A NARROW-minded approach is limiting TAFE’s ability to deliver courses relevant to the changing needs of the NSW agricultural sector, warns former TAFE teacher Dave Forrest.
“Biological and Organic farm training needs to be promoted and advertised to farmers looking to cope with an increasingly variable climate,” he says.
Mr Forrest, Federal via Lismore, grows organic ginger and turmeric on red soil now black with increased carbon content all thanks to a high population of soil microbes
“Soil health is not rocket science,” he says. “No, it’s far more complicated than that. But we don’t need to understand how it works exactly, just how to use natural processes.
“We need to promote how soil biology functions through education for farming systems to work with less reliance on inputs and good seasons. ”
In the past organic and biological agriculture was very much a sidelined sect and so it seems again today with TAFE restricting advertising to certificate based curriculums.
“It comes back to training,” he says. “Historically almost all education said soil organisms were pests and not beneficial. The focus on soil diversity and structure has been overshadowed by soil chemistry.
“Yet most of our problems in farming stem from structural decline in soil. This lowers rainfall infiltration, holding capacity and drainage, essential for soil biological functions and large healthy root systems.”
Mr Forrest says training in organic agriculture is more relevant now than ever. Climate change is real and farming systems must be built to handle increasingly variable seasons. Organic agriculture by its very nature is built around resilience.
Cover crops protect the soil, rather than leaving it exposed during chemically restrained ‘black’ fallow. Using the right technique seed can be sown through those cover crops saving moisture and soil structure during dry periods while preventing hard-pack and bogging in the wet.
Bayer under Tim O’Grady facilitated by Bob Schaefer have entered the realm of soil health with the likes of Serenade, a soil fungi promoter, while Jurgens, which supplies 80 per cent of its enormous tomato harvest to Coles, is using cover cropping and applying organic matter and compost to boost fertility.
“These big growers will influence others,” says Mr Forrest. “Biodiversity has taken the complications out of farming provided growers follow good natural science. It all comes back to farming systems to keep that diversity of organisms comfortable.
“But we need this information disseminated to future farm hands. We need workers on the same page.”
