CANFA Comment

13 Sept: Sydney Airport
We arrived home to Sydney yesterday (12 Sept) from LA.After 6 weeks and 19 flights we will be home shortly - can't wait, especially since David said that we had 27 mm of rain last week.

After Mazatlan we caught a train and spent the remainder of our trip heading towards Chihuahua through the Copper Canyon - the world's third largest canyon. We had an amazing trip going from lush country to high and barren mountains. There were not many European tourists but we felt 100% safe all the time. We wandered through Indian villages, who live next to caves in which they used. They were selling their handicrafts, training their little toddlers to quietly go up to tourists and show what they had with their innocent faces - it broke many a heart. They seemed to be a quiet people but needed a little money as they didn't grow cash crops, only enough corn, beans and potatoes for their own use. Their crops were very poor and had many weeds not like some commercial corn crops we saw later on that used hybrid varieties.

On our last day we visited a region 110 km out of Chihuahua that was mainly Mennonite (similar to the Hutterites in Canada, but more modern than the Amish in USA). We went through their museum and had lunch at one of their houses in town. About 6000 moved there from Canada in about 1930- 1950 to escape the backlash against Germans, and they now have about 70,000 members. They don't live in closed communities as in Canada but in houses and farms around the town. They try to keep their traditions but are allowed more freedom as some women have careers. They have the world's largest apple orchard in the area, we didn't get to see it but we did manage to visit an apple packing shed. It reminded Ray and I of our orange orchard days! The houses looked very affluent, unlike the unfinished buildings in Mexico. They were very good farmers but suffering a drought (only 6 inches this year compared to 30 inches last year), but their crops looked very good.

Hope that you have enjoyed travelling with us around the world. We certainly saw a lot of farming and different ways of life but we can't wait to get home and get ready for what will hopefully be a good harvest.

Anne Williams

Welcome to the new-look CANFA website and the CANFA Comment, a forum where we can discuss some of the issues generating discussion in the industry. We would encourage your feedback in this forum.

When the issue of stubble burning came up a few months ago, we had some interesting correspondence and comments forwarded to CANFA. CANFA Comment is another avenue for letting us know what you think about some of the big issues impacting on your farming business and your day-to-day activities.

Coming up in a couple of weeks is our annual conference and dinner. This is another great forum in our annual calendar for discussing the challenges, technology and progress being made in conservation farming practice. We’re privileged to have Phil Needham attending as a guest speaker this year – a man who has helped grain growers in Kentucky (USA) double their wheat yields over the past 20 years. Phil will be holding a planter school on CANFA’s block, “Cadonia”, Wellington the day before the conference, where he will look at the set-up criteria for various planters, seed and fertiliser placement, straw and chaff spreading and other factors critical to streamlining crop and stubble management. There’s more information available about the planter school on the the website – it’d be great to see you there.

Obviously, the Federal Government’s carbon tax has taken the headlines lately and there’s also been some keen interest in what’s happening in the Lachlan catchment with the State Government-sponsored trial soil carbon trading scheme. Governments (and farmers) throughout Australia will be closely watching the NSW trial as it could influence a national scheme for sequestering carbon in soil. These are some of the happenings and issues we’ll be writing about in future CANFA Comments.

Finally, the USA/Mexico no-till tour is not far away and we still have some places left to fill. The books are open on this trip until 2 August – check out the itinerary on the website and let us know ASAP if you’re interested in going. We’ll be using the CANFA Comment to report back on highlights of the trip as it happens between 13 August – 11 September.

- Neville Gould