SHE joined the party just two months ago and is a rank outsider to get a seat in parliament, but Penny Blatchford seems certain to win over a tide of rural votes for The Greens on polling day this Saturday.
The North West NSW cotton grower turned prominent anti-coal seam gas (CSG) campaigner also believes her involvement in the party is already helping modify the city-based Greens' often-hostile attitudes to mainstream agricultural issues, including irrigated farming, vegetation management and genetically modified crops.
Mrs Blatchford sits well down the Senate hopefuls list with the number three spot on The Greens' NSW ticket led by former Nature Conservation Council boss and NSW Upper House Greens MP, Cate Faehrmann - a long-time activist on the left wing of student and mainstream politics.
The agricultural commerce graduate and mother of three farms 7000 hectares of broadacre cereals and cotton cropping country at Gurley south of Moree with husband Rob.
She is a strong advocate of GM crops, including cotton, supports building more big storage dams on major river systems and believes organic food is a luxury enjoyed and promoted by those rich enough buy it, or grow it, but out of the reach of average Australians.
"And I'm not a vegetarian. In fact, I don't think I know any Greens who are," she said.
"There are things farmers don't necessarily agree with The Greens about, but I also don't necessarily agree with all the policies of the other political parties, either.
"But if The Greens are taking a stand on issues like animal welfare or agricultural land use and they have policies which will impact on farmers, it's very important to have a farmer in the room being part of that discussion.
"I guess I'm a bit young and naive, but these people are discussing my family's future and the future of farming communities, yet there are no farmers among the decision makers.
"Somebody has to be telling them how it is."
Mrs Blatchford has used her new-found alliances with the party, including close support from Greens leader Christine Milne, to promote the practical realities of sensible vegetation management and agricultural land use to its hierarchy.
She has been keen to break conventional Green thinking about broadacre farmers, showing first hand how good farming strategies, including spraying programs, do work with the environment.
"I think The Greens are evolving. Their understanding of rural issues is evolving, just as farmers have evolved beyond that slash and burn mentality that might have been prominent in the past," she said.
"Farmers plant a lot of trees, we practise no-till farming and cover cropping, and integrated pest management, and we use current technology to get the most efficient water use from our crops.
"We understand trees and carbon and its connectivity with what we do."
Her zeal for promoting agriculture and protecting prime farmland led to Mrs Blatchford being recruited by Ms Milne to The Greens federal election campaign only a month ago, having already rising to public attention as a vocal critic of CSG development on farms.
A founding force in the Bellata-Gurley Action Group Against Gas two years ago, she said despite widespread regional support for controls on CSG to safeguard prime farmland and landholder rights, it was a struggle to get action from the region's traditional political base, The Nationals.
"I was in contact with all the political parties, but when I was talking to the Nats it felt as if I was telling them more about what was really going on and they weren't really taking our issues seriously," she said.
"We were trying to improve farm landholders' rights before it was too late, but instead we get the most frustrating responses from the State Government, like its decision to focus on protecting residential homes in towns from having gas wells nearby.
"There's been nothing done to restrict CSG from being extracted close to a farm residence, or to seriously honour the (NSW Coalition's) pre-election promises about protecting agricultural land.
"I'm not asking for a black ban on CSG - I want a balance that's fair for farmers."
