blog

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 ...
Continue reading

On the farm, we have just wrapped up a month of shearing. All went well, except that this year’s shearing went a week longer than usual with the same number of sheep. Our excellent contractor was, as usual, efficient and brought a good team of shearing pros. But for three weeks, he was down two shearers. There is a world shortage of shearers. This has hit especially hard in Australia, land of ...
Continue reading

We have been hearing a lot about “agtech”, a phrase that frames a lot of things, from sensors to drones to Big Data to smartphones. Technological advances are at the centre of the ambition expressed in a new National Farmers Federation/KPMG report, recently launched by the Prime Minister, to have Australian agriculture grow by 70 per cent to be a $100 billion industry by 2030. And another recent ...
Continue reading

Farming has become an immensely complicated and information-intense occupation, to the degree that some farmers have begun borrowing a centuries old strategy from corporations to support their business. For more than 500 years, corporations have outsourced some of their intelligence gathering and decision-making to boards of directors. Faced with an avalanche of information, bureaucracy and ...
Continue reading

As our elected representatives begin the Parliamentary year in Canberra – amidst some fairly unpleasant controversy – I’ve been thinking a lot about what leadership means. As Deputy Chair of the National Australia Day Council I’m lucky to meet some of Australia’s most inspiring community leaders. This extraordinary group of people – 32 finalists in all, from each State and Territory – have taught ...
Continue reading

Are we ready for alternative meat? By “we”, I mean those of us who run livestock for meat production. Perhaps within 10 years, certainly within 20, we are not going to be the only ones in the animal protein game. Plant-based products from companies like Beyond Meat are on the market, and are apparently quite tasty. Beyond Meat has a cast of athletes promoting the virtues of its vision for the ...
Continue reading

Resilience, tenacity and authenticity are in abundance in rural Australia. We also tend to be conservative, and don’t always throw ourselves readily into change. And why would we, when the weather, markets and the innumerable variables of farming dish out plenty of surprises? The farming life has enough unknowns without volunteering for more. But change is also the condition that produces ...
Continue reading

Farmers must be resilient to survive in the business. In any given year they deal with fires, floods, storms, drought, rain at the wrong time, pests, disease and market fluctuations. However, they also have to be innovative and not afraid to be different – two things Seftons is passionate about. The need for innovation and striving to be different were highlighted during the Farm Writers’ ...
Continue reading

Agriculture’s permanent war on invasive species sometimes feels like a version of modern warfare. Despite an immense and growing arsenal of weaponry, the adversary keeps coming, consuming more and more of our time, attention and capital.  The cost is astonishing. Australian agriculture loses between $3.5-$4.5 billion a year to weeds, in lost production and control costs. Invasive animals are ...
Continue reading

Among the many forms of tribalism rife in the world is one that is particularly dangerous to farmers — the myth of farmers versus the consumer. Consumers often don’t understand the complexities of farming, the myth goes, and they need to be better educated so that farmers can get on with business. Like all myths, this has an element of fact, but there is a much weightier fact on the other side ...
Continue reading

The agriculture industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. But can it really be Australia’s next $100 billion industry? According to the latest figures agriculture is now the largest contributor to national GDP (gross domestic product) growth and the fastest growing economic sector, rising 23 per cent in the past 12 months. It is no surprise that the main drivers of this growth are the ...
Continue reading

There is a disconnect between the statistical category “farm labour” and every farming enterprise’s desire to employ “good people”, because good people seldom want to be just farm labour. Good people want to be part of a good enterprise. A good enterprise supports the ambitions, ideals, or self-worth — preferably the trifecta — of those that work within it. 2015 Nuffield Scholar Reece Curwen, in ...
Continue reading

The road into town or the road out of town? Providing happiness for people living in the country will bring more people to rural and regional areas. We are in the middle of the greatest human migration the world has ever seen: the movement of people from rural to urban areas. By 2050, the United Nations estimates that around 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban environments. ...
Continue reading

Incubating interest in agriculture from early childhood right through school and university is important to lead and grow the industry. At the Farm Writers’ Association of NSW lunch in Sydney last week, speakers covered the topic: Incubating talent for Agriculture - K1 to Tertiary. We have probably all heard by now that by 2050 there will be 70 per cent or 2.4 billion more people on earth, ...
Continue reading

As a graduate of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation program, my 32 fellow graduates and I wrote a vision for rural and regional Australia which focused on being able to get a good coffee – latte, cappuccino or soy macchiato, whichever you prefer – in the bush. Even in towns with fewer than 1000 people inhabiting them, the coffee machines are working overtime. Interestingly, 15 years ...
Continue reading

Regional roads, water, schools and hospitals were the main winners in the NSW 2017-18 state budget handed down yesterday. And $12 million in tax cuts for the farming sector also means the budget was a winner for agriculture too. A record $1.3 billion of funding in a Regional Growth Fund has been allocated to regional areas. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said in his budget speech the ...
Continue reading

Loyalty, trust, relevant and competitive are the foundations upon which Bega Cheese executive chairman Barry Irvin does business. At a Farm Writers' Association of NSW lunch in Sydney last week, Mr Irvin spoke about his, at times, different approach to business, including the fact “loyalty and trust were the foundations of Bega Cheese and what allowed us to go forward”. From a single factory ...
Continue reading

Seftons’ managing director Robbie Sefton has shared her thoughts on decentralisation, believing investment in infrastructure and “big picture” thinking are vital to the economic prosperity of rural and regional Australia. Robbie spoke to presenter Paul Turton on ABC New England North West about the issue, which has attracted headlines recently after Coalition partners The Nationals announced a ...
Continue reading

Farmers and regional Australia have been labelled as winners in the 2017-18 Federal Budget. Major funding for the Inland Rail and ongoing funding to the National Landcare Program are just some of the highlights for the agriculture sector. However, despite calls by the National Farmers Federation to allocate funding to fix mobile black spots and the Data Drought, no new money has been put ...
Continue reading

We can safely say – in my opinion – that we’re in a time of great political uncertainty as 2017 gets underway. The heat’s on – not just physically (with Sydney and other parts of NSW on course to recording the hottest January ever) – but politically and culturally. Public unrest and division over the election of Trump in the USA and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union are all ...
Continue reading

In the lead up to Australia Day, many Australians are gathering to celebrate this event, including with local awards. You may have seen media reports of the NSW 2016 Australia Day Address, delivered by Deng Thiak Adut in Sydney on Thursday. Deng’s story is extraordinary and inspiring. A child soilder in Sudan, he was rescued by the United Nations and resettled in Australia. He is now a refugee ...
Continue reading

It’s a warm start to the week in Tamworth – with temperatures predicted to reach 35°C today and a high of near 40°C last week. By any accounts that’s hot – far hotter than the averages for this time of year. Most of us in regional Australia feel the heat in a very real way – it affects our crops, our livestock, our production and our daily lives. We know personally the impacts of a month like ...
Continue reading

Today, the Australian Financial Review and Westpac have announced the winners of the 100 Women of Influence awards – women who have shown vision, leadership, innovation and action in and beyond their field. I’m honoured – and truth told, pretty excited – to be one of the winners, based on my work over the past decades in regional Australia. I’m just back in the office from speaking to our ...
Continue reading

A lot of future visioning has taken place in the national agriculture space in the past two years – notably the Blueprint for Australian Agriculture (the industry’s vision for its own future), and the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper (the Australian Government’s pathway to setting policies that will boost agriculture’s productivity and profitability in the future). It’s great to see – ...
Continue reading

It’s an exciting start to the month here in Tamworth – with the announcement that not one, but two airlines are joining Qantas in servicing the Tamworth district. Virgin Australia will fly between Tamworth and Sydney six times a week from 25 May, and regional carrier Jetgo has picked up the Tamworth to Brisbane route. This development has suddenly changed the entire landscape – and the way ...
Continue reading

Any of us country dwellers know the feeling – we are usually the ones who need to travel to inspect new technology and meet the people and organisations who help our agribusinesses run. We’re used to leaving our loved ones, driving many kilometres, flying, staying over in the city, and trekking back home again at the end of it. This week, in an Australian first, machinery giant Case IH is ...
Continue reading

Happy new year from me and the Seftons team from Tamworth – the city that comes into its own every January when it hosts the Country Music Festival. It’s the largest music fest in the Southern Hemisphere and makes us proud to share our rural home with tens of thousands of visitors. It’s a toe-tapping, whip-cracking week when people from all walks of life converge on Tamworth to celebrate ‘country’ ...
Continue reading