Meet Jason Bradford, a farmer with a conservation focus
It’s said that diversity is strongest at edges, those places where different systems meet: fresh water and salt, wetland to grassland to forest. Alligator Creek farmer Jason Bradford is the custodian of such a place. His mixed cane growing and grazing operation overlaps with Sandringham Wetlands, running across ponded pasture to natural savannah and mangrove wetland to an estuarine area at the confluence of Sandringham and Alligator Creeks as they meet the Coral Sea.
As a place where a saltwater marine estuary environment meets freshwater creeks and lagoons, it's an area of delicacy, abundant with fish, migratory and resident birds, and increasingly diverse flora.
"This place is important, especially so close to town. I feel blessed: on any given day here, you can see things that people come a long way to see, wildlife-wise," Jason said.
The busyness of the Bruce Highway whooshes by the front boundary, some 20 minutes south of Mackay.
"It always blows me away, the interest that there is in this place. We get 12,000 cars a day go past that little lagoon, and it is something of a local icon, with the old Macs Truck Stop there. People use it for everything from appreciating nature to simply as a rain gauge: drivers will glance in there after a heavy night's rain to see if it's flooding. I enjoy seeing people pull into that service road with their kids, have a drink and have a look at the wildlife. Or I've had people pull in and set up easels, bird photography groups have come to visit. I enjoy the opportunity to showcase wildlife that you might not get to see in suburbia."
In 2022 Jason was awarded a QFF Reef Conservation Champion Award for outstanding wetland-sensitive management practices and infrastructure upgrades, including creating off-stream watering points, and enclosed pastures and laneway systems created with some six kilometres of electric fence.
Jason works with Farmacist, an agronomist service, to refine agricultural and environmental practices in his farming system. He's also been involved in programs such as Bluewater and Project Catalyst and is a member of Canegrowers.
In collaboration with Reef Catchments, the farm has also benefited from the removal of the weed species water hyacinth and hymenachne (a great fodder for cattle in ponded pasture systems but a declared weed hailing from South America).
"Hymenachne is a cattleman's dream, but a barra's nightmare," Jason said.
"I had a situation where the waterways were being taken over by hymenachne, and that didn't sit right with me. I knew the recruitment of local fish into that lagoon from the estuary, and I knew what the potential was for those fish to exit again if everything all lined up. I thought there was potential to enhance that."
The weeds were mainly infesting the farm's primary irrigation dam - a 2.5ha reservoir that principally fills from adjacent highway runoff but links to the natural waterways, separated by a bund wall at the east and now a new fish ladder at the west.
"The knee jerk reaction is to spray it, but there is something that just doesn't feel right about spraying two and a half hectares of a body of water that's covered in wildlife. So, we looked at other ways to remove it.
"We wanted to do it in the most low cost, low maintenance way we could, so we mechanically remove it and made it into stockpiles, and let nature do the rest. And hey presto, nine months down the track it had mulched down into a lovely fibrous mulch! The paddock that we worked it into was a difficult-to-work gluepot paddock, and it turned out to be a wonderful ameliorant! Only problem was, I would have liked about 20 times more on the paddock."
It was a good cost-efficient weed management solution, with side benefits of a one-off useable resource that has offered food for thought.
The paddock had its first planting post-mulch in 2022, and Jason reports there has been better strike in germination.
"A couple of months down the track, you can see the difference where it was planted. Overall, the cane is very healthy, and there is a visible height difference."
Fish ladders have also been introduced into the wetlands, allowing fish to move from salt to fresh to complete lifecycles- fish such as barramundi (and a host of 48 other species in the region) need to be able to do this to breed.
Almost 4000 ‘fish barriers’ have been identified across Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac region, and mindful landholders like Jason Bradford are facilitating the construction of passageways like fish ladders that let cultivated human systems work in tandem with natural systems.
Trees are being returned to pasture areas by a process of natural recruitment. On a drive around the farm, Jason is proud to point out where native trees have naturally germinated, then been selected and had their development supported by mesh shrouds that prevent cattle eating them down. He can show stands of messmate gum that are increasing, and places where fencing is keeping cattle off damaged native grass areas to allow resting time. Farm-wide, it's a process of strong regeneration coupled with solid production and business-mindedness.
The farm was bought as a cattle block in the late 60's by Jason’s parents Allan and Beverley, as a second farm from the family's then home farm at Racecourse. Cane was introduced in the 1980s.
Three generations of the Bradford family all work in the operation bringing their particular expertise to benefit the agribusiness. The family has integrated succession, making sure that Allan and Beverley have been able to remain living on-farm in retirement.
"It's a good news succession story," Jason said.
Appreciating that heritage ties to Jason's view to the future.
"I want to focus on another 50 years ahead, too. I want to make sure the things I'm doing now are at worst neutral, and at best, enhancing. Conservation work is part of that."
"I've decided I am going to work with nature rather than against it. Why waste energy and resources fighting that, whereas with cattle, I can work with the land a lot better. If it wants to grow para grass, that's a smile on my face, a benefit in the cattle game rather than a pain in the cane game."
"As a cane farmer it is part of our social licence to abide by the legislation, just like any business. And I enjoy growing cane, I enjoy the satisfaction of sending a good crop of cane off to the mill, and watching those rows go down being harvested. But there's an economic reality of being wedded to input costs."
"It's important to have a diverse base, even if everything is at a relatively small scale."
He's happy that both cane and cattle are currently showing a good price, injecting some extra cash flow.
"It's allowed me to put some ideas that I have had into practice- like setting up infrastructure in the cane side. I want to produce the same amount of cane, but on a smaller footprint. To do that, I need to put things in place, like addressing drainage, applying mill mud and adding more biological ameliorants in the soil.
“I try to introduce different sorts of practices, like running the cattle on the fallow ground in between crop cycles. To do that, you need infrastructure and putting in the fencing has given me the ability to do that."
The laneway system readily allows Jason to direct cattle between paddocks and into pasture, or fallow cane areas.
"Cows introduce a whole range of bio stimulant activity through their rumen, through manures, so that adds another dimension to that fallow."
The fallow cane paddocks can be planted with legumes, or millet, for use as fodder. Millet is suited to warm temperatures and tolerates moisture. He said the quick turnaround of the crop also makes it less vulnerable to the birdlife that is part and parcel of living with wetland country. It is early in the system's development to have clarity on impacts to yield, but Jason said that they are seeing good results.
“At the end of the day, it’s about running a successful business and leaving something magnificent for nature - and the future.”
By Kirili Lamb, CANEGROWERS Mackay
Find out more about grazing best practice farming innovations in Reef catchments.
Last updated: 23 Feb 2023