I remember that prior to coming to Albury-Wodonga I believed farmers and those associated with farming were a bunch of whingers.
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That was despite spending six months in Cootamundra in the 1970s, where most of my mates were cockies.
Even when I came here I still reckoned farmers were always unhappy.
That belief lasted, until I became responsible for The Border Mail’s Country Mail lift-out. Talk about an epiphany.
Now I can’t believe how farmers make enough kanga to live on. Just look at this year.
The croppers had a wonderful autumn break to sow in and a solid winter. But then the vital early spring rain never came and was replaced by hot, dry conditions.
The rain that is falling now is more of a nuisance than anything.
But what happens if the farmers get a devastating frost, or heavy rainfall just as they are about to harvest, as has happened not infrequently in the past.
For many that will mean a waste of a year’s work and a huge chunk out of their income.
And if they do get a good crop there is always the chance prices will drop and they will have trouble even covering their input costs.
Sure, livestock prices are pretty good at the moment, but in reality they are prices the producers should have been getting for the past 10 years.
Yes, there was a time when farmers were, unwittingly, environmental vandals.
But that has all changed with producers now being fine stewards of their land and the innovation and ingenuity they employ is remarkable. That includes being aware of biodiversity, use of organic fertilisers or better use of manufactured ones, preventing erosion, looking after watercourses and so much more.
But our farmers get little support, with city dwellers, metropolitan media and politicians paying scant regard to their plight.
The tragedy is the city types are putting the brakes on a bright future for our future generations.
With the rise of wealthy middle classes in Asia, Australia should be doing some serious planning as to how the hell we are going to produce enough to satisfy the demand for our product.
Instead we get people saying agriculture is a waste of space and that we can import food cheaper than it is produced in Australia
Sure, so long as the farm workers are paid a pittance and you don’t mind eating food that is grown or produced in contaminated soils or waterways. And, of course, those foreign producers are not tied down by enormous amounts of red tape.
I remember interviewing one agricultural entrepreneur who told me that from one of his offices in China he could witness people form long queues for the opportunity to pay $7 a litre for New Zealand milk.
And we must realise our reputation for producing “clean and green” food gives us a huge advantage in the global market.
There are farmers and farming organisations who need to change the way they think, the way they operate and their attitudes.
But agriculture presents every Australian with some great opportunities in the future in many fields.
And they don’t even have to leave the cities to take advantage of them.
We all have to change our attitudes to agricultural producers and give them a foot up – rather than grind them into the dust they often have to operate in.