Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand, and the people doing great things in those industries. To learn more about neXtgen Agri, visit www.nextgenagri.com.
Head Shepherd
Irrigation Insights with Tessa Chartres
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This week on the podcast we have one of the fantastic winners of the 2024 Zanda McDonald Award, Tessa Chartres, to discuss her career, how she manages her work-life balance and much more.
Tessa grew up on a farm in Bathurst. She became an accountant, specialising in agribusiness and farming, and later moved to Deniliquin to be with her husband. There, she joined Murray Irrigation, where she is now the General Manager of Business Development. With Muray Irrigation providing irrigation for 740,000 hectares of farmland, Tessa's role is certainly diverse.
“The thing I love about irrigation is I get to be a part of so many different industries across the ag sector. I see so many different crops or livestock or dairies or any of those things,” she explains. “Being part of the water sector means I get to have an influence on all of those parts and enable all of those different strains of the ag sector to exist in our footprint.”
Tessa sees irrigation as the lifeblood of the region and believes that Murray Irrigation is vital in ensuring the growth and sustainability of the region. With that comes a huge responsibility, particularly in light of climate change, environmental impacts and the concept of water as a tradable commodity.
“What has been interesting about it, has been how people have adapted to the change in water availability, both from water being removed through mechanisms for the environment and just with climate change,” Tessa explains. “What I see is often people adapting to those in really interesting and different ways within their business models. Concepts around permanent and temporary water and how people can structure their businesses to suit the commodity that they're producing is something that, from my business mind, I've found that interesting.”
Tessa and Mark also discuss work-life balance, the importance of good employers, a lively community and how she made all of this happen with two young twins! Tessa's story is a great example of a mutually successful career trajectory and personal life.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited.
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Irrigation and Water Policy in Agriculture
Speaker 1Welcome Tessa Chartres to the show .
Speaker 2Thanks , mark , great to be here .
Speaker 1Excellent One of the selected winners of the Zander McDonald Award in 2024 . That was a pretty good evening down there in Queenstown .
Speaker 2Yeah , great , Great week really . Yeah , it was brilliant to be over there , New Zealand . Certainly much cooler there than what I was expecting , but yeah , no , it was brilliant and a huge honour to come away with the award and excited to start planning all the next steps as well . So really enjoyable .
Speaker 1Yeah , it was a great conference , the summit and a great group of people to be around for a couple of days , that's for sure . We might start back at the beginning . Maybe I don't know how far you want to go back , but I guess your career to date and then we'll get to what you do now .
Speaker 2Yeah , can do so . I grew up on a mixed beef and sheep farm in Bathurst , which is slightly cooler than Dunillipin where I am now , but we grew up there on the family farm . It's sort of two and a half hours inland of Sydney , so in the central tablelands there . So that's probably where the love of ag and farming came from for me . But actually an accountant by trade , after working through a few options of what to do with myself after school , but , yeah , got stuck into the accounting and did my accounting degree whilst working at a local firm there in Bathurst . So I pretty quickly found out . My partner there gave me some good advice that if I could do whatever I want if I was a good accountant which has turned out to be very helpful advice , as it's turned out . So he , um , he steered me in the right direction , and lots of our clients there were small farming partnerships around the region so got my teeth into accounting for agribusiness and farming and uh really went from there uh , until I decided to make those down to denilican , where I'm based now , and my husband is a local here . Their family farm is here as well .
Speaker 2So I thought I'd be pretty right moving from local small town to local small town but ended up in an irrigation footprint and getting a job at an irrigation company . So it was about end of 2017 when I moved down to Denny's . So it was right in the middle of that last pretty bad drought that we had pretty low opportunity for jobs , pretty low economic situation here in the footprint and grabbed a job at Murray Irrigation , where I am now . So I've been here for the last seven years now and worked through the accounting sector and was the GM of finance for a little bit and then now I've jumped over into the general manager of business development so I manage our Commonwealth-funded projects water policy , ict transformation , as well as a few of our commercial sort of contract insurance and sort of things like that . So , yeah , I've really diversified out into more of a broader impact into water policy and irrigation , which I'm really enjoying .
Speaker 1Yeah , right , and it's no , I don't think it's a place for the faint-hearted . The Murray-Darling Basin is you've just got to mention those words in some parts of australia and you get emotions flowing and yeah , so it's obviously how you treat water in a in the driest continent on earth is a fairly important , important job yeah , I think that's what I found really interesting about it certainly my accounting background and how those same frameworks can be applied to accounting for water and the management of that resource .
Speaker 2I found really A critical and B fascinating understanding how that functions . Yeah , water policy has certainly been an unexpected love of mine . That's come about since moving to Denny . It certainly wasn't on my radar beforehand but it certainly seems to consume 99% of my time now . So , yeah , and I think the other thing I love about irrigation is I get to be a part of so many different industries across the ag sector . I see so many different crops or livestock or dairies or any of those things . Rice is one that's really come to the forefront for me now . I'm learning a lot about that , but certainly irrigated agriculture and being part of the water sector means I get to have influence on all of those parts and enabling all of those different strains of the ag sector to exist in our footprint . So I think that's why I've really enjoyed being part of it as well .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I guess over that seven-year time period and probably I mean a few years before that but there's been massive change in the types of things getting watered and where that water's gone . I mean , my mum grew up just near Echuca on , where they were flood irrigating lots of dairy pastures and a lot of that water sort of would have now been sold and shifted to an almond orchard somewhere else , and so yeah , there's been a lot of changes to where we get , I guess , efficiency and bang for buck for water and lots of all that goes with that and obviously really heavy infrastructure around . All that which I guess is part of your job is sort of working out how that works , yeah .
Speaker 2Yeah , no for sure . The infrastructure is a huge part of it . For us , for context , murray Irrigation operates a series of gravity-fed earthen channels that were built way back , sort of around the time of the Second World War is when that all started , but it's been modernized and now it's all remotely controlled from our office . But that infrastructure is worth sort of over a billion dollars . So the forecasting and planning for that asset is a huge part of what we do and part of what I'm involved with , and making sure that channel network is able to provide services to all of those different types of different sectors that are going on , like you're talking about now . There's crops that are able to switch on and off seasonally with water demand , like rice , and those ones that you're talking about there , the almonds , that need the water regardless of how wet or dry it is . So it's a real focus just for us to make sure that we're able to keep that water going and have it there for whenever anyone needs it .
Water Management and Work-Life Balance
Speaker 1Yeah , we'll just digress a little bit into my childhood , but I grew up with my grandfather on the CT-110 , I think , going in there with a shovel and opening banks up and letting water flow onto irrigation bays and setting the water wheel going and stuff , whereas my cousins there would press something somewhere , whereas Solanoa does all of that . Yeah , so obviously massive changes . And then I think that channel network is just phenomenal . I grew up in Hopeton , north West , where somehow , from the Grampians back in the 40s , I managed to find a way to get water to flow all those caves and keep obviously downhill , because the water only goes one way . And yeah , I just think some of the infrastructure projects of that time were just ridiculous when you think of the technology they had . I mean , today it would be relatively easy but with a sort of a horse and a scoop and get into it . That was pretty amazing .
Speaker 2Yeah , no , fully . We've got some pictures of them like you talk about , with the horse and cart dredging out the channels . And I think I find that even more fascinating here because if you've ever been to somewhere like Denny or the Hay Plains , then there's not a whole lot of incline there to work with from the get-go . So it's all very precision done , it's very clever .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I think I mean the mountains of Queen Town are beautiful , but I think , denny , it's bizarre how flat it is . It's actually quite amazing how flat it is out there and almost almost as inspiring as the , as the , as the mountains of just the dead flatness is something you have to see to believe . Really . I think everyone should go for a drive out there once , once in their life at least . And um , that's , yeah , it is phenomenal and yeah , how the hell you ever get water to go the right way out there , I have no idea , but you know they , they managed to achieve it . The um , it literally the lifeblood of that region . Obviously the water . What are we seeing ? I guess social changes and stuff with as these different crops come and go . Are we seeing different ? I don't know . Does that open up different industries , different opportunities ?
Speaker 2Yeah , certainly . I mean I think what's been interesting about it has been how people have adapted to the change in water availability , both from water being removed through mechanisms for the environment and just with climate change . So I think what I see is often people adapting to those in really interesting and different ways within their business models , adapting to those in really interesting and different ways within their business models . The concepts around permanent and temporary water and how people are able to structure their businesses to suit the commodity that they're producing is something that , from my business mind , I've found that really interesting , and how people are going about that .
Speaker 2I think the availability of water seasonally people are able to opt in and out based on a temporary market and some of those guys that have got a bit more of a permanent pasture or permanent planting in they're going to be more reliant on that value of the permanent entitlement . So even that is an economics sort of observation has been really interesting in watching the asset that is now water entitlement develop into what it is today and that's only going to become more important as we continue into more variable times . I think is what I find interesting . It's an easy option to go for hotter and drier , but what we're kind of observing is certainly just more intense periods of wet or dry , so , and both of those come with their own unique challenges and opportunities . So it's really about that adaption to how we use water as an asset .
Speaker 1I think it's been really interesting for me , yeah , and I guess I mean the obvious thing is you'd improve water efficiency through making sure you're ideally it's going under the ground to the plant or it's pivot rather than flood , and like there's different ways that people will be adapting depending on the business . Yeah , I guess they opt in , opt out on a given year . That is , yeah , some crops can , some crops can't , but that's yeah , that sort of temporary water is and we've got clients and friends who who operate on temporary water and it makes some years , makes the enterprise really really robust , and other years it almost breaks the enterprise because it's not there and it's a . It's a hard thing to build resilience into a business where I mean , I guess that's farming that rains , it doesn't rain and water is there or it's not , but it's , um , it's sort of , I guess , even height , even more height , and where you're relying on irrigation because it's might even be rainfall somewhere else .
Speaker 2That's impacting your , your outcome yeah , yeah , certainly , and I think and that's just a really personal choice for what people have got going on in their own businesses sometimes it works for people to not have to pay that permanent entitlement um fee and have a little bit more money saved up when those dry times come to be able to just go cash into the tent market . I mean , the other interesting thing about this whole situation obviously is that you don't have to own land to own a water entitlement . So seeing the movement of that towards its own asset class and investment strategies from people who aren't necessarily farming is obviously a huge factor in all of this . So , yeah , how we keep water servicing what we need it to is important as well .
Speaker 1Yeah , and again , if you want to talk emotion charge , you get into water traders and people get . I know .
Speaker 2We weren't doing that today .
Speaker 1Yeah , you know , people , particularly some related to me , get pretty excited around that stuff . But yeah , no , it's obviously . And yeah , I think , if you look , I mean when my grandfather's brothers went to the war and he stayed home to develop the irrigation farms , basically , which is when they were setting up those schemes , and I mean when they were dealing out water , then I suppose it was just , oh , there's a river full and we can allocate it out , kind of thing , and like , yeah , I imagine that , yeah , you look back now and some of those decisions probably weren't that well informed . But that's life , Hindsight is 2020 . If we swing maybe more to you personally , you've had a couple of young twins , which I'm sure was amazing for the first couple of years , but obviously kept a career ticking over . How did you sort of juggle that ?
Speaker 2Yeah , it's an interesting one . So I found out that I was having the twins a couple of days before I was offered a role as a financial tool controller with MIL . So those two things intersecting was a challenging time for me to have a think about how I was going to make that play out . But the beautiful opportunity I've had at MIL is that they've been very supportive with me in being a flexible workplace and supporting me in a real turn to work capacity as well . So , yeah , I think it's a challenge , but I think the other thing that was really supportive and probably the key thing that allowed me to come back to work in my full capacity , was my husband's workplace were equally supportive of him and our family , and that , to me , is probably where I've seen my ability to return to work in the capacity that I've wanted to , and I think that's probably something I'd like to see more of and facilitate more by telling my return to work story . Yeah , without the support provided by my husband's employer and his ability to share that load and be a dad , I wouldn't have been able to come back the way I have . So really I think that's probably a lesson learned for me .
Speaker 2I think mothers returning to work . I think we've probably got as much as what we can do , and I mean we're seeing that in the workplace now and seeing more and more paternity schemes come up , where I know , anz are one that do that a lot . So I think seeing more of that would mean more people being able to do what I've been able to do . So , yeah , and the other one which is a huge challenge in regional and remote communities is obviously childcare . So there's a huge demand at the moment , and I know of people in our community that haven't been able to come back to work because they haven't got care for their kids , even though they've been on the list before they were born . So I think that's probably another thing that we need to start putting some pressure on , addressing and making sure that our community is a resource so that we can do that .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's amazing of the I don't know . We're through that stage of life and the kids are telling us what to do most of the time . But that whole childcare thing kind of yeah , true , they don't have to be very old that whole childcare thing behind the side of me , like I can't remember if it was talking to you or somebody else , but yeah , like it was . And just hearing about now in the media and stuff , just yeah , like that's , when you've got a shortage in that sector , it's obviously limiting the capacity of a whole range of sectors , which is , yeah , obviously needs fixed ASAP . And on all of this it's easy just to point the finger and say the government should do something . But yeah , it will come down to business in the end . And and thinking differently about how how some of that rolls , uh , the yeah , it must have been .
Speaker 2Did you take it , did you ?
Speaker 1take a . Sorry , I could go no , you're right , I was going on a tangent , so you finish and then I'll go right ?
Speaker 2yeah , I , I think that's . That's certainly my philosophy on it and I try to live that and certainly have the same expectations for fathers in my workplace . That's certainly the leadership sort of position I have , so I like to encourage people to take the time when their kids are sick , regardless of that . So that's just part of the modern world , looking forward to it .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I guess I mean it wasn't all positive out of COVID and lots of negatives , but one of them was that everyone got their head around that people can work from wherever and we can be quite functional from our stay-at-home desks and be here when the kids leave , and that's one of the . I do travel a lot for work and that's one of the downsides of the gig , but it means that when I am home , I'm in the home and so I get to hear them yelling at each other and the whole kit and caboodle which is and be there for it . Yeah , I mean that's . We've got a . The hybrid workplace is going to continue to evolve and it's got some . We don't get to have the so-called water cooler or the morning smokey chats , but we do get to see our kids more , which is pretty cool .
Speaker 1Did you take a cortisol test when you had just got diagnosed with twins and then got offered a promotion ? That would have been a quite stressful little diagnosis . Sounds like a disease , doesn't it ? When your twins were detected , yes , yeah , that would have been . I mean , anyone I know that's thought the joy of going pregnant and then going wow , there's two . That's going to be awesome , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2No , no , it was . I did have a sneaking suspicion that might have been the case . My mum has always very kindly assured me that I was a strong gene in both of her and my dad's family , so I was probably not too surprised and also just feeling quite sick quite early .
Speaker 2So I knew that I was like , is this normal or is this something a bit more going on here ? But no , I mean pros and cons , the beauty , and I mean talking about what has made it easier and harder . I mean there are some beautiful efficiencies in having twins as well , so they get dropped off to the same place , they go to the same place . I've only had one mat leave and I've had the two kids , so that's been pretty good .
Speaker 2So I think , um , like most things , look for the positives in the solution there's plenty of them , so yeah , yeah um , yeah , once , once you get over the shock , there's plenty of good things about it .
Speaker 1Yeah , no I definitely , I definitely think , and actually I was quite , quite cool in the concept until we had one , and then I thought that twins would be tough , but the efficiency of getting a couple out at a time is awesome . Yeah , definitely , in addition to ag , music's one of your passions , and so you've managed to get a few passionate people together there in Denny to get the conservatorium going .
Speaker 2Yeah , so we've got the most remote regional conservatorium in new south wales here in denny , so very fortunate to have that here . I grew up playing music , played the clarinet from quite a young age , for about eight years , and got a little bit bored for a little while and then actually took up the harp in later years of high school , which frustrates me to know why I did that . You don't make many harp players , no , and the problem with that is you don't stumble across many harps . You can't sort of . You never just stumble across one at a campfire or anything like that , like you would a guitar . So I kind of wish I'd spent my time on something a little bit more useful , but no , it's a good story and a beautiful instrument , but I do .
Speaker 2I'm very lucky to have the con here in Denny and I sit on the board there and recently appointed as chair .
Speaker 2So I just I guess it's really important for me to for the kids to have music as part of their lives , growing up , regardless of where we are , and I think music and culture is such an important part of the fabric of regional communities and you know we talk about these dry times or wet times , floods and droughts that come around , and it's nice to have things like music to anchor yourself into when things aren't necessarily going away . And I also think it's just really important to make these communities we're living in as strong economically as possible , so that we're attracting and retaining professional services to our regions things like teachers , doctors , nurses , all those sorts of things . We're kind of closing the full loop here on the childcare thing , right , and I think that's why I'm really passionate about making sure these sort of things exist in our region so that we've got a nice , thriving local economy , not just one sector that's doing well and nothing else is there to support it . So , yeah , very lucky to have the con in denny , and it's it's great excellent
Musical Talent and Congratulations
Speaker 2.
Speaker 1I hope you have more luck with your two boys . We got one out of three . After putting three of them through different instruments , one of them , I think , might stick . But anyway , that wasn't from lack of trying from my good wife , but they probably got a guitar player out of all those lessons , so that should be good . There's nothing quite like hearing in the background of your house someone playing an instrument . That's awesome .
Speaker 2Yeah , no , it's really nice . So if anything , I might be able to get stuck into it , if they don't , so that would be nice as well .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , yeah , exactly yeah . Congratulations again , tessa , on winning the 2024 Australian version of the Zanna McDonald Award . It's , yeah , the talent all grows and grows every year and it's an amazing award and we just , yeah , it's great to welcome you into that family and , yeah , I'm sure you'll enjoy your year and when you get to do a tour around and get over here to see the hills again , and when you get to do a tour around and get over here to see the hills again . But , yeah , enjoy the rest of your year as the winner and we look forward to catching up at the next summit .
Speaker 2Yeah , me too , thanks , thanks , Faye . We'll be looking forward to it , that's for sure .
Speaker 1Excellent , thank you .
