Mary O’brien – Meet Spray Drift Girl

A drawcard at our recent Grower Expo Day in Temora, Mary O’Brien is a passionate advocate for good spraying practices with the aim of maintaining access to products.

Born and raised on a sheep and cattle property in western Southwest Queensland, Mary completed a plant science degree before working in chemical use and best practice across most regions of Queensland and NSW.

In this time, she worked with a range of agricultural industries across everything from row cropping to horticulture, intensive animals, grazing, apiaries, viticulture, and aquaculture, before deciding to establish her own consultancy in 2013.

“I worked for the Queensland Government’s Department of Primary Industries, or Biosecurity Queensland as they are these days, for about eight years and I learned a lot about farming and farming systems.

“My job was to enforce the legislation around spraying, but the biggest problem was trying to communicate with the farmers, to build that trust and get the point across, because you obviously meet with a lot of resistance when you want to talk about spray drift. It’s a fairly intense issue and people get angry. You get yelled at a lot.

“I was seeing the specific areas where farmers were getting it wrong and I saw products being taken off them. So, I felt my skillset would be better spent helping them avoid stuff-ups.”

After leaving the Department, Mary worked with Bill Gordon Consulting and assisted Bill with the delivery of workshops in spray application technology and drift management.

“Bill is very well known in the spray world. So, that was a very big learning curve to be on the road with Bill, seeing the challenges and hearing the questions. When Bill stopped doing the spray stuff, there was this gap that I sort of stepped into in my consultancy.

“Now, I conduct spray application and drift management workshops around Australia and I’m also a myBMP (Cotton Best Management Practices) accredited advisor which takes up a bit of my time.

“Depending on the time of the year and the season, I can be on the road a fair bit. Last December, I had three weeks on the road, so my Christmas shopping was done at service stations and drive-through bottle shops. Who doesn’t need a can of WD40?!”

Becoming Spray Drift Girl

In 2015, Mary joined the Twitterverse and finds social media a great way of spreading her message.

“Twitter has been the best thing I ever did for my business. It can be a tough crowd, but in relation to practice change, I find that is where the early adopters are and if you are going to get real practice change, you have got to get the early adopters onboard first and it filters down from there.

“The following I have is mostly farmers but there’s also machinery dealers and manufacturers, chemical companies, nozzle companies, scientists who do the research, and the contractors and agronomists, so it really does reach a farming audience.

“I did put a fair bit of thought in researching my Twitter handle. We have the ‘Spray Guy’ and ‘Nozzle Guy’ and somebody else was called ‘Spray Drift’ so I added the ‘girl’ and made my handle @SprayDriftGirl, which is a bit of a stretch at my age, but people have embraced it and people certainly introduce me as ‘Spray Drift Girl’ at conferences.”

Attending the Hutcheon & Pearce Grower Expo Day in Temora in April, Mary talked through the nuts and bolts of changing practice as well as best-practice spraying advice.

“The biggest thing farmers want to talk about is the nozzles and how to improve their practices to avoid spray drift particularly those guys who are in mixed-cropping areas.

“Most people would describe my communication style as brutal, but it is very direct, it is very simple. There is a lot of technical detail I see other people get into delivering this information, but I think that is one of the blockages in understanding. So, I just try and keep it as simple as possible and give them quick grabs that they can take away and we stop half-way through and go out and actually have a look at these nozzles in action.”

After presenting, Mary often fields questions by phone or email.

“I strongly encourage people to ask me any questions about things they are not sure about and a lot of guys will actually call or email me after a workshop because they are not comfortable asking questions in that public forum. I am always happy to help in any way I can, and if I don’t know the answer, I will find someone who can help. It’s about changing practice so products aren’t taken away. Because when that happens, I can no longer help them.”

For more information or to contact Mary, visit maryobrienrural.com.au. You can also find her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – just search for @spraydriftgirl.

MARY’S TOP THREE TIPS WHEN SPRAYING:

• Know the difference between day and night wind. Thinking that it’s all about wind speed is probably the single biggest mistake out there.
• Use the best nozzle you can and understand that everything that you put in that tank impacts on the spray quality.
• Slow down, because speeding can cause huge problems in terms of efficacy and drift, particularly in broad acre farming.