For Megan Gooding, diversifying her farm and business in WA’s Wheatbelt meant taking an innovative approach that has brought both challenges and successes.
Narrogin and its surrounding region, located two-and-a-half-hours’ drive southeast of Perth, is well known for its oats, wheat, lupins, barley and canola. What might come as a surprise is that it is also home to an ancient superfood – Megan Gooding is one third of Three Farmers, a team that is growing quinoa in WA’s Wheatbelt. Megan says that while the path to production has been a steep learning curve, it has also been enormously rewarding.
Megan, 37, farms 5000 hectares of mixed crop and livestock along with her husband Damien, 41, and his family on their 7000-hectare property, situated between Dumbleyung and Kukerin and around an hour’s drive from Narrogin. Between farming and raising their two young children, daughter Eva, seven, and five-year-old son James, Megan is devoted to learning more about quinoa as well as sustainable farming practices.
With a strong background in agriculture, Megan’s journey to growing quinoa began on her family property in Narrogin. After completing a PhD in Agriculture, she decided academic life wasn’t for her and returned to work on the farm. “I wanted to get more of a handle on the hands-on side of things,” says Megan. The idea to grow quinoa came about during a bad drought in 2010, when Megan began thinking about different plants to grow that would diversify the farm, offering more protection against the major risks of drought and frost.
“I also wanted to grow something that would enable us to move further up the supply chain and farm something that was high value,” she says. “We didn’t have a lot of land so it needed to be something that would work on a smaller acreage.” Megan’s search led her to quinoa, a seed imported from South America that was praised as the ‘mother of all grains’ – while not actually being a grain – by the Inca Empire.
Through her research into the crop, she came across another farmer in Narrogin, Ashley Wiese, who was also looking into growing quinoa. Alongside Ashley and his agronomist Garren Knell, Megan began six years of trials, starting small before gaining the confidence to undertake bigger broadacre trials. “The Australian climate means it grows very differently here than it does in South America, so we had a lot to learn before we got it right,” she says.
Their hard work paid off, and with support from a Coles Nurture grant, they built a processing facility and were able to replace the imported quinoa in Coles with Australian grown quinoa in 2016. “There were a fair few ups and downs the first year we started selling,” she says. “A huge oversupply meant the price dropped about 70 per cent. It was definitely a challenging start.” While they initially had their own Three Farmers branded quinoa, they later took that off the shelves to concentrate on their wholesale market.
Given quinoa is still a relatively new and niche – and therefore volatile – market, Megan and her team have balanced it out with another venture, partnering with Red Tractor Foods to supply wheat-free oats. “One of the main drivers for our business is to replace imported products with products we can grow in Australia,” says Megan, explaining that previously, all the wheat-free oats available here were imported from Canada. “We were already growing oats and knew through our work with quinoa that we could execute a gluten-free supply chain.” In 2020, Three Farmers started supplying Australian grown, wheat-free oats in the Australian market under the Red Tractor brand.
For Megan and her team, the sustainability of the land they farm is as important as the sustainability of their business. This means working with nature rather than against it, which is why Megan was an early adopter of Seed Terminator. “A few years ago we got a new header and were looking for ways to control our weeds sustainably, so that we didn’t have to burn stubble and get rid of all the carbon from our soil,” says Megan. “We were really impressive by Seed Terminator’s innovation and what they’ve been able to achieve – it is helping the environment as well as the long-term sustainability of our farming.”
Megan says Three Farmers’ paddock-to-plate supply chain enables her to talk to consumers directly, gaining valuable insights into the market. “A major thing they’re concerned about is making sure the food they’re buying is grown in a sustainable manner,” says Megan. “This is really important to us too, not only for the product but for the soil and the environment, now and in the future.”
Seed Terminator is the future of weed control. This story is part of a Graziher collaboration celebrating our farmers with Seed Terminator. Find out more at www.seedterminator.com.au