An Australian "farming legend" has called on Border residents to get behind the people who put food on our tables during a recent visit to the region.
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Globally recognised innovator Ray Harrington says farmers are "being smashed around the ears politically" and pushed beyond the brink.
"Australian farmers are among the best in the world," says the 77-year-old from Darkan, Western Australia.
"We are so far ahead of the pack in terms of adaptation and technology because we've had to do it on our own.
"We compete on the world stage without subsidies and what we produce is sought after across the world - but we're not recognised here.
"We are growing the tucker but no one says thank you."
Mr Harrington is urging all Aussies - from inner-city high-rise dwellers to regional school kids - to look at where their food comes from and stop buying it from overseas.
"Buy Australian products," he pleads.
"The food you're getting from overseas is heavily subsidised - and the aim is to dwindle out our farming systems.
"Then what will we get?"
Sharing the 'good, the bad and the ugly'
Mr Harrington, who has an Order of Australia for services to agriculture, spent a week in the district at the end of June, at the invitation of Alma Park farmer David Humphris and Jindera's Jim Parrett.
The whirlwind trip included a bus tour with about 20 farmers from Walla, Alma Park, Pleasant Hills, Henty, Culcairn and Jindera examining local no-till farming systems.
The group shared the "good, the bad and the ugly" of their practices with the man renowned as the pioneer of no-till farming in the 1970s.
"If you don't share in that you never improve," says Mr Harrington, who has received a prestigious Edison Award for "smart agriculture", presented to him in New York in 2015.
The award recognised his invention of the Harrington seed destructor - a revolutionary machine (built with the assistance of Mike and Geoff Glenn of Agmaster), designed to combat herbicide resistance by crushing weeds that enter the header at harvest.
There have been other tools of the trade - a crutching cradle, jetting race, v-sheep handling machine - he's also invented that have helped lighten the load for farmers across Australia and the world.
Indeed, a lifetime of innovation and invention would see Mr Harrington crowned Farming Legend of the Year at the 2018 Australian Farmer of the Year awards.
He first began looking at reducing cultivation in 1976 to combat water erosion on the Western Australian property he and his brother farmed with their father.
Essentially that involved a move away from "digging up the soil" and losing precious organic matter, moisture and top soil to wind and water.
At first it was a slow burn to get other farmers or, indeed the agriculture industry in general, to embrace the ideas of no-till farming.
"It went against the grain," he laughs.
Eventually, he got a few people together and the Western Australian No-Tillage Farmers Association was born.
No-till and minimum-till farming has now become a standard approach in growing grain.
Mr Harrington recalls with great fondness those days of experimentation - necessity being the mother of invention on the land as he thought of different ways to safeguard against the vagaries of Mother Nature.
A particular highlight was a whirlwind trip to 13 field days in one week in 1996 to discuss the benefits of the system and his machine.
"We started in Condobolin in NSW and finished in South Australia," Mr Harrington recalls.
"All those sites were farming the old way; we didn't try to sell product, we just talked about a 'way out'.
"And really it grew from the farmers' hands from there on."
Now while Mr Harrington has travelled the world sharing his insights on agriculture, he says he's still happiest "having a yarn" out in the paddock with farmers.
"I love being with cockies," he says.
"We are a resilient bunch."
It's why, even into his 70s, this passionate and enthusiastic advocate still travels widely to learn how no-till practices have been adopted - and adapted - across Australia and even internationally.
But he's a staunch and vocal supporter of supporting our own.
"Stop hammering the farmers," is his plea to politicians and the wider public.
"We are getting pushed and pushed in the game - but they won't get out of their castles in the city to see what we are doing!
"We are growing the food.
"We are (already) conservation farming - because we know if we don't preserve what we are doing, it will be gone!"
