Queensland - Martha Shepherd

2006 Winner of the Australian RIRDC Rural Women's Award and Queensland 2006 Winner - Martha Shepherd 

“Putting ‘Value’ into the Value Chain for Australian Native Rainforest Products”

2006 Runner-Up of the Australian RIRDC Rural Women's Award and Western Australian 2006 Winner - Bev Logue 

Bev Logue along with her husband run a family broad acre share cropping business, comprising of 8,000 hectares, north of Geraldton.

They are committed to sustainable farming practices, including amongst the latest technology tramline minimum till with satellite guidance systems, with the marginal nature of their country leading the Logue’s to implement improved water harvesting through wide row spacing trials already underway and shielded spraying in the planning. 

The Logue’s are also licensed bio-diesel manufacturers for 35,000 litres and have been operating farm machinery on canola based bio-diesel blends for the past three seasons. 

Bev’s vision is to see Australian farmers and the broader rural community embrace bio-diesel as an economic and environmentally friendly alternative fuel, sourced from renewable resources, that also frees farmers from their dependence for fuel on the three major oil companies. 

The bio-diesel the Logue’s currently produce on farm is equitable in price to the cost of petroleum diesel, is less toxic than mineral diesel and completely biodegradable and can reduce emissions by up to 70% as compared to petroleum diesel. 

Bev is currently involved in establishing a cooperative canola milling facility for the Northern Agricultural Region, in conjunction with a proof of concept project for regional bio-diesel production for the farming community of Binnu. 

Already national, state and local interest in the bio-diesel has resulted in workshops, media interviews, meetings with state parliamentarians and government organizations and presentation to a number of farmer groups, along with discussion with the Australian Taxation Office. 

Bev proposed activity involves professional business coaching to enhance her business management, communication and negotiation skills. She also plans to undertake an interstate study tour to better understand bio-diesel production and demand for the product and its potential by-products.

2006 South Australian Winner - Heather Baldock 

“GM Forum Roadshow”

Heather Baldock is a broad acre farmer from Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and a leader within her regional community and farmer organizations. 

Heather and her husband Graeme have always been innovative farmers, being one of the first in their region to adopt minimal and no till cropping practices. This commitment to innovation and new technology coupled with the impending review of the moratorium on GM crops in South Australia was the impetus behind her project. 

Her project was to conduct a series of GM Forums across the farming communities of the state, to provide primary producers and rural communities with independent information to make informed decisions about the technology and its longer term impact. 

Genetically Modified foods have in them ingredients that have been modified by a technique known as gene technology. The technology allows scientists to alter certain characteristics of a food crop by manipulating and introducing genetic materials from another source. 

The GM Forum Roadshow brought together five experts to speak across the breadth of the issue, addressing a total of three hundred and fifteen people at a series of six meetings across rural cropping locations in South Australia between September 25 - 29 2006. Forum locations and key note speakers were selected following extensive consultation across rural groups and regional communities. 

The Roadshow visited Piednippie via Streaky Bay, Cummins on Eyre Peninsula, Minlaton on Yorke Peninsula, Jamestown in the Upper North, Loxton in the Riverland and Tintinara in the Upper South East. Each forum comprised of addresses by each of the five speakers and a panel session with questions and opinions taken from the floor. 

The GM Forum Roadshow was an overwhelming success in increasing the awareness and understanding of genetic modification in crops for those in attendance, as evidenced by the data collated from the road show’s evaluation. Of the 72% of attendees who responded to the evaluation, above average knowledge had increased from 21% to 55 % as a result of the forum, with low knowledge falling from 21% to 2%. 

Areas of increased knowledge included the science of genetic modifications, regulations and legislation dealing with GM’s in Australia, production and agronomy of GM’s, storage and handling issues, and domestic and international marketing of GM crops. 

In addition 87% of evaluation respondents believed that GM crops have the potential to offer significant benefits, with 42% believing the benefits to be agronomic, while 24% perceived benefits in increased yields and economic returns, 14% in reduced chemical usage, and 10% in flow on health benefits. 

The data collected from participants attending the forums has now been collated and published and represents the most up to date information, opinions and concerns of South Australia’s primary producers and rural communities on GM technology. 

Heather’s report on the Forums findings has since been forwarded to sponsors, agricultural organizations, relevant State and Federal politicians and other individuals with a keen interest in GMs. It has also been listed as a reference in the bibliography of the SA Moratorium Review of GM Crops Information Paper. She has also presented her data publicly to the Oilseeds Market and Research Update in Mt Gambier, SA Advisory Board of Agriculture, SA Partners in Grain Reference Group, SA Liberal Party Rural and Regional Council, at a private meeting with the Minister for Agriculture-the Hon. Rory McEwen and at numerous other forums. 

The GM Forum Roadshow was the first major event that Heather had sole responsibility for, and as a result her knowledge of GM crops has grown considerably, with some valuable new networks, along with her confidence in her skills and abilities. Specific skills and abilities acquired include research and information dissemination, event management, teamwork, facilitation, public speaking and media interviews. The Award has also afforded her the resources to participate in some professional self development by way of the Technology of Participation (TOP) Facilitative Leadership Program and the South Australian Rural Leadership Program, the Australian Institute of Company Directors course and media workshops.

2006 Tasmanian Winner - Heather Chong 

Heather Chong is currently Chief Executive Officer of QEW Orchards, a 48,000 tree apricot orchard in southern Tasmania, which produces around 1,000 tones of fresh apricots each year for the domestic and export markets. 

Heather is Chair of Summerfruit Australia, the peak industry body for summerfuit growers in Australia.  She also sits on a number of industry organizations, including the Rivers and Waters Supply Commission, the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research Advisory Board and Women in Horticulture export working group. 

Heather believes a shortage of seasonal labour is reaching critical levels within the horticultural industry nationally to the point of damaging industry’s continued prosperity. She believes the labour shortage is the result of a combination of factors, including a strong economy and commensurate low level of unemployment and an increasingly negative general perception to working in agriculture.

Her proposed activity involves a study tour to Canada and Ireland to investigate ways their industries combat the same issue, combined with travel to the Swan region of Victoria and northern Tasmania to investigate the impact this shortage is having in other horticultural districts with the expectation of applying new learning’s from overseas on the domestic industry. 

In Canada a scheme called the Commonwealth Caribbean and Mexican Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program is employed for predominantly migrant workers, while in Ireland the Northern Irish Scheme caters principally for students from Eastern Europe. Under both schemes the rights and obligations of both the employer and employee are protected and regulated to ensure everyone is looked after. 

Heather believes there will be aspects of both schemes that could be utilised and employed to produce a scheme that could meet Australian conditions and constraints. She hopes the information learned from her studies will form the basis for further discussion between industry and government and set the seed for a similar scheme in Australia.

2006 Victorian Winner - Yvonne Jennings 

Yvonne in partnership with her husband Barry created their farm machinery business Murray Mallee Machinery out of necessity, when the 1980’s drought and seven bad seasons out of nine forced closure on their irrigation and dryland farms. 

Yvonne is currently President of Swan Hill Business and Professional Women and under her leadership the organisation’s membership has tripled.  She has had the privilege of being successfully nominated by this group to run for the Queen’s Baton Relay for the Commonwealth Games. Yvonne is also enjoying new challenges as a newly elected Councilor and the only female councilor on the Swan Hill Rural City Council. 

She has served as Chair of Swan Hill and District Rural Women for a period of ten years, during which time she convened a number of major initiatives including the ‘Women on Farms’ Gatherings and a series of multi skilled workshops and forums for rural women. She was also instrumental in securing the resources for four and preparing nine women from her region to travel to attend the Third World Rural Women’s Congress. 

Yvonne’s personal vision is for a rural Australia further enriched by rural women, who are achieving their potential and who have the confidence to create and take up opportunities for the benefit of agriculture and their rural communities. 

Her proposed activity involves the development and pilot of an action learning project intended specifically to provide rural women with the support and skills to grow their capacity and their contribution from a local community level to regional, state, and national level and beyond.  The project will include numerous opportunities for mentoring and individual support by successful rural and urban women. 

Yvonne firmly believes that by empowering rural women, women will do the same to their families, farms and communities, many times over, and also empower other women to create new opportunities and strengthen their rural communities and the primary industries upon which they are based. 

2006 New South Wales Winner - Kate Schwager

“The Rural Town’s Web Package”

Kate Schwager is partner in a cotton and wheat share farming enterprise outside Wee Waa in northern NSW and is Coordinator of Wincott, Australia’s largest network of women in cotton. 

Kate was instrumental in developing one of the country’s first rural town websites for Wee Waa, to help promote the region’s agriculture and tourism along with the local businesses and communities it supports. The website www.weewaa.com became the central portal for the town and a major source of news and information covering the community as well as a major tool for businesses to promote their services and products. 

Her commitment to agriculture and to the rural communities it supports led her to instigating the Rural Towns Package, an easy to use web development program which builds small town websites in a cost and user friendly way. 

Kate’s project was to take the Rural Towns Package to communities across the state, as a means of promoting the importance of agriculture to rural communities and attracting tourists and with them much needed revenue to rural areas. 

Her objective was that the websites be established by rural women, who have the necessary intimate knowledge of their rural communities, the towns, the businesses and the people, while offering them the opportunity of an alternate income source to their farming businesses. 

The package was promoted over the past 18 months to a multitude of forums in both New South Wales and Queensland, including the Country Women’s Association Annual Conference in Narrabri, the Australian Cotton Industry Conference at the Gold Coast and the Women on Farm’s Gathering at Grafton. 

The package was also promoted across a number of media mediums, including the Australian Women’s Weekly, the Land, ABC radio, and Country Style magazine. 

To date some thirty five women in rural towns have made inquiries about the package with some seven rural town sites now established as a result of the package, including Cobar, Narrabri, Moree, Trangie, St George, Hughenden and Wee Waa and an additional four rural towns interested in the package. 

The websites have proved extremely successful to those rural towns involved on a number of fronts, with Wee Waa and Narrabri both recording 45-55 advertisers, all sites generating revenue over and above costs and Narrabri and Wee Waa achieving significant revenue results. 

Kate believes the Rural Towns Package has been the catalyst for a number of positive outcomes. 

She believes the package has for the cotton industry as a whole, improved the awareness of the industry and promoted a more positive understanding of its management practices along with improved publicity of Wincott-Women’s Industry Network Cotton as a network for resources, skills and knowledge, and the opportunity of a new business venture and alternate income stream for a number of rural women. 

She also believes the package has for the community, brought the towns involved and their people to a larger and previously unknown audience,  initiated networks and conversations between people inside and outside the towns and brought new investment and tourism into the towns and the broader regional community. 

Kate at a personal level has as a result of her twelve month tenure as NSW Award 2006 Winner dramatically improved her public speaking skills, her leadership skills and credibility as a leader within the industry as well as improving the financial prospects for her business. 

The launch of the umbrella site, Southern Cross Communities, is scheduled to take place in 2008. The site will, for the first time, network the towns and communities involved, together with other towns in cyberspace. Southern Cross Communities will become a showcase of rural towns with the objective of promoting the large variety of agricultural industries in Australia.

Northern Territory - Janette Hintze

2006 Northern Territory Winner - Janette Hintze

“The Northern Territory Cut Flower Industry”

Janette Hintze is one of the pioneers of the Northern Territory cut flower industry, having been one of the original group of growers selected to trial heliconias and gingers as a suitable commercial cut flower, some twenty years ago.