Helping farmers help themselves

A new radio series featuring conversations with Australian scientists working overseas, helping farmers in developing nations become resilient to global crisis events is now available online.

Produced by Melanie Sim of the ABC Rural Department, the series features five Australian scientists, including two supported by ACIAR, Dr Ivan Kennedy and Dr Colin Piggin.

The series is available online at http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2008/s2532337.htm.

Ivan Kennedy, of the University of Sydney, and his Vietnamese counterpart Dr Phan Thi Cong, are developing inoculant biofertilisers to lower rice farmers’ costs by allowing crops to be grown with much less nitrogen fertiliser. Their early work was supported by ACIAR and they are now working to commercialise the biofertiliser, with the assistance of a World Bank Global Development Marketplace award.

Colin Piggin, is the project leader for ACIAR’s work in Iraq, which is helping the Iraqi farmers to adopt zero-till or no-till production, where crops such as wheat, legumes and barley are sown with minimum disturbance to the soil. Trials are showing consistent yield advantages from this technique, in part due to the ability to sow the crops early. Colin says the Iraqi farmers have a real thirst to gain knowledge from the wider agricultural world.

Other Australians featured in the ABC Rural radio series are Dr Julie Nicol (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre) and her work on reducing the effects of nematodes on wheat, Dr Noel Magor (International Rice Research Centre) and his work with Bangladeshi rice farmers and Joe Rickman (International Rice Research Centre) who is introducing the ‘walking plough’ into Mozambique.