1. EDITION 574
Betterbeef–page3
Angussale–page6Inside:
Supplement to the Bairnsdale Advertiser & Snowy River Mail,week commencing , August 22, 2016.
" # ! '
!! & !!
$ # #
! " % !
!!
Call Steve Morris today on
0418 658 839
STOCKFEED MANUFACTUERS
-- SSiinnccee 11995533 --
Dairy Pellets
Guaranteed specifications,consistent quality,
Inclusive of trace minerals
Beef & Sheep Feeds
Beef feedlot & supplementary rations,
Ewe & Lamb + Lamb Finisher rations
Wheat & Barley
Fixed price contracts or spot pricing,
ASW wheat & F1 barley
Bulk bags of selected feeds available ex Stratford
Talk to
us about M500070
ADVERTISE
YOUR
BUSINESS
HERE
For more information
contact
5150 2323
M11094
Chair of the Macalister
Customer Consultative
Committee (MCCC) will
be among those to at-
tend a Victorian dairy
symposium to find solu-
tions to the challenges
facing the Australian
dairy industry.
Member for Gippsland
Darren Chester nominated
MCCC chair and Gipps-
Dairy board member, Iain
Stewart, who will repre-
sent the Macalister Irriga-
tion District (MID) region
at the symposium this
Thursday, August 25.
Mr Chester said it was im-
portant decision-makers
heard first-hand about the
issues affecting farmers
and what governments
can do to best support
them during this period.
“It’s vital that our region
has representation at this
symposium to work with
government and industry
to design long-term solu-
tions that will help our
dairy sector prosper into
the future,” he said.
The symposium has been
organised by Barnaby
Joyce, Minister for Agricul-
ture and Water Security. It
will bring senior industry
representatives, proces-
sors and retailers together
to discuss what more can
be done to ensure a
healthy and viable future
for dairy farmers and the
industry.
The aim of the sympo-
sium is to develop indus-
try-led solutions to im-
prove transparency of
milk price arrangements
and increase farm gate
profitability.
Mr Joyce and Prime Min-
ister Turnbull met with
Murray Goulburn’s board
and chief executive last
week, and will meet with
Fonterra management.
ACCC and ASIC investiga-
tions into the milk price
write downs are ongoing
and reports will be provid-
ed publicly soon.
MID rep at
symposiumBugs better than beef
A visiting entomologist has told a
Bairnsdale beef conference that eat-
ing insects will provide us with a
comparable source of protein as
meat.
Shasta Claire says insects are also an
excellent source of dietary fibre, min-
erals, vitamins, fats, amino acids and
protein.
“Insects in general have a nutritional
profile similar to fish,” she said.
“Low calories per hundred grams of
meat and much more positive fat to
protein balance than beef, so they’re
actually very helpful from a human
perspective.”
Shasta said insects are actually fattier
given they are 100 per cent edible
compared with a “40 per cent protein
mass in cows”.
Shasta said 10 large witchetty grubs
for example, can provide an adult’s
daily requirements of fat, protein and
calories.
More than two billion people, she
said, are already eating insects in third
world countries.
“I think the reason these people have
traditionally eaten these foods (in-
sects) is because its cheap and people
were poor.
“However, in places like South East
Asia,where the middle class is expand-
ing, the demand for insect food is in-
creasing with that expanding middle
class, because they’re still preferenc-
ing insect food,” Shasta said.
Addressing farmers, the entomolo-
gist said even more appealing was
that insects had a much smaller car-
bon footprint than traditional live-
stock.
“Agriculture currently accounts for
18 per cent of greenhouse gasses, this
is greater than the automotive and
transport industries,” Shasta said.
Insects can be reared “in what would
be appalling conditions for mammals
and they’ll go along just fine.
“You don’t have to treat them with as
many antibiotics because they’re not
capable of being stressed, like cows
are,” Shasta claims.
“Insects are less susceptible to those
stressors and we’re (humans) also less
likely to contract diseases that can af-
fect insects.
DUNG BEETLES IMPROVE FARMS
While some of those in the audience
at the Bairnsdale racecourse on Tues-
day looked a little squeamish about
the thought of eating insects, they
were quicker to embrace Shasta’s ar-
guments for how dung beetles could
improve farms.
She said dung beetles are able to in-
habit and bury a dung pat within 24
hours.
“They’re efficient, competitive and
they’ll even steal off one another.
“These natural habits of dung beetles
we can harness for our own benefits,
their tunnelling into your paddock can
reinvigorate the nutrient cycle.”
Shasta says it costs about $350 to
purchase 1000 dung beetles but the
benefits will last for a long time.
For example, she says, the ability of
dung beetles to aerate the soil and im-
prove drainage will aid a paddock for
many years.
Dung beetles, Shasta says, “can bene-
fit landscapes that don’t even have
cows.”
“You’ll obviously need cow pats to at-
tract them, but then you can grow
crops onto those cow pastures and
you have improved cropping from the
dung beetles and even if you move
your cows on, the benefits in the soil,
such as drainage, re-penetration, seed
plant growth, lasts for two to three
years after the cows have gone.
“So I can also see an opportunity for
cow rotational farming. The way the
crops are rotated to benefit the nutri-
ents in the soil of then having cows
grazing from one season, attracting
the dung beetles and having this ef-
fectively free service of then drawing
that carbon, that nitrogen and that
phosphorus back down into the soil,
breaking up that soil surface and work-
ing that into a crop rotation.
Shasta says by 2050, our population
will have exploded and it’s important
to look for more diverse methods of
farming.
“There will be new poverties that our
growing society starts to experience,
and not just a poverty of money, but a
person living in an apartment in Syd-
ney, New York or Toyko for instance,
doesn’t have the space to raise a cow,
but most people have enough space
to raise crickets, which will live in a
plastic tub under your bed,” Shasta
said.
Entomologist, Shasta Claire, aka bug lady, spots an insect in the bushes at the Bairnsdale Racecourse on Tuesday.
K1165-0061