Women in agriculture . . . Phoebe Johnson from Sydney, Meagan Marshall from Deniliquin, Rachael McIntyre from St Arnaud, Alise Riley from Echuca and Jenna Pearl from Birchip.
Networking . . . Helen McGowan from Yackandandah, Liz Walpole from Whorouly, and ex-Sheppartonian Jessie Matheson from Melbourne.
Enjoying the conference . . . Prof Margaret Alstone, Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed, and Anna Lottkowitz from Wangaratta.
At the conference . . . Cassandra Wortmann from north-east Victoria, Belinda Allitt from Wagga Wagga, Jodie Pengell or Kellerberrin and Jordy Medlen from Lake Grace, WA.
Overseas visitor . . . Papua New Guinea woman Maria Linibi, who is president of the PNG Women In Agriculture organisation, spoke to the conference about other international associations.
Celebration . . . The women rolled out a celebratory birthday cake to mark 25 years of the Australian Women in Agriculture organisation. Cutting the cake, from left, were life members Marion Rak, Elaine Paton AO, Val Lang AM, and Cathy McGowan AO, MP. Absent was life member Dorothy Dunn, AO.
The waste includes food from offices, restaurants and bakeries, coffee grounds from McDonald’s and trial agricultural waste such as grape remains from wine-making and wheat husks.
Her company also grows meal worms for overseas human consumption.
Ms Yarger grew up with sheep and cattle and attended school in Yass before moving to Canberra and later working as a wool classer. After working overseas she returned to Australia and wanted to get into farming but the cost was a barrier.
‘‘I started Goterra by chance. I was looking into setting up a free-range poultry farm and was searching for an affordable feed substitute. Feed was expensive and there were no sustainable options. With the help of Google, I discovered insects could be used as an alternative feed, so I set about working to fill the gap by breeding insects.
Hobby farmer Melissa Connors admits to being naive when her family moved out of suburbia and onto two hectares of land at Kyneton in 2011.
The cattle ran out of feed, the sheep escaped and never came back and the dam ran out of water.
The family desperately needed good advice — and help was just next door.
Ms Connors met a neighbour who turned out to be a retired farmer and became a font of knowledge for their new farm.
So was borne her idea to link up new farmers with experienced farmers, called ‘‘This farm needs a farmer’’.
‘‘In that moment I realised that my farmer wasn’t the only one who had moved into town, off the land (usually at their wives’ insistence) and found that a house block isn’t going to keep them busy like their farm used to,’’ she said.
She discovered there were former farmers still living in rural areas who had a wealth of experience.
‘‘They may not be able to keep up with the ‘muscle’ involved in running a farm, but they certainly still have the know-how — chances are they worked the farms families like mine and other tree changers are now buying up.
Ms Connors plans to build the support model in her own area and then roll the project out statewide, then nationally.
Ms Connors won the AgriFutures Rural Women’s achievement award for 2018 with her project.
When photographer Kim Storey Googled ‘‘farmer’’ she found many of the images on the internet were caricatures of overall-wearing old men; and there were very few women.
So she set off on a mission to find out what farmers really looked like, and has produced a gloss coffee table book with a fascinating array of images demonstrating the range of appearances and experiences.
At the Australian Women in Agriculture conference she told some stories from her travels around Australia while assembling the images for her book What does a farmer look like?.
Great ideas... Eleanor Toulmin, the co-founder of Mimic Tec.
In a quest to improve poultry farming and the welfare of the chickens, two young Victorian women are developing a robot chicken.
Eleanor Toulmin and Sarah Last have developed a hen which is designed to teach behaviour to chickens which they would otherwise learn from their hen mothers.
Hens can’t be placed with chicks on commercial farms due to biosecurity issues, territorial behaviour of hens and stocking densities.
‘‘Chicks never receive maternal care which is important for development and socialisiation, so we created little robots you put into chicken farms which teach them to eat and drink in a nurturing environment, reuslting in increasing weight gain,’’ Eleanor Toulmin told the Australian Women In Agriculture conference.
She said their research indicated robot chickens would decrease mortality and increase growth rates in poultry farms.
Ms Toulmin desdcribed the approach as ‘‘win-win’’, with commercial and animal welfare advantages.
Their Mimic Tec company is still running prototype trials on farms around Australia.
Australian pioneer John Macarthur once graced the $2 note in acknowledgement of his role in developing the early wool industry, but the role his wife Elizabeth played has sometimes been overlooked.
She married the English army officer in 1788 and they migrated to the new colony of NSW in 1790 on the second fleet; she was the first wife of an officer to make the voyage.
While John Macarthur took credit for establishing the Australian wool industry, it was practical Elizabeth who managed their holdings while dealing with the results of John’s manias: duels, quarrels, court cases, a military coup, long absences overseas, grandiose construction projects and, finally, his descent into certified insanity.
Writer Michelle Scott Tucker researched Elizabeth’s role in the fledgeling industry and uncovered a fascinating story which has been historically glossed over.
Elizabeth Macarthur endured privations and hardships, including the loss of an infant baby on the voyage to NSW, long periods of her husband’s absence from the farm, threats from an uprising in the colony, famine and a patriarchal society which gave a woman little authority.
The property established at Camden (formerly Cowpastures) still operates as a farm today.
Michelle Scott Tucker’s book Elizabeth Macarthur — a Life at the Edge of the World is from Text Publishing and is available now.