NEWS24 | Bird flu and mice add to grain growers’ biosecurity challenges.
Bird flu is drawing attention to biosecurity across Australian agriculture, but the risks grain producers manage extend beyond any one disease or sector.
New Grain Producers Australia (GPA) Independent Director Kristy McSweeney discussed what bird flu could mean for grain growers, particularly those with dams, wetlands and mixed farming operations in an interview with News24.
She also spoke about the continuing cost of mouse damage and the work underway to help growers manage it.
While poultry producers are at the centre of concern about bird flu, Kristy said grain farms can also have large bodies of water that attract wild birds.
On properties that run livestock alongside cropping, growers need to think carefully about how different parts of the business interact.
That includes knowing who is coming onto the farm, where they have been and what they may have been exposed to.
Kristy said farm biosecurity plans and managing entry and exit are practical parts of responding to the risk.
These decisions come at a time when growers are already dealing with pressure from input costs and uncertainty around fuel and fertiliser.
Mice add another challenge when they dig up and eat grain after sowing, growers can face the expense of resowing a crop at a time when those costs are already high.
Kristy outlined GPA’s long-running work with the Grains Research and Development Corporation, CSIRO and government on mouse management.
She also discussed GPA’s work to secure an emergency permit for ZP50 mouse bait, giving eligible growers another control option subject to training and other permit requirements.
“Biosecurity” can sound like a single task, but the interview makes clear how many decisions sit behind it on a working grain farm.
Growers must manage people and vehicles entering their properties, watch for emerging threats and respond to pests already affecting crops.
Those decisions take time and money, and their effects reach beyond the farm gate.
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