Provenance Magazine Vol #2 2021 by Reef Catchments NRM

MACKAY WHITSUNDAY ISAAC

Vol.2 2021

/’pr v( )n ns/ noun the place of origin or earliest known history of something. synonyms: origin, source, place of origin; the beginning of something’s existence; something’s origin. “they try to understand the whole universe, its provenance and fate”

Provenance magazine was created and produced at Reef Catchments by Juliane Kasiske, Tegan McBride and Jonathan Reichard. This project is jointly supported by Reef Catchments, through funding from the Australian Government National Landcare Program, Queensland Government Reef Water Quality Program, and Mackay Regional Council, Whitsunday Regional Council and Isaac Regional Council.

The momentum for local food is strong and we are delighted to share the second volume of Provenance Magazine. The story of how food is produced in the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region is about innovation, communities working together and the journey into regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture has the potential to pull carbon from the atmosphere and back into our soils, improve productivity, water quality and curb climate change. Reef Catchments acknowledges the Traditional Owners of this land, past and present. We acknowledge their spiritual and cultural connection and their responsibility to maintain and care for country. - Tegan McBride

p 04 — Yensch Farming p 06 — Myrtlevale Fingerlimes p 08 — The Creek Whitsundays

p 44 — Andrew Barfield

p 10 — Janes Creek

p 46 — Clermont Showground and Saleyards

p 12 — Blue River Microgreens p 14 — Bowen Fisherman Seafood Company & Bird’s Fish Bar

p 48 — Little’s Mobile Butchering p 50 — Meat on Shakespeare

p 16 — BeeGood Wax Wraps

p 52 — P&K Mifsud Dryland Farms

p 18 — Attard Brothers

p 54 — Soul Food Market Mackay

p 20 — Hold’s Fruit and Vegies

p 56 — Tastes From Africa

p 22 — Signature Beef

p 58 — Tricky Pig

p 24 — Water Kefir Mackay

p 60 — Paths to Sustainability

p 26 — Artisan Bakehouse

p 62 — Black Coffee Indigenous Business Network

p 28 — Swift River Distillery p 30 — E3C Heritage Hens p 32 — Australian Prawn Farms p 34 — Kuttabul Abattoir p 36 — Australian Indigenous Grasstrees and Wildflowers

p 63 — Deadly Weavers p 64 — WixStix p 66 — Mifsud’s Fresh p 68 — You are what you eat p 70 — Whitsunday Mushrooms

p 78 — Mt Spencer Pastoral p 80 — Salisbury Plains Grazing Co - Glen Isla cane farm p 82 — Sandy Creek project p 84 — Clarke Creek Aboriginal Corporation p 86 — Bob Harris p 88 — Organisations - Get involved p 90 — Markets - Get involved p 92 — JW Livestock p 94 — Reef Trust IV p 96 — Grazing Goat Cafe p 98 — Slabswell Macadamias

p 38 — Clima(c)tic

p 72 — Bogandilla

p 40 — Parry Family - Blair Plains

p 74 — Tassal Group

p 100 — Principles of regenerative agriculture

p 42 — Masterbeef

p 76 — JCS Enterprises

p 102 — Contributors

Yensch Farming

WHITSUNDAY GRAZIERS Sharon and Mark Yensch are the first to say they don’t farm cattle. They farm grass, they farm water and the rest follows.

their season by a minimum of two months. A recent analysis done by RCS Australia found that for every dollar spent, they enjoy a three-dollar return.

Since purchasing 2350 ha near Bowen 14 years ago, the pair have dramatically shifted their management focus and priorities.

But one of the biggest benefits? More time and a simpler life on the land they love.

Investing in swales to keep water where they want it (on the land and in the soil) the Yensches have seen their pasture and soil come to life with a simpler, more sustainable approach. Now, less water leaves their property and ‘drought-proof’ is not a buzzword — it’s a living reality. “When we purchased the place it was like cement,” recalls Sharon. “Now we don’t need to say, ‘when’s the wet season going to start?’. We don’t have that anxiety, because we have buffered ourselves.” A swale is intelligent farming at its best. Effectively a ditch built on a contour, swales catch water and hold it in place until it absorbs into the ground. From an environmental perspective, that also means less soil and runoff to the Great Barrier Reef and surrounding waterways.

“Life from a management perspective has gotten easier. Without a doubt we could say that swales are something any landholder could utilise. You can’t multiply rainfall, but you can multiply your water-keeping ability and penetration – and that is significant.” A variety of around 70 native trees were planted to provide shade for cattle. The Yensches have undertaken the Savory Institute program and work with RCS Australia to implement tailored holistic property management. Learning has made such an impact to their lives, farm and business that they are in the process of creating a facility for education and training on their property. This is not only another diversification strategy, but a way to give to other graziers the opportunity to learn the practical ways to drought-proof their land.

“People do use them all over the world and Australians should be on this journey,” Mark says. “For us, it has been a complete game changer. We have seen that water can be continual and available all year round, not just in big rain events.”

Yensch Farming: 16 km south of Bowen. 2350 ha and up to 500 head of Greyman. 800 to 1000 mm rainfall per year, which falls intensely in a two-month period.

The Yensches have made small to very large swales. “We’ve built them with shovels and backhoes, with graders and dozers. Put in correctly, even the little ones hydrate the landscape effectively,” says Sharon. Mark says the swales, along with other methods like rotational stocking and fencing more paddocks, have seen them extend

WATER CAPTURE AND STORAGE ROTATIONAL GRAZING DIVERSIFICATION

September 2018

April 2019

Myrtlevale Fingerlimes

MANAGING NATURAL resources is central to long-term sustainability of human populations: farmers understand this all too well. A third-generation farmer, Mark Blair has grown sugarcane for 42 years, until recently succeeding to his son and has dedicated most of that time to resource management. “I was involved in Landcare for 20 years and I’ve worked with Reef Catchments and Project Catalyst to improve my land management for over a decade.”

Not ready to retire, Mark’s lifelong interest in Australian native plants now provides him with ‘something different’, keeping him actively engaged in farming. “I’ve always looked for something that was commercially viable to grow. When finger limes became popular, I did some research and we got five varieties to trial in 2017, to see how they’d go.” Proving successful, Mark has since focused on three varieties that have performed the best - Chartreuse, Byron Sunrise and Red Champagne. “Finger limes don’t like wet feet, so we mounded the ground to plant them. They’re a citrus so they do like NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium), especially when they flower. Other than that, it’s just a matter of weeding and remaining vigilant for disease.”

Mark has looked at more natural fertilisers, however he has not yet found the right cost effective solution. For now, he uses a granulated product. Being a native citrus, it also requires less chemical input to control pests and disease. “I don’t use any chemical sprays. Apart from the odd grasshopper or caterpillar having a chew, they’re relatively pest free. Being citrus they can get Phytophthora (root rot), so you do have to keep an eye out for signs of that.” With culinary demand for the finger lime vesicles high prior to COVID-19, local Whitsunday restaurants were the primary consumers. Changing tactics, Mark set up a roadside stall to sell directly to the public. “We’ve had great success. I can hardly keep up with the demand. They’re so versatile, we use them on fish

and in desserts, they’re great in ice-cream. You can also mix them with your carbonated drinks – the vesicles float up and down, creating a visual delight and they burst in your mouth, very refreshing.” Producing 700 kg in 2020, the 700 trees are yet to reach their full potential, securing his plan to expand. “They’re grafted onto mature citrus root stock so within the first year they set fruit and after four years are in full production (10 kg each). When fully mature they will produce approximately 20 kg per tree.” Continually innovating, Mark is applying for a food licence to process the fruit into a frozen product for retail. Fresh fruit has a shelf life of one week, so this initiative would extend that substantially. “Restaurants will be able to store it longer and just use what they needed. The vesicles freeze well, maintaining their taste and pop. It’s a labourintensive process to remove the seeds, but I’ve found a way of doing it.” A member of the Greater Whitsunday Food Network, Mark has found the sharing of information extremely helpful. He is involved in local foodie events and when approached by a tour guide in 2019, hosted visitors who tried fresh sugarcane and his finger limes. “We had a busload of tourists off a cruise ship with 40 people who were very interested in how we grow sugar and finger limes.” With restaurants slowly re-opening, Mark hopes the interest will continue.

To find out more, go to myrtlevalefingerlimes.com.au

0429 629 337 or admin@myrtlevalefingerlimes.com.au

DIVERSIFICATION DIRECT TO CONSUMER SALES VALUE-ADD EXTENDS SHELF LIFE

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The Creek Whitsundays

THE CREEK WHITSUNDAYS truly is a memorable destination located just outside Airlie Beach. Besides it’s stunning country location, The Creek is a chemical free, 800 acre working farm which follows regenerative farming practices. Ben and Jodie Ferdiand purchased the 690 ha property in 2011: the land had seen years of heavy grazing. Since then, the Ferdinands installed 14 km of both land and

MEMBER 08

riparian fencing, together with off-stream watering points to enable them to rotate their cattle, giving the landscape a chance to recover during rotational rest periods. Stabilising erosion gullies on the farm and conserving soil was achieved through the planting of trees and the introduction of improved ground cover species. The installation of swales slowed down wet season rainfall to allow it to be retained and slowly infiltrate plants

protecting the soil surface and holding soil particles in place. Most importantly, time-controlled grazing rotations enable the Ferdinands to effectively manage ground cover on all paddocks, allowing the landscape to heal from years of overgrazing. Overall, the Ferdinands have been able to transform their farm into a local gem that is now a popular function venue and community education hot spot. It’s Jodie’s mission to share her learnings with the local community, especially our future leaders and protectors of the environment. The Creek provides a platform for the community to learn about the ecological functions of nature in a farm setting, providing an insight into holistic farming practices based on nature’s cycles and its systems’ interconnected relationships.

To find out more, go to thecreekwhitsundays.com.au

0438 750 282 or events@thecreekwhitsundays.com.au

ROTATIONAL GRAZING DIVERSIFICATION OF FARM INCOME COMMUNITY EDUCATION

Janes Creek

MAINTAINING A healthy ecosystem though the catchment means that the Gooseponds should be kept clean, and this was the aim of a recent waterway health project run by Reef Catchments. As an innovative whole-of-system initiative, the Janes Creek project contacted the land managers along the creek, to increase awareness of the pollutants present in the waterways and discuss the different practices that might assist improvements. That included eight sugarcane growers, five cattle graziers, four harvesting contractors and formed the Janes Creek Catchment Group. Staff from Reef Catchments, alongside Mackay Area Productivity Service (MAPS) worked with farmers to take water samples (especially through the ‘first flushes’ of the wet season) and create strategies for improving farm runoff by reducing fine sediments, pesticides and nutrients flowing into the Gooseponds and on to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. Cane grower Peter Schembri (pictured right) was assisted to dig out a sediment chain of ponds in line with a degraded existing cane drain on his property. “The sediment train is a series of holes with rock walls in between. The idea is that the water goes from a shallow drain into a deep hole, and by the time it runs out the bottom it has done that three times so it can drop sediment, fertiliser and chemicals, so we can hold it here instead of letting it go out to the reef. Water quality and saving the reef go hand in hand.” Alan Atkinson, a Janes Creek grazier, was assisted to create concrete crossings for his cattle which were trampling the bank. “I wanted to stop the erosion along the creek banks where the cattle cross. I wanted the crossings concreted to stop erosion along the bank from sending more dirt down to the Gooseponds,” he said. Longer term outcomes are the ongoing relationships between these land managers as part of a catchment community and their relationship with the creek at their doorstep. The Janes Creek catchment landholders’ project was a two-year Queensland Government funded water quality improvement project.

You might notice the water fountains as you drive north on the highway near the Mount Pleasant turn off. In 2019, Mackay Regional Council installed water aerators to help oxygenate the water and avoid potential fish deaths seen in previous years as a result of high nutrient loads in the water.

REGENERATIVE GRAZING DIVERSIFYING FARM INCOME STREAM COMMUNITY EDUCATION

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Blue River Microgreens

DON’T BE fooled by the lack of a tractor and a big straw hat – Naomi Rays is a new breed of urban farmer. The Mackay mother-of-two has embarked on a sustainable agriculture journey literally in her own backyard, this year converting a garage into a specialised grow room for nutrient dense, hand-grown artisanal microgreens, edible leaves and flowers. It’s part of a new frontier of food production that focuses on low food miles and a ‘closed loop’ system that helps ensure nothing is wasted. “I was born into a farm-to-table food culture on a dairy farm in New Zealand. There was a big focus on self-sufficiency and the joy of food,” Naomi explains. “I wanted to create and share that. A lot of people here travel to get that foodie experience but we should be able to have it closer to home. Mackay is ready!”

“There’s been a lot of interest and I’m so grateful to the community for that support. I want people to know there is an alternative closer than 900 km away. We grow microgreens in the heart of Mackay that can be cut fresh and delivered in a matter of hours.” Naomi’s urban and indoor space comes with a plethora of environmental benefits. It’s solar powered, requires less room, and eliminates the need for pest chemical management and sprays. The business also teams up with traditional farms to provide a by-product of cut greens, seed and soil. Interested landholders are encouraged to get in touch. But the real joy comes from getting her hands dirty. “Urban farming is a different approach to life on the land and it’s just as satisfying. Every day I’m toiling with the soil and checking on the greens to provide a local product I’m proud of.”

Microgreens are undoubtedly gaining traction: from sunflower and snow pea shoots for salad bases, to beetroot, mustard and radish shoots popped on tacos and wraps or in stews and hotpots. The creativity of edible flowers is also popular with cooks seeking an eye-catching aesthetic touch. “It’s food that makes you smile,” Naomi says.

Available in Mackay weekly at the Greater Whitsunday Farmers market, every Wednesday. Follow us on social media @bluerivermicrogreens

She currently sells to home chefs through local markets but is interested in approaching cafes and restaurants as a next step.

THE BAUERS have had plenty of practice perfecting the art of catching and preparing seafood. This fourth-generation fishing family has seen the highs and lows of the Bowen fishing industry but thanks to a bit of foresight and a lot of passion, they have grown a viable business as well as supported other producers along the way. 14

Bowen Fisherman Seafood Company & Bird’s Fish Bar

Bird’s Fish Bar is renowned for its authentic ocean to plate experience, serving up the freshest seafood straight from the trawler and serving it in spectacular Whitsundays style, overlooking the picturesque Bowen Marina. Chloe Bauer, Manager and Director of Bird’s Fish Bar, does not underestimate the special connection her family has to the fishing industry.

Almost a decade ago, and at just 20 years of age, Chloe began to take an interest in the business and offered to help out. “Dad really wanted a fish and chip shop, so we created Birds Fish Bar.”

“My first steps were taken on prawn trawler and I’m very passionate about it (the industry), having grown up around it.”

The recently renovated fish bar has become a popular stop for both locals and visitors alike when sourcing fresh local seafood including coral trout, Spanish mackerel, red throat emperor, barramundi, trevally, prawns and mud crabs. they also source fresh Sydney rock oysters and Coffin Bay oysters.

Chloe’s grandparents, Allen and Cecily Bauer, started the Bowen Fishermans Seafood Company in 1982, to give fisherman in the area more control over their prices and the ability to sell their seafood direct to the public.

“We are very passionate about supporting local and we make sure we purchase from all the local fisherman and put it through the store. We also source our fruit and vegetables, salts and sauces from local producers.”

“Back then there used to be 50 to 100 trawlers working out of Bowen,” Chloe said.

Chloe says the importance of healthy waterways sits at the heart of the Bowen fishing industry.

“The fishing industry was massive and very sustainable; everyone wanted to be involved.”

“Talk to any fisherman and they’ll say healthy waterways are the most important thing. The fishing industry today is sustainable because of good fishing practices, as well as healthy waterways.”

The Bauers were renowned for being one of the first to sell live coral trout both in Australia and overseas and it’s still a very popular product to this day.

Find them at 42 Henry Darwen Memorial Drive, Bowen

(07) 4786 1188

Find us on Facebook: Bird’s Fish Bar at Bowen Fishermans Seafood Co

WHEN LOREN Vanzella first saw wax wraps at the markets on the Sunshine Coast she thought “I can do that”. To reduce an overuse of plastic in her home she decided to make a change, starting with an alternative to plastic: especially clingwrap. “I try to be as sustainable as much as I can, and it just got to the point where the wraps were something we wanted to share with others. They are a product we are proud of – local and a simple first step to reduce waste,” Loren says. Fast forward four years and not only has she eliminated the use of clingwrap personally, Loren and her husband Jack are the proud creators of BeeGood Wax Wraps, a product that sells as fast as they can handcraft them.

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BeeGood Wax Wraps

Starting out at local markets, Loren has since been approached by a wide range of businesses seeking an ethical alternative. Stockists include retail outlets, cafes and tourist information centres.

“We’ve made two-metre long wraps for platters, we’ve been approached by companies wanting to buy them as gifts for staff, and travellers wanting souvenirs – especially our Australian print packs,” says Loren.

Wax wraps can be used as an alternative to clingwrap for just about anything, including fresh produce, sandwiches in lunchboxes or as plate and platter covers.

“We’ve folded them into hearts for weddings and have personalised them by hand stamping initials and dates on each wrap. Basically, they can be a wonderful sustainable option to gift, one that doesn’t end up straight in the bin but can go into the compost when the time comes.”

“Unlike clingwrap, which traps moisture inside the plastic so that things inevitably soften, wax wraps keep food fresher for longer,” Loren explains. “They seal the freshness in and are both breathable and waterproof. Herbs and produce you can keep for weeks and that is something our customers love.” The wraps are more than just functional. Lightweight and created using beautiful prints, they are perfect for gift giving and add a beautiful aesthetic to the home.

Loren says the ethos of the business is summed up in the name. BeeGood. “That’s at the heart of it all. Be good to yourself, to others, to the planet.” BeeGood wax wraps are hand made using locally sourced beeswax from Pure n Natural Honey, pure jojoba oil and tree resin infused into cotton fabric. Packaging is biodegradable and compostable.

Find them at local markets

beegoodwaxwraps.com

Facebook @beegoodbeeswraps

When Loren Vanzella first saw wax wraps at the markets on the Sunshine Coast she thought “I can do that”. To reduce an overuse of plastic in her home she decided to make a change, starting with an alternative to plastic: especially clingwrap. 17

Attard Brothers

WITH AN average annual rainfall of 1500 mm, Mackay receives the heaviest falls in the wet season between November and March. Living in the tropics, sugarcane farmers either manage expensive irrigation schedules or mitigate sediment and nutrient run-off. Regenerative biological farming is proving an effective method for John Attard and his brother Michael, who have adopted practices without chemical inputs or fertilisers, with promising results. A second-generation cane farmer, John would like to leave his 53 ha property to his son with a more balanced natural system, and fewer inputs required to run profitably. Faced with common constraints in sugarcane ‘monoculture’ cropping, like compaction, poor soil aggregates, low organic carbon levels and leaching of minerals during high rainfall events, John started with soil and leaf testing to learn more about his farm’s health. After finding carbon levels were sitting at 0.9% he knew it was time to try something different. Biological farming aims to restore natural systems and increase soil carbon levels. With every 1% of increased carbon an extra 170,000 L of water can be stored in the soil saving on irrigation costs. In fact the Attards have significantly reduced all input costs, even halving their fertiliser bill. “I am not losing money any more on high cost inputs like water, pesticides or fertilisers,” says John. “Farming needs to be profitable and that can be achieved through regenerative farming practices. With a system in balance, pathogens and pests cannot become a problem. I have more time for fishing now because the system is running itself.” The biofertiliser process consists of chelating synthetic fertiliser with native microbes in a liquid for six weeks. The microbes feed on the fertiliser, which gets stored in their bodies. When they die, the minerals they store become plant-available deposits in the soil. “My organic carbon has increased to more than 3% in the duration of four years. We continue building 0.6 units of soil carbon every year by maintaining soil biology and providing carbon/sugars in the form of deep root systems or by incorporating our trash blanket.”

Following the Albrecht Method to balance 12 essential soil minerals, John aims to achieve a calcium to magnesium ratio of around 68% to 12%, or 5:1. “I constantly monitor soil and adjust my fertiliser. All minerals travel on the back of calcium and boron is the driving wheel,” John explains. “Once you build up your calcium and boron levels in the soil, then you have the capacity to hold other minerals as well. I also experimented with all types of lime and find that I get the quickest response from micro fine lime. We’ve applied 400 kg per hectare annually over four years on top of the trash blanket.” John says his crumbly soil indicates sufficient aggregates have formed to relieve compaction. “To address compaction, we use a steel ripper subsoiling plough. We just rip the surface at around 200 mm to oxygenate the soil, break the compaction and allow water infiltration. Compacted anaerobic soils introduce pests and diseases, so creating a home for your beneficial aerobic microbes is key to soil health.” John also maintains ground cover and diversifies his plant species. Utilising mixed cover crops in his fallow, John aims for 20 varieties including soybean, mung bean and sunflower. “I have a green cover crop at all times to ensure nutrient cycling in my soils and especially during heavy rain falls between January and March to capture all that excess water. As my carbon increased my grasses disappeared, now I have broad leaves with big tap roots pulling minerals from far below the soil, making my crop more resilient against heat and dry spells.”

INCREASING SOIL CARBON BIOLOGICAL FERTILISERS ALBRECHT MINERAL BALANCING

Hold’s Fruit and Vegies

MEMBER 20

ROB HOLD was born on a dairy farm surrounded by mountains, in Queensland. It was the lure of mountains in the Whitsunday region that led him and wife Rebecca to a rural property near Bloomsbury. “The first time we looked at it, no one would buy it because it was rocky, covered in lantana and all scrub. I liked it for the rich soil, if you’ve got lantana you’ve got good soil.” With a healthy appetite for fruit, Rob and Rebecca choose crops based on their suitability for the growing conditions and steep terrain, but meeting consumer demand has meant diversification. Bananas, paw paws, mango, avocado, dragon fruit, jackfruit, soursops, cumquats, chillies and a variety of herbs frame the landscape. “I started off with some banana plants from Lethebrook and then the dwarf sugar bananas we got from the Tablelands. We grow Red Jack too, if we get hungry, we just eat a banana.” Rob laughs. Rebecca is proud of what they’ve established, “We eat a lot of paw paws as well, sometimes green in a salad.” Rebecca’s a great cook according to Rob, so they don’t eat out much, but why would you when you have an abundance of fresh food? Planting on an undulating site requires planning and management. Rob mounds the rows to accommodate shallow roots, providing fast growing fruit trees the drainage they need. Growing in the tropics takes resilience, as Rob discovered in 2017 when Cyclone Debbie wiped him out. “Then the following year we had more rain, 64inches in two weeks, all the paw paws died, and it was that wet even some of the bananas in the hollow died. We lost nearly everything.” Undeterred, Rob started again. “He just likes planting.” Rebecca says. Rob explains their expansion simply, “We only plant things that produce food, even where I wanted to prevent erosion on the bank, we used soursop. No point in growing things that we can’t eat.”

Grab some fresh goodness at the Greater Whitsunday Farmer’s Markets every Wednesday from R&R Fruit and Veggies.

Signature Beef

THE ANGUS Pastoral Company was formed in 1960 by John and Clova Angus, however their families were involved in the cattle industry well before then. Diversifying in 1974 to include processing and distribution through their butchery in Bowen, the stage was set for generations to follow. A remarkable achievement during an extremely tough time following the UK ascension to the EU, when Australian cattle producers lost a 160 thousand tonne market overnight, rendering cattle almost worthless. You can still visit the Angus Butchery today, owned by the descendants of John’s former butcher.

For more information, go to signaturebeef.com.au

(07) 4983 5309 info@signaturebeef.com.au

Blair and Josie Angus are proud to be part of that legacy, admitting that their love of each bit of land they hold brings a responsibility, working hard to improve soil health and pasture, which in turn supports the health of their herd. Key selection criteria of cattle have stood the test of time according to Josie. “Things like a ‘mossy coat’, that fineness of texture that is reflected in the beef, was used back in Scotland for centuries. Backed by meat science and data, we look to breed an animal that maximises eating quality, it’s our first choice every time.” Blair tends to be pretty eccentric about beef, as a small child he loved his time spent in that butcher shop and Grandma’s love of cooking — a strong influence on what they are doing today. The development of a quiet herd that is healthy and resource efficient has occurred over generations. Described by Josie as cattle that can giveback to the land more than they take, they’ve been sourced from a single herd along the same fundamental guidelines: a singular factor in the Angus brands. “That drives a consistency in our product that is rare. We don’t follow fads in breeding, we just stick to those tried and tested forward steps, every single time we choose a bull to pair with a cow, we have the same goals.” Goals that also apply to the land, which varies across 400,000 acres over four properties and draws on experience from generations grazing in the Isaac Region. “When we bought Carpentaria Downs fifteen years ago, we had a steep learning curve again. Land management isn’t something that comes from a textbook or a three-day course, it takes a lifetime of learning and you actually never stop learning.”

strong belief in the beef industry. They are so keen to be involved that they’ve traded their horses to attend trade shows in Paris. “To have that level of engagement with consumers of your produce is a rare feeling that can make you really proud of what you do. After studying they have now all returned to the business and that is pretty exciting.” Josie believes the development of ‘Signature Beef’ and a presence beyond the farm gate has enhanced the connection. “Lauren, our eldest, studied animal and meat science in Colorado, Madelaine, international business and our boys are equally at home in the stock yard and talking to customers.” Customers domestically and from around the world are enjoying Signature Beef. While the domestic market continues to be the largest, exporting beef since 2006 has led to their product being consumed in 30 countries. “Leo Pugh, who we were processing with at the time, introduced us to our first customer (butcher to the Queen) from the historic Smithfield Markets in London. It’s been word of mouth on a global scale, a chef even moved from one country to another and took our beef with him.” As production costs increase and the Angus family have taken control and built an abattoir. A loan through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund progressed five years of planning and applications to construction that opens new opportunities. “We have the ability to commercially dry-age and to market our product in the packaging that nature intended, (bone and fat), to create value through the whole carcass all the way to biofertilisers and pharmaceuticals, it really is endless. Once up and running we will employ around 80 additional people.”

While Josie recognises their success, she feels the greatest achievement is reflected in their four children who have a

FERMENTING DRINKS and food is one of the world’s oldest methods of storage and preservation. We always knew fermenting was practical and tasted good, but it is only now that science has recognised the full benefits of probiotics that we are really becoming aware of how fermentation can help improve our physical, emotional and mental health. Jade Johansen and her partner Beau are brewers and retailers of the beneficial beverage — water kefir. “Water kefir is packed with probiotics, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. A recent questionnaire to our customers showed that they take it for reflux, bloating, constipation, IBS, gut repair after antibiotic damage, thrush, diarrhoea, anxiety, parasites and more,” says Jade. Their non-dairy kefir is fermented the traditional way with the mother SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). It is not tea based like kombucha, so it tastes more like a soft drink, and is flavoured with real fruit — nothing is artificial. “We’re lucky to have an abundance of lemon trees, ginger and tropical fruit in our local area,” says Jade.

Water Kefir Mackay

“A lot of the farmers and store holders are big fans of our water kefir, so we do weekly trades for beef, eggs, bananas etc. We help each other. It’s like a transaction of kindness.” “Our region has a diverse agricultural sector and a lot of locals have a link to farming. The people here really appreciate local produce and small business.” Water Kefir Mackay started with Jade’s mum Renee in 2016. “She was having major gut issues and looking for a healthy, natural remedy. She’d read about water kefir but was having trouble finding it anywhere in Australia. Eventually a lady in Victoria came to her rescue and sent her everything she needed to make a brew of kefir.” The following few years were packed with home kitchen experiments, creating various flavours and perfecting a fermenting formula. All involved were pleasantly surprised by how delicious and effective it was. “Before we knew it, the whole family was on kefir. People from mum’s work started drinking it, and friends of friends were coming to our house wanting some. Our home is now a fermenting factory, we produce hundreds of litres every week!” says Jade. Jade’s partner Beau is a bit of a foodie and loves to experiment in the kitchen. “We’ve been working on some botanical kefir brews recently. Butterfly pea tea with lemon grass is our new favourite. The violet hues look super cool and the lemon earthy flavour is really refreshing.” Growth has been very quick and the business was faced with the dilemma of getting too big too soon. Labelling and bottling were becoming expensive and time consuming. They stripped back the business model and went simple, introducing refills at a cheaper cost. Customers can now bring in their own bottle to fill. “We are in a time where protecting the planet is on a lot of people’s agendas. Everyone knows about Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. It’s the Slip Slop Slap of the 2000s. Having care and concern for personal health and environmental health often go hand in hand.”

To find out more, go to waterkefirmackay.com

Facebook.com/waterkefirmackay

Grab some fresh goodness at the Greater Whitsunday Farmer’s Markets every Wednesday from Water Kefir Mackay

WYLIE THOMPSON knows how to appreciate his life’s offering, our daily bread.

ingredients and three generations of baking experience.

From the age of six, baking has been second nature. His stepfather was an experienced baker, and his stepfather’s father before him. It was a force inescapable and by the time he was 24, Wylie had turned bread into a serious business. By the age of 34, he had created three storefronts in Byron, Ballina and Lismore. He had 18 staff and his bakeries were booming, but he was also harbouring more stress than he wanted to carry.

“My intention is to put love and good energy into the bread and send that out to my customers, through to their families and our community,” Wylie says.

After taking a break to explore life as a healer, Wylie rediscovered his passion and found a way to knead positive energy into his artisanal goods. There is more to his sourdough than quality

Following a move to Airlie Beach with his wife Lampoo and two young daughters, the pair now operate the Airlie Hunger Stop on Main Street. Their offerings include a selection of authentic, mouth-watering Thai food and the site is also home to the bakery. Wylie’s sourdough varieties are eye opening and extensive, certainly new to the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region. Flavours range from

Artisan Bakehouse

(anything but) plain, multigrain, cheese dill and red onion, pumpkin and sweet potato, garlic cheese and herb, and a crowd favourite – hemp seed flour, which is first to sell out. There are plans to put sweet treats on the menu, with market goers eagerly anticipating warm jam donuts alongside Wylie’s bread staples. Whatever your fancy, Artisan Bakehouse adds a touch of heart to the weekly shop.

Wednesday – Greater Whitsunday Farmers Market, Mackay Saturday – Airlie Beach Market Sunday – Bowen Market Facebook @ArtisanBakehouse

MEMBER 27

Swift River Distillery

DESCRIBED AS an edible plant or part of a plant, valued for medicinal or therapeutic properties, botanicals are used to create a wide range of products. Herbs (a subset of botanicals) are often used fresh, dried, as a liquid or solid extract – ginger is a good example. Fruits, seeds, roots and stems may often require soaking or steeping to unlock certain chemicals: aromatic or medicinal. In Mackay, Vas Orlow began Swift River Distillery in 2017, creating barrelled rum and whisky (matured for a minimum two years). Recognising a market for high end alcohol-free products, Vas is incorporating a complex mixture of individually distilled botanicals to create a non-alcoholic gin. juniper berries, cardamom, angelica root, Kaffir lime and orange peel are combined with uniquely Australian botanicals, lemon myrtle and anise myrtle. “Our traditional copper pot distillation methods produce a non-alcoholic ‘spirit’, in much the same way traditional gins have been produced. We also have stainless fermenters and a mash tun for making whisky wash from malted barley and spent considerable time experimenting with fermentations and distillations.” With uniquely powerful zesty or floral aroma and tantilising taste, both the ‘Spirit Free Gin’ and ‘Wild Rose’, do not contain sugars, sweeteners or colours. A refreshing alternative when mixed with premium sparkling, or tonic water the lingering effect on your palate is something to be experienced. “A dash can also increase the aromatic complexity of your favourite drinks, including alcoholic ones like vodka and are perfectly suitable to use in cocktails. We’ve also been experimenting with alcoholic gin variations.” Vas adds that one of the greatest impediments to craft distillers and brewers alike in Queensland are liquor licensing regulations, “It’s the major reason that Queensland has the lowest number of distillers in the nation. We know of several distillers that opted to start up in New South Wales instead and Tasmania has over 70 distilleries, yet a fraction of the population.” Imported products account for over 90% of national spirit sales, while Australia exports close to three billion dollars in wine sales – something Vas is keen to see change. “This country has some of the best quality agricultural produce and businesses such as distilleries, can have massive long-term employment benefits for regional areas. Scotland exports over $10 billion annually just in whisky. If Australian distillers received the type of support the wine industry does, who knows how big an industry it could become.”

To find out more, go to swiftriverdistillery.com

0402 828 348 swiftriverdistillery@gmail.com

Facebook/Swift-River-Distillery-108173314193038

E3C Heritage Hens

AT AGE 14, Chloe Turkilsen was on a family trip around Australia when she met a young woman managing an outstation on the world’s largest working cattle station, Anna Creek. The conversation inspired the Ipswich city girl to build a life in agriculture, kickstarting her beef industry career with a NAPCO scholarship and graduating from Emerald Agricultural College with a double diploma in beef cattle management and agribusiness. She is directing the acumen gained from education and 12 years working in the bush into operating her own agribusiness, albeit working with a whole different type of livestock. Chloe hopes that E3C Heritage Hens will create a diversified income stream on Cockenzie Station, a cattle property southwest of Nebo owned by her partner Cameron Whitehead’s family. “My dad had given me some chickens (Wyandottes), and I didn’t know anything about them. They grew into these beautiful big birds, and I thought: ‘Holy! These are stunning!’. I started researching, and the more research I did, the more I could see a gap in the market for heritage breeds,” Chloe says. “I realised nobody in central and northern Queensland was breeding purebred heritage breed chickens at a large scale and saw there was a definite demand for these birds.”

“They are longer lived than commercial layer breeds. The heritage breeds are a little slower maturing compared to the commercial laying hen, beginning their egg laying life one to two months later, but live up to eight years and have a consistent supply of eggs for around six.” She is running about 120 hens and 20 roosters on two acres, and the response from the public has been swift in the development of the business since the early part of 2020. With runs to regional centres like Rockhampton seeing 250 birds delivered to home producers, it seems like the idea is taking off, and helping Chloe realise her vision. “I did work in the mines as an operator for two years, but my main passion is for the land. I can run this business, and still help the family with the mustering and general maintenance of the property.”

To find out more, go to e3c-heritagehens.com

Facebook/e3cheritagehens

Reaching out to the market via Facebook, Gumtree and the E3C website, Chloe sells fertile eggs and day old chickens, right through to six-week-old pullets. Her focus is on supplying purebred show quality gold and silver lace Wyandottes, Rhode Island reds and light Sussex: her top picks for the heritage breeds. She perceives strong demand evidenced in the breeds being hard to find, as they are mostly produced by smaller entities with their passion lying in breeding show quality fowl. “I did quite a bit of research and have chosen these particular heritage breeds because they are dual purpose: being good egg producers and large table birds,” she says.

Australian Prawn Farms

LOCATED RIGHT beside the Great Barrier Reef, and aiming for a great quality product, environmental sustainability is an important factor in the operation of Australian Prawn Farms at Ilbilbie, 75 km south of Mackay. From 47 ponds, the operation annually produces upwards of 30 million – over 550 tonnes – of black tiger for the retail market, mostly sold through Woolworths. The 20-year-old operation has more than doubled production, having taken a successful gamble in 2016 on the rising popularity of their product against increasingly strict industry regulation. General Manager Matt West, a part of the aquaculture operation since its foundation, said the business put great effort and expenditure into its environmental compliance. “It’s very important to us. With aquaculture, we are a little bit different to normal farming in that we have a massive reliance on water. Without good quality water, we can’t do our job,” Matt said. Quality water means better animal welfare, producing healthy, stress free creatures. The site has 25 ha of water quality remediation ponds and became the first aquaculture operation in Australia to opt for more sustainable feeding programs, cutting out wildsourced fishmeal and opting for a fishmeal replacement diet. Australia has an enormous appetite for the humble prawn, and the aquaculture approach can reduce pressure on the wild population. Broodstock is wild caught, with 500 to 1000 females producing the millions of baby prawns that begin life in the hatchery ponds, active from July. “That’s 30 million prawns that aren’t being taken from the wild: when you are talking about sustainability, that’s huge,” Matt said. In 30 days, an egg will have grown into a baby prawn big enough to move to the grow-out ponds. “Once they are placed into our grow-out ponds, these prawns will be looked after by our technicians for around 150 to 180 days until harvest size and processed in our HACCP approved processing facility.” From December through to April, the farm switches to processing mode. This dovetails perfectly with the end of the cane harvest, another major local commodity. The farm’s staff doubles to 50 during processing season, mostly employing local workers and building the small community’s economic viability.

Take a look at the great video on Australian Prawn Farms’ process at facebook.com/ausprawnfarms

GROWING AND processing meat is a family tradition for the McGills, since 1931 when the Kuttabul Butchery was first opened by John Sturgeon McGill (Jack). John remembers helping his father Leslie Sturgeon McGill (Snow) clean up as a child, “Dad bought in to the butchery in 1964 then set up the first abattoir in the 70s – we used to have to scoop the blood out and throw it on the grass.” At the height of the business they were processing tonnes of product – 18 t per week just for the mines. The McGill family has always sourced livestock locally and John recalls the Desbois from Seaforth droving cattle through to Kuttabul. “I’m pretty good mates with Stuart and he can remember bringing cattle here. There weren’t as many fences in those days so they could come straight through. Grandma used to make scones and they’d stay for a chat with grandad.”

Kuttabul Abattoir

John sees the value in consumers knowing where their food comes from. “A local grazier told me he wanted to share photos on his website 15 years ago, so his Japanese customers could see the Wagyu in the paddock.” Continuing to build relationships with graziers and retailers, John has seen a big increase in demand for private kills for people who have a few animals on a small block. “Legally, if you get a mobile butcher in, the meat can’t leave your farm, so they come to me and I process it, portion and pack it for them. They can share it with their family then. Cattle, pigs and goats mainly, about eight per week.” The McGills have always had small properties, but rely on local producers to meet demand, with John’s dad buying tens of thousands of head in his working life. These days Kuttabul Abattoir process 40 cattle and 50 to 60 pigs per week, goat processing is less due to supply, with approximately four to six a month. Local butchers keep demand steady and John also runs 500 head of Brangus to ensure supply. “When people have fattened cattle, they’ll ring up and ask me if I’m interested, I’ll go and have a look, which gets me out of the four walls.”

The future of JS McGill Pty Ltd rests with Mason, 17; Lacey, 15 and Slater, 13. Growing cane and tending cattle, the teens are more than happy to be involved. “They love mustering, love their horses and the bikes, they get on everything. I loved it when they weren’t going to school because of COVID. I’d get them up at 4am and take them over to work, then my wife Linda would come and get them for breakfast and schoolwork – they’d be done by 12 and she’d bring them back. We got so much done!” Mason wants to be an auto electrician, while Lacey is interested in veterinary science, Slater jokes that he’ll go and work for Fresco’s Meats, just to stir mum up.

0458 540 105 jlmcgill@bigpond.com

John says most consumers just want a steak that isn’t tough. “Dad used to say people want tender meat, they don’t care what it tastes like, because they smother it in sauce.” He laughs, “He got into grain fed cattle in the late 70s and early 80s when it got dry and it became difficult to fatten animals on grass. That really helped our business to grow.”

Australian Indigenous Grasstrees and Wildflowers

THE POPULARITY of Australian native flowers and foliage is blooming in Australia in the wedding and cut flower market due to their unique appearance in comparison to the structure of traditional cut flowers, such as tulips and roses. In 2017, Kerri-Ann Currie and Nathan Nehow saw an opportunity as Indigenous Australians, to create a business and employment for themselves and their mob in the native flower industry. Australian Indigenous Grasstrees and Wildflowers was created with a strong vison and an ethos to conserve, repair, create and educate.

“The way I see it is that we used to trade fish for kangaroo for example, but things have changed, and the almighty dollar is king. So why can’t we work on our country and make a living from it at the same time?,” says Kerri-Ann. “This would strengthen not only our connection to country, but our identity, our people, our Indigenous communities, the broader community and the economy.” The couple are working closely with Yuwibara Traditional Owners, caring for country through knowledge exchange and training on grasstrees and other native plants in the Mackay region. In 2018, the industry was facing a supply issue. Australia did not have the ability to meet international demand and some overseas plantations were growing and exporting quantities exceeding those grown here in their native environment.

Landholders with native plants on their property can get in touch with AIGW if you are interested in supporting Kerri-Ann and Nathan by allowing them access to harvest. Recent expansion into native landscaping includes the Mackay Base Hospital Indigenous Cultural Garden which showcases both Indigenous artists and native plants from the region.

Find beautiful bouquets online at www.aigw.com.au

Facebook/@aigwqld

While natives take a number of years to establish in commercial farms, native plants are abundant in our landscape. However wild harvesting of natives is only available to those with permits to do so. Our native vegetation is valuable in many ways, and there is also increasing interest in native foods as the Australian bush is recognised for its economic benefits alongside its environmental value.

UPROOTED TREES, driftwood and farm equipment – the detritus of climate events like flood, drought and fire – have been transmuted into a dramatic abstract sculptural trail in the heart of beef country: Sue Gedda’s Clima(c)tic. “It is about the tension between pride in earning a living as a beef producer and concern for the natural environment,” says artist and grazier Sue Gedda. In 2017, a cataclysmic torrent wrought by Cyclone Debbie swept through Markwell Station, rising 4.6 metres higher than previous records. The family fled to spend the night in the car on a high hill. Below, large logs were thrust into high tree forks, 100 year old farm sheds and electricity towers were minced. While fortunately no lives – human or cattle – were lost during the flood event, it was cathartic for the quietly spoken Gedda family, with three generations producing beef across 50 years on the property in the Lotus Creek district west of St Lawrence.

While Sue and husband Simon had already transitioned to regenerative practices like in-pasture mulching and shade-tree revegetation, rotational grazing, and introducing drought-hardy cattle breeds, the couple became advocates for action on climate change. “Water came into the upper level of our house, and that really shocked me into thinking about climate change and our role within it,” she says. “In the chaos that ensued, my mind was going ‘is this self-inflicted?’ We are all consumers, we are all complicit in carbon emissions, just by living. We were already doing things about our carbon footprint, but it really shocked us: we never dreamt that something as extreme as this would ever happen. “We’ve all experienced the higher temperatures, the longer summers, and the prolonged fire seasons. Where is winter? It is definitely changing. I have been

Clima(c)tic

here 30 years now, after coming over from England, and I can definitely see a change in the weather patterns.” Simon has spoken up publicly on issues around climate and water for farmers and graziers, urging shifts in land and vegetation management practices and potential for farmers to participate in the carbon economy. Clima(c)tic is Sue’s articulation around climate and her concern for the impact of people on the natural world. “I always knew I would create an artistic response to the flood, but imagined it would be through painting or drawing. However, I found myself drawn to the idea of found objects,” she says. What has emerged are works showing dynamic tension between organic and man-made materials, all the more poignant for their placement at the ground zero of an extreme climate event. Unprecedented

features flood-deposited timber and steel pickets, forming a tendril-like cascade seemingly bursting from a shed wall. Eyrie: an eagle’s nest constructed of gleaming silver fenceposts perched on a rocky outcrop, others, Dead Weight I and II feature longdiscarded tree-clearing chains and blocks originally found half-buried in mud. On 26 September, 2020, 60 guests gathered at Markwell to experience the ten-work Clima(c)tic exhibition, supported by three conservation groups: Birdlife Mackay, Wildlife Carers Sarina, and Mackay Conservation Group. The exhibition will enjoy longevity with a multimedia experience viewable at suegedda.com.

Take a look at Sue’s work at suegedda.com

THREE GENERATIONS of the Parry family have grazed Blair Plains at Blue Mountain, continuing to manage both business and land with a mind for innovation. Travis Parry said what began as a 1300 acre family dairying operation in the high rainfall district, shifted to beef cattle in the early 2000s following de-regulation in the dairy industry. “Post deregulation for dairying, the operation continued with beef opportunities and pushed through the beef price crash,” he says. “I’ve read grandad’s old farm records and diaries with sale reports and the like. That really cemented the idea that if you’re in agriculture you really need to be diverse, so that when one market has a fall another option can be your mainstay to ride out that period.”

Parry Family - Blair Plains

In 2017, Travis Parry introduced the beautifully freckled Speckle Park breed to his largely Droughtmaster herd, seeing one such opportunity to create a point of difference. The Canadian breed is enjoying growing demand, with a heifer selling at Warwick early in 2020 for an extraordinary 801c a kilo. Travis has been one of a handful of pioneering northern producers seeing success introducing Speckles as a cross with more standard breeds, bringing qualities like low birthweights and great weight for age characteristics to their herds. “The regular selling points for the Speckles were definitely driving factors to introduce them: excellent motherhood and fertility attributes; good classic medium sized frames on the female side and excellent temperament, carcass and beef quality across the breed. There’s a lot of data going into the Speckle Park breed which is really helping with decision making on what suits each operation and their goals,” he says. “By introducing Speckle Park bulls we have been able to attract buyers to our door and create a bit of demand and a unique selling opportunity with something that is a bit sought-after, generating a lot of interest and opportunity.” The Parrys sell cattle at Sarina and Gracemere Saleyards, bringing animals to the 200 kg mark for on-sale to backgrounders, but Travis is also finding buyers responding to his picture stories about the animals on his Facebook page. The Parrys are putting a great deal into innovating land management practices, including introducing riparian fencing, pasture and soil regeneration, and reintroducing native flora. “I really enjoy learning about different things I find on the farm be it a plant or a bug or what the soil is doing here or why that grass will only grow there. I’m not agronomist or a meteorologist or a scientist or a veterinarian but I try to have some basic skills and knowledge from all those fields so that I can do the best I can while I’m here,” Travis says.

Travis is looking to connect with other graziers of the Speckle Park breed, or others new to the breed, to form a network 0421 400 998

instagram @travyp19 #blairplains

Masterbeef

GREAT DATA is a driver for Darren Hamblin, a Wagyu beef producer turned agtech innovator, bringing his own quest to create sets of meaningful data on carcass quality and genetics in his own operation to develop an evaluative camera-based app, Masterbeef. With wife Melanie, Darren has operated Strathdale in the Blue Mountain district south of Sarina since 1996. With further Central Queensland and Darling Downs properties, they run a combined 6000 head of premium Wagyu over 46,000 acres. Cows organised in calving cells are moved through a rotational grazing system, with commercial cattle finished in a Darling Downs feedlot, turning off 140 steers every six weeks. Darren said he shifted into Wagyu in 2000, following the advice of a neighbour, to counter a herd fertility issue. He could also see the potential for a greater return with the breed. What followed has been a success, with Darren and Melanie early to catch the Australian producer wave of popularity that the high-value Japanese breed enjoys in both international and domestic gourmet markets. “The initial pioneers were about four or five years ahead of that, but the industry was still very small: there weren’t a lot of producers who had gone into large scale commercial production,” Darren says. The breed has been particularly popular with CQ graziers, who Darren estimates hold around 50% of the national herd. In recent years, Strathdale has worked with fellow Wagyu producers Scott De Bruin (Mayura, South Australia) and the Hammond brothers on Robbins Island, Tasmania, to develop poll Wagyu herds by bringing together top blood lines from the three herds. Naturally hornless, polls do not need to be de-horned, so raising the animal welfare characteristics of these operations. The poll gene doesn’t come from the Wagyu line, but from historic US crosses. This highly intentional approach to breeding is designed to deliver consistent quality characteristics, drawing on data from over 20,000 carcasses to make decisions about blood lines. However, it is a slow process that will require ongoing careful, data-informed selection to build a complete herd with the desired balance of a diverse genetic pool delivering traits including poll and the high marble score that is the hallmark of Wagyu. Carcasses are currently routinely achieving a consistent, desirable high marble score. “Our key value gain in Wagyu is carcass attributes.” In 2020, Darren has commercialised the Masterbeef app package, designed for a mounted Samsung A71 phone for carcass imaging. The app evaluates for marble score, fineness and meat distribution to create a dataset on all-important “eatability” traits, to a greater level of detail than can be achieved through human eye evaluations. With accessibility in mind, the data interface is designed for use on any device. The app has been a success, being implemented at an all-of-industry level in South Africa’s flourishing Wagyu sector, and clients have also taken up the app in Europe, the UK, and South and North America. “We’ve had interest from Angus producers, also, who have made a big push into eating quality, and some interest from Hereford Australia. And, surprisingly, from the sheep industry!” Darren says.

Take a look at Darren’s app at masterbeef.com.au and learn about his grazier group at www.pollwagyu.com

Andrew Barfield

ANDREW BARFIELD is one of a handful of rice trial growers, based in the Mackay region. Since 2008, he’s been working with SunRice, researching the problems faced by commercial rice growers, and testing solutions to help create more profitable crops. The Australian rice industry is focused on high-value niche varieties, such as the fragrant jasmine rice, sushi rice and soft cooking rice, and Andrew says rice has very specific growing requirements. “There are only a few areas in our region that have the combination of water availability and the right soil, so from a commercial perspective, there’s a limit to what we can grow here.” Andrew says one of the biggest challenges rice breeders face is disease. “There are a lot of variations between varieties susceptibilities to disease and we need to weed out those which are not up to standard, commercial growers require agronomically sound varieties to be profitable — they need to know what is going to work. “We are trying to work out what diseases and susceptibilities our rice lines have, which is why I don’t spray any fungicides. The commercial farmers will work with agronomists and spray whatever they can to keep their crops viable, but that’s not our focus. We are about creating rice varieties with good levels of resistance to the diseases we face in North Queensland. “In the end, we’re really here to help breed the highest yielding, high value crops, with the largest profit margin. It really comes down to how many tonnes can we grow per hectare, and how much money we can get per tonne. “SunRice grows niche rice for the global market, and hopefully the research we do here in Mackay is helping to bring better rice to the world.”

Clermont Showground and Saleyards

CATTLE ARRIVED in the Clermont district in 1850, at the Rolfe family’s Pioneer Station. Eighteen years later, the district developed a showgrounds and saleyard as its prosperity grew around gold, copper and cattle. In 1982, the Clermont Showground and Saleyards were relocated to a less flood-prone part of town, with the saleyards becoming the JR Turner Saleyards, named for one of the move’s champions. Clermont Show is one of Queensland’s oldest, maintaining an authentic agricultural focus. Its 150th anniversary in 2018 was a stimulus to take the venue forward into the next 20 years and beyond. Isaac Regional Council Mayor Anne Baker said the result was a new, multiple-stage master plan. Adopted by Council in 2019, the master plan is designed to guide progressive infrastructure upgrades and support extended opportunities for the venue, not only a home for the annual show and saleyards, but also a hub for local campdraft, rodeo and pony club associations. It’s also the site for Beef Expo and distance education students and the Isolated Children’s Parents Association camps and carnivals. “There’s a number of user groups and events already but the plan will work to maximise the potential of existing uses and increase the range of events, to deliver economic and social benefit to the community,” Mayor Baker says. “The aim is to retain connection to the past agricultural shows, respecting the values of the past, while providing a modern, multi-purpose community entertainment hub – and capitalising on potential spinoffs for the local economy.” Mayor Baker said that the first stage of the upgrades had been completed with Queensland Government State Development Jobs and Regional Growth funding. Further funding is now being sought for the second stage. Agriculture is the Isaac’s second biggest industry and, with Isaac’s cattle population estimated at 866,000 head, upgrading the saleyard is critical to developing this industry. JR Turner Saleyards currently has an annual sale throughput of 12,000 head, and a further 80 to 90,000 in-transit cattle spelling there each year. Stage one saleyard upgrades have built IT capabilities, water and power infrastructure, and six new spelling yards have been added. Work is progressing on elements of stage two, including replacement of the existing sale pens. “These upgrades should maximise the numbers for current sales, held monthly, and potentially increase capacity and the number of sales we can hold in the future,” Mayor Baker says.

www.isaac.qld.gov.au/facilities-and-recreation/saleyards

THE RISE of provenance as a food system value has resulted in growing numbers of people raising their own animals for meat, and an increased demand for mobile, on-farm butchering services. “People love to be able to raise their own animals, knowing what the animal is being fed and having that peace of mind that their family is eating quality meat that has been raised in their own back yard,” says Len Little, owner of Little’s Mobile Butchering. Len is a second generation mobile butcher, with 16 years of experience under his belt, beginning by lending his dad a hand with his mobile butchering service as a child. From working in butchers, abattoirs and weekend mobile butchering, Len and wife Beck

started their part-time business together and bought their first mobile cold room in 2013. Len said they had grown their fleet of cold-rooms, and in 2020 had made the decision to go full time with their business. “It was the best decision we have made: thanks to the continuous support of our customers and our family and friends, our first year full time has been amazing! We now have the flexibility of working for ourselves and also having more family time.” Although based in Mackay, Little’s services as far afield as Moranbah, Bloomsbury and St Lawrence. “I love what I do, I enjoy being able to do the entire

Little’s Mobile Butchering

process from start to finish and knowing that the customer is confident their animals are being processed humanely and kept free from stress, without the need to transport them off the property,” he says.

0439 198 601 (Beck) or 0409 493 225 (Len)

Facebook.com/Little’sMobileButcheringMackay

“It is important for us to show people, especially the younger generation, where their meat comes from. We get a lot of new customers who have never processed their own animals before and it is great to be able to show them and their families the entire process of on-farm butchering.

Meat on Shakespeare

WE ALL experience strong influences in our childhood, for Daniel Rettke the family business is a time-honoured tradition that began with his grandfather in Melbourne making the smallgoods he enjoyed in Germany. Daniel’s father Steve followed in those footsteps, buying an established Mackay butcher shop in 1989 and adding his own range of game meats, smallgoods and gourmet lines, and continuing to make changes to products in line with market trends and customer tastes. It’s something Daniel is keen to develop. “I have been influenced by generational aspects of family traditions, but more on being competent in all aspects of the trade, not just certain cuts, hence the wide variety of meats. I listen to my customers and adapt to suit.” Being passionate about his trade drives Daniel to provide the advice and products customer demands dictate, which fluctuate around trends, like American BBQ style. “Working with dad all those years, it was a logical step to keep going. A lot of my customers love to cook with a smoker and we have all the right meats to do it — brisket, pork and beef ribs, all the cuts you’d expect to use.” Smoking is something on which Meat on Shakespeare pride themselves, supplying a tasty range of ham, bacon, pepperoni and more. “We sometimes have customers that we do custom orders for, like smoked sausage with no pork as they don’t eat pork, but like a certain flavoured smoked sausage.” The increased education of consumers through a plethora of cooking shows, combined with people being at home more has seen a dramatic increase in slow cooked meats being consumed. Meats like osso bucco, beef bones for soup, and the smoking cuts are selling tenfold and many are keen to know where it comes from. Having a good relationship with Kuttabul Abattoir and beef producers provides a direct line of communication for Daniel. “Where possible I buy meat locally, because we love to support local business – beef, pork and goat when I can get it. About 75% of our customers enquire about the origins of our meat. We give as much information as we can – free range and grass fed are popular ethical lines. Unfortunately, there’s no local free range chicken – we need more farmers producing it and goat meat.”

Shop 4/340 Shakespeare St, Mackay

(07) 4957 4468

Facebook.com/meatons

A CLERMONT grain-cropping family has built business viability and security through a diverse and shorter supply chain including local producers and North Queensland stockfeed millers.

P&K Mifsud Dryland Farms

Peter Mifsud is out on the road, delivering a truckload of grain fodder to mixed cane and cattle producers in Koumala and Victoria Plains. “I’ve been rolling grain all weekend, and now I’m getting it out to the coast.” Supplying direct to almost 20 such producers is just one of a diverse range of market outlets for P&K Mifsud Dryland Farms, a family Clermont district grain and pulse cropping business operated by Peter, wife Kim, sons Andrew and Luke, and their partners. With around 11,000 acres under sorghum, corn, wheat, barley, chickpeas and sunflowers, the Mifsuds also supply to a Mackay egg producer, and North Queensland stockfeed mills in Charters Towers, Atherton Tablelands, and to Q Stockfeeds in the Mackay region. The operation is also able to supply into southern Queensland regions when needed there, such as during drought. Q Stockfeeds has been a customer of the Mifsuds for the past five years, purchasing most of their grain from Mifsud Dryland Farms. “Peter and Kim’s investment in a top quality on-farm storage facility gives us the confidence of a top quality product with every load, and surety of supply,” said Q Stockfeeds owner Greg Sandral.

“The short supply chain of dealing directly with a farmer is very simple and flexible. On the stockfeed output side, we can guarantee a consistent product every time with quality grain inputs. As a family business we value dealing with other family businesses, so Peter’s farm fits the bill in this regard.” Peter agrees that a strong local supply chain has proven its worth for the region’s livestock industry in tough years, such as through the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when there were difficulties with interstate supply routes. Further, having a diversity of local buyers has built viability and security for his family business. “It all adds up,” Peter says. The Mifsuds have also strengthened the security of their business through drought resilience strategies in their cropping practices: soil and moisture conservation measures like zero till and retaining mulch and stubble on the ground. Stubble is the stool of the grain plant left standing in the ground after harvesting. “We roll everything, and it keeps the stubble there, it doesn’t break it up. It is very important to have as much stubble as you can on your soil when it rains to catch the moisture. It makes the soil structure better.”

Soul Food Market Mackay

SOUL FOOD Market owner Kylie Cox refers to her store as a ‘safe place’ for those people. It’s a raw, vegan, gluten-free coffee shop and organic bulk wholefoods supplier, stocking both local and Australian-made products for the healthconscious. The business has grown steadily since 2016, from offering a small range of bulk foods to expanding into hand-made raw foods served from the kitchen. They also prepare coffee, speciality teas, salads and slices, and stock household and beauty products. With her own background in preparing wholefoods, Kylie saw a gap in the market in Mackay to provide not only an enjoyable and healthy eating experience, but a chance to go deeper into reducing household and environmental waste. Customers are encouraged to bring their own containers and measure the exact amount that they need, whether that be nuts, dried fruit, herbs, oils or flours. “We have customers coming here because they want organic food but then we have the other customers who are passionate about cutting down on waste. For me those two things go together because for our food to be healthy, and for us to be healthy, we have to cut down on waste and toxins,” Kylie says. “Everything that you buy from the supermarket that comes in a packet has some form of corn product in it and our bodies don’t process that properly. So those two things, cutting out waste and toxins, are part of the whole picture.” Soul Food Market also works with local producers, using local honey, eggs, bananas, and sauerkraut. They make seven different types of granola, their own bread and crackers, as well as a full range of sweet and savoury snacks. They also stock local deodorant pastes, shampoo and conditioner bars. “We’ve been able to start stocking toxin-free cleaning products and ingredients for people to make their own,” Kylie says. “We do our research and we buy Australian products where we can. We will buy Australian insecticide-free products over a Chinese organic product, for example. There are always those sorts of options available, you just need to do your research.” With a surge of customers over the last six months, Soul Food Market has been able to expand the business. “When we first started it was just me in the kitchen. Now we’ve got an apprentice chef and two qualified chefs, one of whom is coeliac,” Kylie says. There are also plans for a kitchen expansion and a fully-fledged café and dining space within the arcade surrounding their store in Macalister Street.

Shop 4 Whitsunday Arcade, 38 Macalister Street Mackay, QLD, Australia 4740

(07) 4818 0283

Facebook.com/SOULFoodMarket

Tastes From Africa

SIMON SCHROEDER has been making the popular South African delicacy, biltong, since he was 10 years old. Taught by his grandfather, Simon learned to perfect their secret family recipe, ensuring the quality and craftmanship was carried on to the next generation.

a great source of protein. We use 100% grass-fed beef and our biltong does not contain sugars, dyes, msg or colourants. We blend all our spices ourselves to ensure that there is nothing fake or artificial in what we produce. Everything is also gluten free, which sets us apart from other biltong makers.”

“After my grandfather passed away, I decided to keep the family tradition alive. Six years ago, I decided to make biltong, not just as a hobby, but as a career, and I opened “Tastes from Africa” in my grandfather’s honour.”

This year, Tastes from Africa has grown from strength to strength, with the COVID lockdowns helping to increase sales overall, especially online.

Over the years, Simon developed his own unique flavours of biltong, as well as perfecting droewors and boerewors. “Droewors is a dried sausage, similar to a salami or a twiggy stick and boerewors is a round coiled sausage that you enjoy on the barbeque — that one is extremely popular.” “Biltong often gets confused with jerky, but it’s made in a completely different way. We get a lot of people saying that they don’t like jerky until we get them to try Tastes from Africa’s biltong. Then they end up loving it so much that they won’t eat anything else ever again.” The high-quality and unique flavours of Simon’s products have earned him five prestigious awards, including gold, silver and bronze in the 2019 Australian Meat Industry Council Smallgoods Regional Competition, and first and third place in the 2020 Mr. Chilli Australia and New Zealand Awards. While you will find Tastes from Africa at local markets they also stock their products at a number of retailers around the country. You can purchase their great products via their online store at www.tastesfromafrica.com.au The business sends their products anywhere in Australia, as well as overseas. “There is a large market for our biltong in New Zealand, England, Indonesia, Thailand and China.”

“Everybody has got to eat, and I think COVID has changed our business for the better. For the first week we weren’t sure what to expect, but sales have gone through the roof. It’s just like a good restaurant, if people love it, they’ll come back. We are grateful to have an amazing following with a lot of loyal and repeat customers.” “We moved to the Whitsundays 10 years ago, and we absolutely love living here. Our business has a huge following and feel incredibly lucky to live in a beautiful area, and run a business that we truly love. I’m very passionate about what I do. It’s the old saying, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.”

www.tastesfromafrica.com.au

0415 755 009

Facebook.com/tastesfromafrica

“We also have a lot of fitness and wellbeing businesses around the country who stock our products — purely because they are

Tricky Pig

IF YOU’RE looking for that perfect ingredient to turn an average meal into a masterpiece, John Cunningham, founder of Tricky Pig Products, has the answer – it’s all in the sauce. “When I was growing up, Worcestershire sauce was always the favourite sauce at a barbeque. I always remembered that it had a bit of a bite to it, and I don’t know why, but over the years, the recipe changed, and I just couldn’t find a supermarket version that tasted the way I wanted it to. “A few years ago, I met a lady who made her own Worcestershire sauce and it was so much better than anything you could buy. It just had that real, authentic flavour. She would always give me a bottle or two – I couldn’t get enough of it.” Eventually, she gave John the recipe, and after tweaking the ingredients and adding in his own flair, John debuted his own version of Worcestershire sauce at a friend’s barbeque. “It was an instant hit. Everyone kept asking me to make them a bottle of the sauce. After making a few batches, I realized that there was a potential business there.” John opened his new venture, Tricky Pig Products, crafting more bottles of Worcestershire, and adding in his own Tangy Tomato Sauce, Lipsy’s Spicy Barbeque and Lipsy’s HOT sauce. With a commercial kitchen setup at Eungella, John is able to make around 150 bottles in each batch, which he sells at the local markets, as well as online via his Facebook page. “The local markets are great, because I can meet my customers and just chat about sauces. I love hearing about the different recipes my customers use. My favourite recipe at the moment is for pork sausages – just cover them in our Spicy Barbeque sauce, then put them in a smoker… you’ll end up with the most incredible, unique sausages that beat anything you could buy in a store.” “At the moment, Tricky Pig is a really great hobby business, and my goal is to turn it into a full-time venture. I would love to dedicate my time to building and expanding my products. I’m currently working on a teriyaki sauce, so keep an eye out for that one!”

You can find John and his Tricky Pig Products at the local Mackay and Whitsunday Markets Facebook.com/trickypigproducts

Growing your own food reduces your food miles and CO2 emissions. Plus it’s seasonal, delicious and saves money.

In Australia alone, 3.92 billion plastic bags were used in 2011. The amount of petroleum used to make these bags could drive a car around the world 1076 times. Fifty million plastic bags enter the environment as litter every year and can take hundreds of years to break down in the environment.

Three quarters of the world’s oceans are officially over-exploited or fished right to their limit. You can also download the AMCS Sustainable Seafood Guide iphone app via their website (sustainableseafood.org.au) or visit GoodFishBadFish for more information (GoodFishBadFish.com.au).

Sustainably-managed farms are better able to reduce the environmental impacts of farming. Alternatively, raise your own chooks to produce daily eggs and reduce your food waste. Search Local Harvest (localharvest.org.au) for sustainable producers and outlets near you.

Paths to Sustainability

Information provided by

Support local farmers, reduce packaging and your carbon footprint by enjoying the freshness and variety of seasonal food.

Organic and biodynamic farming methods improve soil health and reduce reliance on fossil fuels as no synthetic chemicals or pesticides are used.

In Australia, methane emissions from cattle and sheep account for 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing your meat and dairy consumption helps you reduce your contribution to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainable meat and dairy farms employ good environmental practices such as animal rotation, water recycling and management, nutrient recycling such as composting, tree planting and soil health practices, and use fewer non-renewable resources.

Australians send $8 billion worth of food to landfill each year. Using a compost bin can cut the garbage you send to landfill by 50%. Some councils, like City of Melbourne, are helping by providing discounted compost bins to residents.

Asking questions at the shops, market and the restaurant is an important step in promoting positive change. It encourages businesses to provide more sustainable food options because they know their customers will buy it.

Black Coffee Indigenous Business Network

Artwork by NGARO / GIA TRADITIONAL OWNER NICKY BIDJU PRYOR. - Bidju Designs

THE Black Coffee Indigenous Business Network is helping business owners link up and develop market networks, bringing people together for a monthly coffee morning featuring speakers. The network has spread across Australia, but dates back to 2014 in Brisbane, founded in collaboration between Brisbane businesswoman and South East Queensland Indigenous Chamber of Commerce member Leesa Watego (Iscariot Media) and Thomas Holden, then a member of Townsville Region Business Network. “Our chamber was going through some changes, with very few resources. I thought about something I can do that doesn’t cost the earth and doesn’t take too much organisation. I figured a weekly coffee morning was the least we could do,“ says Leesa. A few years later, with a new name, the first official Black Coffee event was held in Townsville. “Our idea is that on the last Thursday of every month, wherever you are, you can meet up with other Indigenous business owners and professionals,” she says. Black Coffee is organised by volunteers in regions across Australia. Felicity Chapman is the owner of Airlie Beachbased Deadly Weaving, a skills-teaching business. She is the volunteer Whitsunday Region Co-ordinator for the network,

facilitating meetings across the Greater Whitsunday Region, rotating monthly through three regional centres. “We share Black Coffee gatherings between Whitsunday, Bowen, and Mackay,” Felicity says. “Our aim is twofold, to develop a network for Indigenous business owners, but secondly, to connect with government, not-for-profits and corporate procurement managers, and promote the products and services we offer to the wider community. “A lot of the time, people don’t even know our businesses are there. But we have amazing people doing stand-out stuff!” Each month, around 20 business owners and corporate or government representatives attend the Greater Whitsunday Black Coffee events. A website for the national network will soon launch, offering fact sheets to help Indigenous business owners extend their skills and reach, and will also promote events and activities.

Connect and find upcoming events at facebook.com/ BlackCoffeeIndigenousBusinessNetwork, or find the network on Instagram and Twitter.

Deadly Weavers

LOMANDRA, PANDANUS, dianella, rushes, vines... Central Queensland flora is being used in weaving projects in the Whitsundays, sourced through local landholders and Traditional Owners. The natural fibres are woven together not only to produce beautiful baskets and jewellery, but also to represent something more profound: healing, sharing, and reconnecting with traditional Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander culture. Several years ago, Felicity Chapman suffered a brain aneurysm, and weaving became a part of her healing therapy. A Wiradjuri woman now living on Ngaro country, and a child of the stolen generations, Felicity followed the opportunity to connect with lost cultural knowledge. “In 2018, I secured some Regional Arts Development funding to bring a teacher up from Canberra. I was struggling to find a local teacher,” she says. “I had always wanted to learn more about my culture and thought weaving would be a great way to have a better understanding of where I came from.” The awakening has blossomed into Deadly Weavers, sharing the craft by running workshops in schools, health settings and with community groups. “Deadly Weavers was established to revitalise traditional cultural weaving,” Felicity says. “We’ve lost a lot of knowledge throughout the regions due to colonisation and forced relocations. So small programs like we do in schools helps young people reconnect with their culture through weaving. The program allows our future Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders to sit in circle, listen to the stories of the Elders, understand how knowledge of the seasons, plants and animals along with practical life skills were passed down from generation to generation. More importantly: that we must respect and tread gently on the countries where we live and work to ensure our fragile ecosystems survive and thrive for future generations. “The most powerful part of weaving is not the actual weaving, it’s everything that happens around that process. It changes lives. The children are our future leaders and they will weave the new way forward.” Felicity grows some of her fibre and natural dye source plants, but also keeps an eye out for new plant species and harvest sources. “I get very excited experimenting with the dye potential of many local native barks and berries and they provide a beautiful gentle palette of colours that allows me to create an aesthetically pleasing and unique woven artefact.” “I have access to a number of properties, and when I travel onto a different country, I get permission from the Traditional Custodians and Elders. This is important culturally as it shows respect to the Traditional Custodians and ensures safe passage. If I see something that would be viable to play with, I check before harvesting to make sure that I don’t disrupt the current practices engaged by the Elders, ensuring the sustainability of the plant species into the future.” From a base in Airlie Beach, Deadly Weavers has run workshops across the broader CQ region, from Proserpine to Pinnacle, and further south to Baralaba and Woorabinda.

deadlyweavers.com.au

Facebook.com/deadlyweavers or instagram.com/deadlyweavers

WixStix

THE EARTHY drone and etherial toot of the didgeridoo resonates a very direct connection between nature and music. Mackay is home to Bruce Wix, creator of WixStix: high-quality didgeridoos with a beautiful natural timber finish, turned timber mouthpieces and just the hint of embellishment via a single ring of small inlaid gems like malachite or opal. With a trade in joinery and stair-building, Bruce started in the craft over 20 years ago, while living and working in far north Queensland. “I learnt by trial and error, and pretty much taught myself, developing tools and techniques along the way,” Bruce says. “I loved the sound. I had bought a didge in Cairns and jumped on a fishing boat and taught myself how to play when I was up in the Torres Strait for three years. I’ve always been a hands-on timber sort of a person, so I naturally progressed to sourcing and making my own.” The process begins with freshly cut northern Australian eucalyptus timbers, usually woolybutt, ironbark, bloodwood, boxwood and stringybark, sourced unmilled from a didge cutter, and packaged to preserve the timber’s moisture. Seasoning is an important step in the process and takes around six months, drying from the outside in. The end grain is sealed and the inner natural termite-made hollow is blocked so that air cannot pass through. This is done to reduce the potential for cracking in the production of the instrument. The crafting process is quicker, with upwards of six hours going into chiselling the internal taper and shaping the external surface, before finally fitting a timber mouthpiece. “Time varies depending on the stick of timber: if it’s a good stick, it will be quicker to make. It comes down to the quality of the blank you are working with,” he says. Bruce is well known in the Greater Whitsunday regional music scene, often guesting with performers at festivals like Wintermoon. As a player himself, he has a strong sense of what the instrument can bring to musicmaking, honing them to produce a particular key. It’s a rare skill, achieved by working with each individual stick, fine-tuning a balance between lengths, internal tapers and diameters to produce the instrument’s natural key. “Now that I am making didges for the European market, they like to play a lot of the overtone notes. So chiselling the internals is important: the closer you get the first toot note to the drone note, the easier it is to hit, and then the second and third notes aren’t far behind, and you start to get all these overtones.” His instruments are sold internationally, picked up by professional musicians in Australia and Europe, sold through shops in Australia, France and Switzerland. In Europe, musicians like Zalem Delarbre, rated as one of the world’s top didge players, are looping the instrument with beatboxing and handpans to create percussive contemporary dance music. Closer to home, several Greater Whitsunday region musicians are also using Bruce’s instruments.

See more of Bruce’s work at www.spiritgallery.com.au/didgeridoo/wix-stix-didgeridoo Facebook.com/WixStix Bruce Wix

Mifsud’s Fresh

HAVING YOUR own garden and growing your fruit and veg to pick fresh is a dream for many of us who live in cities, with little space. Thankfully, you can get fresh, locally grown produce from people who do have the space. What began as a traditional way to feed the family, soon became one of Mackay’s greatest success stories. Mark Mifsud grew up picking produce form the backyard and enjoying mum’s cooking, as a boy he could never imagine how fresh fruit and vegetables would shape his life. “My father Tony has always been into market gardening and he grew produce so well he decided to sell it. That was successful, so he wanted to sell more. My mother Margaret is from Malta and she came from a family who grew produce too, so as a family of six we started selling at the local markets.” Discovering a high demand for their fresh produce, Tony sourced more fruit and vegetables from Bowen farmers directly and even The Rocklea Markets in Brisbane to supply his expanding customer base at the Showgrounds and Walkers Markets. When Mark’s brother Robert found himself working in a fruit shop after he left school, that inspired Tony to open one in 1996. “We’ve moved three times to due to ongoing growth over the years, but we’ve maintained our passion for freshness, quality and supporting our local farmers. Seasonal availability and growing conditions vary, so you have to source certain things from other regions,” says Mark. Mifsud family values extend to the whole of community, which is evident in everything — including their staff. Warm greetings and a genuine, contagious happiness, makes even new customers feel welcome. Currently employing 20 people, Mifsud’s Fresh Fruit Barn supplies 150 businesses through Mackay, Isaac and Whitsunday regions delivering to mine camps, pubs and clubs, cafes, restaurants and more recently homes. “We’ve got a great team here, from our truck drivers and juniors, to packers and people who prepare food for restaurants and events. We’re always looking for new people to join us. COVID really pushed us to go online with a demand for home deliveries – as if I didn’t have enough to do,” laughs Mark. Customer demand has influenced most of the change in the last 20 years. Mark is proud of the product range and services they offer, beaming as he talks about his parents ongoing role in the business, such as mum’s famous fruit platters and Tony’s specialties. “Our Maltese heritage is showcased in our range. Pastizzis, salami, dad’s homemade basil pesto or roasted eggplant and tomato antipasto, are all popular with our regulars. There is too much here to detail, you’ll just have to come in and have a look.”

Bowen – Rockmelon, honey dew, tomatoes, capsicum, watermelon, pumpkin Mackay – herbs (and previously shallots and parsley), limes and finger limes, garlic You can check out the range of fresh food available for delivery on the website www.mifsudsfresh.com.au

You are what you eat

WE ARE what we eat and what we eat comes from the soil. If our food-producing soils are nutrient depleted, biologically inactive and chemically contaminated, then our food supply must suffer. Unfortunately, the tale of chemical, extractive agriculture over the past few decades involves all three of these limiting factors, and, as a result, our food has been compromised, writes Graeme Sait. There have been several studies that have highlighted this decline. In fact, there are nutritionists now claiming that the food we currently consume has just 30% of the nutrition found in the food consumed by our grandparents when they were children. This dramatic nutrient depletion is not solely related to a decline in soil fertility. It is also linked to food processing, food preparation and food transport, hence the importance of eating fresh, seasonal, whole foods. However, here we will focus upon the soil, as it is the major player. How has our food been affected by conventional farming? Conventional, acid, salt fertilisers seemed like a good idea at the time. Growers essentially embraced a much easier option. The high maintenance, soil restorative practices of the past could now be replaced with fertility in a bag. However, “easy” is not necessarily best, and in this case the new approach proved unsustainable. The acid salt fertilisers decimated some of the key creatures in the soil, responsible for soil rebuilding and nutrient delivery. The most visible of these creatures is the humble earthworm, which has disappeared from many conventionally farmed soils. However, the fungal organisms that build humus were similarly affected. Humus is the storehouse for all minerals and organic matter is also the home base for the soil organisms that deliver these minerals to the plant. Humus levels have declined by 70% during the decades of extractive agriculture and we are all paying the price. Nutrient deficient plants always require more chemical intervention. The requirement for farm chemicals grows every year and our food, our children and our planet are suffering from this deluge! How is soil health linked to planetary health? The loss of two-thirds of the organic matter in our soils is hugely important relative to climate change. You can’t make more carbon. There are the same number of carbon molecules present that have been there since the birth of our living planet. That carbon cycles between the soil (the largest storehouse), living things (carbon-based life forms) and the atmosphere, where it is stored as CO2. Over two-thirds of what used to be in the soil is now in the atmosphere, and it represents the lion’s share of the CO2 that is thickening the greenhouse gas blanket, trapping more heat and dramatically impacting all of us. The solution is to put the atmospheric carbon back into the soil from whence it came. Humus building is direct carbon sequestration, and an increasing number of leading scientists are now recognising the planetsaving potential of changing the way we farm and garden.

that if we continue those losses, at that rate, in just 60 years there will be no top soil remaining. This is hugely serious and we urgently need to recognise that the thin veil of topsoil that feeds us is a commodity vastly more precious than gold, silver and platinum combined. We are losing that soil because we lost the soil glue (humus) that binds everything together. It is the ultimate win/win scenario when we build rather than lose humus, because the food is healthier, the farm is more profitable, the crops are more resilient and the planet is happy. How does soil health improvement affect our fruit, vegetables and meat? When we remineralise our soils and invigorate the soil biology, we reclaim forgotten flavours, nutrient density and medicinal qualities in our food. Animals grown on nutrient-dense pasture supply meat, rich in omega 3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA - a powerful anti cancer compound), and that meat features much lower levels of saturated fat than meat from grain-fed animals (five times less!) Vegetables grown in these soils contain much higher levels of antioxidants. We now know that compounds like lycopene and sulforaphane are incredibly protective, but the levels of these compounds in vegetables depends upon soil life activity and the mineralisation of the soil. The medicinal qualities of your food are directly related to soil health. Fruit quality is similarly dependent upon soil fertility. Several years ago in the UK, researchers found conventionallygrown oranges that contained zero vitamin C. It appears that if you ignore the nutrient delivery mechanisms in the soil (biology and mineral balance) for long enough, you produce substandard food. This compromised produce is invariably more chemically contaminated, because of the potent link between nutrient density and pest pressure, i.e. unbalanced plants are a calling card for crop pests and hence there is a greater need for chemical intervention. How do I take the first steps to change the way I farm or garden? The first thing to realise is that there is no sacrifice required to become more sustainable in your farming operation. In our popular five-day NTS Certificate in Nutrition Farming course, you will learn that this change can be the best thing that ever happened in your farming operation. Similarly, home gardeners can visit www.nutritiongardening.com.au to read about simple strategies to build humus, fertility and fun, while producing chemical free, medicinal food for the family. My “Nutrition Farming Podcast” has proven to be a popular learning tool across the globe and I have many published articles which can also help (visit www.nutri-tech.com.au). If you explore these resources, you will soon understand the wonderful win/win potential. What is best for the environment is actually best for you!

Aside from climate change, we are losing seven to 12 tonnes of precious top soil per year, and recent research suggests

Graeme Sait is an author, podcaster and the co-founder of Queensland company, Nutri-Tech Solutions, a recognised world leader in sustainable agriculture and horticulture. He was a keynote at Reef Catchment’s 2020 Healthy Soils Symposium.

Whitsunday Mushrooms

BRET GARRITY and Samara Galloway are passionate about fungi. Growing up in farming and fishing communities in Western Australian, they both developed a deep understanding of the fundamental role fungi play in the ecological process. After travelling the world and settling in Mackay, Samara and Bret turned their love of mycology into Whitsunday Mushrooms, growing and suppling tropical mushrooms to the Mackay and Whitsunday regions. “We started off growing mushrooms for ourselves and became really obsessed with trying different varieties. We got to the stage where we were harvesting more than we could possibly eat ourselves and thought it might be worth starting a Facebook page to see if others might be interested, and it all snowballed from there. Flackyard were one of the very first to contact us, and their support and encouragement has been so inspiring,” says Samara. The fungi fanatics are now focused on growing oyster mushrooms, drawn to their unique flavour, texture and versatility. “Oysters are very different to the standard buttons and portobello varieties that you’ll find in the supermarket. They’re not only high in protein, they’re also really fun to cook with! It doesn’t take much to turn them into steak, bacon, or even calamari.” From the start Samara and Bret were committed to being environmentally responsible, not just on a personal level, but also on their farm and in their business. “A lot of large-scale commercial gourmet mushroom growers use single use plastic grow bags, but we decided that we weren’t on board with creating so much waste, so we grow in reusable food grade buckets. It does create a bit more work for us, but it’s definitely worth it. “Most of plant-based meat options are highly processed, made overseas or are sold wrapped in plastic. Mushrooms don’t travel well and have a short shelf life. There is a huge benefit in growing mushrooms locally, not just for food miles but also for the quality.” Samara says most people are not aware of how essential fungi are. “The relationship fungi have with plants is crazy, and their role in the soil is vital for plant and crop health. We truly believe that mushrooms are a food source of the future. They can be grown in urban environments, in small spaces in a low impact, environmentally sustainable way, with minimal inputs. “The mushroom world is incredible, fascinating and complex. The deeper we delve into it, the more we realise how much we just don’t know.”

You can find Whitsunday Mushrooms at the Greater Whitsunday Farmers Markets and on the menu at The Flackyard.

Facebook.com/mushroomswhitsunday

Bogandilla

THERE’S NO doubt about the success of biological farming at Freckle Farm, near Eton, with many awards for quality pork products under their belt. But did you know that Freckle Farm’s owners, Deb McLucas and Rob Bauman, are also working to develop effective biological grain and pulse cropping systems at an operation near Dysart? Bogandilla is a 2691 ha dryland farm that the couple took on in 2005, before shifting to Freckle Farm in 2010. Since then, they have share farmed Bogandilla, mostly producing sorghum and mung beans in summer and chickpea and wheat in winter. Deb McLucas said it was while operating Bogandilla that the couple became conscious they wanted to move right away from chemical farming, developing a business model that shifted from bulk commodities and towards selling sustainable, biologically produced food direct to customers, leading to the popular beef, pork and poultry products of Freckle Farm. However, they have continued to experiment with strategies to bring a sustainable stamp to their Bogandilla grain operation.

“It’s where our biological farming journey began. We changed our perception of what was best practice farming. At the time, zero till meant that you sprayed every weed. You hit the landscape so that it was pretty much bare, dead stubble,” Deb says. “We now know that by improving soil health, you restore the balance of biology in the soil, and reduce weed and disease pressure over time. “We have maintained an attitude of trying to find the best system that works in a broadacre system, but reduces wherever possible the chemicals and maximises our ability to improve and enhance our soil health and landscape health as well.” Strategies on-farm include avoiding residual chemicals and minimising the use of herbicides by using buffers which reduce the pH of the water and enable chemicals to be more effective, as well as the dispersal of biodynamic preparations out across the farm using a broadcast tower. “The farming approach has included the use of liquid

supplements at planting which contains compost extract and various minerals and trace elements that support root and plant health,” she says. “We have also trialled intercropping whereby two or more crops are planted together to provide diversity and encourage and support more biology in the soil.” She said that there was much to be learned overcoming those logistical challenges of planting and harvesting, but there were many potential benefits of intercropping over a seasonal monoculture rotational approach. “If you have wheat and chickpea (intercropped) together, there is increased ability to suppress disease and weeds, and you immediately have 100% groundcover, which reduces the risk of erosion. With climate change, we are seeing an increase in the scale and frequency of extreme weather events such as super storms. These events can be quite damaging when you don’t have groundcover. “We know multi-species cropping can significantly reduce input costs and labour, so it follows that this approach reduces your production risk if there is an extreme event. “Also, GRDC released a report earlier this year, highlighting Australian research that identified 10-50% yield increases from growing two crops together. So it’s not as if you are sacrificing anything.” Initial work has included mixes like a small tillage radish and barley trial in 2019, with more experimentation planned across the coming season to get that perfect intercrop that is

ready for harvest at the same time and right for Bogandilla’s soil, climate and landscape. The approach ultimately offers the possibility to harvest green, a strategy that eliminates glyphosate from the system and opens potential to explore further biological fertilisation and soil health building by rotating grazing animals across stubble. The idea builds on successful wheat-barley-sheep rotations elsewhere. Reports from WA and NSW operations have demonstrated increases in yield and profits, alongside increased system health. “We’ve seen a lot of evidence that animals in any model, and in particular, cropping systems, are a great benefit to the health of the system.” At present, grain is sold through the standard grains distribution network, although Bogandilla does have a 2550 tonne grain storage complex and are in the process of extending this to allow for grading and drying of grain, allowing for more intercropping with different plant species. The forward-thinking farmers can see opportunities in the future to reach out to an increasing health and sustainabilityconscious market, that does identify the difference and recognise the value of Bogandilla grain and pulse products. She said that share farming had been a successful approach for them in maintaining the operation, largely because they had found a compatible partner with whom to work. “We were lucky to find someone with a strong background in grains and agronomy, who has been able to take good care of the day-to-day operations at Bogandilla.”

Tassal Group

AQUACULTURE IS a rapidly growing concern in Central and North Queensland, as consumers seek a sustainable alternative to pressures on wild marine fish and prawn populations. Tassal Group has set up in Central Queensland with the acquisition, rehabilitation and expansion of a prawn farm and supporting infrastructure at Gregory River, near Proserpine. Gregory River joins other prawn farming sites acquired by Tassal in recent years at Yamba (NSW) and Mission Beach. The company, best known for salmon aquaculture in Tasmanian waters, acquired the site in 2018. Commencement of rehabilitation and a major redevelopment – including a world leading processing facility and hatchery – was announced in 2019. The 180 ha of land-based ponds have taken the company’s total production to around 2400 tonnes. A further stage three expansion was completed in October 2020, adding a further 80 ha. The site has since obtained State Government approval for a total of 455 ha of ponds. David Wood, Tassal Senior Manager – Commercial Performance, said Tassal Group’s diversification into prawn farming in Queensland builds on 30 years of aquaculture experience in salmon farming. “As Australia’s largest aquaculture company and seafood company, farming Australian prawns in Queensland is a natural diversification in species, geography and markets,” he said. “We are harnessing our strengths, innovation and learnings from salmon farming and applying it to how we farm, process and bring prawns to our market channels.” The Proserpine prawn farm received international third-party Best Aquaculture Practices certification in October 2019, unlocking markets and demonstrating a commitment to responsible farming. The site utilises smart-farming technologies to monitor pond conditions such as oxygenation levels, with 85 ha of dedicated treatment ponds to ensure discharge water quality meets the standards set by Queensland Department of Environment and Science. “Our focus on sustainability has been the basis for developing responsible programs around food safety, environmental management, prawn welfare and quality here at Australia’s largest prawn farm,” he said. Tassal Group aims to bring its complete prawn production in northern Queensland and NSW to 20,000 tonnes annually by 2030 with the purchases of both Exmoor Station near Bloomsbury and the recent Billie Creek acquisition. “While we may be the new kid on the block when it comes to Whitsunday primary producers, we’re committed to the region and the community we operate in and are confident that we can play an important part in growing the local economy, especially during COVID recovery.”

tassalgroup.com.au/our-planet/prawnoperations/proserpine

Facebook.com/TassalSalmon

JCS Enterprises

OAKENDEN CANE grower Joe Muscat has given decades and bucketloads of energy and passion into exploring options to develop economic and environmental sustainability in his industry. A second-generation grower, Joe farms 265 ha of cane on a 415 ha property alongside wife Christine and in partnership with his son Stephen. He’s explored possibilities for managing soil health and water quality in Great Barrier Reef catchments through collaborative networks like Project Catalyst, and independently on-farm. Joe has explored the potential for diversifying farm income streams, trialling alternate synergistic crops like kenaf, and both industrial and sunn hemps since 2002. These fibre crops offer compatibility as they can be harvested with the same machinery and are climate appropriate. Joe said gaining critical mass in production, combined with accessible processing facilities could help the aging sugar industry retain viability, and leave it less susceptible to the ups and downs of world sugar prices. “If you look at the amount of land being lost from sugarcane, it is alarming,” he says. “It is going to mean less viability for our sugar mills, who are a third-party processor, and that concerns me every which way.” It is his hope that growers, industry bodies and government can work together to build the industry’s viability, including developing a research and development culture that supports cane growers to experiment on farm with strategies to build income streams and environmental sustainability outcomes. “We have got to find a way to add value, and that is easier said than done. Whatever way you find to add value has got to be very well thought out, very well costed and implemented,” Joe says. He sees alternate cropping as one way of offering a return at multiple bottom lines. “We have got to be cost effective. We’ve got to improve our soils, but if we can do that and generate a return, then I think that is far better than multi-species planting alone. Every species brings soil biology.” In 2013, he was awarded a prestigious Nuffield Scholarship, sponsored by Sugar Research Australia, leading to a 2017 paper Can fibre crops add value to the Australian sugar industry. His research took him to Brazil, Germany and Malaysia, where he investigated both growing and processing systems. “It opened a whole range of networks and information and will be of lifelong benefit,” Joe says. In considering scale and viability of fibre crops, Joe says he learnt that processing remained a critical issue. “The processing of fibre is one of the obstacles in commercialisation, which needs more investment to overcome that issue, and it’s a worldwide issue,” he says. Overcoming obstacles in commercialisation, however, would open up an endless array of end uses for product, Joe says. Work in commercialising novel fibre crops was progressing in Europe and Canada. Most recently, the Muscats have added an orchard and cash crops as part of the strategy to diversify farm income, including corn, soy, peanuts and mung beans. “There’s a range of crops we produce, and they are all to do with what the market is sustaining.”

DIVERSIFICATION OF FARM INCOME ROTATIONAL CROPPING BIOLOGICAL INPUTS USED SELECTIVELY

Mt Spencer Pastoral

MOUNT SPENCER has been in the hands of Sam Wright’s family for 100 years. The operation, near Nebo, also has two other coastal properties, and diversified income streams from cane and sorghum cropping joining the grazing proposition. Mount Spencer Pastoral is a family business, with Sam’s parents David and Raeleen, brother Tom and wife Sophie all bringing their own strengths and skills to the fold, across business, management, agriculture and data. Over the years, the family business has shifted in both land and herd management practices. Sam says an important aspect of the business had been transitioning to tropically-adapted Bos taurus breeds as both a climate and husbandry strategy. “Historically our fertility has been poor and cows have struggled to get back into calf while lactating. Nutrition is a factor, but also the genetic make-up of the animal is very important,” Sam says. Belmonts are holding a strong place in the breeding program, with Senepol, Angus and Brahman X composites also adding value to the herd. Sam says it was less about the particular breed and more about buying in bulls with a quality maternal lineage. “We try to buy a well-rounded bull with a good dam history, which for us is having a calf every 365 days or under. We still want to be buying bulls that have good growth rates and good carcass traits. Bulls with higher fat EBVs (estimated breeding values) will hopefully produce daughters that will hold condition when they are calving and during the dryer period of the season. The structural confirmation of the bull is also important so they don’t break down over the breeding season.”

The family has been working on building data on strong breeders, hoping to be developing their own quality bulls in-herd within the next year. Factors like nutrition are figuring in building a herd of strong dams, with supplements like phosphorous provided. “We don’t have our own data, but cows that are on phosphorous are showing bigger udder size and their calves look to be heavier and are in better condition,” Sam says. Early weaning, when the calf is at three months, has also been an important strategy for helping cows retain body condition and maintain breeding cycles. “We are starting to see some results with daughters of these bulls going into calf as two-year-olds or younger and at a weight that is much easier for us to achieve on our country.” Pasture quality is being steadily improved with reductions in paddock size building rotations. Dogs have also retained an important place at Mt Spencer, with some 17 collies and kelpies taking care of business on farm. “It helps with the animal welfare, and with workplace health and safety,” he says.

Salisbury Plains Grazing Co Glen Isla cane farm

“WE AREN’T trying to say we know it all, but we are trying to have a go at improving our environment, be more sustainable, without having to get hit over the head with regulation.”

Manager-agronomist Paul Rogers works with Rodney Barrett and daughter Sue, to run a cane farming operation at Glen Isla, near Proserpine, and a grazing operation at Salisbury Plains, near Bowen. At Glen Isla, they are one of a number of cane growers pioneering an innovative approach to cropping that integrates an exciting swathe of regen ag approaches. “Rodney and his daughter Sue bought the property in 2014-15: they had a regenerative mindset in their grazing operation at Bowen, it is just how they have always been. They’ve owned those properties for 75 years, and they have worked away at regenerative farming and just trying to improve the land. So, when this cane farm came along, they were always going to be the same way.” says Paul Rogers. “It’s about leaving the land to the next generation in a better condition. You’ve got to try and pay it back” The system, still being fully developed, integrates cattle rotated into fields during an extended 18-month fallow, grazing off weeds and mixed species fallow crops, simultaneously delivering manure to site. In 2018, Paul and Sue attended a soil health seminar in Mackay and picked up an idea about integrating Johnson-Su compost from a presentation by Resource Consulting Service director Dr Terry McCosker. Johnson-Su compost is created over a 12-month period in a custom aerobic bioreactor, and the resulting biological compost can be used as a seed coating, or integrated direct into the soil with plant cane.

With the lowland floodplain farm’s soil tending to waterlog under a trash blanket, and with pressure from heavy machinery used in cane farming, the soil is prone to becoming a bacteria-dominant biome. “We are trying to turn that around with different practices: minimum till, controlled traffic, and we can inoculate the soil with this compost,” he says. “At the end of the processing of the compost, the biology in the compost is dormant. They have gone past their reproductive phase, broken down all the good material, and have become like a spore. They are basically bullet-proof at that point, you can store them indefinitely, and when it goes down into the soil, that gets that biology to wake up again. You feed it molasses and humic acid, or you can coat it on a seed, or in our case, a sugar cane plant, and the sugars in the plant will encourage it to wake up.” This compost inoculation and addition of mixed species plants and cattle rotations in fallow has combined to build a more beneficial, positive fungus-based soil biology. The result of creating biologically lively soil has been a dramatic reduction in fertiliser cost and application. The operation is not using any chemical fertilisers, and fertiliser input has been reduced by 40%: a huge bonus when operating on Great Barrier Reef adjacent floodplains.

A single reactor produces roughly enough material for around 300 acres. Paul said it isn’t a difficult process, and can be started out in the wet season, when time is freer. Interestingly, the aerobic process uses drier materials. At Glen Isla, these were readily found on farm: a mix of hay, leaves and woodchipped debris from Cyclone Debbie.

BIOLOGICAL INPUTS MULTISPECIES COVER CROPS

A GROUP of cane growers who farm within the Sandy Creek catchment got together in 2015 to ask for help in understanding levels of different chemicals in the water. The State Government had been monitoring water quality within Sandy Creek catchment since 2007 and had picked up levels of some chemicals which exceeded the official tolerances for water quality after storms. The growers pride themselves on being good farmers using industry best management practices such as trash blanketing and green cane harvesting to prevent soil erosion and to keep inputs on farm. They wanted more information about where exactly the chemicals were entering the creek and why. The Sandy Creek catchment covers nearly 500 square kilometres and includes more than 70 wetlands. The towns of Eton and Mirani are in the region. Growers were concerned that if chemicals were coming from their own farms, that meant these expensive inputs were not only not doing the job they were bought to do — controlling pests and diseases in order to grow a high yielding cane crop — but also had the potential to harm wildlife in the local waterways where growers love to fish and swim, and the inshore Great Barrier Reef lagoon. Phil Deguara is a cane grower who supplies Mackay Sugar, farming at Brightly with his father John and brother Murray on 250 ha plus additional lease and share farms bordering Sandy Creek.

He and about 12 other growers met with Queensland’s Chief Scientist and talked to Reef Catchments about the need for farmers to understand their own data by monitoring their farm drains for runoff. They were successful in instigating a project in association with scientists from the Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation (DSITI). Where it was proven that runoff came from their farms, the growers who developed the Sandy Creek project wanted to know what they could do to reduce losses and so ensure they were able to keep using the agricultural chemical products they had to hand. To try and answer the question, farmers volunteered to take water samples on farmland up and down the various tributaries of Sandy Creek to pinpoint where chemicals were coming from, where the biggest problem areas were and what could be done to correct the problem. Regular meetings were held to share results and raise awareness of the issues. A range of local landholders and chemical users were invited to attend, including cattle graziers and representatives of Mackay Regional Council and Mackay Sugar. In addition to departmental staff, representatives of the Mackay Area Productivity Services (MAPS) organisation

Sandy Creek project

and Farmacist became involved in advising growers in the project.

out, will save him a lot of money as well as benefiting the environment.

“We’ve had a good working relationship with the Department of Science. It has been an open discussion about everything and the Department has been very helpful.

Initial learnings from the project highlighted that there was no single hot spot and that all tributaries within Sandy Creek are contributing to guideline exceedances where these occur.

“We ran trials on farms with different chemicals, soil types and weather events to compare runoff rates,” says Phil.

The third stage of the project has now begun. For two years in the Brightly area within the Sandy Creek catchment, trials have been under way on farms to continue to understand chemical losses and practices required to minimise them while ensuring the products used still maintain the efficacy required for pest and weed control.

“We looked at the large range of factors which can influence chemical exceedance levels. “I personally have changed some practices as I became aware of how little was needed to influence the levels of chemicals found in the creek. I have changed some chemicals, I have changed spraying practices by not spraying in some windows – not putting on chemicals at a time when I know there will be a big rain event for instance. “We found some chemicals applied three months before will still be detected in runoff after a large rain event. “We also found the agricultural chemical, imidacloprid, used to control cane grubs in the soil, can be lost over a number of years. “We are still getting exceedances but these are less. That may of course be because it has been very dry.” Phil wants to see ongoing testing on his farm to minimise as much chemical runoff as he can, which, he points

Phil hopes that one day all farmers will be monitoring their own runoff data on farm when water monitoring technology becomes cheaper. “Sandy Creek was the first grower-led water testing project and a lot more projects have followed up and down the Queensland coast. This is a real step forward because it is important for growers to own their own data and validate what’s happening on their own farms — rather than bureaucratic decisions being made on their behalf because of modelling.” Phil won the Reef Pesticide Champion Award in the 2018 Reef Alliance Awards facilitated by the Queensland Farmers Federation for his instrumental role in implementing the grower-led water monitoring project.

Clarke Creek Aboriginal Corporation

FROM A treetop, a koala gazed down on a gathering of the Clarke Creek Aboriginal Corporation. Her presence stimulated discussion about the healthy koala population that dwells across the Clarke Creek - Connors Range area. Margaret Hornagold is a Traditional Owner and CCAC director, who said the organisation is developing a plan to conduct koala trail tours in the Clarke Creek area, ideally to start in 2021. “There is a population across Clarke Creek Hall that hangs about, and we thought it would be a great idea to do walks through there, to talk to people about the area, about koalas, and how we need to take care of them,” Margaret says. “I was drawing on a report from 2018 that looked at the koala population around the Connors Range and Clarke Creek area. It showed there were healthy populations. It would be good to keep it that way.” Margaret says it was a good way to start a conversation around conservation of the local koala population, given moves towards development of wind farms in the area, which presented pressures around land clearing and noise. “We all need to sit at the table and look at how these will impact trees and corridors which the koalas use,” she says. Alongside the indigenous tourism initiative of the koala trail, there are plans to increase road awareness signage in the area, and to obtain funding for conservation strategies like over-road walkways for koalas, that build connectivity and safe passage. “It’s about having healthy native fauna. It lets people know there is a local population there, and it needs to be protected,” she says. “In a lot of places, habitats are being destroyed. I know there has been funding announced for that down in Brisbane, and I think it would be good to see some of that for Clarke Creek.” The CCAC is a relatively new body and are building relationships with other groups of the Clarke Creek district, from landholders, to the local school and campdraft association, through to catchment management bodies like the Fitzroy Basin Association. “We are talking with the Fitzroy Basin association, and looking at getting them to come out and identifying the vegetation that is in that little (Clarke Creek Hall) area, and to see that it is all in good shape for the koalas, and how we could go about setting up the tourism trail,” Margaret says.

Margaret Hornagold welcomes enquiries, call 0427 212 701

GRAZIER BOB Harris has been inspired by leaders in holistic management, Allan Savory, Dr Christine Jones, and Charles Massy. For two decades, Bob has applied their principles on his cattle farm at Glencoe Station, a 2400 ha property south of Bowen. In the dry tropics, most of the 1000 mm of rain falls over the two-month wet season, followed by 10 months of little or no rainfall. Bob’s management mentality of ‘mob-mow-move’ enables him to run a productive enterprise all year-round, despite extended periods of no rainfall. This rotational grazing approach enables him to provide the country and his pastures with the required rest to re-establish ground cover density and soil health. “When we started out, our focus was on diversifying our ground cover, introducing tropical legumes to fix nitrogen and to improve soil health, and to make the mineral available to our cattle through their diet. Many legumes are also high in protein which is crucial to our animals’ productivity,” Bob explains. The property is divided into 30 fixed fence paddocks, while additional electric fencing further breaks paddocks down into smaller parcels that support rotational grazing land management. “Dividing the country up enables me to rotate my mob and rest the paddock after they mowed it down. We call these

spelling periods, providing the country to rest after short burst of grazing with a high density of animals. We run two or three mobs of cattle at a time as it makes it easier to move them and enables us to rest 80% of the farm at any given time, meaning there are no cattle on these paddocks at all. The key factor is to only allow short bursts of grazing and to keep the cattle moving along into another paddock, shifting cattle, and thus grazing pressure, allows landscape recovery and stimulates the growth of valuable pasture species.” “Cattle are habitual animals and get used to the moving routine very quickly when there is a fresh paddock in front of them, you can simply open the gate and they will move into the fresh pasture. It should be noted that it is not a set calendar thing; the key is to observe the condition of the farm and adjust your management as you go. “In contrast, a set-stock grazing system can quickly lead to the loss of beneficial 3P pastures which are perennial, palatable, and productive. It needs to be understood that cattle are selective feeders and cherry pick the paddock. If you permanently hold cattle in one paddock, even if it is not

Bob Harris

heavily stocked, you end up losing your most palatable and productive species, and possibly introduce weeds,” Bob adds. Bob emphasises that replacing set-stock grazing with rotational grazing enables cattle to be introduced to freshly grown pastures all the time. A short burst of grazing pressure, allowing them to chew off about 15 cm off the top will keep plants in their most palatable growth phase while stimulating root growth and thus future plant growth. Furthermore, increased root growth creates a carbonrich home for beneficial soil microorganisms to live in, which thrive in soil that enables good aeration and water infiltration. “Basically, the cattle are put into the paddock with established yet still freshly grown pastures for a few days to chew off the top, leave behind their nutrient-rich urine and manure, and to work up the ground with their hooves, acting like a plough. This process loosens and fertilises soils, encouraging soil biological activity and seed germination.” Bob says he has learned that each microbe has a different job to do and each plant species hosts different species

of microbes, thus enabling the harnessing of everything required by the plant and making it available to the cattle. He maintains that a healthy farm ecosystem is able to look after itself. If your pastures are species-rich then your soil biology is also abundant, making the unlocking of needed minerals possible. “In nature everything is connected and so is everything in your farm ecosystem. My animals benefit from improving soil biology and thus pasture richness and diversity. As your soil gets better, you break compaction, you increase carbon levels and increase your ability of retaining soil moisture, building a functioning system where the benefit for the soil fertility becomes exponential. All this is achieved by simply applying intense short-term grazing pressure, followed by long periods of rest.”

ROTATIONAL GRAZING HEALTHY SOIL BIOLOGY

Founded in 2009, Sustainable Table is a not-for-profit organisation working to create a food system that is fair, healthy, humane and good for the environment. Sustainable Table is doing this by building an engaged community of people across Australia who want to learn about, connect with, and improve the resilience and regenerative capacity of our food system. Sustainable Table has recently embarked on a Mackay-Whitsunday replication of their successful Victorian place-based grants program, Ripe for Change, which is designed to improve our food-system and deliver enhanced health, employment and sustainability outcomes for the community and environment. The Ripe for Change Mackay-Whitsunday Program has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the Morris Family Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies Vibrant Oceans Initiative. Sustainable Table | Tegan McBride, 0402 853 903 tegan@ripeforchange.org.au | ripeforchange.org.au

A farmer-driven research group, Central Queensland Soil Health System (CQSHS), is dedicated to restoring and building soil health through combining practical knowledge and science. Inspired by global leaders of regenerative agriculture, local members of cane, livestock, and horticulture producers aim to help one another by sharing knowledge and experience on sustainable farming practices with healthier food being the goal. The non-for-profit, peer-to-peer group enables landholders to build their knowledge around sustainable farming practices while building supportive relationships in a trusted network of fellow farmers. Please contact the CQSHS should you wish to find out more about their meetings and workshops. Central Queensland Soil Health Systems Inc (CQSHS) | Allan McLean, 0439 407 513 cqshs@outlook.com | cqshs.farm

The Greater Whitsunday Food Network (GWFN) is a notfor-profit community organisation bringing all players in the local food scene together. They connect those who produce food, wholesale or distribute or retail it, through to retail, hospitality, and tourism, and of course the individuals who care about what they eat when seeking out special foods and dining experiences in our region. The group has the desire to foster the development of a vibrant regional food culture where locals and visitors alike can access and enjoy the wonderful produce and value-added goods that are grown, raised, caught and made in Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region.

Bowen Gumlu Growers Association (BGGA) is a peak industry body representing Australia’s largest winter vegetable growing region. The district sends fruit and vegetables to both the domestic and export markets with a farm gate value of $460 million. BGGA serves as the first point of contact by utilising it’s on-ground grower and key industry stakeholder connections. The organisation provides a presence and a voice for horticultural issues while facilitating and promoting key industry events and information. Bowen Gumlu Growers Association (07) 4785 2860 admin@bowengumlugrowers.com.au bowengumlugrowers.com.au

Organisations - Get involved

The Greater Whitsunday Farmers’ Market (GWFM) gives locals and visitors the opportunity to buy produce directly from farmers of the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region. The market is a showcase for the amazing produce the region has on offer, while giving farmers and value adders the opportunity to help grow the region’s food culture. The farmers’ market is a weekly ritual of food, friendly faces, and a place for the community to access the best seasonal produce of the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac region. Visit the Greater Whitsunday Farmers’ Market which is held every Wednesday from 7am to 11am at Bluewater Quay on River Street, Mackay. Greater Whitsunday Food Network (GWFN) and Greater Whitsunday Farmers Market (GWFM) Kirra Tully, 0498 771 941 markethq@greaterwhitsundayfood.org.au greaterwhitsundayfood.org.au facebook.com/GreaterWhitsundayFoodNetworkInc

The Greater Whitsunday Alliance (GW3) is the region’s peak, independent economic development body committed to making the Mackay Isaac Whitsunday region strong for generations. The GW3 is future focused, dynamic, and committed to ensuring the region continues to transform and embrace new opportunities for a sustainable, and prosperous economy. The organisation is strategic and coordinated, working on local, national, and international networks, while advocating for projects from both government and the private sector. One such project is the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac Agribusiness Futures Alliance Project which is hosted by the GW3 and is designed to support the improvement of food systems within the region’s agribusiness sector. Greater Whitsunday Alliance (GW3) Shireen Pisters, (07) 4845 8222 admin@gw3.com.au greaterwhitsundayalliance.com.au

Growcom serves and represents Queensland’s fruit, vegetable and nut growers, striving for the long term growth and success of horticultural farms and the industry as a whole. Hort360 is designed to give farmers a 360 degree view of their farm business operations. Hort360 assists in identifying potential risks, capitalise on business opportunities and highlight unnecessary farm expenses. It is a whole of farm business approach. The program is entirely voluntary. By participating in Hort360 you will have the opportunity to access technical support, on-farm training, and professional networks. All this will enable you to increase efficiencies, reduce costs, improve productivity and product quality, and build wealth. Growcom | Eilis Walker, 0477 411 464 ewalker@growcom.com.au | hort360.com.au

While landcare activities had been carried out for many years by individuals and groups, the not-for-profit Landcare movement officially began in 1989 when the National Farmer’s Federation and the Australian Conservation Foundation lobbied the Australian Government to commit to the cause. Whitsunday Catchment Landcare (WCL), Pioneer Catchment and Landcare Group (PCL) and Sarina Landcare Catchment Management Association (SLCMA) work together to progress environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the Mackay Whitsunday region. Each is the peak, community based natural resource management (NRM) organisation for their catchment. They facilitate projects which work to improve, and educate the community about, biodiversity; climate; coast and marine; land, water and waterways and community (as identified in the Mackay Whitsunday NRM Plan). WCL, PCL and SLCMA often pursue funding for joint NRM projects with the goal to delivering on-ground outcomes and support landholders and the community. Each group operates independently and are not-for-profit, incorporated, community based organisations. Collaboratively they are recognised as the Central Queensland Coast Landcare Network (CQCLN), a partnership for the Natural Resource Management of catchments in the Central Qld Coast Bioregion: Pioneer, Sarina, and Whitsunday catchments. whitsundaylandcare.org.au Cath Campbell, 0438 811 229 coordinator@whitsundaylandcare.org.au

sarinalandcare.org.au Saskia von Fahland, (07) 4956 1388 admin@sarinalandcare.org.au

pioneercatchment.org.au Nichole Zahra, 0497 441 979 coordinator@pioneercatchment.org.au

Central Queensland Coast Landcare Networks cqclandcarenetwork.org.au

Markets - Get involved

01 Markets are more than just a great place to get your fresh produce at a great price, it’s also a community space where you can meet up with like-minded people.

GREATER WHITSUNDAY FARMERS MARKET Wednesday, 7 – 11am, Bluewater Quay, River Street, Mackay. Authentic farmers’ market where you can be be certain the food being sold is grown or produced as locally as possible, usually within 150 kms. All stallholders undergo a certification and authentication process. MACKAY SHOWGROUND MARKETS Saturday, 6 – 9am While not everything at the Saturday morning markets is grown within the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region, the best way to find out it where and how it is produced is to form a connection with the grower or in some cases the seller.

TROPPO MARKETS Second Sunday of the month (except December, it’s on the first Sunday), 7:30 – 11:30am, Mt Pleasant Shopping Centre Carpark run by the Mackay North Rotary Club, THIRD GROUND 1st & 3rd Saturdays of the month, Central Street, Sarina. SEAFORTH MARKETS Sunday 8:30am – 12pm, Palm Avenue. Every week the seaside community get together under the shady trees. On the first Sunday of the month they hold the Seaforth Mega Markets. WHITSUNDAY MARKETS Saturday, 6am – 12pm, Airlie Beach foreshore. BOWEN SUNDAY MARKET Sunday 8am – 12pm, 83 Horseshoe Bay Rd, Bowen.

04 02 Many farms are opening their gates to the public in and offering the chance to see where your food comes from. Some of our regions agritourism tours and farm visits locally include: Ballantynes Strawberries where you can pick your own strawberries and blueberries.

There is still life in our food scraps which we can utilise to create microbe and mineral rich additives for your garden. Compost, worm castings and worm juice will all boost your home-grown food system. Do a little research and find the solution that is right for your home. One great way is to upcycle a used PVC pipe, drill a few holes in the bottom 30 to 40cm and bury that end in the ground. Drop your food scraps (no meat or dairy) into the top of the pipe and place the lid on so no rodents can access it. Worms will enter and eat the scraps then make deposits of their castings out into your garden.

Freckle Farm tour to see regenerative agriculture in practice with free range chickens and speckled nguni beef. Sarina Sugar Shed where you can see the full mini mill in action, visit the distillery and taste their range of products including some award winners.

03 We value fresh produce when we experience the time, care, attention and energy it takes to grow food. Try growing something you have never grown before. Juicy homegrown tomatoes taste fantastic and mushrooms are a fun novelty you can try growing at home. Do your research into what season is best. Not too many of standard European vegetables like the humid, hot and wet summers here in the tropics but will work over the cool dry winter. There are plenty of tropical greens like ibeka, brazillian spinach and sambung that will be an interesting addition to your garden and diet.

05 Money matters, so do you think local food, maybe from a small diversified farm, grown in Australia should be cheaper or more expensive than food grown overseas in large monoculture systems? It’s partly about recognising that smaller scale can at times mean increased producer costs, but also consider Australian land values and labour costs. You will mostly get better quality produce for your dollar with freshly harvested produce. Central Queensland has an international reputation for food quality, largely because of our cleaner air and water. Certified Organic food may come with a higher price tag but are you willing to pay for the assurance your food has been through a rigorous process to ensure no harmful chemicals have been used in the soil, or sprayed onto the plant itself to keep pests away?

JW Livestock

FOR A fourth generation of family to flourish on Cockenzie, south west of Nebo, the Whitehead family have diversified their activity both on and off farm. Leaning on the yard rail, smiling as he watches a bunch of happy young cousins on school holidays riding horses and motorbikes, roping and rounding up cattle, James Whitehead knows that growing up connected to life and work on a cattle station is a good thing for his two early teen children, and also those of his brother and sister. At present, James’ family and that of his brother Cameron, along with their father John are all still living and working on Cockenzie, a 10,120 ha grazing operation. They run around 900 Belmont red X Brahman and Charbray breeders, and sell feeder steers. “There is a generational changeover going on. Land is staying the same size, but it’s getting smaller because families are getting bigger,” James says. “As families get bigger, it gets harder for everyone to make a living out of the farm, it just isn’t viable. It isn’t like three generations ago, when there was an abundance of land that was much more affordable. That made it easier to buy more land. For families to get more land now, it means they go further into debt when they are already carrying debt. You need to do it differently.” To that end, James has worked to build a livestock agency business, diversifying his family’s direction and complementing his skills as a grazier. James started out working as a commission agent for Hayes and Co at Nebo Saleyards in 2012, and went on to acquire his auctioneer, real estate and stock principal agent’s licence. Over the past five years, James has grown his own business, JW Livestock, to offer a full range of livestock services, and facilitates vendor access to saleyards right across Central Queensland and online sales platforms. He is proud to be a part of the combined agents’ sales that reinvigorated Nebo Saleyards in 2020. “We are having sales every month, and have got the buyer support, and we are working on building the vendor confidence to bring their cattle back there,” he says. He said the intimate connection with the cattle markets was also helping him make better informed decisions on Cockenzie. “You have your finger on the pulse, we can be sure to sell cattle off here at pretty much the top of the market. Over time, that’s worth quite a few dollars.”

James is also president of the Nebo Bushmans Carnival Inc (NBCI), whose popular and successful events bring a lot of benefit to the broader rural community. While NBCI donate significantly to established community services and charities like Isolated Children’s Parents Association, RACQ CQ Rescue or Rural Aid, it also creates a platform where local community organisations can participate in the logistics of running the event – such as catering and entertainment, and earn money towards their organisations. Drawing up to 7000 campers, Nebo Rodeo creates a hub of economic benefit for the community. “In 2019, we handed back to the community around $51,000. We give back what we can,” he says. Thanks to the hard work of the district’s rural community, the rodeo has evolved into a strong financial entity that has in turn been able to contribute towards improvements and the development of infrastructure and facilities that makes the event even more successful. For example, Nebo’s Undercover Arena has seen significant improvements made over the years due to fundraising efforts from within the community, and from profits from the NBCI’s other annual events. This includes the annual campdraft, cutting show, and ball. James feels these events also build community resilience and diversity.

Get in touch with JW Livestock by emailing office. jwlivestock@gmail.com

Reef Trust IV

SOIL AND sediment — nearly enough to fill Suncorp Stadium, was lost from streambanks along the O’Connell River, St Helens Creek and Murray Creek between 2009 and 2018. Erosion of our precious topsoil and loss of land is concerning for farmers and reef lovers alike. Reef Catchments Reef Trust IV (RT4) project started with waterway engineering specialists to identify what areas are more prone to erosion, where the erosion sites are and pinpoint the cause. Project staff have worked to develop long term affordable methods for landholders to reduce erosion in our creeks and rivers and improve water quality. Amanda Bland, Water and Waterways Officer says, “We also work with the landholders to create an understanding of the natural process of our rivers and creeks and the role we all play in keeping them functioning properly. In total 31 landholders are working toward solutions to erosion and improved water quality across three main catchments covering 78 km of stream bank. The program varies from simple, inexpensive weed control to huge engineered projects which include pile fields. A pile field consists of large logs driven into eroding banks which mimic natural trees (pictured, bottom right). “We have planted over 34,000 trees in the last year alone through the RT4 program, that includes deep rooted trees and matted root systems of shrubs and ground cover as well. These are plants that would naturally be there, so that when there are floods, the banks are protected from that fast-moving water,” says Amanda. RT4 began in 2017 with funding from the Australian Federal Government and is delivered through the Water and Waterways team at Reef Catchments. The project has achieved outstanding results in reducing fine sediment entering the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon. This in turn helps improve both the clarity of the water allowing sunlight to reach established coral and improves the prospects of baby coral, which struggle to connect on to substrates covered in sediment. Like many other Reef Catchments projects, RT4 has dual benefits for agriculture and the GBR. “Riparian zones play a massive part in overall system health. Healthy riparian zones protect your property from bank erosion, increase biodiversity, provide a sense of community and look great, so get involved, “ says Brendan Smith, Project Officer at Reef Catchments. “The RT4 project has provided an opportunity for local landholders to work together to find practical solutions to water quality and erosion issues that complement sustainable farming practices”.

Before After

Grazing Goat Cafe

THE

EVOLUTION WHEN IT comes to diets and nutrition, everyone has their own idea of what works for them. Of course, any diet should focus on fuelling optimum physical health. Founded in 2000, CrossFit exploded in popularity globally due to the combination of unique workouts and diet. Michael Harris became heavily involved in the movement and personally experienced the difficulty in accessing the right foods while dining out. Low in carbs, the diet emphasizes consuming macronutrients from whole plant foods, lean proteins and healthy fats. After two years under the Paleo Café banner he decided to rebrand and broaden his customer base by offering meals that catered for all eating preferences. Taking the positives he learnt from his Paleo Café experience, he added to the menu range by catering to the broader market but was insistent upon keeping the ingredients as unprocessed as possible. Michael says, “The Grazing Goat Café has evolved over time from the early days of being a Paleo Café franchisee to today being a café providing a range of menu items for all eating preferences. “Our core belief centres around preparing as much of the ingredients for our dishes in-house and fresh daily, basically from scratch. Our hollandaise sauce is a great example – made fresh every four hours. We not only believe this is better for you,

but it tastes better also. There is a common perception that if its healthy it not tasty, our goal is to bridge that gap,” he says. Normal, gluten free, dairy free, vegan, vegetarian and combination diets that satisfy any palate are included on the menu, complemented by a range of sauces, dressings and condiments made on the premises, to ensure fresh and wholesome ingredients are used with minimal preservatives or additives. Cooking from scratch is the key. “I need to give a shout out to my team in the café also as they make all of this happen. Doing what we do and how we do it adds significant prep time to our overall operations and with only a small team they work hard to please our customers.” Reinventing the business allowed him to buy produce directly from farmers in his local region. A member of the Greater Whitsunday Food Network, Michael prides himself on sourcing what he can locally like supporting Freckle Farm with their former pork products. “I want to promote local producers and incorporate their seasonal foods in our menu. Karl and Mars from Fresh As

Sweet As have the farm next door to my farm, and and supply seasonal veggies like corn, zucchini and amazing cherry tomatoes. We design specials based on what’s available at the time.” A Chilean corn dish to look out for is from a recipe provided by Michael’s partner, who is from Chile, called pastel de choclo – pie from corn. Michael believes helping the local economy is also key to a healthy community. “We support our farmers and that money circulates in through our region. It’s a win/win for me.” With consumers more conscious of what they eat and where it comes from, catering to a broad range of diners remains a focus. The café has also made the decision to change coffee suppliers. “We currently use Toby’s Estate, a popular brand in NSW and Victoria. However, in keeping with our buy local focus, we have decided to go with local coffee roaster Primal Coffee Roasters. Dan has come up with our own bespoke blend, so we are looking forward to introducing this to the market in the very near future,” Michael says.

Slabswell Macadamias

“THERE’S A macadamia tree in Brisbane Botanic Gardens that’s about 150 years old and still produces. It’s a tree that’s with you a long time.” It’s 12 years since Graham and Roberta Matsen first planted their 20 ha macadamia orchard at Mount Christian, south of Koumala. Slabswell Macadamias was a diversification on their more traditional cattle and cane operation. The Matsen family emigrated from Denmark to farm cane in the region in 1885, so trying something new runs in the veins. The Matsens have put time and thought into developing crop knowledge and networks, from the very first linking with and learning from Gray’s Macadamias, a Northern NSW firm that established over 30,000 trees across two properties west of Mackay in the early 2000s, now operated by other agribusinesses. They are also members of the Australian Macadamia Society and value learning opportunities there and through Growcom. “Gray’s helped us through the first four or five years. We struggled a little when they left, but in the last few years, we have been getting that agronomy support, mainly from Bundaberg, and from Growcom, who recognise the macadamia industry in Mackay. We have turned a corner now, too, with agricultural suppliers understanding what we need.” Operating across two properties, Graham and Roberta have 60 ha given to cattle, and 100 ha to cane, both still their bread and butter, but Graham is quietly philosophical when it comes to the long game of macadamia tree crops. “We got our first harvest four years after we planted, and it’s never missed a year. For sure, it hasn’t made us millionaires, but it’s always looked after us,” says Graham. “Tree crops are quite different to an annual crop. Everything you do is an improvement year on year, a bit like how you develop your herd over the years.” The orchard has been established on old cane country, and the Matsens are taking care to rehabilitate their soils by building the level of organic material in soil, ensuring adequate grass coverage on the orchard floor to avoid erosion, and maintaining thoughtful and timely applications of fertiliser. Graham said that macadamias offered a range of advantages. “When we looked at diversifying, we first thought about lychee, then we thought about the fruit bats. We didn’t want to start a war with them. You don’t have that problem with macadamia,” he says. “You don’t need a hundred workers, either, it’s a fairly automated harvest process that can be completed by a small number of people, and neither do you have to cold store it.” He said the biggest jobs were controlling grass in the orchard and monitoring for pests, but these were something easily managed by a few people at their scale of crop. Macadamias, being a rainforest species, do like a good supply of water. Their natural environment range is from subtropical Northern NSW up to the Wide Bay-Burnett region, but the Matsens, along with several other producers in the region, are finding success extending its range into the tropics. Graham and Roberta sell through co-ops in Gympie and Bundaberg. “You certainly don’t ever have to worry about selling it.”

Learn more about macadamia cropping at australianmacadamias.org

What is regenerative agriculture? REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE is a continuum of observation, learning from nature and applying natural principles to land management practices. It seeks to replace reductionist conventional agriculture practices with those that are aligned with the blueprint of life. The approach is a dynamic relationship between the farmer (as steward of the land) and the land itself, along with all living entities inhabiting it. Each farm will adopt tailor-made farm management practices, where the fertility of the soil is paramount to the health of the farm ecosystem and thus farm productivity. Conventional agriculture, like any other industry, follows certain standards, including environmental best management practices, to minimise adverse effects on the environment while maintaining production targets. Right now, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in agriculture, based on an understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

nutrient-rich, healthy produce, grown in a way that does not jeopardise but instead regenerates the environment in which food is grown. The interdependency between the tiniest organisms found within the soil-plant sphere, their symbiotic relationship with plants and animals and their ability to nurture growth is understood by the farmer. Micro-organisms like bacteria and fungi work efficiently in optimising and utilising the landscape’s water and nutrient cycles, and nature’s natural pest and weed defence – biodiversity – keeps the farm ecosystem in balance. Regenerative agriculture reconnects people to vibrant, healthy food and local cultural traditions, examples of which have emerged from all over the world including: natural sequence farming from Japan permaculture from Australia holistic management from South Africa syntropic farming from Brazil.

In regenerative agriculture, maintaining biological diversity and richness in the soil provides the basis to producing

“Your plants produce sugar through photosynthesis, which is traded for minerals that the microbes supply in exchange. This is ‘mother nature’ doing her job. By putting on everything the plant requires, the co-dependent relationship between plant and soil microbes is destroyed. From now on, you will need to be doing the microbes’ job, because the plant became dependent on you feeding it. Microbes have the tools in the form of acid to unlock the vast amounts of minerals found in the soil rock bed. The focus needs to be on microbes because they are our cheapest and most effective workforce.” – John Attard, cane grower

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Principles of regenerative agriculture

01 The farming landscape is not just a segmented patch to manage, it’s a connected web. It is vital to aim for simultaneous benefit to the whole farm ecosystem.

Soils have the impressive ability to store large amounts of carbon dioxide which over time is metabolised into soil organic matter, creating a healthy environment in which plants will thrive. Adopting low or no-till practices are beneficial to minimise physical disturbance of the soil, keep carbon where it belongs, and support soil fertility.

Exposed soil is prone to erode, resulting in the loss of nutrients required by plants to thrive. By maintaining living plants in the ground, the soil is held in place and protected from erosion. In a monoculture setting, where only the same plants are planted in the same location, limited nutrients are made available to the plant. This is because different plant species release different carbohydrates (plant sugars) attracting a diverse set of microbes, each with the unique ability to unlock specific nutrients. By increasing plant diversity, rotating crops, and deploying cover crops strategically, soils can be provided with a greater amount of organic matter and consequently allowing mineralisation to occur in the soil. The process creates a diverse, rich, varied, and nutrient-dense soil, full of bioavailable goodness for pastures and crops. Always remember, bare soil is bad soil.

In addition to minimising physical disturbance, it is also important to be cautious with chemical or biological activities and inputs. The misapplication of fertilisers and other soil amendments can unbalance the natural and delicate relationship between plants and microbes. Thus, to improve soil fertility, biodiversity will need to be established first, followed by non-synthetic biological stimulants, for example, those derived from compost brews.

Integrate livestock

Where practical, the integration of livestock into crop land provides an additional reason to include rotational cover crops in the form of annuals, perennials, grasses, legumes, and forbs that re-mineralise the soil while supplying livestock with nutritious feed. In return, decreasing amounts of fertiliser will be required thanks to the manuring, urinating, and salivating of the animals. This process aids to increase soil organic matter build-up, increased biological activity, and results in potential disease suppression which manifests itself quickly in improved soil nutrient cycling, improved soil structure, better water holding capacity and drainage, together with weed and pest suppression.

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Photographer

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Graphic Designer

Additional photography by Isaac Regional Council, Clermont Saleyards, P&K Mifsud, Matthew Blyth, Millstream Productions, Australian Prawn Farms and featured producers.

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It’s certainly been a year for adaptation and diversification in order to meet the COVID challenges. The strict lockdowns imposed throughout April and May meant up to one-third of our Mackay region residents had their employment negatively impacted. But we are a resilient bunch, and it was fantastic to see the “out-of-the-box” thinking that ensured many businesses remained viable, including our farmers and the wider agricultural industry. The Mackay region is a powerhouse for the nation. Resources, agriculture, and tourism combine to deliver a regional GDP per head far above the State and National averages. Our community, our lifestyle and our strong economy make this region the best place to live, work and play in the nation (in my biased opinion). After a stellar first edition of Provenance, we hope you enjoy discovering all the fantastic people, practices and products that exist in our very own backyard. Mayor Greg Williamson, Mackay Regional Council

Isaac Regional Council is a proud sponsor of the second edition of Provenance Magazine produced by Reef Catchments. The diverse Isaac Region covers over 58,000 square kilometres. Our Council is passionate about the future of life on the land, and we aim to support the prosperity of agriculture, farmers and our rural communities. Our region has an abundance of grain and beef producers throughout our communities that continue to feed and energise the world. The Isaac is also wellknown for its abundance of fish and mud crabs, along with our large-scale prawn farms. This Magazine offers an opportunity that will benefit the food and agribusiness industry, providing an important link between agriculture and the broader community. We hope you enjoy reading about our producers and that you will be enticed to come for a visit, enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the Isaac Region, and feel energised and invigorated by our vast landscapes. Anne Baker, Mayor, Isaac Regional Council

As Mayor of Whitsunday Regional Council, I am committed to encouraging development and growth of our industries for the future prosperity of our region. Our fast growing $840M Tourism sector welcomes over 800,000 visitors every year and our $630M Agriculture industry is the largest winter vegetable food bowl in Australia. It makes complete sense that the Agritourism market presents a wonderful opportunity to support both the Tourism and Agriculture industries and further bolster the Whitsunday region’s economy. Expanding our Agritourism offering will allow visitors to experience first-hand the amazing climate and pristine natural environment that allows our farmers to grow world class product. Agritourism also allows our producers to leverage every opportunity to create another revenue stream by engaging face to face with the consumer. We hope you enjoy learning more about our wonderful produce and look forward to welcoming you to the beautiful Whitsunday region. Andrew Willcox, Mayor, Whitsunday Regional Council