Vaulted up: government seedbank project put on ice after 'surprise' job cuts
by Dakota TaitThe future of one of the few government-operated native seedbanks in NSW is up in the air after its entire casual workforce was slashed.
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A reported 12 employees involved in native seed harvest, storage and planting lost their jobs at Murray Local Land Services last week in a move that came "out of the blue", according to one employee.
The work of the native seed industry has been increasingly in demand in recent years to meet the needs of revegetation around on-farm carbon projects or conserving and restoring agricultural land to generate offset credits for developments.
A Local Land Services spokesperson said further seed collection was not required in the "foreseeable future", given the large stockpile of seed being maintained.
"The Native Seed Services seed store currently holds around 2000 kilograms of seed, with annual sales of about 86 kilograms," they said.
"Local Land Services is reviewing how the service is delivered to ensure it remains sustainable, responsive to demand and focused on the needs of landholders and communities.
"We are engaging directly with affected staff and will continue to value their skills and contribution to native seed and restoration work across the region."
The spokesperson did not respond to a request to confirm how many staff members lost their jobs.
Peter Watson, a team leader of the casual staff, said he was one of four staff members at Deniliquin who were told their jobs were cut as of the end of the financial year.
Another reported eight casual staff based in Albury and Corowa were also made redundant.
At least two permanent staff would remain employed by the seedbank, including a manager.
Mr Watson said he had been told about the cuts by his supervisor ahead of the announcement to the rest of the staff on NSW budget day last Tuesday (June 23).
"It actually came as a very big surprise, because prior to that, all the talk had been actually in terms of expanding," he said.
"Last year or this season, they'd just taken a five-year lease on a fairly substantial shed in Albury, and there was money being allocated to set up, effectively a coolroom, but we call it a vault to store the seeds."
Mr Watson said they were told the state government was not prepared to continue the same level of funding for the native seedbank, which had been operating for more than 20 years.
It was unclear what the decision would mean for the native seedbank on an operational level.
State member for Murray Helen Dalton has written to the Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty earlier this week, but as of time of publication, was yet to receive a response.
Ms Dalton said the future of the seedbank and upcoming harvests was unclear.
"What walks out the door with them is decades of knowledge about where our local native species grow and how to collect them," she said.
"Once these people are scattered that knowledge is simply gone and you cannot buy it back."
Mr Watson said he had other employment in the quiet months, but would have to find another suitable job to fit with it.
Staff members could work up to 50 hours a week during the peak harvest in late December and early January, Mr Watson said, which tapered off towards the middle of the year.
"We would go from the monitoring sort of stage of the seed season, through the harvest, then we would actually draw and clean those seeds for depositing into the vault," he said.
"During this time of the year, I would also do the direct seeding stuff."
The team was also involved in large-scale seeding and native revegetation on both public and private land, Mr Watson said, including projects with the Biodiversity Conservation Trust and supporting farmers with offsets for land clearing.
Mr Watson said the work was "fairly highly-skilled as well", involving not only physical labour but plant identification and management.
"It's a bit like farming really, it's farming on steroids," he said.
"Because you have to know when the seeds are actually ready to bring in. If you bring it in too soon, it's the same as grain, it goes mouldy.
"And then all the different species, and then there's the processes of cleaning it.
"A lot of your acacias and hard seeds are pretty much the same, but then we do what we call light and fluffy stuff, which is your flowers and sort of different things.
"It's quite highly specialised in terms of being able to clean and process those seeds to separate everything out."
For environmental groups such as Greening Australia, native seedbanks have been essential for work like nature corridors, shelterbelts and biodiverse native carbon credit projects on agricultural properties.
The group has access to nine native seedbanks across the country through supplier Nindethana, but also relies on smaller local seedbanks to source seed of local provenance.
Greening Australia executive director of seed Peter Young said the native seed industry underpinned both general and natural capital improvements on farms.
"You are providing shelter and really good opportunities for livestock to thrive," he said.
"At the same time, you're also putting back into nature and helping those natural systems work back on the farm properties and bringing a lot of biodiversity into that landscape."
Mr Young said demand for native seed was only increasing, and people in the industry had "very niche" and "very important skills".
It was important to make sure seed supplies were ethically and sustainably sourced, he said.
"There is a lot about how much seed you can collect from an individual species or an individual plant and then how much from an individual area as well," he said.
"And also that local knowledge about when these species are going to flower, where they can collect them from.
"It's not just the seed collection, it's also those skills around how that seed is managed ... how it's stored, how it's treated, how it's processed as well."
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