A long history of researching

Last week might have seen me enjoying the best pie I have had. If not, it’s well up there – lamb and mint it was.

I was hoping to eat on the run but was reassured it was to be consumed as an ‘eat in’.

I’m glad I took the advice, The Catching Pen at Coleraine provided a much-needed break following some jam-packed days of packing seed, running around and seeding trials.

We then dashed over to Maroona to seed a forage cereal trial.

As we packed up, the sun set behind the high ground to right of the Maroona Wind Farm and it was time for the drill to head to Gippsland.

Taking a few pictures of everything underway and how it appears is essential. As I was snapping away towards the end, it was like I’d seen this all before.

The beauty of smart phones is that they hold so many images. Flicking back through my photos, I found last year’s trial-seeding photographs.

It was a month earlier – in April 17, 2018 and the shots revealed us stirring up plenty of dust.

I had another photo too, May 14, 2018. The site was up and growing by that time. Last year this site was designed to allow us to evaluate grain, hay, dual-purpose and forage oats for grazing. The site was left to go through and seed down.

As a result, there’s good growth establishment of volunteer oats and ryegrass this year.

Comparing the May 14, 2018 and May 16 pictures of the same site this year showed growth to be very similar, which I found interesting.

Apart from being interesting to compare one year to the next, it made me reflect on how we are fortunate with the amount of research, development, evaluation and demonstration that occurs in the area.

The likes of the Grains Innovation Park that recently celebrated 50 years, Longerenong College established 1889, Birchip Cropping Group, Perennial Pasture Systems and businesses such as AGF Seeds shows this area has a long and rich history of research, innovation and learning – be it government, private, small business, multinational, farmer groups, or tertiary institutions.

Even the ‘Altmann Bag Lifter-loader’ was made locally.

• Mr Altmann, who grew up in Jeparit, attended Longerenong College and has gained extensive industry experience in business and general farming, is a seed and marketing sales agronomist with Australian Grain and Forage Seeds, AGF. He has volunteered to provide his thoughts on the industry and season in a regular Aglife column.