In ten years when 2020 is reviewed I wonder what people will think of how we responded to the many challenges we faced during the past twelve months.
It would be foolish, in this review to ignore the bushfires which devastated so many last summer, just as it would be absurd to forget the social and commercial disruption caused by COVID-19.
Whichever way it is considered, there can be no doubt it will be a year best put down to experience; that is, use the lessons learnt to make informed judgements for the future.
Just as we acknowledge the commercial and social damage caused by the pandemic, let us be thankful the bush has generally had a very good second half of the year.
It does not bear thinking about the greater consequences to our fragile economy if rural and regional NSW was still under the burden of drought.
And although 2020 commenced with drought, enough rain in autumn and through to late spring ensured one of the greatest yielding winter crops on record along with bumper pasture growth.
But in this festive season let us be conscious of those farmers who were in regions which did not receive favourable rainfall.
Stock prices do not seem to have a ceiling as landholders and processors scramble to fill their requirements.
And with the confidence engendered by season, prices paid for flock rams across all breeds and commercial bulls of all breeds seemed to know no bounds.
Everyone seemed to trying to buy the best of the sires on offer to continue the lift of production on their property.
Do they care?
Coming along the Hume Highway past paddocks of different patterns and various colours which might have once attracted the eye of Arthur Streeton, I wondered what the drivers of the many cars heading north and south at speed thought of the landscape.
Did they give a moments thought to the cockies and their families who survived the drought and can now look forward to the new year with some confidence.
Or did they not even consider the farming families plight now that a bountiful season hides so many disappointments?
Was the true cost of their meals in terms of soil degradation and producer anxiety contemplated?
Passing paddocks filled with round bales of hay, or patterned with windrows and ripening winter crops with stock in pasture over their withers, those driving the highway could be forgiven if they thought the past spring was a normal event.
But those who are custodians of the land know its fragility and do not take nature for granted.
The ample spring has been the chance they needed to replenish silos, haysheds, silage pits and bank balances.
For their application, society owes the cockies and their families much.
A past thought
Around the traps, some with good memories have been comparing the past spring selling season to the halcyon days of the early 1980's.
And with exceptional wheat yields coming out of the paddocks leading to long delays at silos, I am reminded of times during the late 60's when my father would often be stuck overnight at the Werris Creek silo as he waited in turn to unload.
He would take something to eat and slept overnight on a blanket on top of the wheat; and many times our Christmas Day was interrupted by the need to continue the harvest.
We accepted his absence as a normal part of living on a farm.
Under the pink hat
The novels of American author Louis Bromfield don't appear on best seller lists these days, but during the 1920's his books were so well received he was awarded the 1927 Pulitzer Prize.
When he had amassed sufficient capital from his novels, Bromfield purchased farmland in Ohio in the late 1930's and set a course to become one of the earliest proponents of sustainable agriculture in the US.
It was that interest in restoring what he considered to be worn-out land for which he is mostly remembered today in the US.
Bromfield rehabilitated his land during which time he learnt soil conservation principles and turned the property he named Malabar into a showcase for his version of 'New Agriculture'.
Some of the farming techniques he promoted such as the use of green manure crops, ploughing along the contour and strop cropping would be taken up by many successful farmers.
He wrote a series of memoirs about agriculture and the environment, with the best-selling Pleasant Valley being published in 1945.
After his death, Malabar was turned into a state park and tourist attraction where aspects of Bromfield's land management philosophy are maintained.
Consider now the example of P.A Yeomans' work in the mid 1950s in NSW, when he demonstrated a new system of land management he called the Keyline system for rehydrating land.
Yeomans was a mining engineer with a keen sense of hydrology and the use of the contours to inform better famring practices.
On the property he named Nevallen near North Richmond he developed improved methods and equipment for cultivation and his chisel plough was awarded The Prince Philip Design Award in 1974.
His Keyline principles or concepts have influenced many landholders and in he published The Keyline Plan in 1954 and subsequently wrote other books about his experience and technique.
Those books were in my father's library and I still have them.
But the point of this story is that while Bromfield's Malabar Farm is a national monument in the US, Nevallan has been subdivided into housing blocks to satisfy the insatiable spread of suburbia across the Sydney basin.
I think that lack of heritage appreciation says everything about how agriculture in NSW is viewed by the suburbs.
Be kind to all and I wish you all a happy holiday season.
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