Growing up on a dairy farm in the Dooralong Valley west on Wyong on the NSW Central Coast I first became interested in vegetables growing winter tomatoes and hand picked beans on frost land during the winter months when the cows were ‘dried off’ prior to spring calving pre all year round quote milking. During the early 60’s Prof Geddes from Sydney University visited our 360 acre property and advised us to build a “Turkey’s Nest” dam for irrigation and all year round pasture production. This was gold as we survived the drought of 1962-3 and commenced all year round milk into the Wyong Diary Factory. Following years after joining the Junior Farmers I choose vegetables as my project and then entering High School studied Agriculture under Matt White for six years (repeated 4th Year) completing the Leaving Certificate in 1965.

Commencing studies in March 1966 in Agriculture Science on a teachers scholarship was a great privilege, however Chemistry and Physics was a struggle having not studied those subjects at High School resulting in repeating first year in 1967. Once into the next three years I thrived under great lecturers especially in the plant and soil based subjects with agronomy staff ( Norman Laing, Carter, Jackson, Crofts, Peter Michael, Greenhalgh and Wal Gentle guest lecturer in 1970) soils staff ( Collis George, Brian Davey and David Smiles).

Majoring in Agronomy in fourth year was an opportunity to integrate other subjects studied throughout the course into the practical aspects of growing commercial agronomic and horticultural crops .

Phase 1 Agronomist in training in private enterprise

On New Year’s Day 1971 Heather and I cross Blue Mountains and started a new position as research agronomist for Byron Agricultural Company at a property between Narromine and Trangie on the Macquarie River. The Byron Agricultural was owned by the Lewis family that had recently sold their company Master Foods to the Mars Corporation a USA based family company and they then had the idea that to grow a vegetable operation similar to what David Lewis had seen in California. Unfortunately the Macquarie River was in full flood a month later and we flew into the property daily from Narromine.

Over the next year we grew a range of vegetables from pickling cucumbers ,processing tomatoes , green beans and garlic which was a challenge on the red soils of “Kyeema” compared to the lighter sandier soils of “Summerly Park”. Worked with Jeff Mitchell a down to earth rice grower from the MIA who shared a wealth of practical farming knowledge and skills that assisted a raw first year graduate.

Unfortunately the soil type was unsuitable for vegetable production and later under new owners (Agriland Pty Ltd) became a successful cotton farm.

Later that year I accepted a job as agronomist with Amatil (formerly British Tobacco) establishing asparagus at Stuart’s Point between Kempsey and Macksville on Wallum sandy soils adjacent to the Macleay River .The concept was to force asparagus into a dormant period not by temperature (traditional method) but by drought as experienced in coastal Peru. This allows asparagus to be harvested twice per year. This was successful until March 1974 when the ‘drought’ period was saturated with over 500 mm of rain and dormancy wasn’t achieved. The company then concentrated on the early export to Japan and developed 400 hectares before selling to local landholder who replaced asparagus with processing potatoes and then avocadoes which are still their today. After five years putting large quantities of agricultural lime to raise pH from 3.5 to 6.5 , numerous green manure cover crops , poultry manure and trace element to grow asparagus

Phase 2 Teaching in a Tertiary Institution

I joined the Horticultural staff at Queensland Agricultural College (QAC) now University of Queensland Gatton campus. I was privileged to work alongside the asparagus projects farm manager Lloyd Miller who had previously been a successful dairy farmer from Gerringong and then moved to North Star on a sheep /wheat property before relocating to Stuart’s Point. Lloyd shared many practical skills to me which have stayed with me throughout my career.

My position as a lecturer in vegetable agronomy at QAC was to deliver lectures and practicals at the Certificate level ,at the Associate Diploma level and finally at the four year Degree level approaching the challenge with the then Queensland Agricultural College’s motto Science with Practice.

I was fortunate enough to arrive at a time when both the Horticulture and Plant Protection department were working closely with innovative local farmers ,grower organisations, vegetable seed companies, fertiliser and agricultural chemical companies and there was a great deal of cooperation between college staff and those industries. The Horticulture Department was committed to developing new cropping opportunities and providing extension advice to local farmers and here I became involved in growing and trialling broccoli in the Lockyer Valley in the late 1970s at the 30 hectare Horticultural Field Station (HFS) on campus.

With the availability of F1 hybrid broccoli replacing the old open pollinated ‘Green Sprouting’ broccoli I became interested in crop scheduling and modelling research which provided the basis for the development of year round broccoli production in Australia.

Fifteen (15) cultivars were direct seeded every three weeks in 1979-80 studying their phenology , days to harvest, marketable yield ,quality and optimum growing season. These then enabled the cultivars to be grouped into four major groups for scheduling.

Follow up work was conducted to provide data to enable crop scheduling decisions to be made:

Significance of mean temperature on the days from planting to harvest

Days from planting to harvest for a cultivar from each of the four groups

Effect of mean temperature on rate of development

Base temperature ,and,

Heat units from planting to harvest for each cultivar/group

Commercial planting were they grown on the HFS for two years supplying COD export division headed by Arthur Shand supplying SE Asian markets by air freight out of Brisbane. Then two local growers ( John Ford & Kev Connors) took over the supply schedule increasing initially from 10,000 in 1980 to 55,000 cartons by 1985. Subsequently sea freight was initiated and Japan was taking over 100 containers / winter out of SE Queensland.

This work was the basis of my thesis ‘Crop Scheduling in Broccoli’ 196 pp.

Master’s Thesis awarded by the Faculty of Agriculture 1986, University of Sydney, Sydney supervised by Dr Bill Greenhalgh.

This work transformed Australian broccoli from a highly seasonal and relatively minor crop in the 70’s into a staple fresh vegetable available to Australian consumers all year round.

Other involvement at QAC;

Coordinated highly successful biennial Horticultural Expo from 1976-1986 with the assistance of Derek Nissen (Farm Manager) and Ken Young (Nursery Manager) who are still great friends and colleagues.

Conducted agronomy training in Cook Island and Vanuatu for South Pacific Commission 1980 & 1981

Director of two ADAB 12 week short courses on Horticultural Production of Fruit & Vegetables for Pacific , SE Asia, Africa and Caribbean in 1982 & 83

Manager of Horticultural Field Section reporting to the Production Committee of College Council

Judge at annual Brisbane Exhibition in August every year 1978-86

Supervised numerous fourth final year degree students research projects on vegetable crop agronomy

Extension activity to local Lockyer Valley in cooperation with local Queensland DPI staff including ;

Bishop Farms, Rugby Farms, Mulgowie Farms, Story Farms , Jackwitz Gardens, Withcott Seedlings (Graham & Wendy Erhart ) ,Dennis O’Dea ,Doug Ziebarth, John Ford and Kev Connors.

Granted six month sabbatical at Vegetable Crops Department ,University of Florida Gainesville Florida working with Head of Department Professor Dan Cantliffe June-December1985

Attended International Society Horticultural Society (ISHS) World Congress in Sydney in 1978 with many of my students then won a Graham Gregory travel scholarship to attend the ISHS Hamburg World Congress in 1982 with Keith Gazzoli from CSIRO

One non vegetable highlight was in conjunction with College grounds staff prepared the turf wicket on number 3 oval at QAC to host the visiting English cricket team in October 1986 play a one day 50 over match against combined Southern Country Queensland side with 3,500 spectators attending with me commentating !

Phase 3 Returning to the Private sector

After ten and half great years at QAC Gatton moved the family to Sydney in January 1987 and joined Henderson Vegetable Seeds as NSW Sales Manager and then appointed as National Sales Manager , a position I ran from Sydney despite the company head office located in Lower Templestowe, Melbourne.

This move back into the private sector commenced me living in a capital city and still being able to work as a vegetable agronomist / consultant in the industry throughout Australia and internationally for the next 33 years. How?, wait till the end.

With a strong background in vegetable crop agronomy and communication from my QAC days trialing new seed varieties and selling through resellers or direct was thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding. Henderson’s had exclusive rights to all Sunseeds varieties of hybrid onions, carrots and cucurbits and exclusive rights to Royal Sluis hybrid cauliflower. Heather ran the Sydney office from our garage and with the help of all the field staff we put together a catalogue of all the vegetable seeds sold by the company especially trial results of new varieties. This was closely watched by our competition and before long they adopted the same approach.

With the retirement of one of the family owners there was pressure on me to relocate to Melbourne and with our family all at critical stages of education in Sydney I resigned after five years with them finishing in October 1992.

I then accepted a role with New World Seeds owned by Tony Rumsey as Sales Manager and then General Manager when Tony became unwell and located at Galston only 25 minutes away from home. New World Seeds had the exclusive agency for Asgrow Vegetable Seeds and Bruinsma Vegetable Seeds in Australia and New Zealand. During my time with New World they partnered with May & Ryan Onions out of New Zealand which increased their catalogue range for short day and mid day open pollinated and hybrid white, brown and red onions bred out of Pukekohe NZ.

The business model of New World Seeds was different with all company field staff tertiary trained in agronomy /plant science and each state had an agency that sold and delivered the products. This resulted in very professional trialing prior to the agents selling seeds. The great benefit of this agreement with Asgrow & Bruinsma is that you had direct access to the breeder of all their varieties and could communicate trial results directly to them. This fast tracked their introduction into the market and built great trust in the products and specific agronomic requirements.

In March 1996 I resigned after Asgrow and Bruinsma announced they were terminating the agreement with New World Seeds and engaging Yates Seeds to be the new agency in Australia and New Zealand .

Within a month I was offered a research job with Frito-lay based at Smithfield Sydney manufacturer of ‘Smith Crisps ‘ scheduling quality fresh potatoes for year round supply rather than stored for winter manufacturing. The second role was the fast tracking of new company bred varieties using tissue cultured techno-tubers for Australia and for their factory in Thailand growing at high altitude in Mae Sot ( 1200 metres elevation) district in western Thailand against the Myanmar (Burma) border. Technico Pty Ltd seed technology revolutionised the global seed potato industry and was initially operated out of Paddy’s River in Southern Highlands NSW. The propriety technology delivered early generation seed potatoes which allowed following:

• Implement affordable early field generation seed potato programmes

• Reduce seed exposure to soil borne pathogens

• Rapidly introduce new varieties

• Exercise control over a compressed seed supply chain

My background in direct seed vegetables was readily transferable to the technituber which was approximately 13 mm in size and weighing 1.5 g . This product was planted at 100kg/ha compared traditional seed potato weighing up to 4,000 kg/ha. The small tubers could be planted with a precision vacuum seeder used for beans, sweet corn and peas.

In March 1998 the team was relocated to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and I stayed in Sydney accepting a role with Golden State Foods (GSF) Australia who supplied fresh cut lettuce , cabbage, onions and other minimally processed vegetable products to the QSR trade ( McDonalds , KFC, Pizza Hut & Taco Bell) out of Wetherill Park Sydney and at Canning Vale ,Perth markets WA.

GSF was experiencing an expansion phase moving from small operation in Lidcombe near the Flemington Markets to a large facility at Wetherill Park having been awarded the KFC/Pizza Hut contract. With Phil Crane moving from their Californian operation as CEO for five years in Australia only he challenged me to improve the quality and reliability of all incoming produce focusing on iceberg lettuce hearts initially. This involved GSF procuring directly from the grower team rather than through a third party market agent which meant closer cooperation between the grower and processor. This was a ‘game changer’ for both parties and my background in crop scheduling and vegetable agronomy benefited all. At the time around the Sydney Olympic Games weekly supply of iceberg hearts peaked at 180 tonne/week into the Wetherill Park processing plant. Phil Crane was also chairman of the McDonald’s Asia/Pacific supply team he instructed me to visit the lettuce growing regions in Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines ,Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia aiming to improve supply and quality. Little did he know that this would lead to continuing involvement by me over the next 20 years. Growing iceberg lettuce in the tropics/sub tropics has been a great challenge with the weather, variety selection, lack of suitable fertilizers ,insect pests ,disease pressure and lack of suitably trained staff all contributing to the slow process of improvement. The outcome has been to procure local supply during the ‘dry season’ and get imported hearts from USA and Australia during the wet /monsoon periods. Like many USA based corporations when Phil Crane relocated back to California the next CEO didn’t see the role for an agronomist and I decided that I would start my own consultancy company ; MHT Vegetable Consultancy P/L in March 2001.

Phase 4 Agronomy Consultancy

Immediately I had a contract with Seminis Vegetable Seeds NZ to manage their seed production unit in Masterton NZ and the supply distribution agreements they had with SPS and Yates in Australia and NZ.I reported to Jean Pierre Posa who was based in Chile and looked after South America , Australia/NZ and South Africa seed sales. JJP as he liked to be known was fluent in seven languages and had a thorough understanding of the international vegetable seed trade.

In 1995 Seminis Seeds acquired three huge vegetable seed companies , Asgrow Seeds, Peto Seeds originally founded in America and then Royal Sluis from The Netherlands. Initially they maintained the status quo by using local distributors world wide then over time they wanted to have direct sales using their own staff. In small markets like Australia and NZ this made no sense however as history now shows they went ahead with local companies like New World Seeds , Yates and SPS lost Seminis varieties. Then a financial wizard from Head Office, Dieter Holtz arrived in Australia to deliver the news that Seminis were going direct so by early 2003 and he intended to appoint a new national Sales Manager for Australia & NZ.

One door shuts and another opens with one of my former past students from QAC Dr Gordon Rogers (CEO Applied Horticultural Research referred to as AHR) offering me contract work on a range of projects over the 15 years including the following funded by HAL and private industry partners:

Leading Project VG03092 “Agronomic techniques to improve shelf life in Iceberg and Cos Lettuce for fresh cuts” July2003- June 2006 for HAL and Oneharvest Company

Leading project VG05042 “Development of optimal agronomy and postharvest handling for Australian baby leaf salad vegetables” October 2005 -September 2008.

Consult on behave of several fresh cuts lettuce processor in Australia & New Zealand supplying agronomic advice to dedicated contracted growers.

Leading Project VG 06034 “Best Practice Manual and Training for the Australian Lettuce Industry” which delivered ten (10) days and a comprehensive manual for Australian lettuce industry.

Leading Project VG 08167 “Development of a crop scheduling program for babyleaf spinach in the major growing regions of Australia”

Leading project VG 10123 “Developing a strategy to control Anthracnose in lettuce”

Part of the research team VG11034 “Benchmarking Uptake of Soil Health projects in the Australian Vegetable Industry” completed September 2012.

Undertaken contract work in the fresh vegetable industry in New South Wales investigating breeding programmes, supply schedules and seasonal opportunities for tomatoes (fresh & processing), onions and potatoes for crisping.

Leading Project TM07001 “Evaluation of New Processing Tomato Cultivars” for Australian Processing Tomato Growers which is currently in its fourth year

Involved in Project VG 06053 “Agronomic programme to improve the uniformity of broccoli for once-over mechanical harvest” from funds provided by Matilda Fresh, HAL, Sakata Seeds and South Pacific Seeds

Involved in Project VG 06135 “Development of a new processed carrot industry to export bioactive phytonutrients for juice and nutriceuticals” from funds provided by SDS and HAL

All the above mentioned reports can be found on the AHR website.

Lead a contract project with Arnott’s Snack Foods evaluating new crisping potato varieties for the domestic crisping industry.

Undertook short term contract work in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia , East Africa (all funded by ACIAR) and China (three training courses to McDonald lettuce suppliers) since 2003 working of developing local vegetable industry for private Companies and Government .

In August 2014 McDonald’s China asked me to assist in setting up a model farm (100 hectares )in MaMing 200 km north of Kunming in southern China for all year round iceberg lettuce production at 2000 metres above sea level using western approved farming best practice for safe and reliable lettuce production. This involved month long visits every second month which was unsatisfactory as they returned to ‘traditional Chinese “ farming practices when I drove out the gate! Eventually I convinced them to employ a fulltime QAC trained agronomist (Liam Riedy) who was highly successful until the Covid outbreak in early 2020. The soil science training by Messrs Collis-George, Davey and Smiles during undergraduate training became extremely valuable during this project.

The most rewarding of all the ACIAR funded project was the three and half years (2014-2017) spent travelling in and our 4-5 times /year in four East African countries ( Ethiopia , Tanzania , Malawi& Mozambique ). The aim was to set up Best Practice Farms engaging with young farmers (12 males and 12 females) 19-30 years old growing three vegetables for improving family diet and three vegetables for commercial sale. All countries being on the eastern side of Africa all had a six week “long wet” and a two week “short wet” requiring drip irrigation for all sites. Hence the below six criteria were the main focus in achieving the project goals;

• Raised beds

• Adequate Soil preparation

• Compost / decomposed organic matter & balanced NPK or P2O5

• Improved cell grown seedlings - see video produced for ACIAR on “Producing Healthy Vegetable Seedlings”

• Drip irrigation

• Mulch – dry mulch; not plastic

My role was to train local on the ground agronomists/extension staff at the Best Practice Farm who then trained the group of 24 young small holder farmers. This was done six times on a six month cycle resulting in over 500 hundred young farmers being trained in the four countries. Mozambique was the greatest challenge after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975 and then not ending the 30 year civil war until 1992 the educational levels were extremely poor in the age group of farmers we were training. Fortunately the field experiments broke down that barrier and satisfactory uptake was achieved.

Unfortunately I contacted Ross River Fever in late January 2017 after a field visit to Mulyan Farm ( Ed Fagan) which stopped my international travels .

Whilst mentioning Ed Fagan I was privileged to attend the 2015 NSW Farmer of the Year award which Ed won. I have know the Fagan family since 1972 when Peter (Ed’s father) grew asparagus and then consulted to Ed from the 2006-2016 when he commenced lettuce hearts for GSF, then grew baby leaf spinach and leafy lettuce, then onions and finally beetroot. The alluvial soils and climate along the Lachlan River from Cowra to Canowindra are underestimated vegetable bowl with good transport logistics to Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane.

In October 2002 I was named the winner of the 2002 Graham Gregory Medal for excellence in horticulture.

I look back on my time spent at Sydney University doing Agricultural Science the quality of staff especially the Agronomy Department ( Messrs Norman, Liang, Carter, Jackson, Peter Michael and Greenhalgh ) who during fourth year became extremely important in setting me on the journey of an Agronomist. I must especially acknowledge the advice and encouragement Bill Greenhalgh gave me throughout the seven years of my Master’s broccoli scheduling experiment and thesis.

In closing I acknowledge the long and loving marriage to Heather who I married in my final year (1970) and as one dear colleague said of her: ‘she stopped me tackling chairs at social functions’ and has never stopped any of my career moves and relocating the family without hesitation. However, after the move to Sydney in early 1987, I stopped relocating Heather, Sharon, Brendan and Peter and commenced travelling out to regional and international areas for work. The support my family has given me has been fantastic and the numerous vegetable growers and industry partners who have permitted me to use their farms and facilities is gratefully acknowledged .