10 September 2008
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Tony Burke
Farmers from Emerald, QLD - Ross and Craig Burnett
Tony: G’day it’s Tony. I’m out in Emerald at a property I previously visited during the Emerald floods. We’re a few months on now and a couple of the farmers who work here are part of the family farm are with me now. Ross and Craig Burnett, G’day thanks for having a chat. Thanks for having a talk. So you’ve seen in the last 12 months prolonged drought, massive flood and now recovery. How’s the change in the landscape over that time?
Ross: Dramatic Tony, I guess seeing one extreme to the other, cattle struggling, and pastures depleted and not enough water to grow our crops. And now we’ve got plenty of water and opportunities to go ahead and make the most of it so quite exciting time from now on.
Tony: How prolonged was the drought, Craig, before the floods came?
Craig: Oh it was a good yeah couple, three years or so, but there’s been stretches of good periods in there too. But just particularly before the drought, before the flood, it was yeah very dry and we didn’t have any crops in at all and the flood came and yeah it took a lot of the top soil away.
Tony: So how long did it take—because when I was here the flood waters had just started to subside on their way up to Rockhampton—how long did it take before you could actually start some farming again?
Craig: Oh it wasn’t for another three months, yeah close to three months ‘cause the flood water left a lot of sticky, heavy mud behind an it was just difficulty in all the country.
Tony: And what was the, what was the first to go back into the soil? We got another generation here, which one, is this one of yours?
Craig: Yeah, yeah, that’s May.
Craig: Yeah, the first to go in the soil was the wheat or the fertiliser for the wheat and then the wheat.
Tony: Ok.
Craig: And we’ve got 250 hectares of wheat at the moment.
Tony: Ok.
Craig: Being irrigated.
Tony: Close to harvest time now?
Craig: Yeah about a month away from harvest and it’s all shaping up—that was in country that was under water six or seven months ago.
Tony: How deep did the water get for you?
Ross: Over some of the country it was a couple of metres deep…
Tony: Couple of metres deep.
Ross: …for an extended period of time, it was sorghum that that was about to go into flower and it was totally washed away. There was nothing remaining after the flood water resided so it was quite devastating.
Tony: So is the, is the optimism back now?
Craig: Oh yeah, now there’s water in the ground, yeah, things have improved a lot.
Tony: When I go to different properties one of the one of the things that people often talk to me about is how hard it is to get young people to come back and see a see a future on the farm. What made the decision for yourselves?
Craig: Just the opportunity to, yeah, to have a go. There was a succession when dad was looking at doing different things, in AgForce and stuff.
Ross: I think we had the opportunity there, we were fortunate enough. It’s not easy to get into agriculture, but I think there’s exciting times ahead for the younger generation, there’s a lot of opportunities to be taken advantage of, so hopefully it’ll work out for the best.
Tony: Ok, well all the best with that, Ross and Craig, thank you very much.