AGRIBUSINESS

Crop tours take an important turn

THE past few weeks have seen a couple of crop inspection tours with a difference on opposite sides of the country.

Mark Saunders
 Farmers have taken to their motorbikes on recent crop tours. Picture courtesy Neil Schirmer.

Farmers have taken to their motorbikes on recent crop tours. Picture courtesy Neil Schirmer.

Both tours involved farmers and crops and both involved motor bikes.

In Western Australia, the first Adama Australia Motorbike Crop Trial Tours were held where riders visited the state's Great Southern and South Coast regions.

The WA tour highlighted a range of research into crop disease, weed control and growth regulation, as well as varieties, soil amelioration, nutrition and sowing systems, also being conducted by local grower groups, other agribusinesses and the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, and some with funding from Grains Research and Development Corporation.

Blended with camping, wine tasting, campfire ballads, a ride up and down one of the region's major tourist sites, Bluff Knoll, supporting local suppliers and concluding at the home of Butterfield Beef near Borden, the event was a recipe for success and some great rural bonding.

It was a similar theme in eastern Australia where a group of primary producers organised a two-day tour of crops and rural areas in the southern Riverina of New South Wales near Lockhart and Mulwala to take some time out from the drought.

The NSW tour was called the Adventure Farm Tour and involved about 30 farmers who linked up from a following on Twitter.

Following the success of the Adama motorbike crop trial tour in WA, the company is looking to hold another event in WA next year and is also attracting interest from other states.

You can see some of the NSW tour action by searching for the tag #Adventurecroptour on Twitter.

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