While at the Northern Australian Food Futures Conference, Oli Le Lievre sat down with Tom White, an agronomist for Elders in Katherine.

Tom has a real love of plants and has wanted to be an agronomist since doing work experience at B&W Rural...during a drought. 

Originally from Toowoomba, when Tom was first offered the position up in Katherine (only 3 months into his grad position with Elders), he immediately turned it down saying he was “too green and just probably didn’t have that confidence”.

After 5 months of being pestered, he decided it was time to “catch the bull and run hard” and moved to Katherine in August of last year.

We’ve collected together some of the best bits from the chat:

How Tom describes an agronomist:

“I think in the simplest words, you could say you'd be a doctor for plants.  Obviously, you want the grower to be making money because at the end of the day if they're winning, you'll be winning.

So it's advice on what you want to plant and how to grow things. And yeah, just try and be as economical and sustainable, just try to get those yields year after year are a big thing. I mean, getting it once is pretty good, but if you can do it year after year, that's the goal.“

How has he found the experience and what he recommends to others:

“It's been an unreal experience, the best experience. I reckon if I could recommend anything to people it would be ‘learn to be uncomfortable’. Get out of your comfort zones and go and do that because you wouldn't get these types of experiences if you just stay in your little comfort bubble.”

The theme for this year's Northern Australian Food Futures Conference was ‘Myths, Opportunities and Realities’, we asked what the biggest myth in the Northern Territory is:

“I think the biggest myth is you can't grow intense production systems, the way that people are farming up here at the moment is pretty good, and it's been in the running for a while like they've definitely got their head around it and they're certainly going to get better as the years go on.”

His advice to students considering a career in agriculture:

“I’d say give it a crack. You only have to be as good as the fella that's applying next to you. So yeah, don't ever cut yourself short or think that you're not ready or that you're not good enough. Yeah, just bite off more than you can chew.”