Celebrating a decade of dairy

Take us back to the first days of your career with Dairy Australia?

My first job at Dairy Australia was as program development manager — natural resources at Southbank. I had spent a couple of years prior working at GRDC and the Federal Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry and I was really keen to move back to Victoria where I am from, but also continue to work on programs that had national reach.

I really enjoyed that role as at the time the portfolio had an extensive network of NRM consultants. The projects I worked on included Fert$mart, DairySAT and a lot on energy efficiency.

One of my most memorable times was going to King Island with some electricians to check on the installation of solar hot water systems on dairies over there. It is one of the most beautiful and hospitable places of the world.

Reflecting on your 10 years, can you recount any particular highlights?

My work in the Murray region is what I am most proud of.

Managing the Accelerating Change project came at a really critical time for the industry. It was about looking at ways that we could improve the productivity and profitability of dairy farms in the region primarily focusing on feedbase and irrigation.

But it turned into a much bigger piece of work, tracking changes occurring in the industry and how farmers were adapting on-farm.

There was a lot of challenges both in the project and more broadly to put it lightly. It came as the same time as high water price, the milk price crash and that absolutely horrible wet winter. It was a gruelling period for everyone.

But both the learnings from that project and the relationships I made during it have been absolutely critical to everything that I do now.

The outcomes have been really important to underpinning the work Murray Dairy and Dairy Australia do in our region and the project has influenced a lot of farmers, service providers and other stakeholders as well and helped us all understand some of the factors that it takes to successfully dairy in our region.

How do you think the industry is fairing compared to say, 10 years ago, when you first started with Dairy Australia?

I think the Murray Dairy region has demonstrated one of the biggest structural changes in an Australian agriculture industry ever since I’ve been here.

The ability of this region to adapt and look forward year on year, to try new things and to keep solving problems at a farm level is one of my favourite things about this region.

I just love the diversity of businesses and people, and the fact that no year or season is the same. This definitely brings up challenges and businesses and people have really gone through some difficult years.

We are also dealing with a whole range of new issues post-COVID with labour and health.

I know a lot of farmers hate the word resilience, but I do think that there is a significant level of it built into dairy farm businesses in our region and that, combined with really good recent seasonal conditions, there is a lot of optimism around and for good reason.

Are there any moments/mentors that have stuck with you over the past 10 years?

I’ve had the privilege of working with a fantastic team at Murray Dairy over the years, which I’ve always really enjoyed their friendship as well as professional support.

I learnt a significant amount from the late Kev Kelly, an AgVic agronomy researcher who I was lucky enough to work closely with on the Accelerating Change project and taught me a lot about agronomy and irrigation.

Some of the most memorable moments have definitely occurred when you get a group of farmers, service providers and others together and talk about the issues most important to them.

We’ve done this many places, in the paddock, at the pub and even on cotton farms in Griffith and for me it’s when a lot of light bulb moments have happened as well as some of the more hairy moments to facilitate as well.