Author: dana.bucur

CSIRO researchers have identified wheat and barley lines resistant to crown rot – a disease that costs Australian wheat and barley farmers $79 million in lost yield every year. Crown rot, which is a chronic problem throughout the Australian wheat belt, is caused by the fungus fusarium. Dr Chunji Liu and his CSIRO Plant Industry team in Brisbane are using sophisticated screening methods to scan more than 2400 wheat lines and 1000 barley lines from around the world to find the ones resistant the fungal disease. "The wheat and barley lines showing resistance to crown rot are now being used in pre-breeding programs to incorporate the resistance into adapted varieties for delivery to the wheat breeding companies," Dr Liu said. Crown rot infects many grasses and weeds found in wheat growing regions. However, minimum till cropping encourages fusarium which survives in cereal stubbles. Minimum till cropping minimises soil disturbance and retains plant stubble from previous crops in order to promote soil health and limit erosion. This means...

A growing global appetite for agricultural assets is revolutionising farming in Australia and spawning new investment models that depart from the traditional family-run farm. The Australian Financial Review reports that even as the most talked about model for city investors to take a stake in agriculture - through managed investment schemes - is under challenge after high-profile collapses, new alternatives are emerging. NFF president David Crombie told AFR that "there's a lot of interest at the moment from funds from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the United States. They're all looking at Australian agriculture." A partner at business advisory firm PKF, John Kelly, said this interest was motivated by the opportunities for long-term capital growth, the sense that global food security concerns supported a positive future for farming and that Australia was a stable investment environment. "On the one hand, you've got capital circulating around looking to land on a farm. Then on the other hand, you've got a farmer who may need some...

Author: GREGOR HEARD IT’S BEEN a tough few months for grain prices, but the last two weeks have seen a rebound from Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) December 09 futures contract lows. Futures had slipped by early October to US456 cents a bushel, but have risen sharply to US520c/bushel this week. This has resulted a mild rebound in Australian contract prices, although the sky-high Aussie dollar has absorbed much of the CBOT rise. Nominally, the spike is due to weather concerns in the US. “The weather hasn’t been great in the US, and the production estimates have come off from that real top-end scenario,” said Australian Crop Forecasters’ managing director Ron Storey. “There’s also a bit of an issue with the winter red wheat plant in southern areas through the Mississippi Delta, due to wet conditions.” He said the wet, combined with pricing, has steered southern US growers out of cereals and back into soybeans. AWB acquisitions manager, Jon White, said his company’s take on the situation...

WA seems to have dodged the global bullet and is set to power ahead, but there are a couple of flies in the ointment, a leading economic forecaster says. Access Economics' latest business outlook says the state, despite its international focus, is benefiting more than usual from domestic economic measures, such as the stimulus package and low interest rates. While the effects of the former subside, and the latter start to rise, other factors such as strong population growth - and the effects of the $43 billion Gorgon gas project - would keep the WA economy ticking along nicely. But while Gorgon might have helped WA sidestep the worst effects of the global financial crisis, it also served as a timely reminder. "That crises come and go, whereas the demand to feed industrial developments in Asia will be with us for many decades to come," the report says. "But you'd have thought that the worst year in the global economy since the global economy since...