Lifelong commitment honoured

A Narrikup farmer was recognised for his lifelong contributions to Australian agriculture and the environment on Monday.

Alex Campbell was named a Member of the Order of Australia for his executive role in many conservation and agriculture organisations.

Mr Campbell has been farming sheep and cattle in Narrikup for 35 years and was excited and surprised to be honoured.

“I’ve lived in the Albany area since 1963, I developed a block in the south-west of Borden, I didn’t have much capital or money and it was really a do-or-die experience,” he said.

Mr Campbell moved to Narrikup in 1976 and became involved with the WA Farmers’ Federation.

He became president of WA Farmers and represented WA in the National Farmers’ Federation from 1989 to 1995 where he managed an environmental portfolio.

“That was an exciting time because the federation and conservation were developing a common understanding which became known as Landcare,” he said.

“After I finished the farming politics thing, I was then very fortunate to be offered the chairmanship of a thing called Land and Water Australia, a research group in Canberra.”

Mr Campbell became very involved in salinity issues at the group and became chair of the State Salinity Council and helped the University of WA set up a research centre for salinity.

This background prepared him for his current tasks of chairing South Coast Natural Resource Management and the UWA Albany Foundation.

He was one of only two farmers to be granted an Honorary Doctor of Agricultural Science by UWA – coincidentally, the other farmer also lives in the Albany area.

Mr Campbell believes there are lessons to be learnt from how salinity was dealt with and these can be applied to the current climate change woes.

“They were saying there would be football field-sized areas of agriculture land lost to salinity, there are similar scary predictions of climate change,” he said.

“In most cases we have to learn to live with salinity or adapt; it’s not the end of the world or the end of farming.

“It’s my belief that we’ll get to that stage with climate change and carbon.”

South Coast NRM is looking into how climate change and carbon can benefit agriculture, for example, wood can provide an alternative energy source.

“That’s the exciting future for agriculture,” he said.

Mr Campbell has passed on the farming bug to his two children and said he and his wife Jenny were in the process of retiring slowly.

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