The week’s top stories (week ending 27/02/18)
Every week, AUSVEG rounds up the top stories on issues affecting the Australian vegetable industry. Here are this week’s most important news items:
- Blood test for farmers using pesticides, chemical the key to preventing long-term health problems (Jess Davis, ABC News)
- Rural Australians struggling to put food on the table, Foodbank Hunger Report finds (Prue Adams, ABC Landline)
- Tomato-potato psyllid: Tough times for Western Australian spud growers (Alice Pohlner, The Weekly Times)
- Seed potatoes: New trade deal opens doors to Indonesia for farmers (Alexandra Laskie, The Weekly Times)
- World’s first hands-free crop planted, grown and harvested in the UK (Brooke Neindorf, ABC Rural)
- Michael McCormack replaces Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader (Louise Yaxley, ABC News)
- Who is the new Deputy PM, Michael McCormack? (James Elton-Pym, SBS News)
- Sentinel beehives provide coastal defence against catastrophic varroa mite invasion (Justin Huntsdale, ABC Illawarra)
- Beekeepers turn to satellite tracking systems to halt hive theft (Lara Webster, Queensland Country Hour)
- Australian mango and dragon fruit growers set to face competition from Indonesian imports (Matt Brann, ABC Rural)
- Stop squeezing avocados say producers, there are better ways to test ripeness (Meghan Woods, ABC South West WA)
- Australian fresh fruit exports exceed A$1bn (Wayne Prowse, Fruitnet)
Please note that this week we have provided a separate round-up of news related to the detection of fruit fly in Tasmania.
This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 27 February 2018.