Agriculture

ElectraNet are shifting their focus east, after farmers voiced concerns about renewable energy line Northern Transmission Project running through prime cropping country. 

Over 25 years the Rural Woman of the Year Awards have propelled hundreds of important rural projects and celebrated women who get things done.

Activity and Analysis with Matt Brann.

Increasingly, stories feature on the Country Hour which focus on the leaps in technology and connectivity which have radically changed the production of food and fibre, and the way reporters deliver stories.

Food security is as much an issue today as it was when the Country Hour began. Many of the threats to farming remain the same – drought, floods, pests – but today there are additional challenges, such as trade wars and a changing climate.

The Country Hour was first broadcast on ABC Radio on 3 December 1945, making it the longest continuously running program in the country.  

The specially bred insects are despatched to growers ready to hatch on delivery and get to work devouring bad bugs. 

Rural and regional issues making the news.

Louise Smith's property has received less than half the average annual rainfall.

Farmers thwart VicGrid in its first attempt to use compulsory access powers to enter their properties.

When a tiny border town was hit with a series of setbacks, including a fire which destroyed essential shops in the main street, a group of local women pitched in to help restore community spirit.

Activity and analysis with Matt Brann.

A Great Koala National Park is being established on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. The timber industry is reeling as trees within the proposed boundary are now off limits.

Rural and regional issues in the news.

Dusty paddocks, with no grain crop to harvest, and scarce feed for the few animals left, is the reality of many South Australian farmers right now. Four women are redefining resilience and showing what it means to endure tough conditions despite it all.

Australian shearing legend John Harris has returned to a central Victorian woolshed for the 75th year.

Hundreds of food products, including beef and oranges, are now exempted from US trade tariffs, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Friday.

At 85, Australian Shearing Hall of Fame inductee John Harris can still hold his own in the woolshed.  A partnership forged between his family and a family of wool growers has seen the shearing contractor return to the same shed for the shearing every year for three-quarters of a century.   

Tully Sugar Mill in Far North Queensland is celebrating 100 years of crushing cane. For a town built on sugar, it honours generations of workers, growers and their families.