Plains Producer

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Plains Producer

$1.40

Wednesday February 16, 2011

Bank Bank SA SA Best Country Best Country Newspaper Newspaper 2007 2007 Bank Bank SA SA Best Country Best Country Newspaper Newspaper 2007 2007

Tough job

STAR OF THE NORTH

! y a d o t e d i Ins

POWER OF FUN n BLYTH’s Bianca Agnew was just one of many local school children to meet Port Adelaide footballers when they visited the region. See page 19.

S’cool in the pool! n Jason McBride splashes out at Balaklava High School’s swimming carnival. More pictures, page 16

IAN Gates leads his father, Murray, through a trail of dust as they harvest clover on the Mount Templeton property of Malcolm and Rick Lamond and, right, taking a break in front of one of the vacuum machines. – PICTURES: Lisa Redpath.

... but someone has to do it!

AS cereal growers venture back from their summer holidays, contract harvesters Murray and Ian Gates continue to do laps of local paddocks, harvesting the clover crops scattered around the district. Murray said the dusty and slow job of clover harvesting sucked. “They work almost like a giant vacuum cleaner in that they suck the clover pods off the ground,” he said. Once in the machine, the pods are sent into a thrasher, enclosed in mesh so the pods break up and continue into a separator. The heavy seed

Les Pearson reports:

stays at the bottom as dust and pod husks are sent blowing out the top. The remaining seed is then finally sent over some sieves and into the bin similar to a conventional harvester. It’s a long, slow process, with the machinery moving around paddocks at 3-3.8km/h. But the pace hasn’t worried Murray, who has been in the clover harvesting game for about 36 years. In that time, he has noted the shift

to continuous cropping, gradually phasing out a majority of clover crops in the district. “There’s not a lot now the style of farming has changed,” he said. “Everyone has gone to continuous cropping and not keeping sheep, so there is not the demand for clover seed. “About 20 years ago there was a big demand for clover seed overseas in the Middle East countries but that fell off in the 90s. n Continued Page 4

agriculture minister cool on parliamentary inquiry into harvest – page 3

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