Irrigators are heading north to escape nightmare restrictions in the Murray Darling Basin. Many are coming into the beautiful black soil plains of the Flinders river in North Queensland. At the moment this area is natural pasture covered with deep rooting grasses that support grazing.

While the soil supports broadacre crops, this introduces an erosion risk in the floodplain, and most of the black soil plains are flood plain. Replacing deep rooted grasses with deep rooted grains, to create mixed grain and grazing properties seems to make sense.

In 2008 the CSIRO released a paper which suggested making this change could provide a 40% increase in revenue per hectare. I asked what we were doing to look at these developments which could turn the North into a new foodbowl.

Transcript

I’m going to go to Senator Roberts for questions.

Thank you Chair. And thank you both for being here today. I’d like to commend your work on perennial wheat and preventing soil erosion. It’s something that we’ve only just become aware of and the Chair knows, from her experience in North Queensland, that this is very important to the Flinders area in particular, stopping the soil erosion up there when we convert to crops. I’d like you to talk about, I’ll give the the other senators some background so that it makes sense, I’d like you to talk about deep-rooted, perennial grains, please. A quick background: irrigators are heading North to escape the nightmare restrictions in the Murray-Darling basin. We’ve spoken with some of them in the Gulf. Many are coming into the beautiful black soil plains of the Flinders River in North Queensland. At the moment, this area is largely natural pasture covered with deep-rooting grasses that support grazing. While the soil supports wheat, cotton and other broadacre crops, this introduces an erosion problem in the flood plain, and most of the black soil plains are flood plain, and they get their rain in a short part of the year. Replacing deep-rooted grasses with deep-rooted grains to create mixed grain and grazing properties seems to make sense. In 2008, the CSIRO released a paper which suggested making this change could provide a 40% increase in revenue per hectare, so that would be phenomenal on top of the figures you’ve already stated. So I understand that the Grains Research and Development Corporation are working on perennial wheat. The Woodstock Research Centre near Charters Towers is, I understand, trialling perennial wheat. Can you please provide an update on the progress of perennial grain development as it would apply to Queensland cropping?

Thanks Senator, look, at this stage we obviously have a number of investments, certainly in Northern Australia and in the Northern region of the grains industry. Some of these are very highly adaptable to the new area that you’re talking about. Perennial grains is actually not an area that GRDC has been concentrating at depth in, in recent times. It is something that people are raising with us as being an opportunity to look at in that Northern or the Far Northern zone. And if it obviously falls into the remit of GRDC, which is amongst our 25 leviable crops, which obviously wheat is, we can certainly have a look at it. At this stage, we’re not doing a lot of work, there is some trial work, as you say, going on up there on a run, alternative and different crops. Some of them aren’t in our remit, but we’re certainly happy to look at what those opportunities are. And we’ve got some discrete initiatives up there at the moment to look at what could be possible. And we also have some very good rotations, agronomy solutions and husbandry opportunities with our traditional cropping programmes, bring rotations into the North that might be extremely beneficial, and also mitigate some of those issues that you’ve actually raised around erosion and accessing those unique opportunities in those deeper soils.

So, it looked as though the perennial wheat was first raised about 2011, I think, from the GRDC, and then we saw some more material, just in 2021, from an external body: the rising potential of Australian perennial wheat. And it really does seem amazing, because you increase the fodder for the cattle or the sheep, as well as reducing soil erosion. So the way I took the conclusion, from what you’re saying, is that you’ve done little work on that at the moment, is that right?

That’s right, Senator. I mean, there’s certainly obviously opportunity that we’re happy to look at, but perennial wheat in the North has not been deemed a priority by growers as part of our current RD&E plan, but, as I say, we are doing discrete work and we’re in consultations in the Far North about what could be possible. So, we have investments, as I say, up there and we’re consulting heavily with, particularly, growers on the ground and some of those other stakeholders that work in that region, such as QDAF, to see what other opportunities we could bring to bear and what research needs are required. And we’re at the table for that.

What are the obstacles at the moment to do more work on that?

Well, there’s probably minimal obstacles. We just need to make sure that we actually design whatever research may be required up there to bring to bear some opportunity. We need to make sure that we’re actually gonna meet the agro-ecological zone and also the climatic and soil conditions. I know that your report that you mentioned, that’s recently been done, they’ve identified an opportunity. We’re more than happy to look at that, in consultation with the players up there, and see what might be possible. Perennial grain, particularly in our traditional region, Senator, had not provided either short- or medium-term opportunity. We’ve been able to bring to bear far better outcomes with our husbandry and agronomy outcomes in our traditional grain-growing areas with our new rotations and the technologies that we bring to bear using annual, as opposed to perennials.

So, what I interpreted, Mr Woods, from your opening response to that second question is that you’re careful to not develop something that people are not interested in. Is that right?

We prefer not to have an unroadworthy vehicle before we start, Senator.

Okay. And Henry Ford said, when someone said, “Why are you building cars? There are no roads.” He said, “The roads will come.” And they did. So, it seems very exciting. And your main obstacle at the moment is the lack of market reception, or customer reception, is that it?

That is correct, Senator. There’s not a lot of acceptance or engagement or excitement with regards to perennials, in the grower spectrum, so I think there’s some work to be done.

Okay. That will do me. Thank you very much. I’d like to contact your agency if we could. Can we do that?

Very happy to, Senator. Thank you.

[Roberts] Thank you, Mr Metcalf. Thank you Mr Woods.

[Chair] Mr Woods, thank you.