On 21 November 2019 we celebrated National Agriculture Day thanks to Syngenta and the National Farmers’ Federation. We connected with farmers, growers, agrologists, people in ag-tech, and others who work in the industry and shared stories of the passion of farming, agriculture, current issues over a delicious lunch of shared plates at Luke’s Kitchen in Waterloo. We were also the first to taste a new breed of cherry tomatoes developed called YOOM – think nutrient dense sweetness and a delicious crunch with a beautiful purple colour swirl that ripples through this new breed of cherry tomatoes.
I sat next to a grain and cattle producer who was a 3rd generation farmer, Peter Mailler at the lunch. We spoke of the challenges he faces today as a farmer. We heard Peter speak of how farmers are changing their practices given the environment we live in. Peter mentioned for a long time agriculture have been adopting and modifying what they have been doing. What farmers do are driven by two things: market signals and public policy. Peter mentioned he was of the view that public policy is not always right. When government broke up the land not too long ago and allocated it to farmers for agriculture one of the perverse conditions is that they had to “clear it or lose it”. Those were the conditions to occupy the land. That’s what they had to do to participate. That doesn’t mean they don’t care what happens to the land and in fact the opposite – there is a desire to leave the land where they found it and create it better for the next generation. There lies part of the conflict.
The Australian agricultural industry is now facing some long term generational issues as there are structural problems we all face now – climate and the environment. Terms of trade are tighter in the agriculture industry, and the industry is managing an environment with long time frames (drought) but with short term finance cycles. The Australian agriculture industry operates in the most volatile weather conditions and yet they receive the lowest level of government support, Peter told us. Hence producers have been very good to come this far. However the agriculture sector is important to maintain a state of society and it is important to check in on the viability of the sector.
We are all in this together.
Thank you to Cox Inall Communications for the invitation