Agmates

Australian Beef Association Chairman, and Northern New South Wales Farmer Brad Bellinger (pictured) writes:

The NFF expressing its dismay at the Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) decision to increase minimum & award rates of pay by $21.66 per week, illustrates its silver-tail allegiance and lack of understanding of the structure of Australian agriculture.

They have supported the big end of town, in the same way that they have worked with the supermarket duopsony, as it robs farmers with huge mark-ups on their products.

NFF staff should leave their sheltered Canberra cocoon and visit the country town offices of the Salvation Army, the Smith Family and the Rural Counselors to see what a mess the real farming community is in.

They should read the recent report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the Australian National University, and La Trobe University. This report shows the results of a survey of 8,000 people and illustrates the rural depression that has developed under the watch of the NFF.

The study reveals that drought’s effect has been worse than expected. It shows that 21 per cent of farmers in drought-affected areas have had to pawn or sell something in 2006, compared with 16 per cent of farmers in below-average-rainfall areas.

Four percent of farmers had to miss meals because of lack of money. This was 2006! the past 18 months has seen the problem become far more serious, as the record farm debt explodes.

The NFF needs to understand that most farmers don’t employ people - they look for part-time jobs to try and make their farm a viable one.

The supposed swing to corporate faming is also a myth as AMP, Prudential, Squire Group and others leave the industry and the AA Co appears to be struggling.

From the 1890’s shearers’ strike on, the Graziers Association obsession with holding down shearers’ wages got rid of shearers and farmhands; - it seems that NFF has learnt nothing. Their staff should be stuffed and exhibited as museum pieces.

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Have Your say! Do you think Brads criticism of the NFF is fair or do you believe that the NFF as the peak Australian Farm Body is doing a good job.

The National Emissions Trading Scheme (NETS) is a greater threat to the viability of farming in Australia that has ever been seen. Adding 15-40% to operating costs, Australian farmers will have to compete with producers in many nations who have no such costs. The entire Agricultural Industry is at risk of collapse under such a regime.

If the Australian Farming sector is to suvive the impacts of the introduction of the NETS it is up too the National Farmers Federation (NFF) to ’step up’ to the plate.

The issue is beyond the state farming organizations. The fight to protect farmers against a 15%-40% increase in input costs from the scheme has to be carried by the NFF.

Below is NFF President David Crombies (pictured) response off the NFF web site.

“THE Garnaut Report and, now, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) have reinforced what we already knew… there are threats to Australia’s agricultural production due to climate risks.

Farmers have long known the risks and have continually stressed the need to proactively adapt and mitigate climate affects, through research and development, new technology and modern farming techniques. Managing climate risk has been hallmark of farming’s tradition and, with the right tools, will continue to be in the future.

The Government’s announcement today of $46.2 million to reduce greenhouse pollution, better soil management and adapt to a changing climate, is a sensible first instalment - but we need to do more to provide farmers with practical, on-the-ground options and tools to adapt.

Professor Garnaut notes:”

“… food is an essential consumer good and climate change will most likely make food production more difficult.

Producers will need to adapt to climate change and this adaptation will require significant additional resources”.

“This highlights the critical need for research to underpin agriculture’s adaption to climate change and in reducing net emissions.

But, more broadly, Australia must not take an ‘at any cost’ approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, particularly as there is no certainty about the contribution to be made by other nations - especially our trade competitors.

Garnaut says the solution needs to be global. We agree. And, while we can take a leadership role in driving global action, we must be mindful that Australia is responsible for less than 1.5% of global emissions - and our economy has a breaking point.

Our response, therefore, needs to be measured and commensurate with that reality. Australia’s farm base is among the most efficient, competitive and low-emitting in the world. If we reduce production here, the bizarre outcome could see global demand shift to high-emitting countries.

We risk a disproportionate impact on Australian food production. Our farm sector is responsible for 12% of GDP, 1.6 million jobs, $30 billion in exports and 93% of our daily domestic food supply, and it could be absolutely devastated if the ETS or transitional policies aren’t geared to account for agriculture’s ability to sequester carbon in soils and crops, not just trees.

We need to invest today to safeguard the future. But, if domestic policies hurt farmers, they won’t be unable to combat climate change, resulting in a reliance on imported food and higher food prices.

Garnaut spells out that agriculture cannot be covered by an ETS at this time. We recognise the obstacles and agree.

Importantly, Garnaut does not suggest an arbitrary timeframe for coverage, but draws attention to the major problems regarding measuring agricultural emissions and the costs associated in monitoring and verifying those emissions across some 155,000 Australian farms.

However, he concludes that we must examine alternatives that can deliver greater reductions to emissions, at lower costs. These need to be incentive-driven and developed in conjunction with the farm sector.

Farmers can and will adapt to climate change provided they have access to the right research and development, targeted to new technologies and that enable them to make informed decisions.”

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Have Your Say! Tell us what you think.

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

Forget all the arguments about global warming being real or not. It’s too late for that.

What is real is that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is hell bent on introducing an Emissions Trading Scheme to prove to the world what a good global citizen Australia is, regardless of the consequences to our economy.

What the main stream media have missed in the flood of coverage is the potential devastation to rural Australia the emission trading scheme will be.

Agriculture will not be a ‘covered’ industry, you can back that in.

That is of little consequence. What it does mean is that an emission trading scheme will dramatically increase the cost of every farm input. Farmers unlike power stations and fuel refiners have zero ability to pass those costs on.

AgForce President Peter Kenny (pictured) tells us that the modeling AgForce has done has shown that farm input costs will increase by 15-40% depending on the industry.

Livestock producers are at the lower end of the scale with grain croppers and intensive industries at the high end.

This coming on top of a record year of AgFlation will be the death knell for many smaller farmers.

New South Wales Farmers Federation President Jock Laurie (pictured) recently told us that they believe AgFlation based on the 4 major farm inputs - chemical, fertiliser, diesel and interest rates is running somewhere between 60 and 80%.

Jock said that they were waiting on modelling to be completed to come up with the final figure.

It is up to the National Farmers Federation as the peak farmer lobby to put farmers case before PM Rudd and his team. If they are not able to secure some relief for farmers from the burden of the emissions trading scheme we will see the greatest upheaval in rural Australia in our history.

Family farms will be sold into large corporate farming ventures. Corporates with massive dollars behind them will be able to survive as they can operate under the efficiencies of sheer size & scale.

Corporate farming operations however do little or nothing for rural communities many of which will shrivel and eventually die under such a scenario. When a corporate operates a farming enterprise that was once operated by say 10 smaller family farms they do it with a skeleton permanent work force supplemented by ‘fly in’ contractors.

Infrastructure and services such as schools, hospitals, doctors, chemists and service businesses in these small communities depend on farming families. Without them these communities have no future.

So forget worrying about the 3 million people who may lose their jobs in the Energy sector, and power stations closing down. Those industries can pass their cost of emission permits onto consumers.

Be worried, very worried about yourselves and the 1,000’s of other family farms that simply will not be viable as the manufacturers of every farm input, steel, timber, rubber, water, electricity, machinery, chemical, fertilizer, diesel, power etc pass those costs onto farmers who have no ability to pass them onto their customers.

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Update 11am - 7th July 2008

Victorian Agmate Jenny Bird has sent us this from todays Border Mail.

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NSW Cattle producer “Straight Talking” John Carter writes: (Opinion)

Australia’s new Trade Minister, Simon Crean (pictured), is coasting along on the back of the same idiotic advisor’s that have taken Australia to the second highest debtor nation in the OECD during a mineral boom.

His disappointment at the new US Farm Bill continuing to subsidize grain farmers is akin to a child bemoaning the setting of the sun. “Please Mummy, stop it going away”. They have repeated the disappointment press release for over 30 years! These people need a heavy dose of reality salts.

Chinese, European and US Governments have known for years that food supply is as important as defense.

Australia’s fat cat bureaucrats, NFF (National farmers Federation) officials on their career paths and Business class travel around the world and empty minded ministers in First Class don’t want to understand this very basic concept.

Amongst public figures only the late Bob Santamaria and Independent Federal MP Bob Katter (pictured) have been able to see and say . Bob, apart from his deep reading and use of the Parliamentary Research Library lives in the far north of Australia and is closer to the real world.

Insular Canberra doesn’t understand that when you are in a hole and want to get out of it the first thing to do is to stop digging. They neither understand holes or digging. They just keep travelling and polluting the atmosphere with their free trade passports. Why?-

“Put your money on self interest, you always know that it is trying”.

We are disappearing under a mountain of debt. We have the second highest interest rates in the OECD- and rising because we have to service the huge debt and, unlike the USA, we don’t have the power to claim that ours is the world currency and print it with no backing. Our high interest rates mean speculation in “carry trades” as money men borrow at 0.5% in Japan and lend at 7-8% in Australia. Madness.

We now import all sorts of food from subsidized Communist China. We have destroyed our manufacturing industry and are destroying our pork, orange, milk and sugar industries. The policy is the antithesis of Pliny’s AD 69 call to Rome ” We must, whatever happens, safeguard the family farm”.

When I went to Paris in 1983 on my Churchill Fellowship tour and met with OECD officials they told me that they had dismissed Australian negotiators as fools as they protested at subsidies.

But what about our beef access to the world? With the world’s only mandatory RFID NLIS we can’t get another kilo into Europe. We haven’t filled the US quota for 5 years and are unlikely to ever fill it again as drought and alternative land use lower our herd.

As we near parity with the US dollar expect to see US Choice grade beef begin to appear in our top restaurants. “They can’t do that, they have no NLIS and they have BSE” we will cry -That mightn’t work-. South Korea is BSE free and the US are forcing their beef in there even without a free trade agreement finalized.

But what about our mineral exports to China? No Free Trade agreement there or with Russia where some of our beef is now going. “Our minerals will save us”. Look at South Africa but worse-look at Nauru.

Nauru was one of the wealthiest countries on earth as its phosphate royalties flooded in, there was no push for alternate industry or self sufficiency, the phosphate ran out and it is now a basket case economy. If we don’t change course it is also Australia’s future.

Globalisation has seen the people of 47 of 50 African countries and much of South and Central America go backwards under free trade and US multi national company thuggery.

That is why desperate people sank the Seattle negotiations with mass protests. That is why the US multinational dominated WTO now meet in isolated centres like Doha.

Oodnadatta should apply for the post Doha meeting with a well organized farmer/manufacturer repeat of the Battle of Little Big Horn to follow. The Custardisation of the Free Trade Custers would make the world in general and Australia in particular, a far better place.

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Have Your say! To join John is an online discussion of the issues he has raised, just leave a comment.

NSW Cattle Producer John Carter (pictured left) summaries his Submission to ACCC Grocery Prices submission.

Armed with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics, UK and Irish figures Athol Economou and I gave evidence for over an hour to the ACCC Inquiry into Grocery Prices.

Our hearing was in Canberra and was chaired by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman, Graeme Samuels (pictured left). There was a very large media presence and Athol and I did 14 interviews with TV, Radio and print media over the next 24 hours.

Our message was simple–

The US consumer is paying half what the Australian consumer pays and gets a far better (graded) product. The US producer is paid from 25% (Trade steer) to 35% (Feeder steer) more than his Australian counterpart. The Australian consumer and producer are being rorted.

Australia’s meat chain is very inefficient. The Australian consumer is annually paying $4 billion more, and the Australian producer is getting $2 billion less than they would under a similar meat chain to the US one.

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) claims each year that Australian consumers pay more money on beef as justification for our levy.

Producers pay a $5 per head levy to MLA plus huge costs in a quite useless National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). US producers pay a levy of $1 per head and have no NLIS. We are three time losers-our cattle prices have fallen heavily, they use our levy to help supermarkets and others promote beef and then we pay more each year for any beef that we buy at a supermarket!

Not good business.?The Australian beef producer is going out backwards. 30% of farm labour has left since 2002 (National Farmers Federation NFF survey). Average age of cattle producer is over 60. Cattle prices are now where they were 8 years ago and input prices for fuel, fertilizer and fencing costs have doubled and trebled. This is unsustainable.

MLA didn’t do a submission to the Inquiry. NFF did a real featherweight submission. Both are far too close to the supermarkets. MLA staff organize promotion monies, NFF leaders and Supermarket chiefs are very close. We are being sold out -in a huge way.

USDA has done a monthly consumer and producer price for ages. The US producer has received between 43 and 49% of the consumer dollar for the past 8 years. Neither Department of Agriculture Fisheries & Forestry (DAFF) nor MLA does such a figure but our arithmetic shows Australian producers are receiving between 20 and 28% of the consumer dollar.

Going through the meat chain we explained that the main problem lies with the retail ‘mark up’.

There is an agent- duopoly-Landmark and Elders. There are problems for producers with links with Japanese who incur losses in Australia and make huge profits in Japan.

Transporters have fierce competition and small margins. Contrary to what some said at the Inquiry we have smaller distances than the US-Australia’s beef cattle and its population are concentrated along the East Coast whilst the US has cattle all over its country.

There is competition in saleyards. (In US a survey showed 12 cent higher price through saleyard than direct). Australia has cartels- No Stockyard and Packers Act to oversee collusive bidding and also to ensure transparency in price reporting.

Feedlots are a recent and economically doubtful addition. Now operating at fewer than 50% capacity and in a good season with high world grain prices will be lower.

Japanese and their fronts and US companies control a majority of Australia’s feedlot capacity. This may be the reason that Australian feeder steer producers are currently paid LESS than the price of the finished steer whilst the US producer has traditionally been paid around 10% MORE?? A Judicial Inquiry is needed.

Abattoirs are mostly unprofitable. Very few new works have been built since the Public works of 1940-60 period-mostly upgrades. Only one export plant (very badly run) west of a line from Townsville to Adelaide (2/3 of Australia) -there were once 8.

Retail.

US has over 50 large supermarket chains, Australia has two. Massive change in 15 years as Coles / Woolworths duopoly’s move to dominate. The only profitable link in the chain. Huge profits. They control the young cattle market as they purchase over 50% and can keep prices down.

Conclusion.

The Supermarkets and the Japanese are taking a disproportionate share of the consumer dollar and putting at risk the sustainability of the industry. We called for a Royal Commission into the meat industry chain.

In March 1999 I attended a two-day Strategic Planning seminar in Canberra with all the Beef industry heavies. I succeeded (against a lot of opposition) in having an audit of the beef industry as the No 1 priority. Nothing has been done.

Now we see the result of Peak Councils and MLA not knowing what our industry is — The US consumer is paying half what the Australian consumer pays and gets a far better (graded) product. The US producer is paid from 25% (Trade steer) to 35% (Feeder steer) more than his Australian counterpart. The Australian consumer and producer are being rorted.
Thanks a lot.

With friends like our current leaders we don’t need any enemies.

Have your say!

Do you believe Australia’s Supermarket Duopoly are paying farmers a fair price for beef and other farm produce?

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Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:

The National Farmers Federation (NFF) admitted today that it may need to change the way it operates, to counteract animal rights groups ongoing anti-farmer campaigns like the ones being waged against mulesing sheep and live export. Click Here to read that story.

It appears that the NFF has been a little distracted by the loss of it’s South Australian and Western Australian State members. Difficult to call yourself “National Farmers” when you don’t represent farmers across the nation, there were still a few farmers left in SA & WA last time I checked.

Can anybody tell us what the NFF has been doing to counteract the campaigns against Live Export, Mulesing, the abolition of the Wheat single desk, the banning of Gamba grass in Northern Australia etc. etc. etc?

Have your say!

Does the NFF work as an effective National farm lobby group for the majority of Australian farmers? Click on the Blue Comments below to tell us what you think.