AS WA's agricultural sector continues to grapple with the threats of foot and mouth disease (FMD) and lumpy skin disease (LSD), as well as the issue of getting leftover grain to port from last year's record harvest, a small group of Wheatbelt growers came together in Kulin on Monday to hear from industry experts and discuss possible solutions to the many challenges facing the sector.
Held by WAFarmers and attended by about 50 growers and livestock producers, Sheep Producers Australia and Curtin University senior lecturer Dr Elizabeth Jackson and Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) chief veterinary officer Michelle Rodan spoke about the biosecurity issues of FMD and LSD, while DPIRD Katanning livestock biosecurity officer Jemma Thomas gave the audience a run down on the significance of traceability within the State's livestock sector in helping to manage a potential local FMD outbreak.
While FMD has gained much attention within the industry due to its recent detection in WA's popular tourist destination of Bali, Ms Rodan said the threat of LSD, which had increased from eight per cent to 28pc, was more significant due to the unmitigated pathway in which it could travel.
Ms Rodan said the risk of FMD, which also recently increased from 9pc to 11.6pc, had prompted DPIRD to work closely with the Federal government on the creation of potential "zones" within Australia, should an outbreak of the disease occur anywhere across the nation.
"There are some really strict guidelines about how you could call WA different to the rest of the country," Ms Rodan said,
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"For instance - you've got the barrier but you've got to prove that you actually don't have the disease here."
With the World Organisation for Animal Health responsible for monitoring the emergence and development of animal diseases in terrestrial and aquatic animals internationally, Ms Rodan said Australia needed to take the opportunity to look at how it traded with other countries.
"We've sold Australia very much as one country, one status and yet it's a really big country," Ms Rodan said.
"Across Europe you can see lots of countries trading independently that could fit well and truly within Australia... so we have some flexibility to look at zones in the future and to work out examples where WA may be able to continue to trade wool, for example, if there was an outbreak on the Eastern States and if we meet the requirements of a zone."
Ms Rodan said she had been heartened by the amount of effort the Commonwealth government had put into the potential zoning of the country, to help it recover more quickly should an outbreak of FMD occur on our shores.
"We've been looking at African swine fever for a number of years and we have been able to put in place a bilateral agreement with Singapore around WA continuing to trade with Singapore if there were an outbreak of African swine fever on the east coast and probably vice versa," Ms Rodan said.
"That natural barrier goes both ways obviously."
Speaking on the potential impact of an FMD outbreak on the Australian wool industry, Australian Wool Innovation WA industry relations officer Tori Kirk said Australia would likely have some leeway in that it was China's most major wool provider, and that without Australian wool imports, the country would run out of the fibre within two months.
"That would give us the ability to renegotiate our way back into that market," Ms Kirk said.
Representatives from the CBH Group, including chairman Simon Stead and chief financial officer Stewart Hart also presented an overview of the investment being made in the CBH grain rail network and its outloading facilities, as well as the challenges being faced by the co-op in getting WA grain to port, with a large amount of grain carryover from last season still impacting the State's farmers.
