This week's Australasian Weeds Conference, hosted by the Tasmanian Weed Society in Hobart, highlights the importance of weed management to the environment and to primary producers.
In opening the conference today, it was pleasing to speak to participants from across Australia and New Zealand of the Tasmanian Government's strong, new agenda for the State, and particularly for our primary industries.
Our Agrivision 2050 is a plan for growing the value of Tasmania's agricultural produce ten-fold to $10 billion a year by 2050.
A key policy initiative of the Liberal Government was the creation of Biosecurity Tasmania to consolidate our efforts to protect our primary industries from pests, diseases and, importantly, weeds.
Weed management is a serious issue and one that requires a response across different levels of government and from the wider community.
Council weed inspectors and government officers work cooperatively to tackle invasive weeds alongside an army of volunteers through Landcare and Natural Resource Management groups.
In Tasmania, weed management has focussed in recent years on those weeds we have a good chance of controlling.
Significant programs have targeted serrated tussock, other needle grasses, and orange hawkweed, while annual programs focus on agricultural weeds such as ragwort, Patterson's curse and St John's wart.
The Australasian Weeds Conference, which runs from today to Thursday, presents a great opportunity for participants to learn from each other on how to tackle a problem that is not only environmentally damaging, but that can be expensive for farmers.
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