Meet the winners at the ABC Rural Farmer of the Year awards
Updated
The Australian Farmer of the Year Awards recognise rural champions both on and off-farm. Celebrating innovation, diversity, passion and success, the awards showcase the modern face of farming, while paying tribute to those who have made enormous contributions. These annual awards are co-hosted by ABC Rural and the Kondinin Group.
Farmer of the Year: Matthew Keith
If you stand still for too long other guys will overtake you so you've always got to be looking and researching into other areas.
Matthew Keith
Australia's Farmer of the Year is a cane farmer turned rubbish warrior, who has turned his business into a recycling facility.
Matthew Keith farms 600 hectares of sugarcane at Woongoolba, half way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
"Our family business started back in the 1940s when my grandfather, from very humble beginnings, started farming sugarcane," Mr Keith said.
Mr Keith has since transformed the business by taking the green leaves left on the ground after harvesting and turning them into mulch.
"Depending on the price of sugar at the time, this mulch can be up to 50 to 100 percent to the value of sugar," Mr Keith said.
"Sugar cane prices fluctuate and you never know what the weather's doing, so it just gives you a bit more security."
In 2001 the family started Rocky Point Mulching, selling packaged sugarcane mulch to hardware stores.
The company now has an annual turnover of $30 million, sourcing cane waste from growers throughout south east Queensland and northern New South Wales.
"A lot of [local farmers] say it's the difference between being viable with growing sugar and not," Mr Keith said.
Mr Keith is currently expanding the company's recycling portfolio, by sourcing waste wood and green waste from Gold Coast City Council and turning it into decorative mulch.
"We take in urban waste timber like pallets, diverting it from landfill and grinding it up as mulch," he said.
Mr Keith also wants to invest in energy production technology, powered by waste products.
"We're a very large power consumer here on site, so we're looking at anything where we may be able to generate our own power," Mr Keith said.
"If you stand still for too long other guys will overtake you, so you've always got to be looking and researching into other areas."
The Keith family also owns cattle properties in southern Queensland.
Young Farmer of the Year: Troy Blackman
We've had some really good supporters from the start ... we wouldn't be here without them, that's for sure.
Troy Blackman
Troy Blackman is a young farmer passionate about agriculture, food and sustainability.
In less than four years the 27 year old has built a thriving cattle stud, pasture-raised beef and egg operation in the Orara Valley west of Coffs Harbour in northern New South Wales.
Running the farming business involves more than just moving the 300 head of cattle and packing the eggs from 1,300 chickens.
"It's definitely more than a full time job," Mr Blackman said.
"My day floats anything from doing laborious tasks on the farm to fencing to chatting with our suppliers and customers to jumping on the internet and doing a bit of marketing."
Mr Blackman feels "humbly honoured" to be named the 2016 Young Farmer of the Year.
"It was something my partner Hannah nominated me for, and when she showed me the essay she wrote for the nomination — well, she was just very kind in the essay," he said.
"She's seen me at my dirtiest and muckiest on the farm in various ways and for her to say those kind words were very nice."
Over four properties totalling nearly 220 hectares, Charolais cattle graze and Australorp chickens roam laying eggs before retiring to someone's backyard.
The beef and eggs are marketed as "sustainably farmed produce" and sold to local restaurants and direct to consumers.
"We've had some really good supporters from the start who have really got behind supporting local farmers from the get-go and then obviously behind the ethics of how we raise our birds and the quality of the produce from that. We wouldn't be here without them, that's for sure," he said.
"We have a relatively large following on Facebook and Instagram that showcases a bit of life on the farm, how the animals raised and little things that happen from time to time," he said.
"It connects people with how the egg ends up in their fridge or the steak on their plate and the processes that are went through to end up there."
The focus on sustainability has been important from day one.
"Not everything can last forever on the limited resources that it requires and so we need to do things that reuse things and use the waste in other ways that can benefit back into the same system," he said.
"Our goal is to be more sustainable, more innovative as we go along and be more smart about how we do things."
Farming Legend of the Year: Dennis Howe
I guess what you do learn is, when things go really bad, you can't dwell on it. You just say "okay, that's happened, let's move on" and that's probably the biggest secret to our success.
Dennis Howe
Dennis Howe answered with a wry smile when asked what it means to be named the ABC Rural-Kondinan Group's inaugural rural legend.
"The worrying part is most legends are dead and buried," he said with a laugh.
Legendary status clearly does not sit comfortably with the quietly-spoken grower who has overseen the trials, tribulations and triumphs of one of Australia's largest and most diverse family farming enterprises over the past four decades.
Based in Walkamin in the heart of far north Queensland's food bowl, Mr Howe has been a master of adaptability, not afraid to take an "educated risk" in a constantly changing environment.
As his parents before him moved from tobacco to melons and pumpkins in the 1960s, he grew peanuts, potatoes and navy beans, before moving to avocadoes, sugar cane and coffee. Last year he added a tissue culture nursery and genomic laboratory.
"I guess what you do learn is, when things go really bad, you can't dwell on it. You just say 'OK, that's happened, let's move on' and that's probably the biggest secret to our success," he said.
"If one crop fails, start looking at the next ... don't dwell on the past, keep moving forward and hope your bank manager agrees with you."
The biggest roll of the dice came in the 1990s when he became the first to plant Cavendish bananas commercially on the Atherton Tableland, at a time when the best advice was it was "too cold".
Mr Howe took the punt and planted 8 hectares and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today Howe's Farms is Australia's second-largest banana producer and bananas account for up to 75 per cent of total farm income.
"It's been a sort of organic growth and it's one of those things that just happens and you follow your gut feeling a lot of the time, he said.
"If you sat down to do a budget and say 'I'm going to do this, this and this', each time I've ever tried doing that, you talk yourself out of trying."
Rural Community Leader of the Year: Michael Badcock
If you aren't changing, you're going backwards.
Michael Badcock
Michael Badcock has been a leader in the Australian vegetable industry for decades, but he still cites being president of his local football club as one of his biggest achievements.
"If you can be president of a football club you can be president of anything," Mr Badcock said.
For Mike, being involved in a community on a local level goes hand-in-hand with leading change on a national level.
"If you've got passion for the smaller community where you live, you'll also have passion for your industry and your fellow people," he said.
His passion for the industry helped him lead restructures of both Ausveg and the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association. It also saw him lead a convoy of tractors to Canberra in 2005 in a campaign to get more Australian grown vegetables into major retailers and processors.
Throughout his career Mr Badcock has split his efforts between local, state and national communities.
"A lot of the organisations I've been involved with have progressed," he said.
"On a local basis we've built new football grounds, new facilities. On a state basis I've been part of setting directions for a lot of the water developments in the state and for agricultural educational areas. Then on a national basis I'm quite proud of where we managed to bring Ausveg from a very insignificant organisation to the organisation it is today."
Recently Mr Badcock has been leading the charge on both ends of the spectrum with a push for local food-hubs and more visits to Canberra to campaign against the backpacker tax.
He said he was honoured be the first person to receive the Community Leader of the Year Award and hopes he can set a fine standard for those to follow.
"Nobody does anything to win awards," he said.
"But I think sometimes you have to set the pace. Maybe by getting this recognition challenges other people to get out and do similar things."
Rural Consultant of the Year: Ken Solly
[It's] really important to have that emotional understanding of your clients to be able to help them and understand them. I'd never know, but I would think that I've probably kept a couple of blokes alive.
Ken Solly
As an advisor, confidant, educator and mentor, Ken Solly has spent his professional life teaching and helping people in agriculture as a rural consultant.
Along the way he has developed intrinsic friendships he believes money could never buy.
"It's one of the greatest privileges and honours you can have in life," he said.
"For some people to allow their door to be open and their mind to be open for me to enter."
Mr Solly spent the first 12 years of his career as a farmer, which he said has allowed him to empathise with people.
"[It's] really important to have that emotional understanding of your clients to be able to help them and understand them," he said.
"I'd never know, but I would think that I've probably kept a couple of blokes alive."
In his personal life, Mr Solly has faced significant hardship — a marriage breakdown, health issues and mental health battles.
"Those experiences, I've treated them as positives because I've learnt so much out of them."
Mr Solly believed that his work has at times been "too much" of a therapy for him; he has sacrificed a lot dedicating his life to consulting work.
"But I'm the luckiest person in this world because when people want to know you and want to use your skills, what more could you ask for?"
The 63 year old said his most rewarding work was coaching and mentoring bright young minds.
"To see a younger person grow and develop and achieve and for you to be allowed to have a little part of that, then that for me is one of the most outstanding or most rewarding things that I can do."
Topics: agribusiness, awards-and-prizes
First posted
