After more than 1800 people from more than 18 countries attended the evokeAG. 2024 two-day conference at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre recently, a series of industry-relevant tours were organised.
The Royal Agricultural Society of Western Australia (RASWA) welcomed evokeAG. 2024 delegates to the Claremont Showgrounds before they embarked on one of four grain innovation tours.
Delegates explored the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre, InterGrain Breeding Facility, the Australian Grains Centre and CBH's Kwinana Grain Terminal, with RASWA staff hosting each tour.
General consensus from the growers was the tours offered a great opportunity to 'connect the dots' from their role in grain production to many of the other processes in the journey, through to the offloading of the wagons and the loading of the ships.
One of the people on the tour said as an InterGrain customer, he enjoyed seeing the infrastructure, the laboratory staff and equipment and the robotic innovations when touring their facility.
It was also his first visit to the Kwinana Grain Terminal despite delivering grain to the CBH Group for many years.
Another grower said she thoroughly enjoyed evokeAG. 2024 and its side events, and was glad to see so much interest in agriculture.
Like many, she hoped the benefits would trickle back to the producers and not to government or big business.
Tour participants experienced uninterrupted views from the 12th floor of the CBH Kwinana Grain Terminal, as an inspection of a museum on the sixth floor, as well as canola grain wagons being unloaded.
The museum, established in the early 1990s and open periodically to the public, details the history of WA grain production.
The Kwinana Grain Terminal is WA's largest grain export facility, shipping more than half of the State's total grain production on average each year.
Located in Bibra Lake, InterGrain is a plant breeding company that provides wheat, barley and oat varieties to Australian graingrowers.
Its highly successful breeding programs are designed to target the major cereal growing regions of Australia.
"InterGrain was delighted to host a number of tours through our breeding facilities at Bibra Lake," said senior wheat breeder, Dr David Tabah.
"Visitors were given a tour of our facility that reflected the breeding cycle, starting from pedigree crossing in our glasshouses, passing through the trial preparation area where every year our staff pack hundreds of thousands of yield plots, and ending in our state-of-the-art quality labs.
"We talked about the challenges of breeding highly yield competitive, disease resistant, and high-quality varieties of cereals in the face of climate change and evolving pathogens.
"Visitors were also treated to the high-tech robotic trial seed packers, and our robotic genotype sampler."
Belinda Morrissy
Farm Weekly journo, researching ag related stories relevant to our readership, with a strong focus on grains. Proud West Aussie, sad West Coast supporter!
Farm Weekly journo, researching ag related stories relevant to our readership, with a strong focus on grains. Proud West Aussie, sad West Coast supporter!
