AFTER a two-year wait, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) celebrated the re-opening of its newly renovated Merredin office last week.
With more than 100 years of history, The Dryland Institute was closed and it's staff moved to the former Landmark office and compound in Mitchell Street when the structure's roof was blown off in a severe thunderstorm in March 2018.
State Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan, who officially reopened the facility, said nature had, in a sense, "done them a favour" with the storm leading to a $1.8 million upgrade and extension.
The renovated building had its roof and ceilings replaced, offices refurbished, four laboratories modernised and another two laboratories added to facilitate research in pathology, controlled environment, soils processing and plant and grain quality analysis.
DPIRD's existing infrastructure at Merredin also includes 600 hectares for field trials, two glasshouses, a sample processing facility, as well as the Managed Environment Facility and the New Genes for New Environments research assets.
With WA's rainfall diminishing since 1975, Ms MacTiernan said DPIRD could celebrate that The Dryland Research Institute had played a significant role in working with farmers to quadruple grain production in the State.
"There is no doubt that all of the meteorological data is telling us it is going to get hotter and drier, so we have to redouble our effort and continue to be imaginative," Ms MacTiernan said.
As part of its work on future farming mechanisms, DPIRD will be trialling new regenerative farming practices at the Merredin facility, with a 3.8ha loam over gravel site to be used to "ground proof" some of the claims that have come from regenerative agriculture.
Acknowledging that regenerative farming was a somewhat controversial topic in the agricultural community, Ms MacTiernan said there hadn't been enough rigorous studies done in the area and DPIRD wanted to fill that gap.
"We have sown a wheat crop across the site to evaluate paddock performance and provide a clear baseline," she said.
"We are going to be monitoring for weeds, disease, soil properties, crop yields and nutritional density of the food produced."
The reopening of the Merredin facility comes during a flurry of activity in the Wheatbelt, with the State government also announcing last week its Digital Farm Grant program had been extended into the eastern Wheatbelt.
Round two of the program, which provides enterprise grade broadband services to areas not serviced by the National Broadband Network, is fully subscribed and will help fill in gaps in the eastern Wheatbelt and Mid West, with a $500,000 investment by the State government matched by Narrogin-based service provider CRISP wireless.
Ms MacTiernan said after seeing how the State's farmers and agribusinesses had benefited from its modest investment in the Digital Farm Grants Program, DPIRD was investigating the possibility of delivering a third round of the program.
"We are deeply aware of how important it is for farmers to have access to this technology to be able to compete globally against enterprises that have modern broadband and can utilise ag tech," she said.
As part of PRIMED, a collaborative project between DPIRD and the departments of Training and Workforce Development and Education to raise students' awareness about careers in primary industries, students enrolled in vocational education at Merredin College will also be able to undertake some practical course work at the Dryland Research Institute from next year.
"To get a focus on agriculture back into our secondary schools, we need to leverage off every asset that we have and we have hit some pay dirt here in Merredin," Ms MacTiernan said.
"We are using our research institutes across the State, from Carnarvon to Kununurra, to work with our secondary schools and create opportunities for young kids to come through and understand the science and technology behind agriculture."
The day before the re-opening of the Merredin facility, Ms MacTiernan and Agricultural Region MP Darren West visited the Muresk Institute and toured its desalination plant - a collaborative project with DPIRD, Murdoch University, the Water Corp and Department of Water.
"We know of at least 30 farmers that have already invested in on-farm desalination technology and we want to understand what they are doing and what they are achieving," Ms MacTiernan said.
Also collaborating on an inland desalination trial project with the Wheatbelt Development Commission at Misty Ridge Plant Farm, the minister said she was hopeful the Dryland Institute would become a central hub for WA's desalination and smart dam projects.
With the Federal government funding many east coast universities for their own dryland projects, Ms MacTiernan said WA was well-placed to also pursue those grants as the "most advanced State in its understanding of desalination and desalination technology".
Joined by DPIRD staff, local representative farmers, community group members and local and State government representatives, Ms MacTiernan said she hoped the rebuild would help boost the morale of the department, by giving its people decent facilities to operate in so they can do their jobs well.
"Extraordinary work has been done out here on dryland farming since 1913 when the first facility was established," she said.
"This extension is a great opportunity for us to recommit to the historic endeavour which has been going on at this site for over 100 years and making sure that it works into the future."
