While all eyes are
on Brazil and the
U. S., our best friends
may be our long lost
down-under cousins
like Ross Johns.
Here s why
Ross Johns remembers when the idea first occurred to him. It was in the heart of China about eight years ago. He was there on a trade mission, representing Australian farmers through his work as a director of ABB, the former Australian Barley Board.
Late one afternoon, the Australian farmer and his colleagues happened on another group of westerners and a conversation was struck up.
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As it turned out, the other group were representatives of the Canadian Wheat Board, including western Canadian farmers who were in China on a similar tour, and their chance meeting led to dinner and a long conversation about the grain industry and agriculture in their respective countries.
It was like meeting your long-lost family, Johns recalls. There were just incredible similarities between the countries, the industries, the farms and the individuals. Canadians are like the cousins you ve never met.
Johns left that impromptu gathering with an inkling that the two nations had far more in common than he d previously realized and an intuition that the path forward for both industries should lay more in co-operation and co-ordination than in cut-throat competition.
Even so, when Country Guide reached Ross Johns this winter at his farm near Warracknabeal, just north-west of the city of Horsham, Victoria, it was hard not to think about the differences and distance between the two countries.
The telephone transmission wavered and crackled occasionally, and Johns discussed the excellent recent harvest. At 8:00 a. m. (i. e. 3:00 p. m. the previous day back in Canada) it was already 26C in Austra-
