Churchill Fellow receives award
Gippsland Water’s local Agribusiness manager, Jono Craven, officially received his Churchill Fellowship at a ceremony held at Government House, Melbourne.
A Churchill Fellowship offers ordinary Australians the opportunity to travel to the far edges of the globe to conduct valuable research in their field and bring back knowledge, experience, ideas and innovation for the betterment of their industry and Australia.
Jono will use the Fellowship to research effective recycling of urban and agricultural wastes to provide positive outcomes for agriculture.
As part of his study which will commence next year, Jono will visit Israel, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, USA and Canada looking at innovative methods of recycling, manufacturing processes and compost uses in agriculture.
“This is a great opportunity to further my knowledge in this area and then share those learnings with industry and the wider community,” said Jono.
Jono’s particular interest in compost development comes from his involvement in the development of Revive Recycled Compost at Gippsland Water’s Soil and Organic Recycling Facility at Dutson Downs near Sale.
“We’ve been using Revive for some time and the benefit is clear to see. However other countries have been using similar products for longer. One of my goals is to see what the best practice is overseas and see if we can’t adopt some of that here in Australia where compost use is still relatively small.”
"When you look at European countries that have very, very high rates of recycling of 80 to 90 per cent, they're land constrained, they have high environmental standards. So everything that is produced is recycled in some way or form. In Australia we are on the way, but we have a fair way to go,” concluded Jono.
Gippsland Water’s agribusiness unit manages more than 10,000 hectares of grazing and cropping enterprise across 12 properties.
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