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Professor Alex McBratney, a pioneer of global soil science who has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society.

Robot jazz and power naps: How a Sydney soil scientist got on par with Einstein

Alex Broadfoot McBratney, a Renaissance man with a penchant for art, poetry, language and lyricism, has been elevated to the highest echelons of science.

  • Angus Dalton

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Mice scurry around stored grain on a farm near Tottenham, Australia, Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Vast tracts of land in Australia's New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as absolutely unprecedented." Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Multi-billion-dollar hit coming to crop exports as mouse plague hits WA farmers

Landholders in Northampton, Mullewa and Ravensthorpe are recording more than 8000 mice per hectare.

  • Connor McGoverne
Jody Brown is observing more days of extreme heat on her Queensland property.

Jody fought drought for 20 years and now, her worst fears are confirmed

Australia’s comprehensive outline of the climate threat is overdue, but the outlook is already diabolical.

  • Nick O'Malley
Does Anthony Albanese (right) really want to follow Donald Trump’s lead on defence spending?

Pistol and Boo should have disguised themselves as (maybe mad) cows

Australia’s strict quarantine authorities famously booted out the movie star dogs. A few years later they are overturning a ban on US beef. We’re truly living in Trumpworld now.

  • Tony Wright
Alison Bransdon and her children, Madeleine, 11, and Harvey, 9, with the chickens they raise in their backyard in Sydney’s south.

Chooks in the city: How an egg shortage drove the return of the backyard hen

As egg prices remain stubbornly high, the humble backyard chook is enjoying renewed popularity in urban areas. Here’s how to keep the eggs coming.

  • Shona Hendley
Beef cattle on a farm near Winslow, Victoria.

‘Dairy shortages, no ifs or buts’: Milk and butter prices to rise as farmers tread water

The high cost of recovery from repeated floods and droughts will contribute to inflation on supermarket shelves.

  • Jessica Yun
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When was the last time egg prices were $4.20?

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton were asked about the price of eggs – and one politician’s answer was much further off the mark than the other.

  • Jessica Yun
Hessians on the Field contestant Alice Williams, 15.

They are the Potato Festival’s best dressed. Think Fashions on the Field – but itchier

It’s harvest time in Thorpdale, but the town chips in to celebrate the humble spud with custom-made clothes, a potato-picking race and a speed-eating mash competition.

  • Carolyn Webb
Bari Sulejman

‘Maggots in the fruit’: Orchards under attack as pest prevention funds shrink

Councils in the food bowl are calling for urgent reinstatement of government funding to protect some of Victoria’s most fertile orchards from fruit fly.

  • Benjamin Preiss
The egg shortage is partly the result of bird flu outbreaks.

‘Crazy jump in price’: Shoppers, farmers brace for years-long egg shortage

Bird flu outbreaks have choked the nation’s supply of eggs – and frustrated egg farmers say the proposed ban on caged eggs is exacerbating the problem.

  • Jessica Yun