Jack Becker and David Riceman turn Ninety-Mile Desert into farms on Coonalpyn Downs by using trace elements
The grain silo, with mural, at Coonaplyn, a centre of South Australia's transformed Coonalpyn Downs agricultural area.
South Australia’s Ninety-Mile Desert was transformed into Coonalpyn Downs agricultural land by entrepreneur Jack Becker and scientist David Riceman from 1943 when Becker bought 3,080 hectares of “poor despised land” 13km west of Keith. Although it received 45cm annual rainfall, the region was unproductive due to soil that was largely leached silicious sand (Laffer sand).
The deficiency of soil trace elements – manganese, copper, zinc and molybdenum – on pasture and on grazing stock had been found in parts of Western Australia, South Australia and New Zealand and shown a decade before by research workers in Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – later CSIRO) and at Adelaide’s Waite Agricultural Research Institute.
When Becker brought his Beckersfield property near Keith at 27/6d per hectare in 1943, he knew about David Riceman's work with the CSCIR on mineral deficiencies in the soil at Robert Dawson’s farm in Robe, in South Australia’s south east. Becker made available land, labour and any other help Riceman needed to test trace elements at Beckersfield.
The first cereal and pasture plots sewn in 1944 showed they responded to superphosphate but, more profoundly, copper and zinc. Riceman's work continued until 1948. It greatly increased farm and pastoral plus scientific understanding. Some, including Becker, became very wealthy, with land prices rising from about 25/- per hectare to about £25. Becker himself moved into producing and harvesting high-quality pasture seeds, especially Clare subterranean clover and perennial veldt grass.
Becker developed seed of a satisfactory purity and germination that he sold commercially through his Unarlee Pastoral Company with Alf Hannaford, a maker of agricultural machinery, who delivered the seed to farmers around the state in his fleet of trucks fitted with the wheat seed grading and pickling machine he invented.
