Image Credit - The Land Robbie Sefton says the community can play a part in Australia's biosecurity battle by being aware of purchases during an overseas holiday that could carry hidden risks Australia
is the lucky country in so many ways – not least of which is the island status
that has protected us from many of the pests and diseases that could spell
economic disaster should they ever reach ...
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latest insights.
Our ability to trade underpins success
Image Credit - The Land The Indonesia-Australia trade agreement
signed in March was another important deal for Australian agriculture, and
follows a series of similar agreements the current government has forged with
China, Japan and Korea. Australian
agriculture produces far more than our domestic market can consume, and often
needs a greater return on its produce than the domestic market ...
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Our times are rich with opportunity, and fraught with risk
Image credit - The Land No matter whether you are conservative or progressive,
I think we all have a sense that our world is changing too fast for comfort. It’s not just the climate, although the implications of
a changing climate is of growing concern to Australians. All our systems - political, legal, economic, social -
are being strained by growing populations, new technologies, and ...
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City dwellers have their own struggles
Image Credit : The Land Australia has more land per person than almost any other country, yet about 90% of its population choose to live in just 0.2% of that space — mostly our coastal cities. We are nearly as urbanised as Japan (94%) and more
urbanised than the United States (82%) and United Kingdom (83%). We in the bush
would do well to remember how minor is our minority in the nation’s ...
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Robbie Sefton appointed to board of Prime Media Group
Sydney, Monday, 8 April 2019: Prime Media Group Limited (ASX:PRT) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms Robbie Sefton as a non-executive director of the company, effective 8 April 2019. It is intended that Ms Sefton
will stand for election as a director at Prime’s 2019 Annual General Meeting. Chairman of PRIME MEDIA, Mr John Hartigan said: “We are delighted to welcome
Robbie to ...
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Value adding agriculture
Robbie Sefton From the start, Australian agriculture has specialised in selling raw commodities, and has done so to great effect. Despite home to some of the oldest soils on the planet and an often-challenging climate, we have built one of the world’s resilient agricultural sectors. But it’s clear we need to remain competitive as other
countries modernise their agriculture, often helped by ...
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Rise of women in agriculture an encouraging sign
Of all the various ways that humanity has devised for splitting itself into tribes, gender tribes are surely the most pointless. Men and women are undoubtedly capable of widely differing viewpoints, and are perfectly capable of exasperating each other, but we are literally nothing without each other.
That's why it's been wonderfully encouraging to watch the rise of women in agriculture over the ...
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When the going gets tough, throw a festival
Agriculture’s rapidly growing efficiency has been challenging for many of the regional centres that were built around a large agricultural workforce. Truckloads of possibilities for reversing the stagnation in the economies of many rural townships have been discussed over the decades, but the only sure recipes for growth seem to be either a large regional centre with the critical mass for ...
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We haven’t left the starting line for Murray Darling Basin Plan
As a small population in a big country, Australians have long enjoyed the idea that we have enough natural resources to go around - enough for agriculture and wilderness, and everything in between.That notion has been challenged over the past couple of decades. Like everywhere else in the world, we’re having to make tough decisions about how we manage the balance between environment and ...
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Digital divide is not just a country issue
Imagine if Australia had stayed as it was in 1861, when nearly half the population could not read. We are today (almost) universally literate, thanks to the compulsory schooling introduced in the 1870s to overcome Australia’s literacy problems. But we now need more than the ability to read if we want to access education, government and financial services, and information in general. All these ...
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Protect consumer trust in our brands
Thanks to technology and our hyper-connected world, the marketing game is changing. Where a big marketing campaign once meant carpet-bombing advertisements across TV and newspapers, today one perfect product placement will carry a punch undreamed of before the internet amplified human affairs. That placement doesn’t have to be intentional, as Paspaley pearls discovered when Meghan, Duchess of ...
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Australia’s clogged cities are in trouble
Anyone who has spent time in Sydney knows that it has become so congested that it is at best inefficient, at worst dysfunctional. Melbourne, long proud of its "world's most liveable city" claim, is starting to collapse under the weight of its fast-growing population.[1] Brisbane seems to be constantly pouring new concrete, yet is steadily becoming more clogged. The answer lies not merely in ...
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Paddock to the office connectivity required
Discussions about rural telecommunications are full of static, and not just because of the copper phone lines. Farmer and Seftons managing director, Robbie Sefton has been instrumental in cutting through the noise as an independent committee member of the federal governments 2018 Regional Telecommunications Review. Recently submitted to the government, the review is held every three years and ...
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Education is key to bridging the divide
Here’s a paradox. In that vast area of Australia outside major cities known – often dismissively – as “rural and regional areas”, the education sector is one of the biggest employers. And yet educational outcomes for the regions are well below those of cities. In the major cities, nearly a third of working-age people have a university degree. In the “inner regions”, the proportion of ...
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Navigate the way with support list
So much hope invested in that weekend rain front: and much disappointment followed. Inevitably, though, this drought is going to be with us for a long time to come. Even when the rain deficit corrects itself, farmers will be carrying a drought-induced financial deficit on their books, perhaps for years. Since Alistair and I moved our farming business from Western Australia to NSW in 1997, the ...
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Agriculture needs to ‘prime the pump’ now
Every successful enterprise has good management at its core. That includes Apple, which recently became the world’s first trillion-dollar company, and the family farm.
Successful entrepreneurs are applauded for building their enterprises single-handedly, but inevitably, entrepreneurial success is built on a solid foundation of good management and the largely unsung people who make it possible.
Are ...
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What agribusiness can learn from Netflix
Like many, I enjoy looking for great books, podcasts or stories about people who make a difference and truly contribute to others’ lives by sharing their learnings. Recently I listened to an ABC Radio National podcast called “Freedom and responsibility”, which was an interview with former Netflix chief talent officer Patty McCord. McCord’s views resonated with what I’ve aimed to create in ...
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Does ag have it’s eye on the prize?
How are we going?
Sometimes we need to sit back and take stock. That applies to our own lives and businesses, and to our agriculture sector as a whole.
This is also easier said than done, as I am only too aware. There are always things that must be done before we take a break — and while we do those things, there goes the day/week/year.
It has been five years since I had the privilege of ...
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Look after your livestock and they will look after you
Drought is an inescapable part of farming we all face in Australia. Because its impact is so wide – affecting output, productivity and income – it is also probably one of the biggest challenge farmers and the service providers they use face. Bureau of Meteorology data shows we have just had the third-lowest April rainfall on record across southern Australia, with the lowest rainfall on record at ...
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Business is enabled by good telecoms
It’s been getting some bad press, but I love this digital age we have arrived at in the 21st Century. In common with 95% of Australia’s adult population, I carry with me a small slab of glass and metal encasing far more computing power than was used to put people on the moon. There is a full office in this little device: it allows me to communicate, read documents and respond to them, make ...
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