A Western Australian farmer who planted more than a million trees on his 20,000 hectare wheat and sheep property in the past decade and helped kick off WA’s eucalyptus oil industry, has won the 2006 individual landcarer award at the National Landcare Awards.

Ian Stanley is the third of a four generation pioneering farming family operating in the Kalannie district of the central wheatbelt since the mid 1940s. When he took over the farm the paddocks were completely cleared so that crops could be grown economically and efficiently.

When the WA Dept of Conservation and Land Management approached Kalannie farmers to trial mallee trees on their properties for salinity control and oil production, Ian and his father Don were initially sceptical and then enthusiastic as they realised the trees could produce an economic return and also help control surface water, lower water tables, and prevent wind erosion.

The trees are planted in belts across the direction of the prevailing winds with cropping ‘alleys’ in between designed to match cropping machinery.

Ian and his father encouraged other WA farmers to incorporate mallees in their farming systems, which led to the establishment of the Oil Mallee Association of WA in 1995 and the commercial arm, the Oil Mallee Company, in 1997. Ian Stanley is currently president of the OMC.

The OMC is developing harvesting and distilling technology and sells eucalyptus oil to China, Japan and Australia. It is currently supporting research into the marketing of mallee products such as activated carbon, charcoal, high cineole eucalyptus oil and ethanol.

The company is also involved in planting mallee eucalypts to offset corporations’ greenhouse gas emissions. Mallee is considered ideal for carbon sequestration because it is long-lived, resistant to disease, unpalatable to stock, and adapted to the soil and climate.

More than 1000 WA growers are now into mallees, and some NSW farmers are also following suit. Through Ian Stanley’s foresight and innovation, dryland growers now have the chance to plant trees, earn carbon credits and benefit from improved landscape productivity.

Read more about Ian Stanley’s award at http://www.landcareonline.com/news_details.asp?sType=news&news_id=137