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Australia Should Lease Land to Multinational companies, to Trial New Crop Varieties
Feb. 19, 2015
Australia could make a lucrative industry out of trialling new grain crops for multinational companies, according to a farmer who has been leasing his paddocks to seed companies for decades.
Whether it is about getting on top of weeds, staying ahead of disease or improving nutritional value in grain production, seed companies are spending billions of dollars creating new strains and varieties.
It is an expensive business and only a tiny percentage of seeds are made commercially available.
Grazier Tony Beck, from Mingbool in South Australia, leases his paddocks to companies and receives an extra wage for irrigating the small trial sites.
He is free of the usual risks, relating to yield losses, but it is in Mr Beck's interest to ensure the trials succeed so he can secure future projects.
Seed production now makes up 30 per cent of his income and Mr Beck was confident the side business will continue to expand.
"The predictions are that the world's population is going to increase quite a bit more before it stabilises," he said.
"In the traditional seed growing areas, in Europe and Asia and Americas, there's going to be an increased need for seed production.
"Even last year, a stock agent brought around a potential new customer from Israel and they were looking for small paddocks … to grow a particular type of onion for their domestic market.
"This has happened a number of times, where we've had visitors from overseas countries looking for new areas to grow new crops."
Mr Beck said Australia's political stability and quality water made it an attractive country for seed production.
But the high cost of labour, diesel, electricity and fertiliser affected its reputation overseas.
"We just hope that it will get better," Mr Beck said.
"I think that as water becomes shorter and shorter, it will become more and more profitable in the future.
"It's a boutique sort of an industry, in that we're not talking about massive tonnes of production, we're just talking about high-value seeds that are required for the whole range of horticulture-type crops."
Mr Beck said he was open to any "reasonable" production request and had no qualms facilitating genetically modified crop trials for Bayer Crop Science.
The South Australian Government maintains a moratorium on GM crops, but approved trial sites are allowed.
"The farmers in Australia are under so much pressure that they need all of the tools in their toolbox to be world competitive," Mr Beck said.
"There is a considerable market in South Australia for the products that we're helping to create here. It's South Australia's loss that they're not embracing the technology."
Source: ABC Rural
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