Brian Marshall has received an Order of Australia Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
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The Guyra grazier has been recognised for his contribution to agricultural industry education.
He started working with adults in primary production in 1995 with his friend Bruce Ward who passed away in 2012.
“He’s really the one who should be getting this award because he was the leadership and I was just there as a mate doing the same thing,” Mr Marshall told The Argus.
The pair worked under Allan Savory, a Rhodesian ecologist whose work involves developing tools to restore desertified grasslands via holistic management.
Mr Marshall said his teachings have taken him across the world from Australia to the grasslands of Argentina and Chile.
“It’s all about an approach to decision making to get things right for their unique situations,” he said.
Over the years the package has been developed into a TAFE course called Holistic Management.
Mr Marshall said his passion for the industry stemmed from many years of study.
“I got an animal science degree in the states, came home and I went jackarooing for $9 a week in central Queensland,” he said.
He decided to go back to the US and study a master of agriculture and worked in the feedlot industry in Colarado and the Panhandle in Texas before returning to Australia to farm.
“When I was in my early 40s I thought, with everything I’m supposed to know things are still going wrong – this was the key point,” he said.
“I used to go flying around and look over the land – four or five inches of rain would cause a flood, three or four months without rain would cause a drought – there’s got to be a better way to go.”
The two other recipients were retired solicitor Phil Hamblin and former president of the NSW Transport Association John McPhee.
The men are both from Armidale.