Former GRDC board member and inaugural GRDC Southern Panel chair Professor Tim Reeves has earned an Order of Australia for “significant service to sustainable agriculture research and production”.

Professor Reeves, 78, says he was overwhelmed and surprised to learn he had earned the accolade in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

Early years

He was born in the UK in the last year of World War II. His mother was evacuated from London to a farm in Wiltshire to escape the German Luftwaffe’s bombing raids.

“Although we only stayed there a few months and I was just a baby, I’m thinking that’s where I must have picked up my passion for agriculture,” he says, laughing.

His interest in biology was piqued while at secondary school in South London, so he decided to attend the University of Nottingham to study for a Bachelor of Science in agriculture.

Shortly thereafter, the chief of agriculture at the Victorian Department of Agriculture visited London on a recruiting drive and interviewed Tim for a research position in Australia.

“The chief offered me a job and so I emigrated to Australia when I was 22,” he says.

“I started work in March 1967 and my first post was at the Rutherglen Research Station in northern Victoria.”

Weeds research

His research focused on weeds management. In his remit were some of the first experiments established on zero tillage (back then, called chemical cultivation).

Professor Reeves counts himself as lucky to have been involved as a pioneer in this research.

“At that time, we were working in partnership with farmers to put in trials and pass on what we discovered,” he says.

“With zero tillage, there was nothing that growers could learn from their fathers and grandfathers because it was such a new concept.

“We worked with growers and encouraged them to try zero tillage in a bid to show others how it could work.”

Other aspects of Professor Reeves’ early work involved testing break crops for wheat.

The work meant assessing canola, lupins, faba beans and chickpeas, and developing agronomy packages to assist growers with the know-how to produce high-yielding crops.

It was during this time that he completed his Master of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne focusing on crop-weed inter-relationships.

In 1980, when the Rutherglen Research Station was upgraded to an institute, Professor Reeves was appointed its first director.

He then worked as a regional manager and acting general manager of operations at the Victorian Department of Agriculture.

After 25 years at the Rutherglen Research Institute, the University of Adelaide appointed him as Foundation Professor of Sustainable Agricultural Production.

During that time, he was based at Roseworthy, South Australia, and was tasked to grow the university’s agronomy and farming systems research.

International research

A highlight of Professor Reeves’s career was in 1995 when the board of trustees at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) appointed him to the position of director-general based in Mexico.

CIMMYT is a non-profit, agricultural research and training centre dedicated to helping the poor in low-income countries.

“That was the pinnacle of my career and it was a privilege to hold the position,” he says. “There’s no better job for an agricultural scientist.”

While at CIMMYT, Professor Reeves and his team added stress tolerance as one of the objectives of the wheat and maize breeding program.

“Coming from Australia, heat stress and drought stress were important, so we started major new research projects in Africa on maize and had the University of Sydney’s Dr Richard Trethowan come back to CIMMYT to concentrate on drought stress in wheat,” he says.

“CIMMYT had also come in for criticism at that time by some people who thought it was focused on productivity but not sustainability.

“We turned that around and introduced a second line to CIMMYT, which was ‘sustainable wheat and maize systems for the poor’ and established a natural resources group to look at sustainability issues.”

Recent work

More recently, Professor Reeves has worked with the University of Melbourne’s Professor Ruth Nettle to lead the bid to establish the Victorian Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub.

The first five partners to sign up were the Birchip Cropping Group, Southern Farming Systems, Riverine Plains, Food and Fibre Gippsland and the Mallee Region Innovation Centre for Irrigated Horticulture.

He says the bid was established on the principles of co-design and co-governance. Agriculture Victoria, Federation University, Deakin University and La Trobe University also joined the bid. It was a successful pitch and the hub started in June 2021.

Professor Reeves and Professor Nettle recently handed leadership of the hub to Dr Michael Tausz, who was previously head of agriculture, science and environment at Central Queensland University.

“I enjoy helping to establish important new ventures and handing them to younger academics who can give them the energy they require,” Professor Reeves says.

“Another highlight for me is passing on to University of Melbourne students what I’ve learned during my career, and mentoring postgraduates and younger academic staff at Dookie agricultural campus.”

A detailed account of Professor Reeves’s achievements can be viewed by visiting Australian Honours Lists.

Other rural achievers

Alongside Professor Tim Reeves, other notable mentions in the 2022 Queens’ Birthday Honours List included Franklin ‘Lyn’ Brazil, from Brookstead in Queensland, and Catherine Marriott, from Yarrawonga, Victoria.

Mr Brazil received his Order of Australia for "service to medical research and to agriculture". He was the inaugural chair of the Grains and Cropping Research and Development Trust.

Ms Marriott received her Order of Australia for "service to primary industry and to regional development". Currently, she leads the farming systems group Riverine Plains.