AFS Agriculture (AFS) are located in Perth, Western Australia. Our group is made up of agricultural and irrigation experts. We share extensive knowledge and experience in the agricultural, horticultural and mining industries that has now been combined to provide this professional service. Our group has commercial farming experience in agriculture and horticulture that includes the production of pasture, grapes, citrus, kiwifruit, bananas and vegetables and ensures that our systems are developed from real world practical experience.
Tim Hyde
Tim has extensive experience in the horticultural industry as a grower and as a consultant. He has been a specialist in the horticulture section of the Department of Agriculture and Food WA. Since 2003 he has held key leadership roles with three major horticultural and agricultural groups, working internationally and domestically with specialist mining and agricultural operations that require a high level of commercial professionalism.
Tim plans all agronomic aspects for AFS relating to pastures, table grapes, bananas, citrus and on the Groups’ farms. He oversees ‘Operations Managers’, consultants and contractors, and more generally provides technical advice to growers on open hydroponics and advanced fertigation systems.
Ivor Gaylard
Ivor has been involved with irrigated agriculture for over 25 years, including 15 years of hands-on large scale farming in Zimbabwe. He grew a variety of both broadacre and horticultural crops, and was a director of Zimbabwe’s largest banana producing organisation.
Ivor has extensive management experience, and since migrating to Australia in 2005 he has run both the Carnarvon Growers Association (CGA) and the Gascoyne Water Co-operative. Having started in Australia as the agronomist at CGA, Ivor has gained an in-depth knowledge of Australian irrigated agriculture and what it takes to turn water into useful products. Ivor’s last assignment in Carnarvon was project management for the replacement of the irrigation district’s main irrigation distribution scheme. Ivor joined AFS in early 2012 and is now based in Perth working principally in managing surplus mine dewater and consultancy services for irrigation schemes.
Mark Lewis
Mark is the current former WA Minister for Agriculture and Food and MP for the Mining & Pastoral electorate. He has executive level leadership and management experience and strong policy, technical and commercial capacity in agriculture, lands and water sectors.
Mark has a very high level of understanding of government processes with in-depth networks across the State’s (and Federal) agriculture, lands and water sectors and international delegation experience and contacts.
John Bussell
John has a strong background working in model plant systems. He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 2000 with a PhD in plant molecular biology and genetics. After a few years working variously at CALM (now DPaW/DER), BGPA and UWA, including as a lecturer in those subjects, he moved to Sweden to undertake a post-doc at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science. Following this he returned to UWA as Research Associate at the ARC Centre in Plant Energy Biology. John started at AFS in mid-2014 and brings extensive experience in planning, managing and publication of scientific research. At AFS, he has been involved in management, communication and reporting of agricultural irrigation projects utilising mine dewatering. John is now working on development of AFS’ new Scheduling Water and Nutrients (SWAN) web platform that will aid managers in better decision making and efficiency in delivering water and fertilisers to agricultural or public open space environments.
Ross George
Ross retired from the Department of Agriculture and Food in 2010 after a long career in natural resource management and has since joined the AFS team as a part time consultant. Ross has broad experience and knowledge of the underlying science and the way in which this science can be used within the policy and regulatory frameworks to meet environmental conditions whilst maximising production outcomes. This has involved land management, irrigation water resource management, land use planning and biosecurity policy at state and national levels.
Brenda Powell
Brenda graduated from the University of Western Australia in 2002 with a PhD in molecular genetics. After a career in health research that spanned 10 years and three countries, Brenda worked for the Western Australian government before moving into Environmental Consulting, managing a large team of botanists for a local environmental consultancy.
Along with her skills in data management, report writing and editing, Brenda brings to the AFS team an ecological understanding of the unique Pilbara environment. Brenda’s role in AFS is focussed on the management of data for reporting purposes, and in compiling regular reports relevant to the projects.