The Future of Aussie Ag Needs a Plan Bee with Gemma Nunn

Oli Le Lievre 0:04 G'day and welcome to the internet on the go podcast produced by humans of agriculture. Our podcast is designed to get you across the things that matter in Ozzie agribusiness in a way that's just well, bloody easy to understand. Think of me as a friend that he's learning with you as we discover and chat about the topics from farm to fork, and even beyond. Welcome back to the humans of agriculture podcast. Do you know that nearly two thirds of Australia's ag production benefits from bee pollination due to habitat loss intensification of farming practices, increases in pests and disease there's a decline in the number and diversity of bees. This episode has been sponsored by the Wayne Bay Foundation to raise awareness about the bee friendly farmer certification, and today we're joined by Jim anom. Gemma is the technical manager at sentry orchards, the 700 hectare farm and planting and 100 hectares of new pistachio plantings. Gemma, welcome to the humans bag podcast. It's good to have you Hi, Unknown Speaker 0:59 Oli. How are you? Oli Le Lievre 0:59 I'm doing well. I'm doing well. And you've had a good weekend but a little bit of cricket and a little bit of golf where you're playing both or spectating ah, spectating Unknown Speaker 1:06 one playing the other. Oli Le Lievre 1:08 How good yeah, we're gonna see you joining us from Gemma. I'm joining us from my office in Loxton. Tell me a little bit about locked in on the Murray River. Speaker 1 1:17 Right on the Murray River. We're pretty lucky it's a beautiful place to live full of Yeah, lots of wildlife and lovely watersports on the weekend, then just good people to be around. Oli Le Lievre 1:27 Is that home for you? No, it's Speaker 1 1:29 not home for me. So I grew up originally in a little town called Wareham all around there. We had a family farm there. And then I moved down to the southeast of SA when I was about five years old, sort of completed all my schooling there. And then moved up to Adelaide for university. Yeah, Oli Le Lievre 1:47 lovely. Can you tell us a little bit about century orchards Gemma? Yeah, Speaker 1 1:52 so century orchards is a 700, hectare Island planting and 100 hectares of pistachio plantings. And we've been here since 1998. So our first plantings were established in 1999. And we've got anything on site from 24 year old almonds to two year old almonds at the moment. So it's a pretty diverse operation. And yeah, I'm pretty lucky to be able to work all aspects of the business. And is there a fair time if you're there? Yeah, yep. So we have quite a few management staff. So we've got our general manager of orchards, our assistant manager, and myself, our technical manager. And then we have our CEO who sort of oversees all of our operations. And we sort of put together plans each week, and work out how we're going to be running things or what we're going to be doing. Beautiful. Well, we'll Oli Le Lievre 2:47 put on our bucket list to get out to Loxton, and come and have a look. But today, we want to chat to you a little bit about bees. And are you passionate about bees. Speaker 1 2:54 I love babies. They're interesting creatures, very interesting creatures. And I didn't know enough about them until I sort of got into the role that I'm in. So it's a very interesting job. And yeah, I love it. What Oli Le Lievre 3:07 is the roles of babies in like in almonds and pistachios specifically? Speaker 1 3:12 So we're mainly use babies and almonds Pistachios are wind pollinated, so we don't need to necessarily worry about these too much. But they're great to have in the environment. Other than that, but in the Arman's, it's yeah, pretty interesting. What bees do, we require them for pollination. So we're quite dependent on them, we have a number of different varieties of almonds that sort of flower at different times. And because of that, we need base to transfer pollen from one flower to another. Almonds aren't wind pollinated like pistachios. So we do require a lot of them to make our pollination work. And in the end, that sort of enables us to increase our yields and and make sure that we do have a crop at the end of the season. Oli Le Lievre 4:01 So do you guys manage the hives and things? Or is that do you use, like external contractors for that, Speaker 1 4:06 we have a group of beekeepers that have been here for years and years, some of them for several generations. And it's just a matter of, I guess they look after their bees, we don't necessarily have to touch their hives, we don't like doing that. So we will keep an eye on the bees and make sure that they're flying, right. And they come and check on them and feed them additional resources if they do need that. But other than that we sort of go through a series of audits when all of our bees come on site. And those audits basically make sure that we have the healthiest highest possible on site. And it means that our beekeepers don't have like rubbings of nests and things like that Oli Le Lievre 4:50 which are not great. Can you just explain to me what you say rubbings of nests? Yeah, Speaker 1 4:54 so if a beehive is like weak, they can rob from others. So they basically sort of like, fly between and then you get hives that end up a lot weaker than others. And yeah, it's not what you want. Really? Yeah, Oli Le Lievre 5:10 robot. Fascinating. Tell me a little bit about baby friendly farming and what you guys are doing. Speaker 1 5:14 Yeah, so baby friendly farming sort of came about for us, probably, I think it was a year and a half ago. And gay friendly farming basically provides you with a certification that you can show to say, Hey, this is what we're doing for our bees, making sure that they're in the healthiest, happiest environment possible, and that we are looking after them when they're on site. But also, it also ensures that we're looking after our native pollinators as well, that are on site which are just as crucial to us as the honeybees their body and Oli Le Lievre 5:48 tell me more so difference between honeybees and native pollinators. Yeah, so Speaker 1 5:52 honeybees are basically, I guess what beekeepers bring in. So they're not native to Australia. But they are basically form of livestock. Whereas some of your native pollinators can be those native bees, which are quite small and tiny, but we don't see them a lot around. And that's generally just because there's not enough habitat around for them. So we've actually got scrub, flat flowering scrub on site that allows those native bees to have a habitat year round. So when it comes to pollination, we hope that they have an effect on flowering as well. So yeah, Oli Le Lievre 6:35 also my first lot proper hives of native bees that was up in out the back of Byron Bay, but Kate bar and distillery and they had gone to the effort of creating that habitat form, which was bloody interesting. And they don't sing it. Yeah, it's Speaker 1 6:48 pretty cool, actually. They're really, really interesting little creatures. Yeah, compared to you know, and they're like half the size of a normal honeybee. It's quite interesting. Oli Le Lievre 6:57 So what was involved for you guys to become certified in bee friendly farming. Speaker 1 7:01 So the certification process was actually quite easy, we were pretty happy with it, you basically filled out a form online, and that form sort of ran you through this is the requirements that you need to meet. And we just had to make sure that we met all of those requirements to be certified. So I think there's between five and 10 different requirements that you have to meet. A lot of them include having sort of cover crops and native flowering species on site for a proportion of the year. And there's other things like providing like continual water sources, and yeah, different things for when visa on site, but also for the native base. Oli Le Lievre 7:43 And so the things like cover crops, was that, like, was it farming practices that you guys had already undertaken? Or did you decide to do it because of the certification? Speaker 1 7:51 Yes, so initially, we'd actually already had cover crops in we've understood the importance of cover crops for quite a few years now. It just helps you know, with your soil structure and soil stability and provides extra nutrients, but it also provides a habitat for a number of beneficial insects, which has meant that we've been able to reduce certain spray applications, as well. So we haven't had to use harmful chemicals that we would otherwise have to use to control certain insects that are pests that have become an issue. Oli Le Lievre 8:25 I've spent the last couple of weeks up through northern New South Wales in southern Queensland, and especially learning a little bit about cotton. And the word beneficials. I've heard so much because the role of beneficial insects and organisms has been so important in them decreasing as you saw that the chemical use. So does it mean that you guys can't use pesticides, or you can still use them in order to manage the environment. But there's limitations and parameters around it? Speaker 1 8:53 Yeah, so we try to be very careful with the pesticides we use, our product gets downgraded when it gets marketed if we have used insecticides. And because of that, we don't like to use it unless we have to. And that is only if it's sort of detrimental to tree health. And we could be losing 1000s of trees, and we don't want to be doing that. But we have a number of precautions around insecticides. So certain insecticides were definitely not allowed to spray when bees are on site. And a lot of other ones depends on what they are. But we spray at night for some sort of assist if we have to spray during like When bees are on site. We weren't spraying insecticide but our fungicides we have to Oli Le Lievre 9:37 spray that at night. Gotcha. Yeah, right. That was always my favourite time when I was working on the shape property in the head Hobbs. Yeah, of doing the mastering first thing in the morning because the bass went active because putting a mother shape up past summer house was always a little bit daunting. It's not fun. Speaker 1 9:54 It's quite entertaining, trying to drive around on a motorbike in the orchard during that time and you kind of have to dodge these anyway. So you Oli Le Lievre 10:01 can imagine, would you say like, is it more of a production driven? Think about the certification itself? Is it more production driven, customer driven? Where does it fit into that fits into Speaker 1 10:11 both aspects for us, really, in terms of production. For us, the production side of things, it enables us to have better practices or improve our practices. And because of that, we have a higher quality product. And we know that it hasn't been through certain treatments. And it just allows us in terms of the marketing acts aspect to be able to show our investors and other people who buy our products that this is what's happened. They've been sustainable in their chemical use. They've looked after their bees when they're on site, and they look after their native insects and pollinators as well. Is Oli Le Lievre 10:54 it something that you guys are seeing uptake, across like through your neighbours and other farming practices, like people looking at you guys and asking you lots of questions about how they can get involved? Yeah, Speaker 1 11:02 so initially, we were probably one of the first ones to pick up the certification. There's been a number of others throughout the farming industry in particular, that have now sort of started making headway in meeting the requirements for a certification because the whole industry as a whole, basically wants to improve. And in order to do that, and to make our practices more sustainable, and environmentally friendly, and look after one of our key parts of our business, we basically have to have that certification. So Oli Le Lievre 11:37 I was gonna ask you, like, you guys are definitely making it possible for a focus to be on bayhealth, but also productive and sustainable agriculture as well. For Speaker 1 11:46 sure, yeah, productive and sustainable. Agriculture is huge for us, like sustainability is a big word in the almond industry. And yeah, I guess one of our main focuses now is to sort of push that sustainability side of things, to ensure that we are being sustainable. And there we can show people what we are doing to make ourselves more sustainable. One Oli Le Lievre 12:07 final question, Gemma, I want you to Paint me a Picture, because I've never been out. And while might slide our database might hold me back. But now we'll come and have a look. But can you tell us a little bit about soy, almond flour? When did they flower? Speaker 1 12:21 So the pollination season begins around the beginning of August, sometimes it's earlier might be a late July. And yeah, because of that, I guess the flowering period occurs over four weeks, those four weeks, we have a number of different varieties on our orchard. And each of those varieties flowers at a different time. So we need bees on site for the whole four weeks. And yeah, it's quite, quite cool to see in the orchard because you go out and you'll see, you know, every second row flowering at the same time. And there might be another variety next to that that's only half the flowering density at that stage. And that's because we have later varieties and earlier varieties that come into pollination. And that just sort of improves our cross pollination and make sure that we can get the best yields we possibly can. Oli Le Lievre 13:16 So can you paint a picture for me? What, what what does it what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like in the thick of flowering, Speaker 1 13:23 it starts off really slow, and then you start seeing your first white flowers pop, they go from a pink bud stage, if so you've got a small pink bud that's on a branch that just pops open one day, and it's what it's really pretty. And then all of a sudden, everything just pops. And you've got these walls of wildflowers, and you can look down rows. And it's you can see the bees flying between the rows and bumping into things. And it's quite a pretty scene. And then you start getting what you call petal drop once flowers have been pollinated, and those petals sort of just fall to the ground. So you get this white mat of flowers on the ground, it almost looks like snow, it's quite a pretty saying like you can sort of tell the how well you've pollinated or how much flower is there and sort of can kind of give you an indication of what your crops going to be like in that year as well by the map that's on the floor. So it's pretty cool. Oli Le Lievre 14:26 You said at the start how you're probably a little bit unaware of the role of bass played, but now you really do love them. How has that kind of changed? And how do you think it's gonna shape and play a role in your career? I Speaker 1 14:39 think there's always something to learn. And for me, I guess I kind of knew a small part of what bass played growing up on a farm we had loosen that we used for production. And quite often we'd have a few beekeepers, but they're based on our loosen and to that extent that was all that I knew. And then Coming to a place where bees are the be all and end all of what we do. It's quite a different scene and to learn the processes and what's involved in how they actually pollinate flowers, it's quite a complex story that I think there's still a lot to learn. Well, Oli Le Lievre 15:21 Gemma, thank you so much for joining us and having a chat about what you guys do. We're very excited to come out and have a look later in the year. We're inviting ourselves but we'd love to come and say it. And good luck with that golf handicap. Hopefully it starts to drop a little bit. Yeah, Speaker 1 15:34 thank you might need a bit of luck there. Oli Le Lievre 15:38 bit more practice when things get too busy. Well, that's it for another episode from us here at humans of agriculture. We hope you're enjoying these podcasts. And well if you're not, let us know hit us up at Hello at humans of agriculture.com. Get in touch with any guest recommendations topics, or things you'd like us to talk and get curious about. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Rate, Subscribe, review it, any feedback is absolutely awesome. And we really do welcome it. So look after yourselves. Stay safe. stay sane. We'll see you next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai