About Us
Crop Circle Consulting is based in Geraldton, the central hub of the northern agricultural region in Western Australia. The region is a world leader in lupin (lupinus angustifolius) production, as well as producing quality hard and noodle wheats, malting and feed barley, canola, chickpeas, oats, triticale and grazing pastures. The region ranges from light textured grey sandy soils, through to deep loamy sand yellow sandplain soils, acidic wodjil soils, red loamy sand soils through to heavy red clay loam soils overlying limestone. Rainfall ranges from a 450mm growing season rainfall zone along parts of the western coastal zones, through to 200-250mm growing season rainfall to the east. The eastern parts of the region often receives large amounts of summer rainfall, which contributes significantly to stored soil moisture reserves and compliments the slightly lower growing season rainfall. Farmers in the region are renowned as some of the most efficient, cost effective and innovative in the world. As with any group of people, there are innovators and there are laggards. This website aims to provide information gathered from leading farmers and industry representatives in the region and make it available to the world via the web.
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Director and agronomist Grant Thompson has been working alongside and consulting to farmers in the area for many years. Grant grew up working alongside his parents on a 29000 hectare (72000 acre) grain and livestock property in the Mullewa region, and credits his direction in agriculture to his father Ken, who taught him the inner workings of the farm from an early age. After completing an honours degree in Agricultural Science at the University of Western Australia, Grant travelled through Africa, Europe, USA and South America, stopping in the UK to work on a farm near Oxford. Upon returning to Western Australia, Grant worked for local fertiliser company Wesfarmers CSBP Ltd, as a researcher in the Field Research team. Grant spent 2 years traversing the state researching a multitude of fertiliser products and strategies in many different crops and soil types.
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After that, he moved to Mingenew, where he worked for rural merchandise firm SBS Rural IAMA as a regional agronomist, servicing 30 clients and conducting numerous research and contract research trials. He also worked as a fee for service agronomist in the Northern Midlands for a year before moving to Geraldton to form his own consulting company. Grant has been working as an agronomist and consultant to farmers in the northern agricultural region for over a decade. As a contractor to national leading Agribusiness LANDMARK, he provides agronomy support to their customers and is also involved in a comprehensive research program, as well as liasing with a team of agronomists throughout Australia. A keen interest in the development of liquid fertiliser practices in the region gave Grant the opportunity to travel to Canada to meet with liquid fertiliser and machinery companies and attend a liquid fertiliser conference. This also provided an opportunity to visit farmers and agronomists in the fluid fertiliser arena. This trip led to a small stint at importing liquid fertiliser machinery and application/distribution kits from Canada and initiating some local machinery outlets to becoming dealers for POLYWEST liquid handling equipment.
As optimists, we believe that the future of agriculture is a bright one. Adopting new technology, managing climate variability, improving our farming environment and our carbon footprint will be the key to making agriculture sustainable and profitable into the future. As farmers, it is our role to supply the worlds ever increasing population with quality food and fuel. To do this, we believe that the industry must work together as a whole to keep each other informed and constantly evolving with the challenges that agriculture, the human race and mother nature provide with us on a daily basis.
We wish you well and safe farming.
