9 October 2009

SUBJECTS: Reef Rescue program

E&OE

ADAM STEPHEN: The Federal Minister is touring North Queensland this week checking out whether Government funding to improve farming practice is getting the desired result.

Tony Burke is visiting farms which received a slice of the $200 million Reef Rescue package, which aims to reduce chemical and nutrient run-off reaching the Great Barrier Reef.

Minister Burke says he’s been very impressed with how the first round of funding has been spent.

TONY BURKE: I’ll get into trouble with the rest of the country for saying this, but it’s the best stuff I’ve seen. I haven’t seen anything come close to this. And it’s not because I haven’t seen good work in the rest of the country, but what’s happening up here at the moment brings all the threads together.

You’ve got the best technology; you’ve got absolute precision equipment being purchased on some of the cane farms, for example, that I saw out of Mackay; and you also have a situation where they end up with almost no paperwork because of the nature of their electronic systems.

And at the end of it, what they are doing for their business? They’re making money as a result of it.

What are they doing for the reef? There’s a whole lot less run-off.

ADAM STEPHEN: Does that make it a good investment in your opinion, the money that’s going towards grants for farmers?

TONY BURKE: It’s a terrific investment, what’s happening. I’ll give you an example of a piece of equipment that I had a look at a couple of days ago, back on Wednesday. Now, this is out at North Eton, not too far out of Mackay, and they’ve got new equipment that they’ve installed in some of the tractors called AgDat.

When they’re putting chemical fertiliser or nutrients over the land, the GPS connects directly to the paddock and knows exactly when the soil type changes. You have precision as to when the nutrients go out the back. They are using a quarter of what they used to use.

Because the equipment is being set specifically to the paddock, it gets recorded electronically and is automatically downloaded every hour. They don’t even need to press the button.

So for the records they need to keep for the Government grant, it’s all done automatically. They’re using a quarter of the inputs they used to use; there’s less to run off and there’s less for them to pay for.

Now, if you’re looking for win-win outcomes, you don’t find many as good as this.

ADAM STEPHEN: Is there more money to come this year? Because I know a number of farmers are disappointed that they missed out on the first rounds of funding.

TONY BURKE: I’ve got to say, as problems to have, I don’t reckon you’d get a better problem than that: when you’ve got more people wanting to participate than they can in any year.

The nature of the funding is for many farms and it’s run, a lot of it, through the local natural resource management bodies. The opportunities happen each year for people to get involved again if they haven’t got involved the previous year.

And its one of those classic situations in agriculture where you get a few people, early starters, getting involved right at the beginning, and then a whole lot of people look over their fence and reckon, yeah, I could do that too.

ADAM STEPHEN: That’s Federal Agricultural Minister Tony Burke in North Queensland this week.

ENDS

DAFF09/166T

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