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A social media trend where eager tourists drive out to flowering canola fields, jump fences and seek out the perfect selfie is becoming “dangerous” and a growing biosecurity risk for farmers.
Two weeks ago, Tim Condon was driving over the crest of a hill at about 90km/h near Harden–Murrumburrah in southern New South Wales when he had to slam on the brakes. He said two cars of families with little kids were spread out across the road taking photos of the canola.
“Luckily I was in a Prado and had the wits about me so I could stop in time. If I had been a big double stock crate, full of stock, you wouldn’t have been able to stop. So that really hit me in the face at how unaware a lot of these people are.”
Each spring, social media platforms like Instagram are saturated with photos of people posing in a sea of yellow canola flowers with captions such as “The best things in life are free” and “Life is full of beauty, sometimes we have to slow down to notice it”.
Condon, who is a Delta agronomist and works with growers across the NSW Hilltops region, said the social media trend is becoming a problem in Harden because it’s so close to Canberra.
“There has been a promotion in Canberra to go do the canola drive, and people are just randomly driving out to a farm, pull up and wander through a crop,” he said.
Tony Flanery, a Galong wheat and canola farmer, said under the latest changes to the NSW government Biosecurity Act the onus is on farmers to have a biosecurity management plan in place and keep a register of people who visit the property.
“There’s a real fear about foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), and what quarantine people have been through and where they’ve come from,” he said. “It’s something that poses a very real risk to us now, particularly.”
