Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Murray Watt has today welcomed the appointment of Ms Cathy McGowan AO to the position of Chairperson of the AgriFutures Australia Board.

Ms McGowan is a sixth-generation farmer from northeast Victoria and has held various leadership roles in rural and regional organisations, including as President of Australian Women in Agriculture. Ms McGowan was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia in 2004 and was elected and served in the Australian Parliament as the Federal Member for Indi from 2013 to 2019.

GINA Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture has recently purchased three irrigated cropping properties in the Wee Waa region of New South Wales, in a transaction reportedly worth circa $150 million.
 

Industry sources have told Grain Central that Hancock Ag purchased the 6856-hectare aggregation from the Findley family, who have lived in the area for three generations.

The transaction features main property, Cudgewa, alongside Pian Plain and Pindara, which are run by father-and-son team Robin and Lucas Findley.

Sizable, reliable water entitlements is understood to be a key feature of the aggregation, with the properties coming with a combined allocation of 23,000 megalitres plus approximately 7000ML of groundwater.

Of the total land size, about 4300ha is developed to irrigation.

Milton Speer, University of Technology Sydney; Joshua Hartigan, University of Technology Sydney, and Lance M Leslie, University of Technology Sydney

The northern Murray-Darling Basin produces 93% of Australia’s cotton. Cotton is one of Australia’s biggest agricultural industries – worth about A$2 billion each year – and a steady supply of water is crucial for production.

Kathryn Allen, University of Tasmania; Alison O'Donnell, The University of Western Australia; Benjamin I. Cook, Columbia University; Jonathan Palmer, UNSW Sydney, and Pauline Grierson, The University of Western Australia

Most Australians have known drought in their lifetimes, and have memories of cracked earth and empty streams, paddocks of dust and stories of city reservoirs with only a few weeks’ storage. But our new research finds over the last 1,000 years, Australia has suffered longer, larger and more severe droughts than those recorded over the last century.

Rainwater harvesting is the accumulation and storage of rainwater for either domestic use, livestock watering or other agricultural uses. Farmers have been practising rainwater harvesting for centuries, but as water sources become increasingly scarce, this sustainable technique is gaining popularity around the world.