Latest Features

AWB logo in background, looking through some trees

AWB, GrainCorp and the grain bin of history

It was an institution for Australia’s wheat farmers – the single desk marketing system that took their wheat around the world, guaranteed them a buyer each harvest and delivered a tidy profit under the auspices of the Australian Wheat Board.


Cleared farmland near Esperance

Is foreign investment a problem?

How much new foreign investment is actually occurring in Australia, and should agriculture and food industries be concerned?


Australian team Mounted Games

Young riders in International Mounted Games

Five of our top young riders head to Britain in August to compete at the International Mounted Games. Australia won last year at Calgary, Canada. Can they make it two in a row?


Indigenous children play on the Areyonga football oval

Indigenous community learning through its love of football

Many city-dwellers would be shocked if it took seven years for a community sporting ground to be built. However, for the Indigenous residents of Areyonga, 200 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs, the development of their local football oval represents a coming of age.


Bill and June Tapp in 1972.

Rise and fall of the 'Cattle King'

Bill Tapp was known as the 'Cattle King' as he went about developing several Northern Territory cattle stations, but in the early 1990s his empire came crashing down.


Sow 229

Setting free the pigs

Intensive piggeries are under pressure to change their practices, like removing sow stalls and freeing the pigs into group pens. It could cost tens of millions of dollars and we may pay more for domestic pork. Sarina Locke investigates.


A pig

What makes pigs happy? Looking at sow stalls.

Do sow stalls have a future in Australian piggeries?


Charles Armstrong launches Familes needing Farmers campaign

Farmers pitch to city consumers to buy local

Australian farmers are launching a three-year marketing campaign to entice city consumers to locally grown food in New South Wales. The slogan is Families Needing Farmers.


Cadia mine - workers underground

Construction starts on huge Australian mine

Construction of Australia's largest underground mine has started near Orange in central-west NSW.


The Ord's largest sandalwood harvest begins

The Ord's largest sandalwood harvest begins

Elders forestry are harvesting 125 hectares of plantation Indian sandalwood with a projected yield of 300 tonnes of saleable timber. The Ord Valley is home to the world's largest plantation of Indian sandalwood, but its value on the world market has largely been untested.


Wheels of cheese

All kinds of dairy

Step inside the Hastings Co-op dairy factory in Wauchope and it is a hive of activity with workers busy making a whole range of dairy products from cheeses and yoghurts to bottled milk.


Four legs off the ground at Mareeba Rodeo.

2010 61st Mareeba Rodeo

The Mareeba Rodeo is one of the country's most iconic. It's been held every July since 1949 and thousands travel to the town west of Cairns in far north Queensland to experience it.


NSW Premier Kristina Keneally

Property rights dominates farmers conference

Farmers from around NSW are demanding the State Government enact legislation to protect property rights in rural Australia.


Steve Lubiana installing irrigation for his seven hectares of new vines

Tasmanian vineyards expanding

Tasmanian vineyards are looking to plant more vines, despite low grape prices which have plagued wine producers from mainland Australia.


Climate changes desert - birds eye view

Climate change in regional art

Leading regional artists show the impact of climate change on Australia. The landscape works depict resilience.


Gough Whitlam's government also had a plan for regional population

Regional population plan not a new idea

Labor's plan to encourage people to move to regional areas, is not a new one.


Helicopter crash

Chopper crash survivor tells his tale

Chopper pilot Ben Williams is lucky to be alive after his lunch leftovers caused his chopper to crash land.


In full flow on the Cotter

Cotter River gets transfusion

Ecologists will test the success of a water transfusion from the Murrumbidgee River into the Cotter River in the ACT as the Cotter Dam is expanded.


Retired women voters in Eden-Monaro at Merimbula, NSW

Retired women voters want more federal health spending

More rural health spending is the big election issue for retired regional women over 55 on the south coast of NSW. Hear the views of many coastal women voters at Merimbula in the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro.


Rural Reporter Nikolai Beilharz interviews John and Kaaren Whyte at the mouth of the Murray River

Heading South: The Rural Report heads to the lower lakes

Mildura reporter Nikolai Beilharz is taking part in a study tour of the Lower Lakes of the Murray. He's with a group of farmers from in and around north-west Victoria and southern New South Wales, who are trying to find out first hand what it's like to be on live life at the bottom of the Murray Darling Basin.