Cooloola Farms Produce advertorial

from WA Grower Magazine Summer 2021

Origins Market

Cooloola Farms Produce

BY ROB ABBAS ROB ABBAS CONSULTING

PETER BUCHANAN’S COOLOOLA

Farms Produce is a small/medium sized vegetable growing business located to the east of the Gympie township in the Cooloola region of South East Queensland.

The Gympie region has long been known for gold and hand picked green beans dating back to the early 1900s when green beans in hessian sacks were carted on horse drawn cart to the Gympie railway for the journey to Brisbane for sale. Peter's grandfather first delivered beans in this manner in 1915.

Peter’s operation of Cooloola Farms Produce follows on from his father, and he produces a number of quality vegetable lines for sale to supermarkets and central market agents across Australia.

Peter has continuously strived to produce a quality line of products with an ability to compete with larger and more mechanised operations. He was instrumental and maintained a key role in the setup and operation of the Gympie pack-house which packs, markets and runs the Lindsay transport depot for local growers. As the Gympie region's topography lends itself to many smaller operations, this is seen as a great support mechanism for the local area. Cooloola Farms Produce produces approximately 25ha of hand-picked green beans, 20ha of zucchini and gold squash, 2ha of summer specialty crops and 20ha of broccolini.

Peter has used the Wildeye soil monitoring systems for the previous 5 seasons. Over that time Peter believes he has achieved best-practice water management for his crops, attributing his operation’s yield and quality improvements to the use of Wildeye and the move to use of composts and soil health improvements. Originally starting with one unit logging a 400mm soil moisture, EC and temperature profiling soil probe, Peter now runs 4 units which are moved from field to field as harvesting is in its latter stages. Peter has observed a reduction in pest and disease pressure, and higher yields over the period that he has been monitoring his operations with Wildeye products. He attributes these observations to the use of composts to provide constant nutrients and to assist with soil moisture retention (the benefits of which have been reflected in the data collected by his Wildeye monitoring systems); and the use of Wildeye’s soil moisture monitoring tools to reduce moisture stress. Peter checks his graphs daily from both iPad and iPhone using WiIdeye’s user-friendly app, and uses that info to make often-daily adjustments to irrigation and timing decisions. Peter particularly likes the moisture level and soil moisture stacked graphs as they allow him to determine where his crops are drawing moisture from and therefore how long to schedule irrigation for, observing that “this is a huge water efficiency benefit!”. Peter is one of a network of vegetable growers in Queensland who have adopted Wildeye’s technology to monitor soil, irrigation, weather and water. Wildeye products are available through a network of Australia-wide resellers, or directly from Wildeye’s Perth based team for Western Australian based growers.

f OWNER of Cooloola Farms Produce, Peter Buchanan, with Bhargava Rayeni holding freshly packed broccolini.