fiona lake news

Rice has been grown in Japan  for more than 2,000 years - it is a revered crop which was once even used as currency.   In 1993 some clever farmers in the town of Inakadate came up with the idea of using different varieties of rice plants, with different coloured leaves, to create pictures.  Others have now joined in and fabulous images are now precision planted with the aid of computers.  These huge murals are so fabulous you may think they are CGI (computer generated images) until you see the closeup photographs of the purple, bright green and pale yellow rice plants.

Visit the UK Daily Mail website  to view some of the fabulous 2009 agricultural artworks that have become popular tourist attractions.  What a clever way of drawing attention to food growing.  I’d love to see these in person, and it must be fabulous seeing the images form as the plants gradually grow.

A new Northern Territory aerial mustering & charter company called ‘Outback Helicopters’ has been formed by business partners Keith Phelps, Paul Blore and Doug McBean.

Australian Agricultural Company Chairman Stephen Lonie has announced that David Farley has been appointed AACo Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, commencing on 1 December 2009.

David Farley’s career began in 1975 as a jackeroo and he has solid experience in Northern NSW and the cotton industry, spending a couple of decades up the top of the tree of 2 of Australia’s best known cotton-related companies.  David was Managing Director of Colly Cotton Limited for 16 years (when it reached the top ten of cotton-trading companies, worldwide) and Chief Executive Office of Calcot.  He has been most commonly quoted in recent years in relation to water management issues, such as water trading rights, an issue especially pertinent to the specific agricultural sector he has spent most of his working life in - irrigated cropping - in particular, cotton growing.

David Farley owns Matrix Commodities, a NSW-based agricultural commodity trading and equity investment company with offices in Narrandera and Sydney; and he has been on a number of agriculture-related boards.  One is Tandou, a massive irrigated cropping enterprise growing citrus, grapes, grains and cotton on Lake Tandou south of Menindee (NSW).  Tandou also runs some stock, but the large flock of fine-wool Merinos that were the historic basis of Tandou’s production, have been destocked in favour of the far less labour intensive wool-shedding Dorper, a sheep-meat breed from South Africa.

David started his career as a jackaroo in 1975, apparently on the famous NSW Southern Riverina Merino sheep stud ‘Boonoke’, which was owned by Rupert Murdoch (News Ltd) at the time.

Anyone who underestimates the amount of misinformation being spread by pro-vegetarian extremists, should check out ‘Save Our Planet Be Vegan’ on YouTube. 

It’s so inaccurate and alarmist it would be funny if it were not for the unfortunate reality that there are urban residents with absolutely no first hand knowledge of farming or farmers, who will read this stuff and think it’s actually the truth.  One of the funniest links is ‘Save our Rainforest’.  More rainforest is cleared to create farm land (for crop growing - eg soya beans and rice) than grazing (livestock), so where does this aim fit with the ‘be vegan’ mantra?  It’s completely contrary to it. 

Clearly, not eating meat hasn’t done anything for vegans ability to think through the big picture logically. 

Stumbled upon an excellent blog today, called ‘Bush Belle’ written by a woman who lives on a sheep property in NSW.  The links to other blogs written by people living on the land led to a whole chain of farm life-related blog recommendations in Australia and elsewhere.  Such as ‘Raising Country kids’ (USA) and ‘Smiling Country Ranch’ (Eastern Montana, USA) (with a stack of very tasty looking all-American recipes) - which lead on to other blogs such as ‘Frazzled Farm wife’ (south Dakota, USA), ‘Just another day on the Prairie’ (Alberta, Canada).  ‘Fresh From the Farm’ (USA) is another excellent blog with lots of interesting recipes, and the writer sums up what a lot of country women think when she says in her profile:  ‘I love living on the farm. I am a farmer’s daughter and always knew that I would be a farmer’s wife too! I wanted to raise my children on the farm and that is exactly what we are doing.’

It is fascinating to see this huge interconnected web  forming, of women raising families on farms, all around the world.  In many respects these women have more in common with one another than they have in common with women living in cities in the same country.  They love a country bloke and they love living in the country, and raising their family on a farm.  These women have similar problems with droughts, floods, commodity price fluctuations, rising costs, equipment breakdowns and labour issues.  I imagine this blog network will grow exponentially, and families will visit one another in different countries, all because they got to know one another via their blogs.

I have nearly run out of the advance copies of the new book ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’; so anyone who is thinking of ordering one to be mailed to an address outside Australia should order ASAP to ensure delivery before Christmas.  Normally it’s only 7-14 days by airmail to most places around the world, however worldwide customs clearance delays cause havoc with timely Christmas delivery, in December’s deluge of parcels.  Parcels mailed late may not arrive to mid January or later.

The ship carrying the main consignment of ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’ is due in next week - I should be mailing out Australian orders from about December 8th.  All Australian orders go by Express Post, which takes only a few days to reach most places in Australia - and only about a week to deliver to very remote areas.  About 14 days before Christmas, orders for remote areas (i.e. with once-a-week mail delivery) are given priority, to help ensure pre-Christmas delivery.

Alan C Hayes retired from the position of CEO of Macquarie Bank’s Paraway Pastoral Company in 2008 and took up the role of Head of Property Strategy for the Macquarie Pastoral Fund.   Alan moved on from Macquarie mid-2009 and now his agribusiness management company which he has owned since 1996, Pastoral Assets Management Pty Limited, is online.  Directors are Alan Hayes and Campbell Hayes.  Pastoral Assets Management Ltd specialises in pastoral sales and purchases, pastoral portfolio construction, sourcing staff, advice and management of pastoral joint ventures - and the financial management side, such as establishing investment & operating plans, setting up reporting procedures, budgeting for running costs & capital expenditure, and analysis of farm financial accounts.

In September 2009  Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management won a U.S. award, ‘Real Asset Manager of the Year’.

Troy Dann’s ‘My Outback TV’ website is online now, and at long last the complete ’Outback Adventure’ TV series is available, on a set of 6 DVDs.   The website includes a kid’s club and classified ad section (buy, sell & employment) and plenty of typical action pics.  This is a major project Troy Dann has been working on for a long time, so it’s good to see it online.

Troy has had more than his share of verandah-sitting knockers over the years, but he’s done more to raise the profile of life in remote Australia, than anyone else.

Ian Mott takes Jennifer Marohasy to task regarding her sweeping claims of cattle damaging the environment on her blog.

Have a read and a think about what they both have to say.  Jennifer is a classic example of someone who is absolutely determined to push a very specific barrow, despite whatever evidence may exist to the contrary.  Typically unable to have a reasoned discussion or adequately defend challenged assertions.

Ian is entirely right when he says selective photography can be used to promote a misleading view.  A good photographer does this all the time - minimising what they don’t want in an image and emphasising what they want to draw attention to - by changing angles, closeups shots and selective cropping, etc.  This is from someone who does it all the time!  It’s the most important skill any photographer can have.

As usual, it’s a one-eyed environmental extremist treating the public like fools by presenting them with propaganda and insulting their intelligence when they dare to disagree.

Kevin is entertaining, isn’t he?  ‘Record high temperatures in southern Australia are evidence of global warming’.  Right-o Kevin.  Up here we’ve had what must be record cool temperatures for the last couple of months.  Today I have been able to wear a t-shirt with short sleeves, and I can’t ever remember being able to do that in Townsville in mid November, without risking death due to heat exhaustion.   Normally at this time of year I’m sitting in my togs at the computer, periodically getting in and out of the pool to liven up the brain - the heat is usually atrocious.

Perhaps the northern cool weather and southern hot weather  is incontrovertible evidence that all the hot air that pollies spread about, from Brisbane around to Perth, is the true cause of global warming?

I’m so over these grandstanders, who choose climate statistics to suit whatever barrow they happen to be pushing, whilst decrying as idiots people who are brave enough to question the panic-mongering and ask for a balanced discussion. 

One big volcanic eruption will cool the average temperature of the whole planet by up to several degrees.  Doesn’t sound like much, but actually  that’s a massive - and sudden - drop, causing all sorts of huge flow-on effects.  Check out the figures on Mount Tambora, Indonesia’s largest volcano, that erupted in 1815.  Little known, but even larger and more catastrophic that Krakatoa.  There’s lots of information on Tambora on the internet, eg NASA.  Volcanic eruptions such as Tambora and Pinatubo cause signifcant temperature drops.  The year after Tambora erupted was called ‘the year without summer’.  Tens of thousands of people were killed - it was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

The best sunset images I ever took were in the 3 years or so following the eruption of Pinatubo - the spectacular boab sunset images on postcards I produced in the mid 1990s were taken near Derby (WA) a year after the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo.  The fine ash stayed in the upper atmosphere for an amazing length of time - several years at least.

The only good thing about the global warming panic is that hopefully it will encourage some environmental vandals to mend their ways.  In the meantime, we have to tolerate the sanctimonious pontificating of idiots treating the rest of us like idiots.