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

5 Sept: Mazatlan, Mexico
Just an update as we spend the morning in a hotel on the beach at Mazatlan on the Pacific ocean. Since the last email we left Mexico City for a visit to Cimmyt (the second time for Ray and I) but still very informative and interesting.

Fernando was in his usual charismatic form showing us the wheat breeding and conservation agriculture trials. This time though they treated us to a Mexican lunch with the research crew who had been in the fields putting blue tape on individual wheat heads, that would later be harvested by hand in order to keep the seed for further selection. The lunch was salsa and t-bone steak so we were really spoilt!

Heading north of Mexico City with have travelled through beautiful green and some very rich agricultural land - not how I had pictured Mexico at all. We have stopped off at an organic avocado and macadamia farm to see handmade biofertilisers in action. Eugenio Gras recommended this farm to us and he will be in Australia for another course in Mudgee later this month, which we are going to.

On the way, we stopped off at La Cofradia, a tequila farm and factory for lunch. The name tequila is licensed to only approximately three states in Mexico but this one was in the shadows of Tequila Mountain. We learnt how the pineapple of the agave (very similar to our aloe vera) plant is baked, fermented and distilled to form three types of tequila. We tasted all three and thought all were pretty good. After the tour of the factory, museum and shop we had a Mexican lunch outside with a mango margarita!

The hotel we're in is right on the beach but it also has swimming pools with a swim up bar and live music. We only have one more day with the bus and the rest of the trip will be by train so it will be different, but we are certainly seeing some wonderful countryside up the west coast of Mexico.

Anne Williams

1 Sept: New Orleans & Mexico City
Since our last update we spent a couple of days in the old French quarter of New Orleans - managed a swamp tour and dinner on a paddle steamer on the Mississippi, which was quite memorable.

We flew into Mexico a couple of days ago and had lunch at a beautiful old villa.It was very posh - the men had to wear a tie at least! We were treated like royalty but it was a wonderful experience. We didn't realise it at the time but we had 1942 tequila as a pre-lunch drink. It cost as much as the meal! Luckily, it was very nice!

Yesterday had a tour of the Presidential Palace frescos and cathedral (built on top of an Aztec pyramid). A lot of the buildings are leaning because Mexico City is built on top of a lake. It doesn't seem to stop 29 million people living here though. In the afternoon, we toured the ancient pyramids of the sun and the moon,set in beautiful countryside. Ray climbed both and I surprised myself in climbing the moon pyramid (feeling it now though).

Last night we went to the opera building and saw traditional folk dancing, which was very colourful and interesting.

We're off to Cimmyt at Teluco today. Unfortunately we couldn't line up Ken Sayre (the researcher we met in Germany and came to CANFA's conference in 2007), but we spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He is retired now but still coming in to work. We will meet up with David Bonnett, who Ray and I met last week while we were here.

From Teluco we're heading north into the countryside, visiting farms. We've only 10 days left of this wonderful trip, but we're missing everyone.

Anne Williams

24 Aug: Columbus via Chicago, USA
Ray and I left Cimmyt and the group earlier in a chaufer driven car to arrive at Mexico Airport to find that they upgraded us to business class (they said that they needed to redistribute the weight in the plane? Ask no questions - just accept it all. As a consequence we had a great flight to Chicago. We were up at 3.10 am though to catch up with John Lawrie's group.

We had a long way to come here to Columbus but managed to fit in a couple of farm visits on the way. John and the crew tried to make us envious of the week we missed with them. The visit to Dwyne Beck in south Dakota and to Edwin Blosser (compost making) were apparently the two outstanding visits.

Tonight we are off to dinner at the Ihio University with Dr Randal Reeder (who spent four months with Neville Gould at Trangie some years ago) and Professor Rattan Lal (a soil carbon specialist), and a few others who we are yet to meet. We are looking forward to it.

Anne Williams

19 Aug: Dallas, Texas
After another couple of flights, here we are in Dallas ready to leave tomorrow for Mexico. We're having a great time!

In St Louis we saw Monsanto's headquarters - 2,500 employees and 5,000 all up in St Louis.They spend more on ag research than the USDA does.

We went to Gavilon Grain Elevators, after which a couple of Texans lead us on a visit to their farms - pretty impressive. They are having more than a month of temps above 100F and in the midst of a serious drought which they are starting to compare to the 1930's Dust Bowl, but this time without the dust storms. Despite the dry they are still harvesting some crops such as sunflowers and cotton.

We had lunch at a real Texan bar at the Fort Worth Stock Yards - they had saddles as bar stools!

A free day tomorrow before another flight to Mexico which we are all greatly looking forward to.

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22 Aug: Cimmyt, Mexico
Hi there from Mexico City, our last visit on the GRDC’s The way we were trip.

Yesterday we went to Cimmyt and met the farm manager Fernando Delgardo (pictured here in wheat trials at Cimmyt) who ran an excellent experimental station with a lot of emphasis on breeding wheat and corn for international partners, but always kept in mind his obligation to improve the local farming systems that are around 1 acre per farmer (with livestock included). The chief breeder, Dr Ravi Singh from Sydney Uni, gave us an excellent insight into how plant breeding for wheat works and their ambition to be ahead of the next global catastrophe in wheat diseases. He was able to quote wheat breeds, like Cook and Hartog, that we direct descendants of Mexican Cimmyt breeding programs.

Australian, Dr David Bonnett showed us his trials pre-breeding to bring back the genetics of ancient grasses and durum wheats to bring more diversity into the genome pool, bringing hybrid vigour back into the breeding program so that they may be selected to put into the main line of breeding. We are privledged to met such clever people as we have travelled.

We are visiting the Australian Ambassador this afternoon and back to the headquarters of Cimmyt tomorrow before we fly back to Chicago to catch up with John Lawrie's tour of USA and Mexico. It will be great to catch up with them.

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