Cover Story

Makin’ Hay in the Desert

The Hugh River hay operation is a testament to the results that can be achieved in arid zone agriculture. Just add water. The Buddle hay field is fed by a pivot irrigation system that dumps water on the 32 hectare area from two bores 24 hours a day. The rotating irrigation arm sprays subterranean waters from the Mereenie Aquifer, the same reservoir from which Alice Springs draws 70% of its water supply.

Lucerne is grown on Hugh River all year round, but oats are strictly a winter crop, with the mix of the two creating the farm’s premium stock feed. Water is precious, so the Buddles have become adept at conservation and getting every bit of value out of each drop. When they bought their current irrigation system, they found the sprinkler heads were 2 m above the crops. “So we actually lowered the sprinklers down so they are just at the top of the crop,” recalls Glenn Buddle, “which reduces evaporation and wind drift. Now all the water is concentrated right on top the plant and you use less water.”

Hugh River is a freehold lease, excised from Orange Creek Station back in 1982. The property was taken over by Glenn’s father, Malcolm and later by Glenn. The Buddles had come north to the Territory from South Australia, fleeing the over-use of chemicals in the farming industry. They sunk bores for cattle water but the flow rate was so good that they planted a hay crop to cushion themselves against dry seasons. They grew hay to feed their animals, “but production was really good so we started selling a bit and from there it just snowballed. Now we’ve got a really good name for ourselves,” explains Mr Buddle.

“Down south they average two to three good cuts a year. On good, productive places – four or five cuts. Here, we average 12.”

True to their original aims, no chemicals are used to eradicate pests and weeds. They average about 700 bales (25 kg each) of lucerne per cut, which occurs every six to seven weeks in the winter and every three to four weeks during the hot summers. “Down south they average two to three good cuts a year,” says Mr Buddle. “On good, productive places – four or five cuts. Here, we average 12 cuts a year. It’s because we’re cutting a lot in the summertime when the weather is perfect for growing, especially lucerne.”

The Buddles have fought battles with invasive caterpillars and the elements, but their greatest opponent to expanding into a second hay oval is rising fuel prices. To pump the 20 000 gallons of water an hour required during the summer season and to deliver bales to Alice Springs, 15 000 litres of diesel a month is used. At prices that have skyrocketed to $1.62 a litre, the family can only pray for rain, so they can turn off the pumps for a while. They are exploring renewable alternatives but are yet to discover a viable option.

However, their hay remains in demand in Alice Springs among horse and camel owners, a more preferred option than buying hay from interstate. “The quality of their lucerne is very good,” says Margaret Betterman of Laucke Feed Mills in Alice Springs, a South Australian based company.

“We get hay up from South Australia but it’s not nearly as good. Maybe it’s the seed the Buddles use?” Or perhaps it’s the well-documented combination of lots of subterranean water and unlimited Central Australian sunshine that gives the Buddles’ product something extra.

Designer Flowers on Debut

Ian and Irene Hennessy own and operate Hennessy’s Enterprises, and on this day every week, they harvest, gather and deliver their tropical cut flowers, mostly heliconia and ginger varieties, to waiting clients. Also in the shed there’s bucketfuls of some of the new cut flower Zingiber hybrid varieties called the Darzing, one of four chosen by industry members like the Hennessy’s for commercialisation.

They joined with a few other growers to purchase the sole rights to initially market the flowers, by buying the Plant Breeder’s Rights (PBR) of the new varieties. “It’s a first because it shows that the growers really liked these new hybrids and were willing to take over ownership of them,” explains Doris Marcsik, the cut flower research horticulturist for the Department of Primary Industry, Fisheries and Mines. “It’s a plus for the cut flower group.”

The growers have been involved from the outset of the New Cut Flowers Products Project, choosing these varieties from over 500 hybrids in the ginger breeding trial on offer from the department. “There are hundreds of different kinds of gingers but these are giving lots of big flowers,” says Ian Hennessy. “They are flowering earlier in the season, with some better colours too.”

Ms Marcsik presides over the project from the department side and says: “The growers are getting excellent productivity with the Darzings – huge numbers of flowers to a plant compared to the common commercial varieties about, longer seasonality with an extended period of flowering. And we had a couple that were quite unique in appearance. We wanted to see Territory growers have exclusive rights to that.”

The Darzing varieties were bred from selected Zingiber parents with particular characteristics: colour, form, yield, and vigour. They were crossed, trialled and evaluated by researchers outside Darwin at the Coastal Plains Research Station. How long do they last? What is the length of stem? Do they come in earlier than Queensland?

The growers came out and information on the flowers was passed to them from the researchers. “They did the vase trials for longevity and stem length,” recalls Mr Hennessy. “Then we came out and picked the ones we liked and the whole thing had a really good buzz about it. The department did a hell of a lot of work to make it happen.”

The new releases come as the Top End is beginning to take on a greater national focus as a centre for tropical cut flowers. The spotlight landed on the Territory during the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Intense national media attention was focused on the winner’s bouquets that included Territory heliconias supplied by Peter Jettner of Territory Flowers. “It really put our growers on the map,” explains Ms Marcsik.

Last year’s International Heliconia Conference was also held in Darwin and featured a large turnout from Queensland. Many of those growers joined the North Australian Cut Flower Association, the new Darwin-based industry group made up of tropical growers from across Northern Australia.

The four Darzing varieties are, however, just the first of a number of new hybrids to be released. Mega-coloured Curcumas are certain to widen the range of tropical cut flowers, with new hybrids bred and developed from varieties sourced from Thailand and Singapore. “The Curcumas take us down a new road called ‘potted colour’, another area of ginger breeding,” says Ms Marcsik. “One commercial nursery has decided to take on the Curcumas, and that’s the Girraween Nursery, whose finalising their selection.”

Another cut flower product to emerge from the New Cut Flowers Products Project are the stunning Heliconia psittacorum varieties. Because heliconia rhizomes cannot be imported into Australia, researchers collected H. psittacorum seeds of different commercial varieties and, after they’d grown out, industry growers chose the ones they liked. New varieties resulted from these seedlings, and growers named all the nine new varieties which will be registered with the Heliconia International Society.

The program is an encouraging example of how government and industry can work together to broaden the cut flower market. It’s a service not every state enjoys. “Queensland growers have no government staff over there working with ornamentals and tropical cut flowers like we do,” states Ms Marcsik. “We’ve got projects aimed at the cut flower industry here, and they’ve never had it, so they benefit from our Darzings, Curcumas and Heliconia psittacorum varieties developed right here by Government.”