Moree’s Oscar Pearse is leading the way for change within the grains industry, having recently graduated from Grain Growers’ Australian Grain Leaders Program (AGLP).
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The Moree farmer was one of eight people from all over Australia selected to participate in the 2017 program, which is designed to develop leadership skills, knowledge and potential for emerging leaders in the Australian grains industry.
The AGLP is designed to give individuals a helping hand necessary to develop, implement and evaluate their own project, providing ongoing support of a trained program facilitator as well as industry partners.
Open to emerging leaders under 40 year of age, the AGLP offers participants the opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals; develop leadership knowledge and skills; gain an insight into the leadership pathways of established leaders and learn from inspiring speakers; and set individual goals and implement a plan to achieve these via an Australian grains industry, enterprise or on-farm project.
“It’s quite tailored; each participant has a project they’re working on – other participants were doing soil, one was doing heavy vehicles, another was looking at extreme yield,” Oscar said.
“Mine was on biodiversity and native vegetation and looking at best practice and capital gain issues.”
As a member of the NSW Farmers Association’s Conservations Resource Management Committee and Native Vegetation Taskforce since 2011, sustainability is one of Oscar’s key interests, particularly the current impacts of crop land development on biodiversity-providing habitats.
As part of his project within the AGLP, Oscar analysed the current options for landscape planning in cropping lands within the new native vegetation laws.
He said the program has helped to significantly improve his individual business decision-making.
“It helped me with looking at our business and acclimatising things in different ways, looking at capital and expenditure items using different systems to work out better ways of optimising both,” he said.
“I can now do a better analysis of my options in terms of [the new native vegetation] legislation with the aim to improving biodiversity.
“I’m doing a few things different agronomically.”
The biggest thing Oscar got out of the experience was the opportunity to network.
“It’s a chance to get out of your own zone and see what others are doing,” he said.
Oscar said it was particularly encouraging to find out just how advanced agriculture in the Moree region is.
“We went to a very innovative production in South Australia and when they found out I was from Moree, they said ‘what you guys do in Moree is world-leading practice,” he said.
“It’s interesting to see what we’re doing compared to others – we think it’s normal here but to someone else it’s quite innovative.”
And it turns out Moree isn’t just one of the most innovative areas but growers are also lucky to have multiple options to market their grain, compared to other regions which only have one or two grain handling facilities.
Oscar couldn’t recommend the Australian Grain Leaders Program highly enough and encourages anyone from this region looking to make a difference in agriculture to apply.
