HOW RELEVANT IS A LIVESTOCK HEALTH & PEST AUTHORITY ON YOUR FARM?

Rural NSW is looking for strong inspirational representation. I believe I am equipped to do just that for your family as a Director for the Tableland LHPA. Just when you were wondering if you could afford rates for another irrelevant bureaucracy it is time to look again. The Livestock Health and Pest Authority is reinventing itself for service to farming families.

My vision for the future is were I want to be a director that makes certain this process of restoring relevance and ratepayer faith actually takes place.

Where we will have a highly trained, professional staff who are aware of how to deal with pest animals, animal disease and disaster relief in your region. With larger districts Tableland LHPA is looking to enhance Communication streams. People think they will be less in touch - shop fronts will remain open for visiting when in town. Head office is just a phone call away, no more remote than ever before, in fact a more in touch attitude is what I as a director will be seeking.

OF PESTS AND PARASITES

Do you area have trouble with rabbits, foxes, cats, dogs, pigs or some other species?

Tablelands LHPA can offer advice, can help your area to help yourselves -asist to look for funding, improve techniques, get agencies around the table and install a wild dog program for your area with public land managers.

Do you have trouble with hunting dogs or town dogs wandering onto your farm? Where do you go for help? LHPAs are working with Local Government to keep dogs as “mans best friend.” Rabbits need a state wide retake on biological control. LHPA, DPI and the Invasive Animal CRC are working together on foxes, dogs, mice, pest birds and other species.
What about grasshoppers and European Wasps? What deserves “pest status” in your area?

Our family has over 30 years experience with wild dogs. I have worked the last 13 years with wild dog affected families NSW, ACT, Victoria to get something done about the regions pests. I offer this experience of setting up programs, guard dog training, electric dog fencing. Do llama work? As previous director with Yass RLPB and other instances I have contacts across the region looking at cooperative pest control programs. Funding and training professional staff are on going issues for a united strong voice.

YOUR ANIMALS ARE CROOK AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHY?

Animal health is an on going concern. Drought, stresses our animals, and it’s hard to keep productive. Infectious disease, parasites, ill thrift, poisonous plants - they can all cause grief and anxiety, but our vets and rangers are a phonecall away. They can give advice, such as an on property inspection, develop a coordinated lice management program for your area, or investigate fertility problems in breeding stock.

Get your neighbours in for a talk and get together to discuss on progress and production, a common problem such as blow fly traps, obscure lameness or not so obscure. LHPA is there to help contain infection, diagnose disease, set a program in place for your animals and your family.

I have university qualifications in Animal Health working 16 years in CSIRO in livestock vaccine development before returning home to raise and educate a family on distance education. We have sheep, cattle, horses, goats, chooks and a wing of guard dogs at home. We have got them through drought, bushfire and tough times. We look forward to and work for better times.

DISASTER RELIEF HOW CAN WE KEEP OUR BREEDERS GOING?

Many families have genetic selection flocks and herds that go back many generations of livestock and family generations.

How do you replace them?

From an industry point of view commercial and stud selection lines are not the sort of animals you just pick up often in the sale yard. There are selections for productivity and temperament. The droughts shall not weary them. LHPAs should and do take on some responsibility for offering alternatives for livestock disaster relief. In a time of drought, bushfire, flood we could plan to ship them out and feed them. There are plenty of opportunities there to do it better.

There are many people giving up on maintaining a traveling stock route system across NSW and Queensland I say not so fast! While ever 95% of Australian’s are omnivorous and most parents want to feed their children home grown meat, fish, dairy produce for strong bodies and minds our TSR system is relevant while ever our livestock eat grass.

Australia’s agricultural customers in Asia also wish to access more meat. If environmentalists want to reduce the pressure on fisheries then perhaps we look at our livestock industries as complementary sources of food.

Then there is our wool, alpaca, mohair industry, dairy industry.
Priced at fodder 60 cents a day per dry sheep equivalent NSW TSR and rangelands that have become destocked and bushfire affected national parks supported $3B in for 6 months drought aid in 2002 to survive our nations breeding flocks and herds.

There has been over 3 million hectares of TSRs in NSW and Queensland, about 600,000 hectares of travelling stock reserves in NSW and 2.6 million hectares in Queensland.

These have acted as strategic refuges not only for native biodiversity that gravitates to grazing but our domesticated migratory mega fauna destocked off weary paddocks to perform fire duty on the roadsides and in native forests.

City people and commissioned science have a way to go to understand the antiquity of grazing with plant coevolution and interdependence. Well fed native species thrive. Grazing and cool fire feed the soil, feed the ecology.

Grazing systems and mega fauna are two areas of my current research relevant for TSR and native vegetation management to enhance biodiversity persistence and reduce risk and impact of intense fire.

BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE IT RAIN! DON’T BE SO SURE!

Another area of research I am currently undertaking is rainmaking as a drought circuit breaker.

The facts. Climate change.

The facts! The things farmers haven’t been told.

The science and politics of rain! We know why it is not raining and we know how to fix it. Particulate pollution is killing our rain clouds. The wet forests have been burnt on the high country. The thick scrub is stopping run off. State of the art cloud medication is used internationally USA, India, China. Why not here?

The things farmers need to know about “Climate Change!” Australia was a world leader in rainmaking research - What happened?
Frost, rain, hail or shine and carbon trading - what every farmer should understand?