David Taylor

David is a fourth-generation central west farmer with 50 years of farming experience in the Trundle area. He is semi-retired and he and his wife operate a 1600 ha merino lamb production enterprise based on derived-native-grassland pastures near Trundle.

David holds the following academic qualifications (gained externally): Bachelor of Business (Monash), Bachelor of Arts (Griffith), Master of Rangeland Management (University of Queensland), PhD (University of New England). His other qualifications include Certificate of Agriculture (Yanco), Certificate of Sheep and Wool (NSW TAFE), Diploma of Marketing, Diploma of Marketing Research.

David’s PhD Thesis investigated the ‘Structure and function of a central west plains grazed grassland hill-slope’, and his Masters Thesis examined ‘Strategic risk management amongst farmers on the central west plains’.

David has Australian Wool Exchange acknowledgement of 50 years as a professional wool classer.

David says that the central west plains has amongst the most variable rainfall of any similar average annual rainfall zone anywhere in the world and is acknowledged to have the most variable farm income of any of ABARES farm production regions.  His particular interests are farming systems and business modeling as tools in the strategic management of risk in farming businesses on the central west plains; the role of central west plains ecology and landscape processes in designing farming systems to mitigate production risk; implications for biomass production of the interaction of rainfall characteristics and above-ground below-ground processes in ‘hard-setting-red-brown earth’ soils of the central west plains; the role of cropping in stimulating productivity of derived-native grasslands; and sheep genetics, sheep production systems, and grazing-land management.