The week’s top stories (week ending 22/01/19)
Every week, AUSVEG rounds up the top stories on issues affecting the Australian vegetable industry. Here are this week’s most important news items:
Australian industry:
- ‘Not a bathtub’: Burke demands better monitoring of Murray-Darling (Peter Hannam, The Sydney Morning Herald)
- Visa call slammed as farm threat (Rob Harris, Herald Sun)
- Early cyclones bring relief, and even a near-record soaking, to dry far north Queensland farmers (Eric Barker, Queensland Country Hour)
- Farmers are paying big to truck water and feed to keep crops and animals alive (Des Houghton, Chris Honnery and Jack McKay, The Courier-Mail)
- What you need to get your recommended intake of fruits and vegetables (Nicole Mills, ABC Radio Melbourne)
- Scientists believe people should be eating less meat and more vegetables (Kate Kelland, Reuters/news.com.au)
- Bush food industry booms, but only 1 per cent is produced by Indigenous people (Ruby Mitchell and Joshua Becker, ABC Rural)
- The latest miniature food to hit the shops (Liana Walker, Rural Weekly)
- Hive biosecurity: How safe is the honey bee industry in Canberra? (Adrienne Francis, ABC Radio Canberra)
- Weather records broken as Queensland nears three dozen consecutive days over 40 degrees (Aneeta Bhole, ABC Western Queensland)
- Internet of Things rain gauge sends climate data to the cloud (Chloe Chomicki, Nathalie Fernbach and Sally Rafferty, ABC North Queensland)
- Scientists say microplastics are all over farmlands, but we’re ignoring the problem (Jon Daly, ABC Rural)
- Red tape reduction to make things easier for Queensland farmers (Larraine Sathicq, Queensland Country Life)
- Animal rights group creates online map showing farm locations and contact details (Glen Moret, ABC South East SA)
- Rural electorates key to winning government in federal election (Alex Sinnott, The Weekly Times)
- Gippsland growers set to have new regional agriculture representative body (FreshPlaza)
- Mental health patients in rural Australia feel ‘forgotten’, despite billions in funding (Katri Uibu, ABC Wide Bay)
- NSW farmers still unhappy with Inland Rail despite ‘pay dirt’ offer (Jenny Wiggins, Australian Financial Review)
- Bayer CEO Werner Baumann flags fresh tactics in glyphosate legal battle (Brad Thompson, Australian Financial Review)
- Mysterious night-time power cuts cause financial loss and hardship in key cane-growing region (Nicole Hegarty, ABC Wide Bay)
International news:
- United Kingdom: UK farmers prepare for trade crisis matching disruption during World War II (Olivia Ralph, Cassandra Hough and Jessica Schremmer)
- United Kingdom: AHDB publishes guide to diseases of lettuce crops
- India: Researchers uncover how Salmonella infects plants before harvest (Food Safety News)
- Israel: Introducing PROSPERA®: A New Sweet Basil Hybrid Resistant to Downy Mildew (Bar-Ilan University)
- USA: Potatoes have a form of ‘depression’, but scientists have an idea to cure them (Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Gizmodo)
- New Zealand: New Zealand trying to get rid of plastics (FreshPlaza)
- Netherlands: Greenhouse growers want to get rid of Fusarium (Wageningen University & Research)
This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 22 January 2019. Subscribe to the Update using our online form to receive the latest industry news in your inbox every week!