Paul Kelly, a farmer from Minganu (~400 km north of Perth, ~30 km from the coast, ~450 mm rainfall), describes his role on the GRDC Western Regions panel and his farm operations (wheat, lupins—including GM GT albus lupins—canola, coriander). He has completed two two-year panel terms and started a third, and served with the Mingnoor group (vice-chair). The Western Panel (~10 members mixing farmers and industry/academics) collects farmer ideas and funnels them to Canberra; the RCSN complements this by sourcing views from five port zones (15 members each). Recurring regional problems are non-wetting soils, weeds, and soil acidity; local trials (spading, mouldboard, ploughing) and GRDC investments address these issues. Overall tone endorses GRDC investment as well spent.
Chapters
My name's Paul Kelly, I'm a farmer from Minganu, about 400 kilometres north of Perth. I'm also a member of the Western Panel of GRDC and I've done two full terms. Two two year terms, sorry. And I've just started my third two year term. We live in a fairly nice sort of area. We're about only 30km from the coast. We're in a 450mil rainfall. We grow a variety of crops and we have including wheat, lupins, canola, including GM GT albus lupins and we grow coriander. We've also tried many other things as we have a lot of water under our farm and we have many different soil types. So I've been a member of the Mingnoor group. I've done two terms on that and the last term was I was vice chairman. The role of the Western Regions panel is extremely important. It's made up of 10 members, about usually five or six farmers and the rest of the guys from industry. Guys or girls from industry. We have professors, we have PhDs, some real hard nut business type people as well. If we had only academics it would be a disaster. If we had only farmers it would be a disaster. We have a good mix of a well functioning panel. I see my main role as a panel member is gathering ideas of my peers and other local farmers and we bring these ideas back to the panel and they get progress and they get sent through to Canberra and end up as major investments. In the last four years the RCSN Regional Cropping Solutions Network has been brought on board and that gathers farmers views from all around the state. There's five different port zones in the state and they were 15 members on each panel from each port zone. And these guys channel their ideas to us, we dissect them and then channel them through to Canberra. Of the five port zones that I've mentioned with the RCSN in four of the regions the non wetting came up as a severe problem. Weeds is always the other big problem that keeps you awake at night and soil acidity and we are addressing them. It's a long term thing but we will get there in the end. With non wetting we are doing a lot of spading trials, mouldboard trials, one way, plough trials. We are getting around those problems. Weeds. We're going to be chasing weeds forever. That's what we do. But all in all I think the investment GRDC puts in is a fantastic investment and yeah, your levies are getting well spent.
