vision for this project is that Australian grain growers will be amongst the first in the world to get access to new Actives once they're discovered. We try and develop a balanced portfolio of our investment. So we're looking, we invest about 20% of our budget in what we call short term projects, demonstration and delivery of solutions that growers can take up in their paddocks. Straight away. About 40% is what we call medium term, so five to eight year farming systems, crop protection type projects, and then we've got about 40% of our portfolio in the longer term. Game changer disruptive technologies. To me, when I look to the future, the one that really excites me is what's happening in automation and robotics and driverless tractors. And I think some of the real opportunities with some of these technologies is simply going to be with the one work unit. We're going to be able to significantly increase the area that a farmer can actually manage. And that's pretty exciting. The southern region has enormous opportunities, I believe, in the high rainfall zone where growers have converted from cattle production over to grain. And because it's higher rainfall, they've got enormous yield potentials which we still haven't been able to truly capture. So R and D is going to be critical to getting those really delivering on those yield potentials that we know exist in those higher rainfall zones. So to me, in the southern region, they're the two really exciting parts of the business. In the northern region, the challenge is you've got both summer and winter crops and getting that rotation right. We're seeing at the moment some enormous opportunities with chickpeas because the price of chickpeas at the moment is at a historic high and we're seeing a lot of chickpeas go in in the north also controlling diseases, particularly crown rot in wheat. It's a big challenge getting the rotations right to be able to manage diseases. Root borne diseases like crown rot is very important. In the West I guess some of the challenges are similar. Again, herbicide resistance is big. The west obviously has some pretty challenging soil problems. Acidity obviously is one and non wetting soils is a big one that we come up against. That needs a lot of work. The most exciting thing about this industry is the willingness and the preparedness of growers to actually take an interest in RD and take up the results of that R and D on their farms. So that's it for in the field. Let's hope that we get some good planning rains and that we end up with another great season here right across Australia. Cheers for now.
