HE has helped develop international agricultural universities and worked with farmers to increase sustainable agricultural production in Australia, but Professor David Coventry has added one more impressive accolade to his long list of achievements.
David was recently named an Officer of the Order of Australia as part of the Australia Day awards, and has since been congratulated by former colleagues from across the nation.
While David has no idea who nominated him for the award, he said it was great to have the recognition and acceptance of the work he had accomplished in his career.
“Such an award is only possible as a result of working in wonderful locations and with fantastic teams and individuals”, he said.
Professor Coventry did not come from an agricultural background, but always liked the idea of working in the industry.
He was brought up in the country town of Wycheproof, in the Vic Mallee, when his father moved there as a football coach.
After finishing school he completed an agricultural degree at the University of Melbourne and went on to do his PhD at the University of WA.
It was not long before he joined the Department of Agriculture, Vic, where he was an agricultural research officer at the Mallee Research Station at Walpeup from 1975 to 1978. He then moved to India, where he advised on an Indonesian-Australian sheep breeding farm in Haryana in north-west India.
After returning to Vic in 1980 he joined the Rutherglen Research Institute, serving as director from 1987 to 1994.
It was here he developed a passion for agronomy, sustainable agriculture and international work.
“When you first get notified of an award like this, it’s disbelief, then excitement, and then you do a lot of reflecting about your career,” he said.
One of Professor Coventry's standout achievements was facilitating the development of an agricultural university in Eritrea in South East Africa, between 2003 and 2008.
He was involved from the project’s inception, guiding a business plan for the Eritrean government to roll out at the university.
The university has a comprehensive agriculture program covering animal sciences, sociology, economics, engineering and plant and soil sciences and graduates more than 1000 students annually.
“In the beginning they had grand dreams of doing highly technological research, but they have stuck with the plan and only recently have started conducting applied research,” he said. “Their primary business is to educate and graduate students.”
In addition to his project in Eritrea, he also helped Syrian, Indian and Tibetan farmers progress to a zero-till cropping operation, following the success of introducing zero-till in Australia.
“What I was able to do was take the Australian farmer-led research model into the international sphere,” he said.
“Since the civil war in Syria, the adoption (of zero-till) has been more rapid, because the farmers realised fuel was in short supply, and they used a lot less fuel with zero-till.
“They’re on the land less frequently which means it is safer, and the yields are just as good.”
And in Indonesia, he worked for 10 years with an AusAid Program conducting interviews for scholarships for Indonesian students to study postgraduate courses at Australian universities.
The challenges for the next decade for young scientists are very real – we have to keep working to increase global food security.
- DAVID COVENTRY
In 1994, he moved to a CSIRO appointment in Adelaide, then in 1996 he took on the role as department head of the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine from 1996 to 2003.
He was Professor of Sustainable Agricultural Production from 1996 to 2011 before becoming an Adjunct Professor in his retirement.
David describes himself more as “semi-retired”, as he still enjoys visits to the university, and involvement in some research programs.
“When I reflect on the undergraduate students I’ve taught compared to our cohort in my student days in the 1960s, today’s students are so well mannered, well behaved and interested in learning,” he said.
Looking forward, he said the challenges and developments required for agriculture, particularly globally, were enormous.
“Population is continuing to increase and global hotspots of conflict don’t seem to disappear,” he said.
“The challenges for the next decade for young scientists are very real – we have to keep working to increase global food security and do this without degradation of our natural resources. It is essential that we keep having strong inputs into agricultural sciences in Australia.”