User Profile

Andrew Mole

Nanotechnology’s big play in flystrike war

It’s summer in a fortnight – and it’s been hot in plenty of places already. And for sheep breeders and woolgrowers across northwest Victoria that means one thing – flystrike. Particularly if we end up with another wet spell through December...

25 Nov 2024

Dryland Farming

Dont get wild about oats, get their measure

WIDESPREAD across most of Victoria, wild oats are a common weed of cereal crops, pastures, roadsides and waste places, including the margins of swamps, lakes and streams. The Mallee – like most Victorian cropping areas – is confronted with weed...

21 Nov 2024

North West Farmer

App connects AI and almonds

SUNRAYSIA’S almond industry is big business – and now it’s going to be helped into the future by something as simple as an app. With the backing of the Almond Board of Australia, GoMicro has launched a phone app putting, it said, precise...

21 Nov 2024

Opinion

Press releases, potholes and bureaucratic bull

THERE I was, sitting in the editor’s office at the local newspaper the other day. Mind you, I say editor and office with a slight tongue in the cheek as he is also the journalist, the advertising manager and receptionist. Hey, I live near a small...

21 Nov 2024

North West Farmer

Why Wyndham Station is no carbon copy of a pipedream

People are pretty pragmatic out in the pastoral country. It’s big country which can have big problems – but also big rewards. Where no day, season or year is ever the same. Right now at Wyndham Station, on the anabranch, north of Wentworth, it’s...

20 Nov 2024

Citrus, Stone Fruit & Nuts

Poh, Murray add almonds glitz

NEW Australian Almonds ambassador Poh Ling Yeow will add an element of glitz as the industry pushes hard to increase its market share this year. The Almond Board of Australia has gone nuts about her appointment and the high-profile celebrity chef...

18 Nov 2024

North West Farmer

There are very few who are busier

When it comes to Sunraysia horticulture, no matter how big the business, much of it is incredibly reliant on one of the smallest inputs available. The bee. More precisely, the incredibly efficient and effective European honeybee (Apis mellifera).Which...

18 Nov 2024

Dryland Farming

Free spray day for Mallee farmers

NATIONAL peak industry body GrainGrowers are teaming up with the Birchip Cropping Group to stage a free spray application for Mallee producers on Tuesday. The workshop will be headed by Craig Day from Spray Safe & Save, who has been running spray...

09 Nov 2024

Education

Filling gaps for a farming future

NARRAPORT’S Bill Lee took a fairly short round trip on his way to a Bachelor of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne and back to the family farm. He took a gap year where he spent six months working on the farm and another...

19 Oct 2024

Opinion

You protest too much, methinks

THE old Whacker has been known to make the odd protest or two over the years (very odd, some have suggested).Such as the times (and this is an ongoing almost-annual outrage) the local agent tells me my selling fees have to go up. Again. Then there was...

19 Oct 2024

Livestock

Broad-ribbon bonanza for Tamaleuca

OUYEN-based Poll Merino stud Tamaleuca is on a roll. Coming off the back of a rock-solid annual on-property ram sale in August, it has now swept through the showring at the Adelaide Royal and come home with the reserve grand champion Poll Merino...

19 Oct 2024

Dryland Farming

Farming a fair-dinkum balancing business

THERE was a critical message for participants at the 2024 Birchip Cropping Group’s Main Field Day at Nullawil, south of Robinvale, this week. Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre chief economist Professor Ross Kingwell told them “the most...

19 Oct 2024