Bruce, his wife and young children live some 60km outside of Roma. They’ve been farming organically for about a decade and he cites becoming a father and starting to think about the health of his young family as the turning point that had him convert to organics.
His father bought a farm in the area about 50 years ago, so he grew up here and took over when his father retired. After converting from conventional farming, Bruce introduced other members of the family to organics, and now all 3 family properties are certified organic.
While they primarily farm organic beef cattle on 5000+ hectares, they also set aside about 500 hectares to grow millet, chick peas and wheat for Kialla. It’s a dry land farm, meaning that they don’t irrigate the crop and thus depend entirely on healthy rainfall to grow grain each year.
He hopes that through dropping the chemicals and going organic he is creating a sustainable future in farming for generations to come.
Many farmers are aware of the impacts of chemicals on their own health and want a better future for their families. Bruce considers that chemical farming methods have their ‘use-by-date’ and he says, ‘ for my children – and beyond – I hope that organics is certainly the way for them… I think they’ll benefit out of it well into the future’.
