Wednesday, March 09, 2016 1:20:53 AM
Innovation in farming means strawberry fields forever
.. Sam Violi looks to be an Aussi farmer who is into growing as protectively and responsibly as he can ..
3 Feb 2016
Paid for by NAB [an Australian bank]
Sam Violi has been farming strawberries in the Yarra Valley [ http://www.visitvictoria.com/Regions/Yarra-Valley-and-Dandenong-Ranges.aspx ] for almost
four decades producing more than 3 million punnets a year. But it’s his environmental innovation and love of the land that are key to his success
Sam Violi inspects the next crop at Golden Vale Strawberry Farm. Photograph: Sam Violi
When strawberry farmer Sam Violi was a boy his father told him a story taken from the soil of his native Calabria in southern Italy.
A young man thinks he has found the perfect block of land to build a life on. When he tells his blind old father he intends to buy it the old man asks to be taken there instead.
Without being able to see it, the old man walks to the middle of the paddock, reaches down to touch the ground and declares: “This is not the land for you.”
The reason, Violi says today recalling the story he first heard as an eight-year-old, is that the old man knows immediately there is no grass on the allotment.
“In other words the land was barren,” Violi says. “And even a blind person could tell that the ground would be useless to him. You’ve got to look after your land – that’s the moral of the story.”
It is a lesson the now president of the Australian Strawberry Growers Association has lived his life by and the same green outlook he champions to his industry by example at his Yarra Valley farm.
Violi started Golden Vale Strawberry Farm in 1981, with 10 acres and 15,000 plants at the Coldstream property. He has since grown the family operation to 1.4 million plants on 90 acres and supplies more than 3 million punnets a year to customers like Woolworths in Sydney and Melbourne.
Three-month-old strawberry plants on the farm. Photograph: Sam Violi
The grower says in a highly competitive market with low margins like this it is essential to make efficient use of resources like water, particularly during long dry spells.
It has been through constant innovation and care for his land that he has been able to have the satisfaction of “growing as good a strawberry today as when I started out 36 years ago on the house block”.
“If I can do that for 36 years and I can teach my children to do the same this will keep the land healthy for another 36 years,” Violi says.
To keep the soil fertile over the period, he has combined old family methods and personal experimentation with the latest international expert knowledge.
Instead of the traditional two rows, Violi uses a triangular three row planting system with watering units closer to the roots to help reduce water loss and watering time. A recycling system is also able to capture more than 75% of the runoff to use again while organic fertilizers help keep the soil healthy.
To cut chemical usage by about 30% he uses tiny insect predators eat the eggs of pests and he is working with CSIRO researchers trialling the use of bees to distribute fungicide.
The farm also plants “green crops” like oats and rye which help to strangle weeds naturally and have the added benefit of being mulched into the soil as manure.
But Violi says his best innovation has been to design a machine which automatically lays out rows of strawberry growing beds inside a protective plastic “tunnel” on the land from the back of a tractor.
This prototype “plastic mulch layer” has since been commercialised by a local engineering firm and rolled out to strawberry farms across the country as just one innovation he is happy to share.
Plants under cover to protect then from the elements. Photograph: Sam Violi
“I get growers ringing me on a daily basis,” he says. “You are able to give them the information they are looking for instead of them wasting their time and their money.
“You try and encourage people to take up the new technologies and in the long term they are going to save money.
“You always try new things. If you fail once you don’t give up. You’ve got to look at what you’re trying to do and say well is there another way I can approach this.”
Violi’s fact-finding missions have included going to the World Strawberry Congress in London and the Strawberry Olympic Symposium in Beijing in 2012 – a US$850 million showcase of state of the art techniques and research.
“You need to listen quite closely and get as much information as possible and then come and practise on your own place. You might not perfect it but it could be a turning point in your operation.”
Strawberries packed and ready to go. Photograph: Sam Violi
Aside from a passion for the outdoors and for his fruit there is family. Violi is proud to have his wife Vicki and sons Dominic and Anthony with him running the business into the future.
“Every year is different but it’s just a crop I enjoy growing. I see the satisfaction on my grandchildren when they eat the strawberries and the delight that you get from the aroma of the fruit.”
The Violis have been banking with NAB all their lives, receiving support along the way for the creative thinking that has taken them so far.
NAB head of corporate responsibility strategy Sasha Courville says there is a growing awareness of the need to manage natural capital with the same diligence as financial capital.
This means measures like accounting for the availability of clean water, investing in biodiversity and putting a value on soil conservation to help agribusiness customers like the Violis.
“Natural capital is everything nature provides that we need for a healthy economy,” Courville says. “Natural value recognises that contribution nature makes.
“As our population grows, the impacts of degrading our natural capital pose significant challenges for our economic prosperity. Vice versa, by investing in building our natural capital, we can enhance business resilience and productivity.”
In December 2011, NAB was one of two inaugural signatories to the Natural Capital Declaration .. http://www.naturalcapitaldeclaration.org/ (NCD) – a global statement that recognises that natural capital poses significant potential risks and opportunities to the finance sector.
Courville says the methods used by the Violis like integrated pest management and water management are letting nature work for you with positive results for the environment, the consumer and the farmer.
“And his strawberries are gorgeous,” she says.
http://www.theguardian.com/nab-meet-the-changemakers/2016/feb/03/innovation-in-farming-means-strawberry-fields-forever
.. Sam Violi looks to be an Aussi farmer who is into growing as protectively and responsibly as he can ..
3 Feb 2016
Paid for by NAB [an Australian bank]
Sam Violi has been farming strawberries in the Yarra Valley [ http://www.visitvictoria.com/Regions/Yarra-Valley-and-Dandenong-Ranges.aspx ] for almost
four decades producing more than 3 million punnets a year. But it’s his environmental innovation and love of the land that are key to his success
Sam Violi inspects the next crop at Golden Vale Strawberry Farm. Photograph: Sam Violi
When strawberry farmer Sam Violi was a boy his father told him a story taken from the soil of his native Calabria in southern Italy.
A young man thinks he has found the perfect block of land to build a life on. When he tells his blind old father he intends to buy it the old man asks to be taken there instead.
Without being able to see it, the old man walks to the middle of the paddock, reaches down to touch the ground and declares: “This is not the land for you.”
The reason, Violi says today recalling the story he first heard as an eight-year-old, is that the old man knows immediately there is no grass on the allotment.
“In other words the land was barren,” Violi says. “And even a blind person could tell that the ground would be useless to him. You’ve got to look after your land – that’s the moral of the story.”
It is a lesson the now president of the Australian Strawberry Growers Association has lived his life by and the same green outlook he champions to his industry by example at his Yarra Valley farm.
Violi started Golden Vale Strawberry Farm in 1981, with 10 acres and 15,000 plants at the Coldstream property. He has since grown the family operation to 1.4 million plants on 90 acres and supplies more than 3 million punnets a year to customers like Woolworths in Sydney and Melbourne.
Three-month-old strawberry plants on the farm. Photograph: Sam Violi
The grower says in a highly competitive market with low margins like this it is essential to make efficient use of resources like water, particularly during long dry spells.
It has been through constant innovation and care for his land that he has been able to have the satisfaction of “growing as good a strawberry today as when I started out 36 years ago on the house block”.
“If I can do that for 36 years and I can teach my children to do the same this will keep the land healthy for another 36 years,” Violi says.
To keep the soil fertile over the period, he has combined old family methods and personal experimentation with the latest international expert knowledge.
Instead of the traditional two rows, Violi uses a triangular three row planting system with watering units closer to the roots to help reduce water loss and watering time. A recycling system is also able to capture more than 75% of the runoff to use again while organic fertilizers help keep the soil healthy.
To cut chemical usage by about 30% he uses tiny insect predators eat the eggs of pests and he is working with CSIRO researchers trialling the use of bees to distribute fungicide.
The farm also plants “green crops” like oats and rye which help to strangle weeds naturally and have the added benefit of being mulched into the soil as manure.
But Violi says his best innovation has been to design a machine which automatically lays out rows of strawberry growing beds inside a protective plastic “tunnel” on the land from the back of a tractor.
This prototype “plastic mulch layer” has since been commercialised by a local engineering firm and rolled out to strawberry farms across the country as just one innovation he is happy to share.
Plants under cover to protect then from the elements. Photograph: Sam Violi
“I get growers ringing me on a daily basis,” he says. “You are able to give them the information they are looking for instead of them wasting their time and their money.
“You try and encourage people to take up the new technologies and in the long term they are going to save money.
“You always try new things. If you fail once you don’t give up. You’ve got to look at what you’re trying to do and say well is there another way I can approach this.”
Violi’s fact-finding missions have included going to the World Strawberry Congress in London and the Strawberry Olympic Symposium in Beijing in 2012 – a US$850 million showcase of state of the art techniques and research.
“You need to listen quite closely and get as much information as possible and then come and practise on your own place. You might not perfect it but it could be a turning point in your operation.”
Strawberries packed and ready to go. Photograph: Sam Violi
Aside from a passion for the outdoors and for his fruit there is family. Violi is proud to have his wife Vicki and sons Dominic and Anthony with him running the business into the future.
“Every year is different but it’s just a crop I enjoy growing. I see the satisfaction on my grandchildren when they eat the strawberries and the delight that you get from the aroma of the fruit.”
The Violis have been banking with NAB all their lives, receiving support along the way for the creative thinking that has taken them so far.
NAB head of corporate responsibility strategy Sasha Courville says there is a growing awareness of the need to manage natural capital with the same diligence as financial capital.
This means measures like accounting for the availability of clean water, investing in biodiversity and putting a value on soil conservation to help agribusiness customers like the Violis.
“Natural capital is everything nature provides that we need for a healthy economy,” Courville says. “Natural value recognises that contribution nature makes.
“As our population grows, the impacts of degrading our natural capital pose significant challenges for our economic prosperity. Vice versa, by investing in building our natural capital, we can enhance business resilience and productivity.”
In December 2011, NAB was one of two inaugural signatories to the Natural Capital Declaration .. http://www.naturalcapitaldeclaration.org/ (NCD) – a global statement that recognises that natural capital poses significant potential risks and opportunities to the finance sector.
Courville says the methods used by the Violis like integrated pest management and water management are letting nature work for you with positive results for the environment, the consumer and the farmer.
“And his strawberries are gorgeous,” she says.
http://www.theguardian.com/nab-meet-the-changemakers/2016/feb/03/innovation-in-farming-means-strawberry-fields-forever
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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