Bush Foods Growing Wild Across Australia’s Own Backyards

Martin was raised with a passion for cooking goanna on hot coals, and catching barramundi and bream out of local rivers and creeks—and she’s been spending years since getting other households around the country to do the same. Her pitch is simple: Use lemon myrtle instead of rosemary and thyme; use lemon instead of lemons or limes; and be not afraid to use kangaroo or crocodile in curries, stews and stir-fries. Martin says people are only now beginning to appreciate that the number of native plants that fit the definition of true super foods actually are high in nutrition and medicinal benefits, and that these plants are being found on menus and cooking shows throughout the country.

A bush Tucker journey from WA’s Kimberley to North Queensland

Martin is a proud Jaru woman from the East Kimberley region of WA but today lives in Cairns, several thousand kilometres away from where she is Australia’s native. That trip north to south has clearly influenced her perceptions of indigenous food – not as something you only find at your side of the country, but something that’s available to all with a backyard or a patch of bush close by. She wants people to get up the courage to actually use it for cooking, and others do, too. From the Far North to the tropics, a few small (but growing) projects led by Aboriginal people are making that same idea more structural as they develop livelihoods based on plants that never left them—or just never made it to market.

Growing Yam Crops the Traditional Way in North Queensland

One of the more ambitious projects belongs to Henrietta Marrie, a Gimuy Walubara Yidinji Elder from the Cairns and Yarrabah region, along with Tracy Gray and Roy Gray Junior. Together they’ve planted their first yam crop, using close to 400 seeds and tubers across three different varieties. Both traditional owners travelled to Nigeria and came to know that it is a part of their traditional diet. It is a starchy root and is used as a substitute for potato. It is used in soups, stews and even ice cream, because it is converted into flour. Now they are assessing its nutritional value, so that its usage can be backed by hard scientific evidence.

How LIFES Is Helping Communities Turn Bush Foods Into Business

Martin’s own mentoring work now happens through the Local Indigenous Food Enterprise Services, or LIFES, based in North Queensland, where she helps Aboriginal communities figure out how to grow native crops and turn them into viable businesses. LIFES president Mark Harbrow says bush foods and bush medicines have existed for millennia, and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always understood their nutritional and medicinal value, even if the wider population is only catching up now. He sees real value in non-Indigenous Australians recognizing that these plants have been growing in their own backyards the whole time, often overlooked simply because nobody told them what they were looking at.

Australian Bush Foods & Yam is the new sensation in the Australian home cooking market.

This is unfolding at every event she caters from her Indigenous business in the region, from small family events to larger events throughout Australia Barbra Drummond, Indigenous catering business owner, in the region, is seeing this change at every event she cooks up – small family gatherings to larger events throughout Australia. She was raised to know that food was not just food but a celebration and a connection, both as a Wagadagam and Wuthathi woman from Mabuiag Island, in the Torres Strait. Bush foods shouldn’t be worshipped, adds Marrie, but more a part of everyday eating like yam did for her family for generations, as it still does for those growing them back in WA and all the way north of the country.

It’s a definite trend that’s continuing to grow from one backyard discovery to the next whether in WA or anywhere else with a little native bush to be found, as more chefs, home cooks and even convention centers across Australia learn to cook with native ingredients and use yams in dishes.

The post How Your Backyard Could Be Growing Bush Foods Worth a Fortune appeared first on Unmute Australia.

With freight costs on the rise, Woolworths have to pull out

The move is about economics, in the form of a growing price for killing and transporting cattle across Bass Strait, according to Woolworths. The retailer is now buying its beef from a handful of local farming partners, which must be killed at an abattoir on the mainland and then shipped back to the shelves, in Tasmania and interstate. The supermarket was “very mindful” of the impact the change will have on those involved and will be in close contact with growers during the transition period, the company said. Importantly, the company says this is not a broader withdrawal from the state, it will continue to purchase other products from Tasmania, such as fruit and vegetables, as its beef supply chain slows its pace.

Scottsdale Farmer Jerrod Nichols Feels the Blow

For Jerrod Nichols, a cattle farmer near Scottsdale in the state’s north-east, the news lands close to home. He has supplied roughly 40 head of cattle a fortnight over the past two years, and says having that contract locked in gave him the confidence to keep investing in his herd despite a volatile market. Nichols wasn’t entirely surprised by the call, though, pointing out that Tasmania no longer has a dedicated contract kill abattoir, which forces processors to send stock to the mainland and back again at considerable expense. He described the change as “another kick in the guts” for producers already dealing with tight margins, and said he would now need to negotiate directly with meat processors to try to secure a similar level of certainty going forward.

Coles Already Skipped Local Beef, Tassie Growers have Fewer Options

The retreat from Tasmanian beef isn’t happening in isolation. Coles has not bought locally grown beef for some time, which means island producers now have one less major domestic buyer to turn to once Woolworths exits the category entirely. Coles does remain a significant purchaser of Tasmanian lamb, running a seasonal program that keeps local lamb on shelves for much of the year, but that offers little comfort to cattle farmers watching their options narrow. Industry figures say the situation highlights just how thin the retail market has become for producers in Tassie, who already have fewer processing and buying choices than their counterparts on the mainland. George Shea, who chairs the state farming body’s livestock council, said growers would need to keep adapting and hunting for new outlets, even if the timing of this latest blow is far from welcome.

The future of Tasmanian Beef and Woolworths’ Local Suppliers

Farmers will have an opportunity to plan ahead for the end of 2026 as the Tasmanian beef contract is ending, albeit quietly, at the end of this year, according to Woolworths. For growers such as Jerrod Nichols, it means new negotiations with processors to secure “baseline numbers” to give them some certainty in their businesses. Other farmers in the industry are concerned that the departure may accelerate a general trend in other areas of Tassie away from cattle and are considering whether it’s still a profitable investment. Regardless what the outcome of the episode is, it’s brought small regional supply chains back to the spotlight as it comes to the issue of whether the big boys control the fate of the little guys and whether the island growers have as much control over their own fate as they think they do.

Consumers may not notice the shift straight away, since Tasmanian beef will still sit on supermarket shelves under existing supply arrangements right through to the end of 2026. But industry watchers say the longer-term effect could be felt well beyond the paddock, from regional abattoir jobs to the freight operators who move stock across Bass Strait each week.

The post Tasmanian Beef Loses Its Biggest Supermarket Buyer appeared first on Unmute Australia.

A Reef Almost Nobody Had Studied

Groote Eylandt is located in the remote corner of the Northern Territory in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where even living coral reefs on the wider northern coast of Australia have only been documented in 2004. There have since been only a few studies of reefs in the area, and a none of these had been specifically on the coral around Groote Eylandt. But all that has changed, thanks to the work of the rangers and researchers from the University of Technology Sydney who have published their first extensive baseline study in the archipelago journal.

Lead author and UTS PhD researcher Dane Wattle surveyed five reef sites across four days in mid-2024, using a remotely operated underwater vehicle rigged with a camera. The results varied dramatically from site to site, with hard coral cover ranging from as little as five per cent at one location to almost half the seafloor at the richest. Rather than the branching corals often seen further east, the team found the reefs dominated by hardier, more solid structures.

When the Models Got It Wrong

UTS researcher Emma Camp said satellite data had shown sea temperatures were elevated in the lead-up to the fieldwork, but not at levels typically linked to coral bleaching. Global predictive models, in other words, saw nothing worth flagging The coral bleaching event was detected and confirmed only due to the existing monitoring of the reef by the Anindilyakwa rangers, who observed the reef directly on the water. Ground level connections made the difference between not knowing if we were going to have bleaching in Groote Eylandt, or understanding why it happened, she said, explaining that we have global models that help us predict when reef will bleach, but none predicted that we were going to have bleaching in Groote Eylandt at that time.

The timing made things harder still. Fieldwork took place only months after Tropical Cyclone Megan tore through Groote Eylandt at category three intensity, damaging vegetation and infrastructure on the island and leaving the reef itself bruised from the storm. Camp said cyclones can physically break apart a reef’s structure even as the reef absorbs wave energy that would otherwise erode the coastline, meaning the survey captured a system dealing with two kinds of stress at once rather than a single clean bleaching signal.

Crocodiles, Stingers and a Job That Demands Focus

Fieldwork of this kind isn’t straightforward in the crocodile-inhabited waters of the Northern Territory. Anindilyakwa Land Council’s Kirsten Eden said the presence of saltwater crocodiles, box jellyfish and other marine stingers, combined with unpredictable weather, had kept researchers away from these reefs for years, long before the coral bleaching event even became a concern. The eventual survey became a genuinely coordinated operation, with drones scanning from above, spotters stationed on boat roofs, and a remotely piloted underwater vehicle doing the close-up work human divers couldn’t safely attempt.

Rangers were trained to pilot both the drones and the underwater vehicle themselves, meaning the monitoring program can continue without university researchers needing to return each time. Eden said the five survey sites were chosen by rangers based on traditional knowledge of which reefs held the greatest cultural and ecological significance, rather than being picked at random from a map.

A Baseline, Not the Full Picture

Researchers are careful to note the survey is a single snapshot rather than an ongoing study, captured four months after the coral bleaching event and three months after the cyclone, meaning it likely doesn’t reflect the reef at full health. Sea Country makes up around 70 per cent of the Anindilyakwa Indigenous Protected Area, yet legal protections for marine environments in the Northern Territory remain far weaker than those covering land under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act.

With a nearby manganese mine on Groote Eylandt facing eventual closure and a proposed ocean outfall raising fresh questions, the rangers and researchers involved say the real value of this work lies in what comes next: a continuing, locally led monitoring program that no longer has to rely on distant satellites to know when something is wrong beneath the water.

The post How Anindilyakwa Rangers Caught a Coral Bleaching Event the Satellites Missed appeared first on Unmute Australia.

The disaster is raging on the Himalayan border and is mounting and worsening by the hour. Rescue workers are working through mud and flooded roads, and with the potential of another surge, a wall of ice and rock pounding a mountain river on Wednesday has spiraled into one of the most devastating natural disasters the area has experienced in years. Dozens of Australians are missing and this adds a distinctly Australian edge to a tragedy that is taking place thousands of kilometers away.

Search intensifies in Nepal as the toll of the floods keeps mounting

At least 626 people have died and nearly 3,000 remain missing in the disaster-hit area, authorities in Kathmandu confirmed on Saturday morning. The officials believe that a large ice block under way in a high mountain region, unleashed a flood of debris and water which crashed through villages without warning. Market towns were literally erased from the map as whole communities along the riverbanks were flattened within minutes, witnesses on the scene told the Red Cross.

Over 93,000 are believed to have been caught up in the emergency in some way, from being displaced to injured or not knowing what is happening to missing family members. Hundreds of the missing have been identified by hydropower workers along the river, as a reminder that numerous activities are right in the line of construction.

Australian MIA in the Nepal-Tibet Disaster Zone

Family life at home has been agonies. At least 41 Australians are still missing despite search teams sifting through the debris on both nations’ sides of the border. Those missing had been travelling independently, some in organized pilgrims and the others in small tour groups, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is trying to locate the missing Australians “urgently” and consular officers are working around the clock. So many foreign nationals were swept up into the flood in the first place, in part because the border zone itself, also known as the Nepal-Tibet corridor, has long been a popular destination region for hikes, spiritual travelers and adventure tourists.

NSW Families Stuck in the agonizing news waiting period

The sad tale of a fifty and sixty year old married couple from Sydney, who had come to the area on a pilgrimage after being motivated by a spiritual teacher in India, has been some of the most heart-wrenching stories to come out. NSW friends say the pair were last in touch when they cleared immigration on Monday this week and have heard nothing since.

A group that had been en route to the country’s capital for a tour that included several from Sydney and the surrounding area, went missing earlier in the week, and a candle-lit vigil was held outside Parliament House in Canberra, where community leaders in the Nepali community prayed for the dead and the missing.

Challenges of Nepal-Tibet border of snowy landscape

It has been nearly as challenging to reach out to the people who were affected by the flood. The water has been cutting through the roads and many dozens of bridges have been lost, while mobile networks are out of service along much of the border. Disaster researchers say the topography that made these river valleys so appealing to villages and hydropower projects is the very thing that’s making it difficult to enter or exit the area: helicopters are often the only way in or out. Meanwhile, search dogs and inflatable boats were brought in to reach the worst hit area by the mudslide, two days after the disaster on the Tibetan side, by the Chinese rescue teams.

As Nepal rebuilds, so does International Aid Flows In

The governments of the world have started to pledged money and personnel to support the recovery. Canberra has pledged an assistance package valued at $5 million that has been split between the World Food Programme, local aid partners who are providing shelter and medical assistance and an alliance that will fund community-led reconstruction initiatives, and Canberra’s consular officials are still working to identify all of the missing Australians. Others, including officials from Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other countries, have pledged additional assistance, including a British rapid deployment team; we are told that the British will be sending a staff to the area as well as a rapid deployment team.

UNICEF estimates the numbers of affected children to be about 17,000 and will assist local authorities in reuniting children with their families. The next challenge is straightforward but formidable: moving as many as they can to safety, including the Australians still on the missing list; with the notoriously turbulent local climate potentially setting another trap for the rescuers.

The post Nearly 3,000 people are still missing, while the death toll in Nepal’s flooding disaster has surpassed 600 appeared first on Unmute Australia.

So what makes Australians so fond of a tin?

The lunchbox must-have is for a very simple reason: convenience combined with nutrition. One can provides a good dose of protein, and doesn’t need a stove, a chopping board, or a lot of time. Tinned fish may have been around for a long time, but it has certainly been a staple of life in Australia for many years – and for Australians anyway, it seems it never went out of fashion despite the rise and fall of other convenience foods. Well, it’s about mercury and whether or not regular consumption equals a gradual dose of more than is beneficial.

Calculating the volume of mercury in a tin of tinned tuna

Mercury is found in nature, and can be released into the environment during volcanic activity, weathering of rocks, and other natural processes. It is converted to methyl mercury in water by bacteria and then ingested by fish. Larger, older fish that are higher on the food chain build up more of it throughout their life cycle, so shark, swordfish and marlin have higher levels of mercury than do smaller fish. The majority of the Australian product is sold from younger and smaller skipjack and Yellowfin, both with significantly lower levels of mercury. That’s important when considering how much of this pantry staple can you safely consume.

The PTWI has been established by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)

Food Standards Australia New Zealand uses international guidelines to establish a guideline value called provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI), which provides an estimate of the amount of mercury that does not give the consumers a significant increase in risk to health if it is consumed weekly. That limit for most adults is 3.3 micrograms per kilo of body weight a week and pregnant women, about half of that amount.

For a 70 kg adult a PTWI would be approximately 231 micrograms of mercury per week and approximately 112 micrograms during pregnancy. A study of dozens of small cans abroad found an average level of mercury that would equate to about 13 micrograms per tin. Consuming one can a week is a relatively small part of the weekly intake, and most adults can safely consume one can a day even. There is scope for limited Australian specific testing, which is why Food Standards Australia New Zealand will continue to use international data when reviewing this guidance annually, according to local health authorities.

Canned fish may be safer than other species.

Keep in mind that this is not the health office’s “fish” concern. Shark, which is also sometimes sold as flake, and swordfish, broad hill and marlin, have considerably more mercury, and provide a strong recommendation to limit servings to one per week while avoiding the other high mercury fish of the same week.

The option of canned tuna as lunch is an Australian staple. Children require less of their weekly allowances than adults do as a lower body weight is used to work out the allowances which means that one tin can take a significant proportion of what is deemed safe for children. Despite this, a couple of cans per week – equivalent to a couple of weeks of sandwiches – is not a problematic amount for most children.

Could the consumption of canned tuna change among Australians?

The evidence is overwhelming for the majority of Australians that banning tinned tuna is not the answer – nor even reducing its consumption – for the sole purpose of reducing exposure to mercury. The symptoms of mercury poisoning, such as numbness, problems with coordination, vision and memory, would only occur when one is repeatedly exposed to much higher amounts of mercury than what is normally found in foods.

However, consuming a single food item daily is not optimal nutritionally because no single one contains all the nutrients required by the body. As it’s easy to see, tinned tuna is a healthy and cheap option and for the vast majority of Australians isn’t actually a big risk to consuming regularly. It’s an affirmation that all the dietary fears we have are not true and sometimes the most basic lunchbox tips are right as they are.

The post The Truth about Eating Tinned Tuna Everyday appeared first on Unmute Australia.

Now a new observatory has left Earth with a similar mission: work out whether that force has been correctly understood all along, or whether the model needs a rewrite.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched over the weekend from Kennedy Space Center, riding a SpaceX Falcon Heavy into orbit under clear Florida skies. It’s a moment researchers have awaited for more than fifteen years, marking the start of an ambitious mapping project for NASA.

Why the Roman Space Telescope Could Rewrite the Dark Energy Story

For twenty years, the working assumption was that dark energy stayed constant, steadily pushing everything apart since the Big Bang. But newer surveys, including DESI and a separate all-sky mapping project, have hinted this force might not be fixed at all — it could be weakening over time, which would change how the story ends.

University of Queensland astrophysicist Cullan Howlett says those results are tentative rather than proven. That’s exactly where the Roman Space Telescope comes in. Its job is to independently check those findings using a different set of instruments and a far wider field of view than NASA has flown before.

“If you detect something really exciting with one telescope or one experiment, you want to be able to confirm that with an independent dataset,” Dr Howlett explained, describing why a second, unrelated set of eyes on the sky matters so much in physics.

Built to Capture More Sky in Every Single Shot

What sets the Roman Space Telescope apart isn’t raw power — Hubble and Webb both outperform it on certain measures. There are multiple reasons for why Roman Space Telescope was able to do it :-

• Its infrared camera can cover an area 100 times larger than that of Hubble Space Telescope. This gives a large area/data to study, because when it comes to space, larger the data clear the information.
• as dark mater and energy only reveal themselves as statics, speed of the telescope also matters. Mapping millions of galaxies with this one is comparitivly easy in comparison to other apparatus.
• Roman Space Telescope can also look for rare type of radiation’s coming from an exploding star. This helps our understanding of accelerating expansion of our universe.

Dark Matter Is Just as Stubborn a Mystery

That’s not the only puzzle on the agenda. Dark matter, the invisible scaffolding that gives galaxies their shape and holds them together, can’t be directly detected. Its presence is inferred only from gravity’s fingerprints on galaxies and clusters, yet its pull shapes how the universe’s largest structures are built.

NASA astrophysicist Ami Choi says having a fresh, independent instrument trained on the same questions is invaluable, since the physics is mysterious enough that a second perspective genuinely helps.

A Possible Paradigm Shift for NASA and Physics

If these findings hold up, physicists will need to abandon their current model of cosmic structure, known as Lambda-CDM, in favour of something new. Dr Choi compares the potential shift to the leap from Newtonian gravity to Einstein’s general relativity — not a tweak, but a genuine rethink of how everything fits together.

Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University, notes that the telescope’s wide-angle view gives researchers a serious numbers advantage when hunting supernovae that anchor these distance measurements. Combined with gravitational lensing — using massive galaxy clusters to bend and magnify light from more distant objects — the mission adds a new toolkit to the search.

First Light Still Months Away for NASA’s Newest Mission

The observatory won’t beam back science images straight away. Commissioning is expected to take roughly three months before operations begin from its orbit near the Sun-Earth Lagrange point, far beyond the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in Florida where the mission began. Once running, the data will be freely available, letting researchers everywhere, not just those at major institutions, dig through the same catalogues.

Dr Howlett already plans to combine the new observations with data from telescopes worldwide, hoping to eventually assemble the most complete map yet of the universe.

The post Did NASA Get Dark Energy Wrong? The Roman Space Telescope Aims to Find Out appeared first on Unmute Australia.

The fox was found in sand dunes at Osborne, a quiet coastal suburb in Adelaide’s north-west, showing signs of illness before it was collected by officials and euthanased. Samples have gone to a national laboratory in Geelong for confirmation, but if the result comes back positive, it will mark the first time this strain of bird flu has turned up in a land-based mammal anywhere in Australia.

Adelaide’s fox becomes the new face of a spreading outbreak

The Osborne fox wasn’t reported in isolation. It was one of five new suspected cases logged in a single day, alongside an Australian raven at Robe, a little penguin at Southend, a greater crested tern at Coonalpyn and a Pacific gull on Kangaroo Island. The capital itself has become something of a hotspot in this outbreak, with authorities in the metropolitan area now watching wildlife, pets and livestock with far more urgency than a few months ago.

South Australia’s Primary Industries Minister, Clare Scriven, said the fox case wasn’t exactly a shock. Foxes are scavengers by nature, and if one eats a bird carrying the virus, infection is a fairly predictable outcome. There can be harm, however, in predictable, so when you say “predictable,” what do you mean?

PIRSA tracks H5N1 as case numbers climb

The state’s Department of Primary Industries and Regions, known widely as PIRSA, has been the agency fronting daily updates since the outbreak began. The Department of Primary Industries and Regions now records suspected infections as “events” rather than counting individual animals, a shift that reflects just how many sightings staff are dealing with. According to PIRSA, more than 300 H5N1 infection events have been logged across the country since the first detection back in June, with South Australia carrying the heaviest load at roughly 195 confirmed cases.

The concentration in one state is indicative of the spread of the virus. It was believed to have been introduced from overseas by migratory seabirds, and established along the coast before it began to spread through resident birds inland. If the fox case is confirmed, it’s the next logical step: birds to the animals that eat them.

Why a fox worries scientists more than another dead seabird

University of Sydney veterinary public health expert Michael Ward has described foxes as a transmission “bridge species,” and it’s easy to see why. If a carcus is infected with the virus, it can be spread way beyond the coat via many scavengers like red foxes.

Australia’s red fox population is estimated at 1.7 million animals spread across roughly 80 per cent of the continent, which gives H5N1 an enormous amount of terrain to travel through if the virus does establish itself in land mammals. Officials from the Department of Primary Industries and Regions say monitoring will need to expand accordingly. Farmers have already started asking questions.

Pets, poultry and native wildlife needs to be protected

The virus has not been found in any big or small commercial poultry anywhere in the country. Even so, South Australians have been urged to keep dogs on leads away from sick or dead birds and to keep cats indoors, partly to protect native wildlife and partly to protect the pets themselves.

Vaccination efforts are also underway in pockets of the state. Cleland Wildlife Park, a short drive from the city, has begun vaccinating around 30 bird species held in its aviaries, while open-range colonies, such as the little penguins on Kangaroo Island, present a trickier challenge simply because wild birds can’t be tracked or recalled for a second dose.

What comes next for Australia’s outbreak

The Osborne case is still under investigation, but the implications are spreading out. If the infection is picked up by a land mammal in the suburb of a capital, it means that H5N1 is no longer restricted to remote coastlines and seabird colonies. It’s edging closer to backyards, farms and the animals people share their lives with, and authorities say the coming weeks of testing and monitoring will show just how far that shift has already gone.

The post A Fox in the Suburbs: What H5N1’s Move Into Adelaide Means for the Rest of Australia appeared first on Unmute Australia.

Fortunately, it is not permanent to have credit card debt. It does not take much to make a difference -a few small changes, the goodwill of the budget makers, and early responses. The trick is to not worry about it after the fact, and to address it before the interest gets too big.

Start by Understanding Where You’re Money Goes

The first step in tackling Credit card debt is to understands your financial position. That sounds obvious, but many people know roughly what they owe without knowing exactly where their money disappears each month.

Go through recent bank and credit card statements. Write down your regular income, essential expenses and discretionary spending. Check subscriptions, take-out meals, online shopping and other small purchases-you can’t tell if they’ll add up.

Financial counsellors advise creating a simple budget prior to approaching a lender. After you’ve determined your income and necessary expenses, you will be able to figure out a repayment amount that you could afford instead of just paying whatever is left over each month.

The Trap of Revolving Credit Card Debt

One of the biggest problems with Credit card debt is that it can become a cycle. You make a repayment, reduce the balance slightly, and then use the card again when another expense appears.

Breaking that cycle may require temporarily stopping new purchases on the card. Some people choose to lower their credit limit, while others put the card away entirely until the balance is under control.

The important thing is to avoid using a credit card as a permanent extension of your income. If everyday expenses repeatedly need to be placed on borrowed money, the underlying budget problem needs attention.

Paying Only the Minimum is an Expensive Habit

Paying the minimum amount may give you some relief in short term, but , its long term effects are more severe. This is because minimum repayments always come with high interest rates. Majority of your payment goes in covering the interest rather than the principal. The National Debt Helpline warns that a debt can take decades to clear when repayments remain at the minimum level.

Even a modest increase can help reduce the amount of interest charged over time. If you receive extra income, such as a bonus or tax refund, consider directing part of it towards Credit card debt rather than immediately spending it.

Check if you’re paying too much for your credit card

There are some differences in Interest rates, annual fees and other charges depending upon the type of card you have. Balance transfer offers can also be enticing especially if they feature a temporary low or zero interest rate. But, please read the conditions carefully. Failure to make your payments or pay off the balance in time may lead to greater expenses.

This is also true for debt consolidation. An advantage of consolidating multiple loans into one is that it makes repayments easier; however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the debt becomes cheaper to repay. Longer repayment times may result in a greater repayment amount.

Break the Revolving Credit Card Debt Cycle

When the repayments have started, be vigilant enough to look closely at your expenses. Any wasteful expenditure can & will start the revolving credit card debt. Try to use cash more often, to track the money being spent. This creates a clearer boundary between money you actually have and money you are borrowing. Building a small emergency fund can also help. Even a modest savings buffer may prevent unexpected expenses from immediately going back onto the card.

When to Contact the National Debt Helpline

If the situation feels too difficult to manage alone, free financial counseling is available through the National Debt Helpline. The service provides independent and confidential assistance for people dealing with financial pressure and debt problems.

The NDH can help people understand their options, assess their financial position and communicate with creditors. Financial counselors care less about the reasons why someone is in debt, they just want their money back on time.

The post Take Control of Your Credit Card Debt Before It Takes Control of You appeared first on Unmute Australia.

The result for richer countries might at first be increased supermarket prices. The effects are likely to be even more dire, though, for poorer countries which rely significantly on imports.

Added Uncertainty with El Niño

Due El Nino in the pacific, more erratic weather patterns are on the horizon. More drier and hotter conditions are bound to return and affect farming activities. Growers in Australia are already keenly monitoring the potential of a strong El Niño. Dry weather may lead to low soil moisture, lower crop production, and deter farmers from increasing crop planting programmes.

It is not only a country-issue. El Niño has the potential to impact rainfall in Asia, Africa and the Americas, putting crops from wheat and rice to corn and other staples under stress.

Bad timing is no good. Already, global markets for grain are suffering from disrupted trade routes and increased production costs. Multiple food production areas experiencing droughts at the same time would leave little space for a supply shock to be absorbed.

Why the Middle East Crisis Reaches the Farm Gate

Modern agriculture depends upon global supply chain. That is why its relevant to say that a war happening thousands of kilometers away in Middle East is affecting WA agricultural activities this much. Products like fertilizers, oil & diesel etc move through Strait of Hormuz, which have been severely affected due to war.

For farmers, fuel is not simply a transport expense. Tractors, harvesters, irrigation equipment and freight networks all depend on energy. When the price of refined fuel rises, the cost of producing food rises with it.

The problem is compounded by fertilizer. Modern grain production relies heavily on nutrients such as urea, and disruptions to international supplies can quickly increase costs. Australia has also had to seek alternative fertilizer sources after trade disruptions linked to the conflict.

Australian Farmers Face a Difficult Season

For Australian farmers, the challenge is not simply producing crops during difficult weather. It is deciding how much financial risk to take before the season is even guaranteed. Increased diesels cost, machine operating and fertilizer costs can have a significant impact on margins. While many Australian farmers are familiar with coping with difficult times, adaptation does not reduce financial pressures.

With a long dry season, yields may be affected and with high inputs, the cost of every hectare planted may be high. According to the most recent outlook on agriculture, the seasonality is the overriding determinant of production decisions. The rising price of fuels and fertilizers is increasing the uncertainty, especially in the dry cropping areas. For Australia, this matters beyond the farm sector. The country is a significant exporter of wheat and other agricultural commodities. A weaker harvest can tighten supplies available to international markets.

Refined Fuel Prices Could Push Food Costs Higher

• Energy prices are often the hidden force behind food inflation. A loaf of bread may appear disconnected from global oil markets, but the entire supply chain depends on energy.
• Farm machinery consumes diesel. Grain must be transported to storage facilities and ports. Fertilizer has to be manufactured and shipped. Food products are eventually moved through warehouses and supermarkets.
• That is why shortages of refined fuel can create consequences well beyond petrol stations. Recent pressure on refinery capacity in both Russia and the Middle East has kept global fuel markets vulnerable.
• A sustained increase in the cost of refined fuel could eventually flow through to food prices, although the effect is rarely immediate.

Australia Is Better Positioned, but Not Immune

Despite the risks, Australia remains better positioned than many food-importing nations. It produces substantial quantities of staple foods and has a strong agricultural export sector.

Despite better positioning, Australia is not completely immune from the upheavals of the global market. Extreme weather conditions, rising costs of oil, diesel and other agricultural products will lead to future inflation.

The post A Storm for Food Security: El Niño, War and Rising Farm Costs appeared first on Unmute Australia.

Perth Butchers See Chicken Sales Plunge Amid Public Anxiety

One Mt Hawthorn butcher says chicken, usually his most dependable line, has dropped by roughly 20 to 25 per cent over the past five or six weeks. Another operator running a shop in Wattle Grove described an even steeper fall, with chicken sales down about 60 per cent in just three weeks.

He had to throw many unsold boxes of chicken for the first time in a long while. In the days of normal demand the restocks were daily job, but now things have changed. He further said that he barely reordered the cut. There is nothing wrong with the meat, but people are anxious due to the virus spreading in WA.

Is Bird Flu Actually a Threat in WA Right Now?

The nervousness comes despite WA’s outbreak having gone quiet for over a month. The state recorded Australia’s first confirmed detections of the H5N1 strain in a migratory seabird back in June, and authorities say they have been working closely with wildlife groups to track and report new cases since.

The state’s Deputy Premier confirmed there had been no fresh detections in WA for more than four weeks, even as the picture elsewhere in the country continued to shift. Food safety regulators have been equally clear that properly cooked chicken and eggs remain safe to eat, stating there is no evidence of infection within Australian poultry or the wider agriculture industry, and that the virus is not known to spread to humans through food.

Bird Flu: H5N1 is not H5N1, but rather a hybrid bird-flu virus

Wildlife authorities are rightly concerned about the strain, which is officially designated as H5, a strain of bird flu of the H5N1 type that has been found in seabirds and, more recently, in a few marine mammals. More than 300 positive wildlife sightings have been reported with the virus in at least dozens of species since the first WA case.

It is a variety different from the variant that infected commercial farms in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT about two years ago, forcing egg producers to butcher about two million birds and leading to a prolonged national shortage of eggs. But that previous incident was one of the reasons that when the latest H5 bird flu case hits the headlines in Australia, people have a tendency to store up memories, especially when they are being fed the almost opposite message to the prior one, as seems to be the case this time around.

The demand for backyard chickens is growing as the worries of bird flu do as well

A chicken shortage is the opposite problem to the one that shopkeepers are experiencing as their chickens are sold out, and poultry breeders throughout WA are experiencing. This is similar to the pandemic and previous H7 outbreak, when industry believed this was due to households preparing for potential shortage if the virus was to make its way to commercial flocks, according to industry figures.

How Australia’s Butchers and Farmers are Watching Next

For Australia, for now, the situation is being closely watched with a vaccination trial to safeguard vulnerable native species. The South Australian case in a fur seal reported earlier this month was the first time the virus has been identified in a mammal, officials said, but the development was not completely unexpected, after the outbreak has developed as it has.

Butchers in Perth, on the other hand, are merely hoping that people will have their sense of trust restored when everyone gets a better handle on how little actual danger cooked chicken offers and that the downturn is more about fear than fact. Shelves remain filled and freezer shelves remain loaded until they can once again be confident in the product they love for their dinner. Rebuilding that confidence may just take time, patience and some quiet weeks in an industry that has its own process of habit and routine.

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