2024 David Roget Award Winners

For the first time in its ten-year history, Mallee Sustainable Farming's David Roget Award for Excellence has been awarded to a group, not an individual.

In a surprise announcement at MSF's Big Ag Day Out at Waikerie on 14 February, the Lowbank and Districts Agricultural Bureau was celebrated for its continued support of agricultural research and enthusiastic collaboration with research scientists. Nearly a dozen Bureau members were on hand to receive the award from MSF's new managing director Jenny Garonne and MSF director Andrew Biele.

MSF program manager Tanja Morgan said the Bureau was one of the strongest in the Mallee and a number of its members had been previous MSF directors and integral in getting the research organisation up and running. She said the group was "supportive and innovative" and ran many of its own trials to benefit farmers from across the region.

Groups such as Lowbank were invaluable in supporting MSF achieve its goals, said Mrs Morgan. "The best research happens when it happens from the ground up," she said. "These farmers work in one of the lowest-rainfall cropping regions so are proactive in adopting innovative practice to keep them viable."

Bureau president and Lowbank farmer Tim Paschke said the passionate group consisted of about 30 members from multiple generations. The Bureau conducts its own farmer-driven trials and also collaborates with scientists and research organisations such as MSF. It also offers members an invaluable social network.

"We farm in a pretty tough area so any improvements we can make on the bottom line make a big difference," Mr Paschke said. "That's why we try to run as many farmer-driven, paddock-scale trials as we can."

Dr Roget was a principal research scientist with CSIRO and the award was created to acknowledge his enduring legacy and contribution to sustainable agriculture. Ms Garonne said he was remembered for "taking research out of the laboratories and into the paddocks."

"He was instrumental in developing and promoting the concept of farming systems research by bringing together multiple disciplines and grower input particularly through the Mallee Sustainable Farming project, which later became Mallee Sustainable Farming."

Previous winners of the award include farmers Robin Schaefer, Malcolm Lynch, Fred Maynard and Allen Buckley, and researchers Jack Desbiolles, Jason Brand, Kath Cooper, Danny Conlan and Michael Moodie.

The winner receives the David Roget Award Perpetual Trophy and a cash prize of $1000.

Read more at: Mallee Sustainable Farming