VegNET RDO update

from WA Grower Magazine Autumn 2021

by vegetablesWA

Report updates irrigation water availability in the Gascoyne

Autumn 2021

VegNET RDO update

BY SAM GRUBIŠA REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, VEGETABLESWA

Well, well, well… would you looky here? It appears the ‘stage five clinger’ that was 2020, just can’t let go.

2021’s Year of the Ox or Water Buffalo (depending on your ethnic legacy), kicked off with the flagrant volatility you’d expect from a PBR (Pro Bull Riding) bovine. As a symbol associated with hard work, patient strength and agriculture, you could have easily mistaken this as a sign that this year would be our year! Between checking in on fire affected growers, as water bombers pinch water from their dam, and watching Facebook videos in disbelief as people I know, who can do nothing but stare as their life’s work is devoured by flood water… I couldn’t tell you if I was Arthur or Martha. While the uncontrolled fires that tore through bushland and agricultural properties; a flood to our north causing a 20 per cent loss of early crops; another Queensland fruit fly incursion and a quarantine-acquired case of COVID-19 may have forced us to drop it down a few gears, our innate resilience will force the wheel of fortune to turn in our favour. Eventually! With the world around us becoming madder by the minute, a meeting with the recently convened Grower/Industry Regional Extension Advisory Group (REAG) confirmed my faith in the people of horticulture. We met to discuss and finalise their included feedback recommendations for our five-year Regional Development Strategic Plan.

Their approval and support of the strategic plan, that Truyen and I created from nothing, was our final hurdle. And like a PBR bull at a gate, we absolutely smashed it!

Now, as a self-proclaimed ‘Horticulture Unicorn’, my views on the matters that affect our industry are often divergent.

Here’s hoping the Ox is right and this year WILL be our year!

My job, for taxation purposes, is as WA’s Vegetable Industry Regional Development Officer. I am here to support, inform, encourage and propagate procedural skills and organisational awareness throughout WA’s vegetable production businesses. My life, however, is generationally grounded in Primary Productions pre-dawn starts, dirty hands and seasonal clashes with Mother Nature. Being able to sit in my role as an industry representative, with the grower representatives who are facing the fires and the floods, and truly comprehend their concerns about future pest incursions and their ideas for the future, well, it made me contradict my own in divergence. It made me realise that no matter where you sit in this industry, whether you’re a grower, a sales rep or a truck driver, we all have the same basic, yet ambitious initiative: a prosperous, consolidated and stable Industry. And I know I can’t ‘go rogue’ on government legislation or industry regulation, nor can I fix every busted main pipe or sprayer calibration.

I can, however, take a page out of the mighty Ox’s book and with patient strength and steady progress, work to develop a clarified, yet pragmatic perspective of industry.

A quote from this year’s zodiac horoscope: ‘If you are prudent in your decision making this year, your efforts will pay off in time’. Here’s hoping the Ox is right and this year WILL be our year!