Weeds $3.27b hit on Aus grains

Speaking at the Herbicide Innovation Partnership lab launch last week in Frankfurt, Germany, Mr Thomas highlighted a report completed this year which estimated weeds cost the Australian grains industry $3.27 billion per year.

That total comprises $2.56b in weed control costs and $708m in crop yield and quality losses, he said.

“It (resistance) really translates down to a very significant cost to a grower in his or her system; ranging from about $103 per hectare up to $211 (per hectare) when you start to take into account the need to use either more or different and more costly herbicides for the control of herbicide resistance,” he said.

“Australian growers and growers across the world do a very good job of controlling weeds but it’s coming with a very high reliance on chemical control and this is particularly important in Australia where we retain stubble from one season to the next – we don’t plough and do minimum tillage.”

Mr Thomas said rye grass, wild radish and wild oats remained the most costly weeds, in terms of yield loss in Australia, while brome grass was an emerging issue.

“Rye grass remains the most significant herbicide resistant weed in Australia but others are becoming more common,” he said.

“We are seeing resistance to Group A’s, Group B’s, Group F’s, Group C’s and multiple resistances too.

“This is the whole premise of us entering into the herbicide resistance partnership.

“If Australia cannot control its weeds; it will lose production.”

Bayer Crop Science Global head of research and development Adrian Percy heads up the company’s $1.62b R&D budget in core areas like chemical crop protection, biologicals and digital agriculture.

Mr Percy also spoke at last week’s launch and said agriculture was currently an incredibly exciting place to be with a “tonne of money” coming into investments, from many varied sources.

He said companies that traditionally had no link to agriculture like Google and IBM were now making “massive investments”.

“It’s really, really exciting to see that new money coming in,” he said.

Mr Percy said agriculture was attracting small start-up companies in areas like digital technology that will “provoke” and lead to future innovation.

He said new technologies like gene editing and computational life sciences - where millions and millions of data points can be extracted and made sense of, to link with the genetic make-up of plants and predictive characteristics - are “very exciting”.

That work’s important to the cause of “human kind” which faces a “massive challenge” to feed a growing global population that’s demanding more meat and protein due to an expanding middle class, he said.

“We live in a society that has removed itself, to a large degree, in many cases from agriculture; not understanding agriculture and not understanding what companies like Bayer do,” he said.

“And it’s really our responsibility, collectively, to do what we can to explain to the public, that what we do is safe and is actually benefitting mankind.

“As scientists we have a big responsibility to reach out to stakeholders, be open about what we do, and to explain the best way we can about what we do with our technologies and why we believe they’re beneficial not just to farmers but also to the public in terms of producing good quality food.”

Australian Consulate General and Senior Trade Commissioner David Campbell said if he could dream-up a magic recipe of business co-investment between the two countries the Bayer and GRDC partnership would be “nirvana”, although he had nothing to do with striking the new deal.

Mr Campbell said the partnership ticks “a huge number of boxes” including aligning with the federal government’s innovation statement released just before Christmas.

He said it also served the big picture needs of the global food task and supporting the Australian food and agribusiness sector which was a core economic strength.

Mr Campbell said the next couple of decades offered an exciting future, because of Australia’s strong position in the world’s fastest growing region.

He said Australia had a population of 24 million people while Indonesia to the north had 250m and China 1.4b while India’s population was also “huge”.

China’s economic growth rate is expected to be between 6.5 per cent and 7pc while India’s forecast growth rate is 7.5pc, he said.

“To put that into context the average growth rate in Europe next year is expected to be 1.6pc so this is truly the fastest growing region in the world,” he said.

Mr Campbell said the OECD estimated about 650m middle class people currently lived in Europe which was expected to grow to 680m over the next two decades.

He said about 600m middle class people currently lived in Asia but over the same two decade period that number is expected to grow to 3.2b.

“The reason why this is significant is because as this middle class develops they’re developing an appetite for our food, our wine and our agricultural products generally,” he said.

“This is where the big opportunity is for Australia and that’s why this partnership (between Bayer and GRDC) is significant because it helps our growers to become more productive in agriculture so that we’re able to meet this growing demand into the future.

“It will help to guarantee Australia’s prosperity for the next several decades.”