Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:
In light of the Global Food shock that is gripping the world the timing of the Australian 20/20 Summit is perfect for the Agriculture revolution that Australia will lead the world in.
Those in the mainstream media who have decried the summit over the last week have totally missed the significance of what was achieved in the Rural section of the summit. Prime minister Kevin Rudd and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke are to be congratulated in bringing together the 100 men and women who participated in the Rural think tank.
Agmates has spoken to 4 of the attending summiteers and brings you a brief summary of their thoughts on the summit and what must be achieved for here.
Roger Fletcher - Fletcher International Exports: Location
When I was a boy growing up on a property west of the NSW town of Moree I remember Roger was a drover and a bloody good A grade Rugby League player for the Moree Blue Boars in the group 5 competition. He started with nothing but an ability to work hard and think big and has gone on to become a multi-millionaire sheep meat and wool processor.
His Business Fletcher International Exports in Dubbo is the city’s biggest employer and today exports meat, offal, skins, wool and other sheep by-products to more than 80 countries.
Roger told us:
“The states are outdated constructs of the horse-and-buggy days that were choking country communities because of their differing rules and regulations and their inefficiency. The states and their different laws were set up in 1902 when there were no cars and no roads.
It’s a nightmare doing business in 7 different states, its like dealing with 7 different countries. We need to harmonize the laws across the states, for a start one set of legislation for roads and rail.
I can tell you, if you have been doing business one way for 10 years and haven’t changed, you’re doing it the wrong way.
A study has been done and showed that as a nation we’d save $30billion in duplicated expenditure if we did away with the states and just had a Commonwealth Government and 20 - 30 big regional councils.”
What infuriated Roger more than anything was going to overseas trade shows and seeing the states with their separate stalls undermining each other rather than trying to win business for agriculture nationally.
“The other thing we need to fix is imported labour. We just can’t get workers in rural Australia. It just makes sense, we have got heaps of work here and no one to do it. Our near neighbors have heaps of people that want to work, but no jobs.
It makes more sense to bring in workers from our neighbors Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. Bring them here for 2 years, we train them up, they make good money then go home to their families with money in their pocket and a whole set of employable skills.
Aren’t we helping them more by doing that than sending money over there as aid and paying them to sit on a beach somewhere waiting for a handout?”
Jane Bennett - Ashgrove Cheese and dairy - Central Northern Tasmania: Location
Jane and her family run Ashgrove Cheese on their dairy farm located in the picturesque countryside of Elizabeth Town in central Northern Tasmania.
In 1993 the families established the cheese factory to value add to the milk being produced on the farm. Today the farming operation has expanded to milk over 900 Friesian dairy cows on two dairy farms supplying milk to both Ashgrove Cheese and Fonterra.
Jane thought the summit was very productive and worked on solutions to key issues affecting farmers.
” A major challenge we face is the massive loss of labour in rural Australia. As our standard of living improves - health, education, there is not many people left who want to do farm labour as a career. We have a serious shortage of people who want to milk cows, pick fruit and small crops.
We send a lot of aid money into the Pacific and other regions to people who never have any hope of employment. Dairy farmers in particular want to bring Phillipino’s over to work. they want the opportunity and they are terrific workers.
It’s not a matter of taking jobs off Australian’s, we have the work and no people to do it, they have heaps of people who want work but have no jobs.”
Jane is currently doing a Nuffield Scholarship which has recently taken her to the USA and Europe.
“What those trip proved to me is this farm labour shortage is a world wide phenomena. Perhaps it’s just exacerbated in Australia because of the mining boom.
In the UK the majority of the farm workers are from Eastern Europe particularly Poland. It’s not a long term proposition for them, just 2 years. In a lot of dairy’s we visited the farm workers were Polish. Behind nearly every dairy shed was a caravan where the workers lived. It’s not just rural, a number of the processing factories had signs written in Polish.
This is not a short term issue. We need a long term policy from the government to address the rural labour shortage in Australia.
That includes a national skills & training agenda, it needs to be industry specific - the farming sector needs to feed in information to develop that agenda.
In fact we see the rural sector needs a greater capacity to engage with schools. The intensive dairy industry in Northern Tasmania has already begun this with a program we have developed called “Cows Create Careers” with year 10 students at local high schools.”
Bobbie Brazil - Chair of Land & Water Australia: Location
Bobbie is a partner with her husband in a broad-scale dryland and irrigation farming business on the Darling Downs and in the Goondiwindi region in Qld and south of Katherine in the Northern Territory. The farming operation encompasses primarily grain, cotton and cattle.
Currently, Bobbie is Chairman of the Australian Landcare Council. She has also recently been appointed as Chancellor of the University Of Southern Qld. She stressed to me that there were many recommendations from the 2 day summit that had not been canvassed in the mainstream media, but these would come to light when the actual report was released in another week.
“The final big ideas announced to the media at the conclusion of the summit were a brave attempt to get some kind of summary of the event. The summit will really achieve it’s potential for agriculture once the actual report is released and the ideas are followed through at the local level.
We need to have a series of meetings in each region of the country to take the ideas of the summit further, down to the local level, the farmers, the practitioners and landholders.
What was a real eye opener for me was how little appreciation there was of the extent of the extension aspect of R&D- and concern that R&D outcomes were still not adequately delivered to the local on- ground level.
That EXTENSION across a range of agriculture issues was once largely funded by state govts. It is more often the case now that many farmers employ their own consultants to help them keep abreast of new development and new knowledge.
That’s were the pool of knowledge is with individual farmers and their ag consultants. The ideas of the summit have to be channeled through those people to bring about the ultimate integration of food production and the management of natural resources. Without this input I would have limited expectation of what will be achieved in this area.
The Minister (Federal Ag Minister Tony Burke) took a great interest in the issues and ideas discussed and agreed upon. Those idea spread across every stream of the Agricultural industry in Australia.”
When I questioned Bobbie on the issue of major development of agriculture production in Northern Australia her comments were.
“Farming in the tropical north of Australia is not as simple as it looks to the majority of Australians. It is a very harsh climate and brings it’s own set of challenges.
We have had 200 years of European settlement in the Northern territory and it’s still largely a land of potential in relation to agricultural development. Not that there have not been grand attempts. There is in fact a history of significant failures of large scale attempts at Dairy, Horticulture, Rice and Cotton.
I’m not against development of Agriculture in the North of Australia, we just need to be mindful that it’s not southern Australia, the climate and environment is totally different and what is standard farming practice in southern Australia in many cases is just not suitable or sustainable in the North. We know that first hand because of the farming country we have at Mataranka in the Northern Territory.
The Federal and three State Government’s have a lot more research to do before we can seriously look at major development of the north. For example there has never been any research on just how much productive land is actually available in the north.
A lot of that land is held by the traditional owners, we really have no clear cut idea what the actual capacity is and thats something, along with sustainable development of that land and water, that needs research before we can proceed in that direction.”
Claire Penniceard: Owner and Sole Director of The Pig Pen Pty Ltd: Location
The Pig Pen situated in Euroa Victoria is an environmentally friendly operation that rears 28,000 pigs a year for export to the giant Singaporean-owned company QAF. They take in in seven-week old piglets weighing 16-20 kilograms and send them off for sale five months later, weighing in at 90-95 kilograms.
The pigs are housed on deep, soft litter bedding in large sheds, where they can wander freely and have feed and water 24 hours a day.
“I have a great feeling of energy and liberation following the summit. The process was complex and what I believe we have done is open the the lines of communication - it’s just the starting point, not a result in itself.
What has actually gone to the press is nothing compared to what will come out in the final report. I was not in the rural group but actually in the rural communities stream and the big issues are infrastructure and social issues.
The Pig industry is an early mover in the increase of scale and intensification in the rural industries. But to build these intensive industries you need a different substructure. You need better networks of phone, water, energy (electric and gas), roads, rail, ports and air freight. Intermodule hubs to support these intensive industries.
You run an intensive production industry be it pork, dairy, horticulture, aquaculture, feedlots, cropping you have serious issues with electricity and water - intensive industries are not cyclical - the are continuous and need reliable supply. Piped water, reliable and efficient energy, telecommunications, roads and ports produce food.
I see designated sites or hubs for agriculture where the services are all available, efficient and reliable, that’s where you want to be to run those intensive industries. Industries in those hubs is what will give use Food security. But the infrastructure has to be there first.”
Like Roger Fletcher who was in a different group (Rural Industry) Claire’s group saw the harmonizing of State regulations across Australia as essential.
“We need a single set of regulations across Australia. Not 7 sets of differing Regulation. Road and rail are an obvious area requiring urgent attention.
The media has been portraying the Summit as just a smoke screen for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd setting us up for a republic. I don’t believe that for one minute. Tim Fischer told us that in 1920 a labor government and again in 1931 a conservative government both looked seriously at abolishing the states and establishing 20 - 31 regions. In 1920 labor looked at 31 regions whilst the conservatives by 1931 had it down to just 20. If we did go that way the areas size and location of the regions would be governed by population and climate.
The Prime Minister gave us a guaranteed undertaking to keep the lines of communication open and the dialogue going. With ongoing meetings and the interactive web site, I see enormous capacity to follow through on these ideas.”
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