Hot pink Tas crop brightens Japanese landscapes

Brenton and Anne Heazelwood in their pink buckwheat crop, Whitemore Tasmania April 2008
The unusual colour of a flowering buckwheat crop in northern Tasmania is generating a lot of interest.
The hot pink field at Whitemore near Carrick is being grown for seed for Japan.
Farmer, Brenton Heazelwood says Japanese farmers will plant paddocks of it to purely brighten up the landscape.
"They just use it purely for sowing and making the countryside look pretty," he said.
"They want it for the pink flower, all the other buckwheat of course is white flowering and it's used for noodle making but this is purely an ornamental, I suppose you would term it."
Anne Heazlewood says the Cancer Council in Tasmania has taken photos of the field and may use the image for its next campaign.
"Oh it'll be lovely, yes," she siad.
"Normally they have figures planted in a lawn of pink or something like that but i think this will be a nice different approach to their advertising campaign."

CKYH ships put on the brakes

Janet Porter - Monday 21 April 2008

Cosco: part of the CKYH alliance.FOUR powerful Asian container lines have agreed to slow down their ships and eliminate duplicate port calls as part of a wide-ranging programme aimed at slashing record high fuel bills Cosco Container Lines, K Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin Shipping, which co-operate through the CKYH alliance, will be adding a ninth vessel wherever possible to their Asia-Europe services.That will enable ships to lower steaming speeds from 25 knots to about 21.5 knots. The consortium operates eight loops between Asia and northern Europe, of which two covering the longest route from northern China are already run with nine vessels. The network also includes another three strings between Asia and the western Mediterranean, and three to the eastern Mediterranean. Several other lines or alliances have slowed their ships in the Asia-Europe trades as bunker prices hit unprecedented highs, but this is not appropriate on shorter routes as it would be impossible then to maintain weekly schedules. A 10% speed reduction can cut fuel consumption by 30%, and so generate massive savings. The four lines are now looking for additional tonnage to slot into their Asia-Europe rotations. That could include ships redeployed from the Pacific if the quartet decides to reduce capacity there. But if the right units cannot be found, the CKYH alliance is prepared to run some of its Asia-Europe loops at slower speeds with eight ships, and miss one weekly call, said Takafumi Kido, deputy general manager of K Line’s container business group planning team. The determination to save fuel follows a summit meeting of senior staff from the four lines in Japan earlier this month. They agreed to proceed with various strategies. including the rationalisation of services in the transpacific and Asia-Europe trades, and further co-operation on terminal operations and equipment sharing. As well as slow steaming, the lines are also preparing to revise schedules so that there is no unnecessary duplication of port calls between the various services. That may be the best way of saving fuel on the Pacific where there is less scope to decrease speeds. Instead, the lines hope to reduce the number of separate calls at Asian load ports. Even though the Pacific trades are in poor shape right now, the consortium has not yet decided whether to remove capacity by deploying smaller ships, or possibly offering fewer than the current 14 loops it now operates between Asia and the US west coast. If ships are withdrawn, they could be transferred to routes such as the Middle East trades where conditions are much better, said Mr Kido in a telephone interview.

Carbon footprint, not food miles

Report: Merian Ellis
Tasmanian food producers may score relatively well in the new age of carbon awareness, if New Zealand's experience is anything to go by.The climate change debate is pushing all industries to evaluate their carbon footprint, for example, more than 30 businesses on King Island are undertaking a carbon audit as part of a 12 month King Island Sustainable Futures program.Apricot grower and chairman of the Tasmanian Food Industry Council Heather Chong says assessing carbon footprint is likely to be a better path to purse for the state, compared to counting food miles (the distance food travels to market).Heather Chong says food miles have the potential to disadvantage Tasmanian exporters, compared to the state's carbon footprint."New Zealand did an interesting study recently where they could actually prove that goods purchased from New Zealand were actually better, if you looked at the carbon footprint basis, than goods purchased from Europe going into the UK market because New Zealand, like us, uses a lot of renewable energy.So I think if we go down the carbon footprint route, as opposed to the food miles, we stand a much better chance of being able to still continue to sell goods into overseas markets."
In this report: Chairman of the Tasmanian Food Council Heather Chong.

Farms cash in despite big dry

Article from:

NICK CLARK
April 18, 2008 12:00am
TASMANIAN farmers are set to cash in on rising grain and oilseed prices as competition for land grows between agricultural commodities -- despite the drought.A survey by rural lender Rabobank suggests a good outlook for grain prices in the medium term. Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association cereals and seed committee chairman Crosby Lyne said cereal crops were increasing. "The drought has meant a lot of people have got rid of their livestock and may plant more cereal crops if the season breaks," he said. "Fertiliser prices have gone up 50 per cent to $1500 a tonne which resulted in farmers planting crops which need less fertiliser." Mr Lyne said there was pressure for acreage. "The poppy growing companies are desperate for more ground in the 2008-09 season," he said. "There are plenty of small seed and grass seed contracts available as well. In these dry years barley has proved to be a pretty versatile crop for malting and as a feed for livestock." "Cascade and ABB, which malt for Boag's, are pretty keen to get more barley." Mr Lyne said the greater upside in potential yield of wheat than barley had prompted some to favour wheat. "Some farmers are growing wheat under irrigation," he said. North-West contractor Greg McDonald said he expected to harvest 4000 tonnes of wheat in 2009 up from 2000 tonnes in 2008. "I've had more inquiries from people wanting to grow wheat than ever before," he said. "There are people growing wheat that had never grown it." He said farmers were "getting screwed by spud factories" and were looking at lower production costs of wheat and grains. "The way fertiliser prices have increased, unless there's a big increase in the price of potatoes they're better off to grow wheat," he said. He said wheat needed less water than vegetables and were "less work". Mr Lyne said there had been an increase in canola crops for stock feed and poppy seed for biodiesel. ABS data shows Tasmania grew just 8000 hectares of both barley and wheat and 1000ha of canola in 2005-06.

Plant closure forces speciality fibres overseas

Report: Anna Vidot and Rose Grant
Tasmanian specialty fibre producers will be forced to send their goods overseas for processing, or shut up shop, when Australia's only small scouring plant closes at the end of June.The CSIRO facility in Victoria processes fibre for smaller scale and niche producers, with an estimated 1000 businesses relying on the service.The CSIRO says it is still holding discussions about the future of the plant, but producers claim they have been told to start looking elsewhere for the processing services.One of those who relies on the CSIRO facility is Elaine McDonald. She has been selling woollen garments at Hobart's Salamanca Market for over two decades, but she says the future of the business is now in doubt."You can not have the wool spun at a mill if it's not scoured, and there is nowhere else in Australia that will take small lots of wool or coloured wool, natural coloured wool."The Australian alpaca industry has also be forced to send fleeces overseas.Matt McAninley from Australian Alpaca Fleece Limited says the CSIRO scourer has become integral to the development of the rare natural fibre industries in Australia and its closure will impact upon thousands of individuals and small businesses, as well as a small number of large Australian companies."We've now had to look at alternatives, which involves sending fleece to New Zealand. "It's not ideal because it's certainly quite a significant increase in costs. But we're also now sending fleece to Peru which is greasy fleece and we've managed to have the requirements changed. We weren't able to send greasy fleece into Peru but we are now able to," he said.
In this report: Elaine McDonald, In Sheep's Clothing; Matt McAninley, Australian Alpaca Fleece Limited

1984 - Bin Brother is watching you

By Karen Barlow
Posted Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:26pm AEST

RFID chips allow the council to work out who is recycling and who isn't. (File photo) (ABC News: Giulio Saggin)
There is revolution going on in waste management, which Big Brother would be proud of.
Tucked away under the rim of wheelie bins found in two Sydney councils are small radio frequency tracking devices collecting information on a household's waste habits.
Randwick Mayor Bruce Notley-Smith told The World Today they are the way of the future.
"We will be able to find out the weights of the various bins and collect the data, the entire amount, as opposed to the quantity that is recyclable," he said.
The garbage truck reads the data on the bin, weighs the bin, and the data is collated on a computer.
"We've aimed to increase or target problem areas in the city where there's a lower level of recycling," Mr Notley-Smith said.
"The fact is that 50 per cent of the city of Randwick is multi-unit dwellings and we have faced a number of challenges there with getting compliance with recycling."
The data collected will allow the council to confirm which areas are recycling and which are not.
Ryde is the other council using the tracking devices. It has done so since 2006 and says it has helped to raise local recycling rates to about 48 per cent.
But champions of recycling, such as Clean Up Australia founder Ian Kiernan, are underwhelmed.
"I don't believe they deserve huge praise for an environmental initiative because I don't think it is that," he said.
"I think it's simply a somewhat effective commercial move. It's like when you have metered electricity, you can look at your meter and see how you can count it back.
"But this information is not going back to the consumer, to the rubbish producer, the householder - it is simply for that particular waste company to keep a track of its bins."
The data collected by the tracking devices is supposed to stay between the council and the contractor, WSN Environmental Solutions, due to privacy concerns.
Mr Kiernan says the information should be shared with the garbage thrower.
"They could say, 'We've got to cut down on what we're paying to get rid of your rubbish. We obviously need to remove some of the recycling that's going into the waste stream, or we've got to look at our purchasing so we're buying less packaging.' And [there are] so many things that you can do in that little household audit, once you have the data," he said.
But Mr Notley-Smith says he is not in it to make money for the council.
"It's our obligation to collect as much as for our recyclable material as we possibly can and reduce as much as we can the amount of waste going into landfill," he said.
"The commercial imperative is not the issue here. We're trying to minimise the amount of waste which is going into landfill.
"The contractor, what they actually do with the recyclable material, that's for the market to decide."
Recycling can be big business. It is no surprise that one of Australia's richest men is the 'Cardboard King', Richard Pratt.
Mr Kiernan says more needs to be done on the individual, government and business level to reduce waste.
"Some proportion of what is recyclable is actually going to landfill because it's convenient and it can be cheaper than recycling," he said.
"Now, I haven't tracked down the validity of those claims, but we've just got to realise that we have got to improve our waste management.
"And the good operators are doing it, they're looking to how they do it everyday. But just putting tags on bins is not a huge stride forward in the name of the environment."

Launceston's once-troubled James Nelson weaving mill is expanding, employing more workers to help meet new orders

40 workers lost their jobs when the textile factory's former owners closed it down to retire before Christmas.
The State Government stepped in with $250,000 to help James Nelson's management and workers secure a buy-out.
The factory re-opened six weeks ago with 24 workers.
It has now secured new interstate orders and is offering jobs to four more past employees.
They should start work within the next two weeks.
James Nelson's managers say they are thrilled by the interest from potential customers and are negotiating for overseas contracts.