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For further information contact:
Edwina Clowes, 
RIRDC Rural Women's Award National Coordinator. 
Phone:  07 5445 7282 
Mobile: 0417 727 544
clowesedwina@bigpond.com

© 2008  RIRDC

Natasha Mooney has been heavily involved in the South Australian wine industry for the past 15 years. During that time she has seen the fortunes of the industry and its people shift markedly as they have been forced to cope with severe water shortages, oversupply of grapes and softer export markets. 

Natasha’s vision is to help turn around the fortunes of growers and the industry by developing a new grape beverage and in effect new markets for grapes. Her concept is a natural sparkling grape juice will be produced from excess red wines grapes, grapes that are currently left on the vine to rot. 

The product is essentially a grape juice based on any selection of red wine grapes, subjected to only partial fermentation and resulting in a sparkling and sweet grape juice with significantly reduced alcohol content. 

Natasha’s proposed activity involves taking the product from early testing and trialing to commercial reality. Her activity involves further product trialing and development, combined with research into branding, packaging and marketing, both domestically and internationally. 

While her product has some way to go before it becomes a commercial reality, she believes  that if successful, the beverage provide growers with a new market avenue for their grapes, so helping reduce the current glut and helping to stabilize returns to growers.

Gail is a livestock producer, in partnership with her husband they breed Murray Grey cattle, White Suffolk sheep and Standard bred horses in northern Tasmania.

The Murray Grey cattle stud has been operating for the past ten years and while they have bred and raced Standard bred horses as a hobby for the past 20 years, 2007 is the first year Gail and husband Lyndon have bred yearlings for sale for the inaugural Magic Millions Standard bred sale on 1^st March. 

Gail is also actively involved in her industry, having served as Secretary and Treasurer of the Tasmanian Murray Grey Breed Promotion Group for the past six years, she has also served on the Beef Cattle Committee of the Royal Launceston Show and is a member of the Tasmanian White Suffolk Promotion Group. 

Gail’s vision is to raise awareness and the level of information on the nutrition, education and presentation of yearling Standard bred horses for sale. Her proposal was borne out of a desire to gain skills and valuable information on nutrition and presentation of yearlings for sale and the harness racing industry in general. She plans to undertake study tours of established and successful breeding studs in New Zealand, New South Wales and Victoria, to attend forums on the nutrition and education of horses and to meet with experts in the field. 

She believes the information and skills acquired she will be able to share with other harness racing participants, and that her achievements will empower other women to create new opportunities and in turn strengthen primary industries. 

Tina MacFarlane has been involved in the pastoral industry in the Northern Territory for most of her professional life, from a jillaroo mustering cattle and mending fences to now equal partner in a stud and commercial Brahman beef cattle operation outside Mataranka. 

Tina and her husband have, in the space of 25 years,  converted 150 square kilometres of scrub country into a highly developed property, boasting numerous watering points, improved pastures and a network of paddocks to accommodate their herd of 1000 head. 

Their holistic approach to managing the property, involving a higher rotation of cattle through smaller paddocks has delivered a number of benefits, including improved soil structure, reduced weed pressures, less reliance of herbicides and pesticides, and an increased conception and calving rate. 

Tina’s quest to improve the carcass traits and eating quality of their cattle has led her to the relatively new technology of ultrasound scanning. The technology allows for accurate and objective recording of carcass quality traits such as eye muscle area, subcutaneous fat cover and intra muscular fat or marbling. 

The data is now able to be collected and recorded through Breedplan, the national beef cattle genetic evaluation system, thereby aiding buyers in their selection of cattle for meat quality and carcass traits and assisting in targeting specific market requirements. 

However with no accredited scanners currently available in the Territory, Tina’s proposed activity is to become an accredited scanner for the benefit of her own operation and to be able to assist other producers become accredited to Breedplan and to produce cattle better suited to their markets.

Vera Fleming and her husband own and operate a mixed fruit orchard in the Goulburn Valley of Victoria. Vera is a leader in her own right, representing her industry and rural women across of number of platforms tackling issues such salinity, water conservation and pest management. 

She has held a number of key positions including past President of the Goulburn Valley Women in Agriculture and  former Member of the DPIE Pear Industry Steering Committee and Goulburn Valley Water. She is currently Chair of the Shepparton Fruit Growers Association. 

Her ambition is to demonstrate a profitable farm business, complimented with a diversity of value added products, such as fruit juices and wines, condiments and confectionary. 

Her project titled ‘The Spirit of the Valley’ involves visiting similar farm businesses within Victoria and interstate and learning from their value adding and niche marketing initiatives. She hopes to identify new innovative marketing, packaging and branding tools and to extend her network of manufacturers and suppliers, so that she can develop a tool kit of innovative ideas and networks to disseminate to other women and regions. 

Vera hopes that through her project local women and in particular culturally and linguistically diverse women (CALD) will be encouraged to look beyond pure production to value adding opportunities and be encouraged to develop new business ventures for themselves. She hopes also to develop her leadership and mentoring capacity to enable her to better support women within her community.

Pia Boschetti is part of a professional fishing family involved in a number of fisheries, including the northern prawn fishery, the western rock lobster and the demersal long line fishing industries. But her passion and profession for the past seven years has been pearl farming. 

Pia farms pearls at the AbrolhosIslands, off Geraldton, believed to be the most southern point in the world to commercially culture black pearls. Her farm is now one of the major producers of Australian black pearls in Western Australia. 

The major pearling industry in Australia and based in the Broome region is the maxima industry or the larger white pearls, with all other pearls including the black pearl, the Japanese Akoya oyster pearl and the wing shell referred to as the non-maxima industry. 

While Pia’s farm is dedicated to the production of black pearls, they have recently successfully trialed the production of high quality and larger than average size Akoya pearls. 

With the Japanese produced Akoya pearl in serious decline due to pollution and disease, the implications for the Australian pearl industry are potentially huge, with anecdotal feedback from the export markets very encouraging. 

Pia’s ambition is to produce Akoya pearls of a high grade that has not been seen in the Japanese markets for several years. Her proposed activity is to explore further the techniques for Akoya production in Japan and to investigate further the opportunities for both Akoya and black pearls into the Japanese and European markets.

Fiona Kliendeinst is an ultra fine wool producer, who with her husband operate an OFDA testing business from outside Uralla in northern New South Wales. 

She holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of New England and holds corporate experience at Solutions Marketing and Research Group, the Biological Wool Harvesting Company and ABRI Breed plan. 

Her frustration with the lack of availability of wool garments and woolen materials has seen Fiona become involved in the Australian Wool Fashion Awards and involved in work with the Sheep CRC and CSIRO in trialing wools for quality performance. 

She has recently started up a small business for made to measure woolen garments made from 100 percent Australian wool and produced by local rural women who produce the wool. 

Her vision for the next 12 months is to grow the business, to expand into larger premises and to employ more rural women. She plans within five years to have a fully operational studio with 5 full time seamstresses and 2 cutting and finishing staff and a showroom open to the public, full of beautiful wool and wool blend materials and garments. 

Her long term vision is to have a fully vertically integrated operation, complete with scouring and processing mill, dying spinning, weaving and finishing facilities, and a full time staff of over 150 women designing, sewing and promoting Australian wool to the world. 

Fiona plans to travel to Italy to attend the Fashion and Apparel Show in Milan, where all the international mills showcase their runs, and to visit wool processing mills and fashion houses, to make contacts and learn from them the industry beyond the farm gate and the needs and demands of the international market. 

She believes the knowledge and experience gained will be invaluable in turning her cottage industry into a successful business venture for the region’s producers and a significant employer of the region’s rural women. 

Linda Jaques and her husband Nat are Australia’s coffee industry pioneers, having established the first ever coffee plantation in the Cairns Highlands in 1979. 

The Jaques family were responsible for developing much of the industry’s technology including Australia’s first coffee harvester and have been fundamental to the survival and success of the Australian coffee industry. 

Today the coffee roasting, distribution and wholesaling industry in Australia is worth around $10 billion a year and growing fast and the Jaques family now own and operate Jaques Australian Coffee at Mareeba, a successful award winning coffee and agritourism venture, which produces over 31 tonnes a coffee a year. 

Linda’s goal is to produce Australia’s first naturally produced caffeine free coffee, as a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to decaffeinated coffee. Three naturally grown caffeine free, high quality Arabica plants have been discovered in Ethiopia, by Brazilian scientists. 

Her proposed activity is to travel to the University of Campinas at Sao Paulo in Brazil to meet with the scientists responsible for the discovery, to work with them to source tissue culture and to gain some insight into the cultivation of the plants. She plans to cultivate and grow out the cultures, to then plant out the trees, a process she estimates will take five years before the trees can be harvested and available to the broader industry. 

Linda also proposes to establish a Bursary out of the proceeds generated from caffeine free coffee, to benefit rural women in Ethiopia. She believes her project offers enormous potential, in providing a healthy and environmentally friendly caffeine free coffee and as a new rural industry for Australia.