Machinery man notches up 50 years

This year the well-known machinery writer celebrates his 50th year in journalism.

When you ask Ken how he is going, the usual answer you get is "top of the tree".

But there is always the disclaimer that follows – "but someone is trying to cut it down!"

His is a career that has taken him across all parts of WA, across Australia and overseas. But a lifetime of journalism nearly didn't happen.

Ken admits he actually failed leaving English, "due to a lack of application".

"I had to go back to night school and get my leaving English," he says.

And initially in his working career, it wasn't journalism that called him but agriculture.

His says his love of the industry harks back to his childhood growing up on the family farm at Cunderdin.

Ken still remembers seeding time well, when as early as eight-years-old he would be up at 4am and put on a Lanz Bulldog to help out.

"The first thing you would have to do is crack the oil case, put the blowtorch in to warm the engine and away you would go," he said.

"Dad would take me out and do one round and then leave me to it. He would say 'just keep the front wheel in the furrow'.

"Someone would come out at lunchtime with your crib and then as it got dark you would see the headlights coming through the paddock to pick you up."

The family left the farm when Ken's father moved to Perth to play football for West Perth, but the connection with agriculture remained, with Ken heading back to Cunderdin on school holidays to help out.

Upon leaving school, Ken embarked on what he thought would be a career in agriculture when he started work for Dalgety-NZL as a cadet.

"My main jobs were in finance, wool, stock, merchandise and accounts," he said. "I would have to double check budgets that farmers had sent in to ensure they added up."

Working for Dalgety immediately made Ken the black sheep of the family, as his older brother and uncles were working for its competitor, Elders.

Aside from agriculture, sport was Ken's other great love and it was this that attracted him to journalism.

"Even though I didn't apply myself in English at school, I always enjoyed writing," he said. "I broke my leg playing footy at school and I couldn't play any sport for a while so I started writing a report on the school football games and would put it on the noticeboard each Monday. I think that is where my lean towards journalism started.

"After a period with Dalgety, I felt ready for a change and thought I would pursue journalism and was lucky enough to get a job at the Daily News as a reporter. I did a short stint as a court reporter and then moved into the sports department.

"I specialised in golf and football writing and was actually a ghost writer for some big sporting names of the time, including Polly Farmer, Haydn Bunton, Mal Atwell and Barry Cable, who all had columns in the Daily News."

In the late 1960s, Lang Hancock and Peter Wright started up The Sunday Independent, which would eventually become a daily to take on The West Australian.

"I accepted a job with them working as a sports reporter, but the paper didn't last long and so I moved on," Ken said.

That move would take him back into the agricultural industry when he was approached by Western Farmer and Grazier to be magazines editor.

"Ironically, the first magazine I had to put out in this role was a Machinery Annual," Ken said.

"It was a busy time in agriculture. We were putting out a number of features, the Merino Muster, Merino field day previews and a Dowerin field days preview.

"I remember writing the opening story for the first Wagin Woolorama, which started off as a small show, but has turned into a big event ."I also remember covering the first Newdegate Field Day and Mingenew Expo. It was good to see districts really starting to thrive at that time.

"After the stint as magazines editor, I became machinery editor for Western Farmer and Grazier.

"I found it was a good fit for me. I think I have always had 'diesel for brains' and this was nurtured by those Lanz Bulldog days.

"Rural Press then moved in and took over the Western Farmer and Grazier and Elders Weekly about the same time and I was asked to go across to the Elders Weekly as editor.

"I also was grains writer and agripolitical writer in the early 1990s and that was a time when farming was great.

"Everyone was doing very well and people were up and about and there was some aggressive lobbying going on.

"We had some really proactive young activists then – many of whom are still around lobbying today – and there was lots to write about."

Ken eventually moved back into the machinery writing role full-time and has stayed there ever since.

In that time he has won seven Rural Media Association of WA awards including, Best News Story (three times), Best Feature (twice), Best Finance Story (twice) and Fairfax Australia Rural Awards for Best On-Farm story in 2011 and 2013.

Ken believes the past 50 years has probably been the most exciting years in agriculture, but the next 50 could take it to another level.

"In comparing today with then we had the evolution of direct drilling, now we have a revolution where farmers are looking at going back to deep ripping and controlled traffic farming and variable rate," Ken said.

"I would think within 10 years it will all be in-furrow and liquids."

Ken says one job that sticks in his mind was a trip to South Australia in the mid-1980s to see a Jumbo Trashworker being built by John Shearer and trialled north of Adelaide at its Mannum research centre.

"It was 60 foot wide and hydraulic and it was really ground-breaking technology at the time," he said.

"That was something to behold, but no one really understood at that stage the importance of hydraulics for a seeding bar.

"Of course you had Canadians coming in with their equipment, plus an active Australian manufacturing industry.

"Shearer was still around, plus the likes of Horwood Bagshaw, Connor Shea, Napier Grassland and Australian Farm Equipment.

"We had a healthy manufacturing industry back then.

"I would think it was the 1980s where you would say we had the emergence of true broadacre farming.

"The Steigers and Versatiles 4WD tractors came out and there were improvements to spraying with so-called blob dobbing swath marking and so on.

"Ray Harrington released the tungsten points, Primary Sales achieved good development work with points, and it really started to push broadacre agriculture in crop establishment.

"We had points that didn't wear, there was wider machinery and 12-tonne boxes for seeding.

"From this point the whole movement started to go. I would think it was almost the birth of proper broadacre agriculture."

Ken said direct drilling was the starting point for where cropping became more sustainable.

"There have been variations on a theme since then," he said.

"Deep ripping or tillage had been around since the late 1950s and Sir Eric Smart pioneered some of that up on the Eradu sandplain and transformed the sandplain with lupins.

"That was another transformational moment in agriculture – the introduction of the legume into a cereal rotation.

"This became really sustainable and produced an industry that became the biggest lupin-growing area in the world. It was ground-breaking work and put a focus on nitrogen fixing in rotations."

Ken is often asked his opinion on machinery but has a class line for farmers: 'Listen to everybody, pay attention to nobody and go home and work it out for yourself'.

"That is accurate because every farmer is different, particularly in WA," he said.

"In the 1980s it came to prominence how good WA was at dryland farming.

"We received world recognition for that.

"The likes of Ralph Burnett came into picture and the chemical atrazine for radish control started.

"There were a lot of guys pushing the envelope in that decade and the chemical revolution was just starting to gather steam."

Looking at current day agriculture, Ken says it is exciting to see the approach young farmers are taking.

"The young farmers are taking a more forensic approach to soil and they understand it better," he said.

"They are also doing all sorts of things to try and mitigate against increased costs. Productivity is always a word bandied around, but productivity and cost efficiency are the two main things in agriculture.

"It is all about tweaking the one or two per centers.

"We had the revolution in machinery, but when you put new technology on farm, that is when you worked out how to gain those one or two per centers.

"Farmers had to work it out for themselves, there was no textbook.

"I think the best farmers live by the adage, 'you can't control anything but what you can control yourself'. You can't control weather or prices, but you can control what you do on farm.

"Your judgements are the best shots you have, and you have to back yourself."

From a machinery point of view, Ken believes there is still a lot to play out in terms of new developments.

"You look at where we have come from where we had a 22 foot comb on a PTO header and people thought that was huge," he said.

"Now you can get 11-13t of grain in the box on a header and it takes 11 minutes to fill it. That was a day's work in the 1930s.

"I remember when John Deere brought out a 300hp tractor, I asked them 'Do you think you go any further?' and they replied 'they doubt it". But then 600-700hp tractors came out.

"The only limitation to width and size is going to be stress fractures on machinery."

Ken says he will continue to cover WA agriculture while he has the passion in him.

"I love championing the cause of agriculture," he said.

"There are challenges in regional areas with the declining population.

"There is almost less opportunity for young people to do what their parents did in terms of community work.

"It is getting harder and harder to be in the fire brigade, or drive the ambulance, as well as be the footy club president or coach.

"It is a different paradigm now to where responsibilities are. There is really no such thing as a farmer's wife anymore, they are either working on the farm or off earning extra income in town.

"There is a lot more time pressure on people now. Even though we have made some great progress in technology, in some ways the past two decades have been the most difficult for agriculture.

"There has been a decline in the terms of trade and costs outweigh everything and that is what has led to a sharpening of innovation for farmers."

Ken says the image of agriculture needs an overhaul.

"It is a vibrant wonderful industry full of wonderful people, but we suffer from a poor self image," he said.

"Young kids need to be educated that agriculture is a professional industry; on a par with mining.

"Look at the amount of knowledge you need to have to be a farmer; it is enormous. This is never recognised, though. There is just an expectation that farmers will always produce."

Ken says the motivation to continue to roll up to work or to get in the car and drive across WA after 50 years of writing is driven by discovering something new and talking to all involved in the industry.

"There are so many good people involved in agriculture," he said.

It is always a good feeling when you have done an interview with progressive people and they are doing things well; that's what I love about the job."

Despite travelling many kilometres and writing many words, Ken still had time to raise seven kids with his wife Mary-Jane. They now have 10 grandchildren to keep them young at heart.

"The work-life balance was a juggle at times, but I think the essence of that is the presence you have when you are at home," Ken said.

"I believe you need to have a presence and tell your kids you love them.

"And I am reaping the rewards of that now, my sons and daughters would be my best friends and I have a wonderful family."