Spring fever

It’s a bit early to be putting the thermals back into store for another year but there is certainly feverish activity on the conference front – and the organisers seem to want to hear from the CRCNPB.
 

The 2009 Grains West Expo, held in Perth from 17 to 19 August was sub-titled ‘Together we succeed’. The CRC could hardly decline a speaking invitation with that to spur us on. As a silver sponsor, the CRC had an exhibition booth which was attended by our PhD students, Mark Castalenelli and Nichole Hammond. Representing the CRC was Board Director, Chris Richardson, as well as recently appointed Associate Professor in Stored Grain at Murdoch University, Yong Lin Ren, and CBH’s Ern Kostas.

The major conference themes were:

• Western Australian Grain – Where the dollars come from and who can afford to pay
• Review of wheat marketing and supply chain – impacts for Western Australia
• Innovation and opportunity, and
• Managing risk on the front foot
   

A highlight of the Expo was the presentation by Rabobank’s Grains Industry Analyst, Wayne Gordon, who (in 40 minutes) ranged the world to give an economic outlook on grains for food in China, India and Africa. He also discussed biofuels in the USA and the EU, as well as feed in the Middle East. It was a tour de force and while plant biosecurity was not specifically mentioned, the sheer reliance on plants worldwide to sustain all of this economic activity underlined the need to minimise losses due to pests, diseases and weeds.

Some interesting and quite scary information emerged from the presentations, for example, as found by the Food and Agriculture Organization, 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry each night, while information from the World Health Organization reports that one billion people are, simultaneously, overweight or obese….

Exacerbating the situation, in developing countries losses in storage are horrendous. Twenty-five per cent of food never reaches the consumer, while, in the developed (sic) world 25 per cent of food is wasted.

Readers will be familiar with the imbroglio which brought to an end the Australian Wheat Board Ltd’s monopoly, or ‘single desk’, for export wheat. This for many years has been a widely discussed topic at grains industry meetings, however, now this issue has been resolved, concerns are being expressed about the multiplicity of bodies involved in wheat export. It has been argued that a ‘too many cooks’ situation could increase the risk of breaches of biosecurity. In any event, 23 entities are now accredited as wheat exporters, including Australia’s largest individual wheat grower. There are also concerns regarding the fact that information flow is not as free as it has been in the past. The term ‘commercial in confidence’ was murmured in dark corners of the Expo.

In this very context, and with considerable help from our Grains Advisory Panel and other industry luminaries, I was able to put together a presentation on ‘Biosecurity risks for de-regulated grain’ as a contribution to the Expo session on ‘Managing risk on the front foot’.

My somewhat tongue-in-cheek starting point was “Why would de-regulation make a difference?” The colleagues I consulted actually tended to agree, but there were some nuances to be teased out, especially around the critical use of phosphine in stored grain and the need to maintain industry best practice in both large bulk handling companies and also ‘on-farm’.

During my research it was revealing to find that statistics on grain storage, especially ‘on-farm’ are hard to come by, which makes it difficult to facilitate best practice management. No-one in the audience challenged my assertion that this deficiency represents a major risk in its own right.
 

Overall, the Expo emphasised how dynamic the grains industry is in Western Australia and what a major contributor it is to gaining export income. This being the case biosecurity must be accepted as a critical element in preserving market access and keeping global doors open to new innovations.
 

And so to Singapore, where in September Director, Christine Campbell and I will be taking part in ‘Agriculture Outlook Asia 2009’. More of this later, meanwhile, as previously stated, it must be the season…