In November 2026 I was fortunate to be supported by the EEAS scholars programme to attend the International Herbage Seed Group (IHSG) conference held in Launceston, Tasmania and the post conference tour in Victoria and New South Wales. The scholarship also enabled me to travel to Canterbury, New Zealand after the conference to join a small group of UK farmers visiting leading herbage seed growers in the Canterbury Plains.
The IHSG was created to encourage knowledge sharing and cooperation between all those involved in herbage seed production across the world from research scientists to growers primarily focusing on production of forage grasses and forage legumes.
The conference itself was a three day event consisting of morning sessions of technical presentations with afternoon field tours. This was followed by a three day tour visiting seed growers and breeders in Victoria and New South Wales. One hundred and forty attendees joined from New Zealand, France, Denmark, Canada, China, USA, Argentina, Uruguay amongst other seed producing countries.
Tasmania is long established as the breadbasket of Australia producing half of the grain grown in Australia in the mid 1800s. Since first growing certified seed in 1932 it has become the seed producing hub for domestic and export markets worth A$60m annually. It benefits from favourable climate, soil types, irrigation along with low environmental regulation compared to other seed producing countries. Whilst Tasmanian farmers receive no direct government support, the state government have funded several large irrigation infrastructure projects which enable growers to utilise water resources from mountain lakes to water crops in the fertile plains.
The standout field visit in Tasmania was to Greenvale Pastoral near Cressy which is run by Robbie Tole. Robbie was growing grass, chicory and clover seed under centre pivot irrigation and utilising the grazing opportunities with these crops with their 2000 ewe breeding flock finishing all lambs.
Coming from a mixed family farm I was really interested to see how Tasmanian (and later in the trip New Zealand) seed growers were utilising their crops for lamb finishing. Whilst they are benefitting from climate and irrigation advantages not available to the majority of UK seed producers, these growers gave us all food for thought regarding how ambitious we could be during the grazing phases of various seed crops.
Delegates were given talks by experts from across the world on a wide range of technical subjects related to herbage seed production including the development of green on green spraying technology and the use of tricoderma fungi to prime plants against abiotic and biotic stress.
After a night spent in a cabin on the Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry crossing from Tasmania to Geelong, Melbourne the post conference tour of three days took delegates north and east through Victoria to the New South Wales border visiting trials sites, seed growers and processors.
We saw several growers of sub clover, a clover species prevalent in Australia which sets a seed pod and then effectively buries this pod beneath the soil surface making harvest of the seed a challenge. Although this crop is not relevant to the UK, the attitude of Anthony Black from Corowa Seeds towards this specialist crop was very interesting, it represents only 5% of his cropped area but 30% of his turnover. With many other growers giving up on the crop due to practical challenges Anthony has sought technological solutions and is making it work.
A group of seven of us from the UK reconvened in Christchurch the following week, we were extremely fortunate that Dr Phil Rolston, one of the most respected authorities on seed production in the world, formerly of the Foundation of Arable Research (FAR) had agreed to be our tour guide for a few days and had curated a fantastic selection of farm visits in the Canterbury Plains.
Our visits included David Birkett, Eric Watson, John McCaw, Angus McKenzie and Richard Merrilees, all of whom were incredibly generous with their time and willingness to answer questions and share their experiences. These farmers were all operating slightly differently and on varying scales but their focus on production and attention to detail was striking.
Our time in Canterbury coincided with one of FAR’s ARIA days (Arable Research in Action), this was essentially a mini cereals event with a series of walks around trials and presentations relating to seed production and other crop production. It was interesting to hear how growers regularly achieving wheat yields of 14-15t/ha are still striving to improve and learning from them the base blocks of what they feel underpins their high performance. Of course, soil, climate etc are things that we cannot translate back to our farm in Northamptonshire but there are snippets of information and an attitude towards production that left me inspired.
The temptation is to become disheartened by growers in Australia and NZ using a number of pesticide products that have been banned for more than twenty years in the UK enabling them to produce higher yields than we are able to at a lower cost. The more positive outlook would be to try to take home some of the practices and techniques that these growers are employing that we are able to utilise rather than focus on what is ultimately out of our control. The growers from Denmark on the tour face the most stringent restrictions particularly around herbicide use and this is driving innovation in alternative methods.
Both Australian and New Zealand farmers are farming without subsidy support, whilst they do not have the level of regulation we experience in the UK, some of their other costs are higher than ours. This has driven innovation both at an industry level with groups such as the Tasmanian Seed Industry Group investigating novel crops for its members but also at farmer level with adapted machinery and inventive systems to maximise returns.
I am grateful to the EEAS scholars programme for supporting this trip which was a trip of a lifetime, I am hopeful that in the next few years a few of practices and ideas that I have picked up on my travels will bear fruit on our farm at home and I have already enjoyed sharing some of the learnings during a couple of speaking opportunities.
