Back in 2012 I started a newsletter called “Giving a RATS” as part of the extension program for a GRDC-funded herbicide resistance project.

That ran for 3 years and was great fun to do and was well regarded by those who received it as it covered a diverse range of topics related back to managing herbicide resistance.

People have been saying to me “What ever happened to that newsletter “Giving a RATS”?

So here we are with the medium of the moment, podcasting.

Takes me back to my time as District Agronomist at Griffith, with NSW Department of Primary Industries, or whatever iteration it was called in the early 1990s. I managed to get my hands on a professional reel-to-reel recorder and I set up a small studio and every Friday I produced a 3 minute radio piece on whatever was topical around the agronomy districts of Griffith, Hillston and Coleambally. I was ably assisted by my fellow District Agronomists Don McCaffery and John Whiteley.

We then had to rush it up the hill to the 2RG studio to be played during their Friday lunchtime ag hour. Those were the days, before all this digital technology. Mind you, digital is a lot easier to edit!

Topics I will cover will be wide and varied, and will be informative and entertaining and I will source my interviewees from around Australia, and hopefully some from overseas as well.

Happy listening.