Nuffield report.

My Nuffield report has now been published and is available here: http://www.nuffieldinternational.org/rep_pdf/1237250841Matthew_Munzberg_Nuffield_report.pdf.

It is titled 'Regional branding and marketing as a tool for improving returns to agricultural producers'. It tells you about the places I visited and some of the things I learnt while travelling on my scholarship last year. I will be travelling to Cairns to give a formal presentation to Nuffield on my report after Easter. If anyone has any comments or questions about my report please feel free to contact me at kammunz@hotmail.com.

Check this link out!

Here is an interesting story I stumbled across on the web. I must say not a bad photo either! http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/2008/09/meet-matthew-munzberg-barossa-grower-on.html

Post from South Africa

Well I am on my way home now. I have been in South Africa for nearly a week, most of that time near Cape Town. I will get back home on the weekend, after spending nearly 17 weeks travelling the world. In that time I have flown around the world twice, done around 30 individual flights and covered nearly 65,000 air miles. I have stayed in around 50 different hotels. I have been to 12 different countries and driven vehicles in 8 of them. In the 10 weeks of my own study I have conducted more than 25 pre arranged interviews, with at least that many more informal meetings. I have also completely missed out on a southern hemisphere winter. The knowledge I have gained on my travels, I believe, will take a long time for me to digest properly and put to use in our business. I would like to say a great big thank you to Nuffield and Nufarm for organizing and funding my scholarship. I would also like to thank all the people I have interviewed and met with, I have been blown away with how generous people have been with their time. Thanks also to the many people who have provided me with contacts to enable me to conduct my study, in some cases they even provided me with a bed as well as answering any questions I had. This experience has been life changing for me and, I believe, will influence just about everything I do in the future.

A Post from London

This week I am in the UK. I have spent some time near Cambridge and I am now in London. I am staying at the Farmers club right in the heart of London just across the Thames from the London Eye. I flew in from France last Thursday. I really enjoyed my time in Eastern France and learnt lots about how wine is made in the 'old world', and some of the mystic that is attached to it. The photo is another that I took while I was in France, in the Alsace region.

Back at home in the Barossa Valley it has been a relatively dry week, with only 2.8mm of rain recorded. We have also had 3 frosts (2 of them quite a low -1.4C). I hope these have not done any damage, I have been told that some of our vines were at woolly bud stage and so will be vulnerable to frost from now on.

A Post from Alsace France

I am in Strasbourg, France currently. I spent a couple of days longer in Spain than I was hoping to, due to very heavy flight bookings. I have been in France for 4 days and am really enjoying it, despite not knowing much French. The people are very friendly and try to help any way they can. I am quite glad that I do not need to farm some of the land that they grow grapes on. The vineyards are very steep with very high planting densities. I have seen very few vineyards that could be worked mechanically here, but the small land holdings probably make this impractical anyway. The rules that they also need to comply with would cause me frustration, but they do also provide some stability to their industry that we do not enjoy back home. The photo shows a traditional French village with an ancient fort overlooking it, surrounded by vineyards.

Back in the Barossa Valley it has been drizzly and we have had several frosts. We recorded 11mm of rain for the week over 5 days. I believe we are also seeing the first signs of bud swell.

Post from Spain

Today I am posting from Barcelona in Spain. I have spent most of this week on the Mediterranean coastal region. Grape growing here is very interesting - while the climate is similar to the Barossa Valley, the soils are very different. The stony and chalky type soils produce very low vigour vines. I have visited several wine regions while here, but lack of time will limit me to regions close to Barcelona. Next I am heading to France. The photo is of a typical Spanish vineyard, although this one is a relatively high vigour one. This was taken in the hills above Tarragona.

Back at home it is continuing to rain in small amounts, we have had a total of 14.8mm for the week and recorded some rainfall 6 out 7 days. We have started mowing down our cover crop. This years' cover crop is looking like one of the best we have grown for quite a few years - not a bad result considering it has not had any artificial fertiliser, only the fowl manure we usually put on every second row each year. I think we must be doing something right with our soil!

Another Airport - this time JFK New York

Well this blog comes to you from New York. I am waiting for a flight to the UK, where I will be spending the weekend before flying on to Barcelona to have a look at wine growing in Spain. This week I have spent here in New York and in Maryland, I have been talking to wine promotion people and regional marketing organizations. I am interested in how regions brand, and then market themselves - as I feel the Barossa Valley is not doing as good a job as it could at this. My Nuffield scholarship that I am on at the moment is helping me find out how other regions are doing this and giving me lots of ideas that the Barossa might like to try.
The photo today was taken in Washington state, it is of the entrance to the Red Mountain AVA, a relatively small but, I think up and coming area for premium grapes.
Back at home it continues to rain in small amounts. We have had 20mm for the week, however this was spread over 5 days (useful, but not ideal). Just another piece of news I have from home, this week the Barossa Grape and Wine association appointed a CEO. He is Sam Holmes, and I look forward to meeting him and working with him when I get back home.

Boise, Idaho

I am currently in Boise, Idaho. I have spent most of the last week in the Washington wine growing area. For a relatively young wine growing region, they are making some amazingly good wines. There are also some of the worlds best winemakers working here. So far I have been very fortunate with the weather - everywhere that I have been has been fine and warm but not too hot. This coming week I will be flying to the west coast of the USA. The photo this week is of sunset in Washington state taken near Dayton.

This week at home in the Barossa we have only had 4.4mm of rain for the week. This is only enough to keep things damp, but we do still need some heavy soaking rains before the end of winter.

First week of own study in California

I have now been here in California for nearly a week. I have spent all week in the grape growing areas near San Francisco. I have been to Lodi and the Napa and Sonoma valleys, I am currently in Davis. I was able to get a quick introduction to some of the viticulture research that is being done here at UC Davis. Next week I will be flying to Idaho and from there going to Washington state.
Back home in the Barossa Valley it continues to be cold and rainy. We have had another 8.2mm of rain for the week and are now only about 12mm short of setting a 10 year record for July rainfall. It has also been very cold, 2 nights we recorded below zero temperatures and a couple of days only struggling up to 10C.

Back in Australia - for now

I have now been back in Australia for nearly a week. I have not been home, my family has been holidaying with me on the Gold Coast in Queensland. I have been enjoying some much cooler weather than we got in the Philippines and China, while my family has escaped the cold and rainy weather back home. Tomorrow they will be going back home, to normality and school, while I will be flying out to the San Francisco to start the solo stage of my Nuffield study. I will be away for another 8 weeks before I see home again. It has been faantastiic to catch up with my wife and family and have a bit of a chance to recharge my batteries before diving into my own study. I will try to update my blog a little more regularly, now that I am on my own.
Back at home in the Barossa it has been raining again this week. We have had approx. another 12.5mm of rain, we have now had our average rainfall for July - anything more this month is a much needed bonus, as we are still behind (by about 50mm) our average for the year.

Post from the Philippines

Well our global focus program is winding up now. We have just left Manila on our way back to Australia. We stayed at the International Rice Research Institute. This was an very good place to end our world tour, considering how crucial rice is to so much of the worlds population and how much world rice stocks influence grain prices. We have seen how this institute is trying to improve rice yields to offset the increase in world population and at the same time, the reduction in area that is being planted. The photo shows rice paddy's in the Philippines, with a monsoonal shower in the background.
Back home in the Barossa it has been raining and quite cold again. We had about 26mm of rain for the week ending Fri. 11th July.

Flying in China

We are about to get on a domestic flight in China from Guangzhou to Nanjing. As is usual with our group, the flight is delayed, so I have a little time to update my blog. China is a country of contrasts, they are obviously expanding at a furious rate, but at the same time a lot of the farming is being done much like it has been done for hundreds of years. There are very few young farmers in this country - all the young people want to do is move to the cities and get jobs in the many factories here. Farming is considered a very low class occupation, until this attitude changes, I do wonder how China will be able to feed itself. The photo today shows fruit and vegetables for sale in one of the many wet markets we have seen here.

Back home it has been raining this week, not sure how much, looks like around about 10mm. our season is shaping up to be fairly dry - we will need a really wet month soon!

Update from LAX

We are in the middle of a long layover in LAX as part of our Nuffield global focus tour. We are currently in the One World club lounge during a 8 hour wait for a connecting overnight flight to Hong Kong. This is a very nice lounge, much nicer than some we have used during our travels. The last 5 days have been spent in north and western Oklahoma. The usual comment that we have been getting is, why are you going there? Well we have been learning about all kinds of things, from dairy operations (yet again) to cheese making (somewhat related) to oil production and wind energy. The photo shows a fairly late wheat crop being harvested in the Oklahoma panhandle under quite threatening skies.

We have had very little rainfall back home, it looks like we have only had 0.8mm for the week.

This week 20th June 2008

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while - we have been very busy on our Nuffield global focus tour. We are currently in NW Oklahoma, in beef and oil country. Our group is having a amazing time, we have been looking at all kinds of things including a very interesting visit to Oklahoma state university, where we talked to a cereal seed breeder and turf grass researchers (among others). We also had meetings with deans of most of the agriculture related departments of the university. Earlier in the week we spent some time in Maryland, this was a very interesting part of the world, we even got to spend an evening on an oyster skip jack with a real local character giving us a run down on some of the local seafood history. I haven't had a chance to organize any photos for this post, but I will make sure that I have some next time.
They have not had much rain at home in the last week, I believe that there has only been about 3mm (the Nuriootpa weather station has been offline for several days again this week).

Delayed Flight

We are currently in Boston(USA) waiting for a delayed flight to Washington DC. So I thought I would write just a little about what we have been up to. We spent the last 3 days in France. While there we visited a number of small (by our standards) farms. It appears to us that these farms are only viable because of the EU subsidies that they receive (even though it is obviously very productive land). We also visited the Rungies international market early monday morning to see fruit, veggies, cheese and meat being traded there. They also trade seafood and flowers there, however they were not open on Monday. This was a very impressive visit with fruit and veg, that I have never seen before being traded. There are something like 25,000 trucks that pick up or deliver to this market every day. Last night we stayed in a really nice French country villa. The photo shows pigs ready for sale.

This week 13th June

Good news for the Barossa this week. We have recieved 15.8mm of rain, to keep our vineyard going. We are still well behind our average rainfall for the year, we have only had 95mm so far (our average up till the end of this month is 203mm). I am still hopeful that we will get the very wet winter that we really need.

I am currently in Chartres, France on the Nuffield global focus tour. We have been having an incredible time. Our group of 11 (8 Aussies, 2 Kiwi's and a token Canadian) are all feeling rather tired. We are having to cope with very early mornings and late nights as well as jet lag and long sessions visiting farms and listening to other presentations. I have learnt more about the world dairy industry in the last 2 weeks than I will probably ever be able to use. But it is not just dairy, we have been to pig, sheep, beef, cropping, poultry, thoroughbred horse and seafood farm operations and have had a chance to question the owners/managers of all of them (we have even been to some farms that I think they actually farm tractors, one Irish farm had more than 60). I do not have any photos to show this week, as I haven't had time to download them from my camera.

Touring NZ

We are in NZ at the moment. We will be leaving this fabulous country tomorrow afternoon to fly to Ireland via Hong Kong. We have been having an amazing time looking at all kinds of farms and talking to farmers and other people about farming. The first photo shows Ackaroa harbour on the Banks Peninsular. The second photo is of Mt. Hutt taken from near Methven.

This week 30th May 2008

I am currently in NZ. I have been visiting the Marlborough grape growing region this week as part of my Nuffield Scholarship. On Sunday I will be meeting up with some of the other Aussie scholars (and some assorted Kiwi's) to start our global focus tour. We will be spending 6 weeks travelling together, looking at farms and farming related things all over the world. Tonight I am staying with one of the NZ scholars that will be travelling with us from Methven south of Christchurch.
Just for the record the Barossa Valley has recorded 11.2mm of rain in the last week, sounds like mostly from a thunder storm.

This week 23rd May 2008

My weather data for this week is incomplete due to the Nuriootpa weather station going down after rainfall last weekend.
We have had just over 40mm of rain in the last week. I am writing this from Sydney airport, on my way out of Australia. I am just about to start my travel as part of my Nuffield scholarship. Today I will be flying to Christchurch in New Zealand. I will try to update you all as I am travelling, and let you know where I am and what I am doing. I will also try to let you know what is happening at home in the vineyard, however I will not be back home for another 16 weeks - so there will be no photos of home and only limited weather data. I am sorry if anyone needs this info but you should be able to access it at weatherzone.com. The photo today shows part of our contract hand pruning gang doing a hand cleanup on some Shiraz vines, on a cool misty morning in the Barossa Valley.

This week: 9th. May 2008

Weather Report Week Ending 9/5/08
Maximum Temperature for the week 21.1C (70F) on Sun. All 7 readings above our monthly average of 17.3C.
Minimum Temperature for the week 5.2C (41F) on Sun. 5 readings above our monthly average of 6.5C.
Rainfall for the Week 1.6mm (5 points) 4 days of rainfall recorded.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Surprisingly warm this week. Very mild stable conditions all week. Just heavy fog and mist in the mornings giving us our rainfall recordings this week.

This week in the vineyard:
The photo shows that our covercrop is now well under way. At this stage it looks very good, however will probably need some more rain on it before too much longer (I am not very concerned about it, yet). We have been removing an old patch of Sauv. Blanc this week, however we are not planning to replant it this spring – it will be left fallow for 12 months. This will give us time to prepare the block a little better for the new planting (as well as giving our winery some time to decide what they would like planted there).
I will be leaving on my Nuffield scholarship in less than 2 weeks now. I have, after some difficulty, finally, applied for my Chinese Visa and after a number of phone calls to the embassy in Canberra, to straighten a few things out; it is now being processed for me. Hopefully my Passport will be back in my hands by the end of this coming week.