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the australian farmer
your farm would be being legislated or “activisted” towards closure. Being a “head in the sand” farming ostrich might be good for a while - after all, the sand is warm and dark and you can pretend all this isn’t happening. But eventually you need to come up for air, and face the reality. If you aren’t paying to join, why should you expect other farmers to subsidise you or your farm? Big business employs lobbyists directly - they understand that in business you need to have quality relationships with government to minimise attacks on your business. If your farm can’t afford a full time lobbyist, sit still and wait to be swallowed, or join the farming peak body most specific to your business and pay your bit towards their full time lobbyist. If you don’t like what that association is doing, get in- volved and change the rules. Or start a new Farmer Peak Body, or change the Farmer Group if the old one isn’t listening. Or be your own full time lobbyist - writ- ing letters, having meetings, conferring with other groups, writing submissions, doing consultations, developing plans, finding alternatives. You need to fight for your future! How much is the actual loss to your farm if all those well-funded groups have their way without any push-back voice for the farmers? So often in busi- ness, you have to spend a little money to make more – and if your cashflow is squeezed now, how much worse will it be if all these groups get what they want, unopposed? People power matters. Unless and until farmers realise this and begin to act as a group; the activ- ists, companies and regulators will have their way, with only these poorly-funded groups to stop them. Most of the time you won’t even know it’s happen- ing until it happens. If you are in the farming business, being informed and supporting lobbying is part of that business. Join the group that best represents your farming business tell them what you need, make yourself aware of the work they do, and make your require- ments clear. Stand up and be counted. Now is your chance to make a difference to your own future – or have it made for you.
‘Oh wait! The Farming Peak Bodies and Feder- ations can stop the attacks. I don’t have to. Some other farmer will fund them so I don’t have to. I can blame them if they don’t do the job that I didn’t pay for. It’s too expensive. I can’t point to a deal that I would get to offset my membership fee. It’s eco- nomically rational not to spend the money if some- one else is going to spend it.' Well, it looks like all farmers have become eco- nomic rationalists. All over Australia, farmers have walked away from their representative groups, who are struggling along on “smell of an oily rag” budgets, trying to counterbalance all these well- funded forces for the good of all farmers when only some farmers have the guts to pay. Wake up, farmers! As the saying goes, “the best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm”. You could find 10 reasons not to join your Farmer Peak Body - be it beef cattle, sheep, for- estry, grain, horticulture, or chicken. But that’s completely overshadowed by the one reason TO join - without these tiny underfunded groups run by (often) poorly paid and deeply passionate staff,
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