Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to give a call-out to the 3,800 grain growing businesses across WA who have produced an extraordinary harvest this year in the 2021-22 season. Over the weekend the Grain Industry Authority of WA produced its final tally for the harvest, 24.09 million tonnes. To put that into context, the previous best harvest in Western Australia was 18.1 million tonnes, in the 2016-17 season. That represents an increase of 25 per cent over the previous best harvest. To put it into further context, even though the east coast of Australia had a very good harvest this year, WA produced 38 per cent of the nation's grain crop.

It was an excellent season across most of the state, although, unfortunately, there were a couple of isolated pockets that didn't fare so well. I just want to mention those. On the south coast, south of the Stirling Range, there was just too much rain, and some crops were washed out and unfortunately didn't perform as well as hoped. But, most heartbreakingly for those growers in the eastern wheatbelt, who have suffered a series of dry seasons and were facing one of their best seasons in living memory, they suffered the heartbreak of a frost in September, which robbed them of much of their potential yield. I have experienced that myself, and it is the most heartbreaking thing in farming.

We've managed to achieve this through the innovation and great work of our farming communities. A couple of innovations include early sowing and dry sowing, to make use of every drop of rain that falls, and weed control, either through chaff carts accumulating weeds in heaps or through seed destructors, which destroy the weed seeds as they come out of the harvester. There are also improved varieties, including GM crops, for which I campaigned for many years prior to coming to this place. Two of those three innovations came from an extraordinary constituent of mine, Ray Harrington. Ray is a farmer at Darkan and has previously won the Edison award for science and innovation—well deserved.

The crop has to go somewhere, and I congratulate the CBH Group on receiving 21.3 million tonnes. To Ben Macnamara, the CEO, and his permanent staff: well done and thank you. And I think they had up to 4,000 casual staff, including my daughter Emma, who worked at the Albany port and got great satisfaction receiving that crop. Well done to all the casual staff. I also say thank you to the truckies who delivered the crop, the machinery dealers and the mechanics who supported the farmers throughout the harvest, and all the communities. There are many small communities across my electorate in which everyone has a connection to the local farming community, and they all made a contribution.