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The Logan River is the primary water source for Ray and Lisa's soil-grown parsley crop. This parsley crop was lost as a result of water stress, followed by flood rains and disease. An ideal sandbed culture system for growing high quality herbs (Herbzest Pty ltd). This basil crop is grown in a typical sandbed culture system (Herbzest Pty Ltd).
A Farmer’s Story y Small crop primary producers in soil have been amongst the worst hit by severe drought and water shortages, causing many to reconsider their water management and growing practices.
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LISA CROOKS tells her family story as a small in-ground parsley grower, and describes the need for change.
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ay's farm career started as a young boy when he worked proudly beside his father and brothers growing lettuce, parsley, celery, eschalots, and eggplant. It was around 1983 that Ray started producing for Coles and has been with them ever since. After the sad loss of their father, Ray and his brother Steve took over the farm, taking it one step further, focusing on parsley as the main crop. At the age of 21, Ray bought his first property with his brother, having 10 acres with sandy loam where they dug a one-acre dam. In 1987, while working the two farms, he still had time to find himself a bride.This is where I came in, a city girl who had made a career in the pharmacy profession and had never played with dirt. But, after five years of marriage and our first child on the way, I decided to leave the easy life and work beside Ray in the paddock. With his parent's farm sold to developers, we turned his first block of land into a great success story. We worked hard trying to keep up with orders, and with a second son on the way, our next option was to employ staff. As the business grew, so did the staff. We found parsley caused allergic reactions to some people; one of the first employees to join us was very allergic to parsley, but an excellent worker, so we felt there was a need to grow another crop.This is where radish came in. With an expanding business, the paperwork mounted and I was left to contend with office work associated with GST, Quality Assurance, Workplace Health and Safety, Super and Centrelink – as if farming
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isn't challenging enough! With two young boys and a lot to learn, the office became my second home. Children are only young once and I didn't want to miss their growing up.The only way to meet the deadlines with BAS and the mountain of the paper work was early starts. My day can begin anywhere from 2am and I work until the boys wake up to make sure that they receive all the time they need.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” The more crops you grow, the more water you need. As a couple, we experienced our first drought.The dam went dry, so we sunk our first bore. Little did we know that this would be the first of about 12 deep bores, mostly on our property, some on prospective land, and the rest on Ray's brother's block, which is 500 metres away, two houses down the road. We laid two-inch poly pipe, sneaking it underground beside the road, from his place to ours. Desperate times call for desperate measures. As supplies ran short, there was an urgent need for another property. After eight months of searching, contacting every real estate agent and driving around every afternoon after work, we found the perfect place; 46 acres with the combination of clay through to river sand along the Logan River. We thought that all of our troubles were over, as we had an endless supply of water. The first farm never really recovered from the drought but we call this place "home". Over the next seven years, the dam was never full. With limited registered chemicals for parsley available, and Methyl Bromide almost at an end, we started to plan our next approach and the direction in which the farm needed to go. With the second farm on the Logan River heavily cropped with parsley and radish, we thought that we would have all the water we need. However, over the last three or four years the water slowly depleted with the town dam at about 12% capacity. In February 2003, the Government had no other option but to stop the water. Our water supply started to run out very quickly.We had grave concerns for the crops as they showed signs of stress like tipburn and yellowing, and the crop started to slowly die off. By this stage, we went searching for suppliers of parsley throughout Queensland and down south to meet the supply and quality demand with Coles.We found that we had started communicating more with other growers and sharing problems and ideas.
DAVID GILL
GREENHOUSES • • • • • •
Single or double roof vents Single or double skin roof 4-metre post height Condensation collecting aluminium guttering Screening friendly Polycarb adaptable
“We watched growers who had been around longer than us close the gate on their farm, waiting for the rain.” Our next step was to conserve water with the construction of a shade house, the sinking of yet another bore, and only watering crops we were planning on picking in the near future. By this stage we had six staff members, all being excellent to work with. Over lunch we discussed what the future held.This day was one of the hardest days, letting them know that it was only a matter of time. We had watched growers who had been around longer
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A typical example of the author's parsely crop following drought then flood rains.
Chives (foreground) and basil are grown in this recirculating sandbed system using drip irrigation techniques.
The AGHGC2003 farm visits gave Ray (left) and Lisa a better understanding of water-efficient and sustainable growing practices.
than us close the gate on their farm, waiting for the rain. Two days later we received the start of around 12 1/2 inches of rain over the next two weeks.Yes, Murphy's Law! Drought and floods all in one week. Needless to say, that finished off the crop. We had problems with the ground and the parsley. For the first time ever, we were unable to supply Coles with our own crops for the entire order and we were like a lot of other farmers; there was a short supply throughout Queensland. In desperation, and after having to put a staff member off, I approached Local, State and Federal government leaders personally (another first for me) and shared with them my anguish. All three requested a letter telling our story which they submitted with their Exceptional Circumstances request.The successful outcome allowed some of the farmers who had closed their gates to re-open.Though for us, drought assistance was not an option. Back on the land, the ground was unable to dry out, and the shade house was the worst affected area. As a result, the shade house had to be pulled down and we were left with a lot of problems and diseases over the entire farm. We did extensive testing on the crops, with results indicating bacterial soft rot, Alternaria and Fusarium, and other unidentified bacteria.There were also problems with high pH and salinity in the water. Trying to find answers on how to treat these problems, we were left with the common responses like, "plough in the ground" and "cover crop for 12 months". As the farm is our only source of income, we needed to go further and after endless hours researching through the Internet, GrowSearch (DPI Cleveland) and other farmers around us, I decided there was an urgent need for more available research material on parsley. I contacted the Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association who put me in touch with Julia Telford, who is the Industry Development Officer. Ms Telford was more than willing to help; we took her to both farms where we photographed the crops and the farm. On telling her of my intentions with researching and photographing all trials, hoping to control risk management of parsley and creating the most intensive development of resource material, I had hoped to obtain research funding, which would help to take the pressure off a bit.
“ ...we came to the realisation that a different method of growing was needed, but where did we start?” This led to coming in touch with Elizabeth Minchinton from DPI in Knoxfield,Victoria, who had a project going with bunched vegetables and was willing to include us in with her research. It was then that we had more diseases to contend with like Stemphylium, Microdochium, Colletotrichum, Gliocladium, Septoria, Pseudomonan Cichoriil, and Sodium Chloride (salt: to include a word I can pronounce). With my research beginning to develop, I also made contact with Robert Hayes from Freshzest. I found Robert to be a wealth of knowledge; taking away a lot of my guesswork and providing realistic answers to my barrage of questions. As a herb grower himself, we have a lot to learn from him. When reflecting upon our knowledge, we came to the realisation that a different method of growing was needed, but where did we start? With Julia of course! When I received an email advertising the AGHA Conference and I looked through
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the list of attendees, I saw an opportunity to meet with people who may have been able to help us further. We decided to take the plunge and make the most of it. Three days prior to conference, we visited the DPI at Knoxfield and spent the afternoon going into details about parsley. The following two days we also visited five farms that grew parsley and discussed not only how the drought had affected us, but also options for survival. We were so thankful for their time and appreciated their valuable input. The next step for us was the Conference. We were very eager to learn all aspects of the industry and to see how it would help us. Our main interest was investigating filtration, membrane technology, ozone and UV for the Logan River water. We needed to look further with the filtration system for treating a larger volume of water. Other points of interest were the different types of media, how to control our famous environment consisting of extreme temperatures, and whether this was suitable for greenhouses, plant nutrition, crop types, the latest R&D developments and pest management. The farm study tours to Freshzest and the fodder farm were also found to be very informative, giving us a better understanding of how to go about creating systems, learning from teething problems and the retelling of success stories. Another site that was particularly impressive was that of the NSW Agricultural Department at the conference exhibition.They went beyond the call of duty, being extremely helpful and full of information. Being inground farmers, IPM was new to me and I came out of the
conference with a great respect for their work. During the conference, we also quizzed just about everyone about the growing of parsley hydroponically. Some had tried NFT but did it unsuccessfully, finding that when the parsley had been cut, it went too limp, too quickly. For us, we believe that sand media may create a buffer and maybe a better crop, and that we also need to acquire the proper nutrient ratio. We plan to start trials as soon as possible. Overall, we found the Conference to be a huge success. We walked away with a lot of ideas, new friendships, better understandings of the Australian Hydroponics & Greenhouse Association, and we are looking forward to attending the next conference. Once I have consolidated all of our pictures and notes, we plan to get together with our staff, other growers and suppliers to share everything that we have learnt. We believe that working together can make our lives easier, and we are still very keen to hear from more growers of parsley, whether it is about their wins or their losses. Nobody can help everybody, but everybody can help somebody! ❧ Ray and Lisa Crooks can be contacted at: Riverview Herbs, 321-331 Holloway Road Chambers Flat, Qld 4133 Ph/Fax: (07) 3802-1054 Email:
[email protected]
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