An open letter on behalf of drought-affected farmers
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‘Gundooee’ 8th December 2009 Dear Tony, Re: Drought in Central West NSW Deep concern and disappointment is the catalyst which has prompted me to write to you today. As I look around at my farm and my friends, our future is quite literally blowing in the wind, and that wind is heading for your office in Canberra. I am only one of many farmers (and other community members) in our area, hurting from extreme weather conditions, and we are collectively asking for your help.
Over the past 12 months, the Commonwealth Government has indicated that it wants to change the way it delivers drought assistance, or in other words, to reduce government support to this area to eliminate the prospect of drought subsidies going on perpetually into the future. Back in May this year, the ‘Productivity Commission’ responded to a request by Government (economic report) to “Identify the most appropriate way for governments to assist farmers to improve their self-reliance/preparedness for drought events” (find a better way so government can discontinue drought support). I guess the concept had potential, but the timing failed when our drought “recovery period” was terminated by dry weather in its infancy. Farms and farmers need assistance now. The dry period we are experiencing is extreme and is in some part the result of climate change — something we apparently have no control over. Farmers are hurting as small business managers, as environmental custodians, and as individuals. In their visit to the Central West area in February this year, NRAC failed to accurately assess not the pasture (which was fairly abundant at the time), but the poignant and less obvious signs of drought: depleted fodder reserves, exhausted soils, stretched bank accounts and rising levels of depression. This oversight, which was derived from a pre-existing change of government policy, has plunged farms and surrounding communities into decline. Also, the volumes of rain needed to produce feed during these next few hot months are historically impossible, so stock feed production or sowing of crops from now to Autumn is unrealistic, and over a large area — a very important point. The photo in this letter were taken at 2pm today — we have at least another three hot months of this heartbreak and cost in front of us … how will people survive this? The rainfall figures here at Gundooee tally 325mm for the year, which is half the average annual rainfall. The effective annual rainfall is far less than that, as most of the rain fell in the height of winter and summer when grasses respond poorly, and much of the other rainfall was sporadic and ineffectual. I believe our effective annual rainfall to be about 100mm for this year. This would not have been so unmanageable, had we not been coming out of a five-year dry time. Earlier this year, our farm had to take out a further loan of $80,000 with the NAB to cover our $100,000 feed and agistment bill (for 2009). The gross annual income for the farm peaks at $200,000 per annum, so after removing the drought costs and interest repayments, the residual funds available for running the farm and family were never going to be enough. We run at 70% equity which is traditionally a safe margin, but the problem this year has been the depleted reserves of fodder and money — the real difficulty is not having that buffer to fall back on. This letter is a request for you to:
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and I look forward to your response, not just to acknowledge the letter, but a response that gives us all hope. Yours sincerely, Rob Lennon ‘Gundooee Organics’, Dunedoo NSW |
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21 Comments
I am not a famer but I live close to the land and have been involved in many disucssions about the farming situation. I believe that now is the time to stop drought assistance for ever. Instead, landholders should be assisted in drawing up farmplans that are far more realistic under the circumstances, with family maintenance available until the end of the process. Public money should then be available to implement the revised (environmentally realistic, ecologically sustainable) plan to put the land on a better productive footing. If that cannot be achieved then the landholders should be paid to leave. Unless our meagre finances are used to put the country on a better footing to deal with permanent climate change then we are wasting it.
Interesting proposition DJH. But give a bit of a suggestion what you mean by:
” If that cannot be achieved then the landholders should be paid to leave.” Do you mean the Commonwealth should buy out the debt at the bank and take over the property while paying the ex-farmer some sort of lump sum or a pension? Who actually do you see as ‘managing’ the emptied property and who should ‘own’ it? And if better times return - ie. lesser times but better than now, should someone farm the land or do you see it as emptied forever and no longer managed? Because while this might sound like a clean and neat method of making a problem go away it actually includes creating a brand new and possibly less sustainable challenge.
Well said, Rob. But refer to Item 10, by Bernard Keane, in today’s Crikey. It specifically refers to writing letters to Ministers and MPs. Sadly, no considered response will be forthcoming.
Dunedoo has been seriously hot and dry this year. With respect though, last year wasn’t unusual, nor were the last five years really a “dry time” on an objective rainfall assessment (respectively 582, 678, 432, 733 and 675 mm, vs 612 mm mean).
Pasture and crop growth depends on soil moisture, and a lot of things affect that beyond just crude rainfall aggregates. Is the undoubted dryness in the central west more affected by increasing temperature and evaporation?
I would be very interested in the opinion of an expert in soil and pasture management in relation to the farm, Gundooee, and its management during the past several years.
If it is reasonable to support farmers through drought periods via loans and low interest rates, then it is equally reasonable for these same farmers to develop and stick to a farm management plan which has been appraised by experts.
Perhaps such accredited farm management plans should be a condition of at least some of the Commonwealth and State aid. If no such plan can be developed, then I agree with the first contributor - look for ways to support the uneconomic farmer to leave the land and arrange for the land thus left to be used less intensively under the best plan which can be developed.
I know it’s cruel and hearltess rationality, but my reading of your letter is that it simply makes the case that your farm is not viable. If the only possible way of continuing to do business is to rely on the government, then you are not really doing business; you are asking the government to preserve a cultural practice.
Sorry Rob, I’m with Bogdanovist on this one. Maybe you just shouldn’t be farming there? What’s the benefit to the Commonwealth of supporting unproductive farming?
I think it’s horrible that this has to be experienced by individuals, but it is part of the cut and thrust of running a capitalist society. I heard an interview with the head of the Farmers Federation (name?) who wasn’t really happy with drought assistance. His theory was that it eliminates the advantages of intelligent farmers and supports farmers with lazy farm practises. In a cold hard economic approach this is a bad idea. The good farmers should prosper, the bad ones should fail. Asking the Govt to step in is not likely an efficient redistribution of resources. Shame individuals have to bare the brunt of it.
I didn’t want Rob to send that letter as I knew it would generate responses from people (urbanites?) who are also authorities in land management and the future of food and fibre in Australia. I’ll happily extend an invitation to water and soil experts to assess our management practises, look over our farm plan - in fact anyone who wants to see how we are trying to cope during this extreme and extended weather ‘event’ (El Nino). You can’t really comment on the drought until you have experienced it from our perspective: it’s grinding us into the ground. We have destocked and have most of our cattle away on agistment so our land and water resources are not degraded to the point of compromised recovery. We also manage large areas of native vegetation and therefore habitat for many native species (many endangered) so removing the cattle also gives the wildlife a go. We do this because it’s our responsibility to manage the land to the best of our ability - and we don’t get credit for it over the next bloke who doesn’t manage his livestock humanely or the land & water resources carefully. It’s a touchy area to talk about “removing uneconomic farmers” and the questions I raise, are how do you determine who is ‘viable’ or not? Are you comfortable with whole districts such as ours being stressed to the point where we are wondering where the next suicide will be? Who decides who the ‘lazy’ farmer is? Land degradation is linked to low incomes, and right now, everyone is feeling the pinch, so ultimately our landscape is really suffering. Our district is traditionally a ‘safe’ farming area, but we are being put to the test this season. My defensiveness is heightened by the criticism of people who expect [clean and green] food to be readily available at cheap prices. If you want to roll the costs of production and good land management into food prices then I’m sure many couldn’t afford to eat. There is one more point I’d like to make, and that is, with the bushfires in Victoria this year, the nation donated (govt too) to help those poor people - and yet no-one had the balls to say that they shouldn’t have been living in a high risk bushfire area in the first place. Drought occurs all over Australia; we chose to live and farm here because of the suitability and capability of the land. Drought, ‘dry periods’, El Nino, whatever you call it, is a form of natural disaster, just like bushfire, cyclone, flood etc it’s just that it is slow and insidious in its effect. We don’t want a cash hand out, we are looking for a temporary break (through EC declaration) that will allow people to look after themselves and their land. If our weather patterns are exacerbated by climate change, then please let’s get serious about reducing CO2 emissions. Thank you.
GundooeeGirl, I largely agree with you. But, capitalism works best when there are less subsidies and Government interventions. It’s horrible but true. So, in answer to most of your questions; the market decides who wins and loses, not the Government. I’m not generally in favour of this style of ‘let the markets decide’ attitude, but if we’re going to use the system, we should use it properly.
The absurd conclusion to Government intervention is that farmers build their practises around getting the best subsidies; with no output. I have anecdotal evidence this happens. As a taxpayer you might be outraged by this and want it stopped. As a farmer you clearly want to be supported and see it as being in the good of the Commonwealth. It’s a tough one to resolve.
I am an environmental scientist who married a fifth generation farmer in the Central West of NSW and we live on his family’s large mixed farming property near Cumnock. The one thing I have learnt since moving on to the farm some years ago is that management practices can vary widely between generations, within families and from property to property. Despite this variation, the number of farmers who are educating themselves about land management and employing responsible land conservation techniques are increasing and those who don’t manage things responsibly find that even in the better times’ they are not as able to cope as they once did.
Sustainable farming practices such as minimum soil tillage when cropping or maintaining groundcover when grazing are becoming essential parts of a property plan to ensure that a farm remains viable through times of the natural seasonal variation in weather patterns. It sounds as though ‘Gundooee’ is one of those properties that already have these plans in place and employ some of these techniques? It is good to hear that you are combining both conservation and production!
My husband took over the management of his family cattle export business 7 years ago and through the adoption of grazing and pasture management he has managed to reverse the poor land management decisions made by other members of his family while also turning a profit. So I have seen first hand how management can make all the difference.
It needs to be clear though, that good management practices will only help a farming operation get through the normal expected climate variations. The current climatic conditions are not normal and I challenge anyone who has driven out here lately to differentiate between a farm with ‘good’ management practices and a farm with ‘bad’ management practices. I can tell you now that they look EXACTLY the same. Our property is looking as bad as “Gundooee” and I know that we are among the best land managers in our district.
The fact is that the current weather pattern that is occurring makes it virtually impossible for anyone to survive for long unless they are lucky enough to have inherited the farm debt free from their parents and they can keep borrowing against the land for things like feed. Not to mention that it is virtually impossible for anyone to enter farming now-days due to the high cost of land (driven up by the land being priced for ‘lifestyle’ use rather than production) and the inability to make enough profit to service these huge amounts of debt.
Too bad if you are passionate about working the land, but unlucky enough not to have a spare million dollars lying around – you wouldn’t be able to survive what is currently happening. So we limit the ability for people with the skills and passion to enter the industry and we are pushing out anyone who may not have the equity ratio or borrowing capacity to ride it out.
I agree that people who are irresponsible land managers should not be encouraged to continue to degrade the land in order to farm. But if you think that forcing well educated responsible farmers employing sustainable management techniques off the land is a good outcome, then I ask you – what are you having for dinner tomorrow? If everyone leaves the land, who is going to farm it and are you willing to pay the price (both environmental and economic) of having a food market dominated by large corporations who only care about the bottom line?
And where will you grow the food? If you say that the Central West is not a viable food production area – where do you propose to farm? Closer to the coast?? Oh that’s right, we are building houses all over the best farmland in the coastal rain belt and filling it with urban sprawl and little lifestyle hobby farms where the owners produce olives, alpacas and truffles. Hmmm. I guess that will have to form the basis for Australia’s food production from now on? Well, I think if that is the attitude then everyone should be prepared to go hungry.
If people came out here and saw what is happening, they would realise that it is a natural disaster and that the circumstances are exceptional. If times were good and people were putting their hand out, then I agree there is a point where the hand outs need to stop. But times are very extreme and so I think that the Government needs to recognise the importance of helping farmers who are doing the right thing and perhaps drought assistance in the future should be linked to farm management plans and outcomes.
In the meantime, good luck at “Gundooee” and I hope for the good of the industry that you can ride it out.
Don’t worry Gundooee Girl, it was a good thing to publish the letter. Don’t arc up to the “urbanites’ who are perfectly capable of understanding your situation and don’t be too dismissive about anyone who expects clean and green food to be readily available at cheap prices. If we want a fight about food prices we’ll pick that with Woolies and Coles.
Together with Glenwood though, you should look to the models of how previously thriving primary industries have been put out to pasture. The east coast line and trawl fishery has been through several iterations of what is going to happen to a lot of eastern Australian farms. There are hardly any commercial fishermen left. It was a way of life once but not any more. Irrigation is finished west of the Divide, and only the seriously clever and innovative dryland farmers are going to make it. If, as Glenwood suggests, “drought assistance in the future should be linked to farm management plans and outcomes” - it may turn out that after a few more years the “outcomes” were nil. The farms were still broke. What then? I think the economic rationalists are trying to draw a line in the sand. If we all wait long enough the whole landscape will have blown away.
“Gundooeegirl” and “Glenwood”, I absolutely agree with some of the comments re land management and building homes and hobby farms on previously viable land.
I live not far from Singleton and, when I drive into town from the northeast, it makes my want to cry to see homes and streets on what were dairy farms only ten years back, with 10 metres of the best river flats in Eastern Australia.
That which passes for town planning in NSW is hard to understand as anything apart from selection of winners and losers from the available range of landowners, generally yielding to the money.
Back to farming. I imagine that the rainfall deficit in the Central West is 300 to 500 mm. This is an enormous amount to try to catch up and my heart goes out to you and your neighbours. However, the taxpayers’ pockets are only so deep. How are we, as a nation, to plan our support schemes?
Good farmers should and must be supported during poor years. Those who cannot demonstrate skill and care will eventually not succeed, regardless of the season. I didn’t draw a conclusion here re any particular property, however it seems to me that the better farm managers have cause to argue that relief money should be steered away from the no-hopers and towards those who can demonstrate that their farm plan/business plan is realistic.
Do any Crikey readers know a farmer who has ever received drought assistance? I have a friend who is a farmer, and according to him drought assistance is a myth. The only way you can get it is if you are so broke that no bank will lend you any money. He doesn’t know anyone who has ever successfully applied for drought relief. I would like to know if it is real, or if it is a case of the government seeming to help primary producers, but really using the money on administration of a scheme that doesn’t deliver.
John Kerin wrote a very intersting piece on farmers in Dissent arguing that ‘farmer’ was a complex term that needed more careful consideration. I think this is the right reference. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=133592124944325;res=IELHSS
But that aside, why shouldn’t each and every business in this country get the same sort of assistance farmers get when they experience severe negative business conditions. What makes farm businesses think they have some special call on public funds? and calling people ‘urbanites’ to indicate how dumb we are and how unable we are to understand a complex problem is just sectarian rubbish.
Well someone mentioned subsidy of a culture. Even if that was all that farming was, you know what? I’d much more happily subsidise that with my tax dollars than all the other “cultural subsidy” I do, the ABC, the National Museum in Canberra, the World Youth Day, a whole shitload of “culture” that is a national embarrassment.
We find ourselves swapping places here, SBH. The urban socialists who support the working class doing the actual production of wealth, suddenly lose their sympathy when that producer is a land owner (the traditional enemy), who is widely regarded as anti-green and a supporter of disreputable politicians.
And yet the production of food has become the great underrated cultural mainstay. The loss of it is far more than just export dollars and domestic food security, although these are tremendously important. I was not born on the land, but I could not imagine my childhood without large amounts of time spent on the land of relatives and family friends helping out at busy seasons. You can laugh this off as Henry Lawson sentimentality, or you can consider that societies - whether they are hunting or fishing or herding or farming societies - that lose contact with the means of their own food production and get it out of a can, become kind of … lost. Hard to explain in brief, I could write a whole thesis on this idea, but I guess you can either see what I’m talking about, or not.
I don’t want Australia’s farmers to close up shop, sell their land to Westfarmers (as the Nationals are angling to happen) and either shoot themselves or become taxi drivers. I’m willing to pay tax to that end.
By the way Mr Lennon and Gundooee Girl, it seems the National Party is now opposing any financial rewards for farmers to plant trees on their land.
The logic, according to Senator Fiona Nash, is that “You can’t eat trees. We need to be very cautious about going down this path. Food security is the most serious issue facing the future of this nation.”
According to Senator John Williams, the worry is that your farm land values might go up. Don’t believe me? “People buy the land,” Senator Williams said, “a farmer can’t get it and land prices increase. It squeezes out the farmers. If we plant too many trees, we lose food production, which is vital.”
When something sounds completely out of Alice in Wonderland, a good looking glass to look through is … follow the money. Who could possibly benefit from farm land values not going up?
A quick google search of rural press articles suggests that there is a major buy-up of Australian farming land taking place. The buyers are not, of course, a new generation of farmers, but international corporations from China and the Middle East, attempting to secure their own food security. And some big Australian companies are buying up land too. We’ve also heard for some years that the supermarket companies are pursuing a vertical integration model, and they prefer not to buy produce at farmers’ markets if they don’t have to.
These companies are of course all getting their land for rock bottom prices, because for many of the farmers it’s that or eat their shotgun. It might cramp their style if farmers are able to make money by growing trees - one of the provisions Malcolm Turnbull insisted on including in the CPRS bill before it, and he, were voted down.
Would someone care to do a bit of checking on where the National Party’s interests really are these days?
James McD asks what the National Party’s interests are these days.
To answer that question, first unwrap an enigma inside a puzzle. The poor old Country Party/CLP/Nats appear to have no policy, no discipline and no respect for the electorate. At State level, in NSW, I have great respect for my National Party local member, but at the federal level, the continuing mixed signals from the Queensland loonies and the destructive and ignorant approach to everything related even slightly to greenhouse/AGW/trees/water is hard to take.
Currently, the interests of the NP are determined on a daily basis by whoever is closest to the microphone, having regard for populism, ignorant bias and despite advice to the contrary.
The real interests of the NP should perhaps be the rebuilding of their platform and membership and thus to provide a strong and respected force for progressive change, especially on matters regarding natural resource utilization and social values.
However, if all of the Nationals’ opportunists, hooligans and blabbermouths were tossed out on their ears, the federal parliamentary party called the Nationals would be unrecognisable.
John Bennetts, I wish I could believe that they were so haphazard.
However, they have steadfastly opposed all efforts by both Malcolm Turnbull and the National Farmers Federation to turn carbon reduction policy to the farmers’ advantage.
The entire federal parliamentary team keeps repeating the key phrase “food security” over and over. As in, “Food security is the most serious issue facing the future of this nation” (see above).
We have at least two senators suggesting that higher land values are bad for land owners, because of a perceived risk to “food security”.
No, I think much of what we see from the federal Nationals is just smokescreen. I think they have a tightly defined policy, lots of discipline, and a high degree of respect for whomever’s interests they serve. I just wish I knew who that was. I think it stinks like a conspiracy with big corporate money behind it.
I just looked up the official Dunedoo rainfall figures daily and month by month for 2009.
Yes, the rain has been about half of the long term average.
No, it hasn’t favoured any particular season more or less than normal. To say that the rain came in Winter is not really true - it was spread through the months with similar ditribution to the average over 50 years.
If a farm is not sustainable during years of half of the avergae rainfall, then it will be unsustainable a large percentage of the time and must be supported by cash reserves or off-farm income which enable life to go on during the poor years.
Whilst Dunedoo has a fair average annual rainfall of over 600mm, this part of the country is notoriously unrelaible when it comes to rain and many soils, such as those in the writer’s photo, are sandy and do not hold moisture long after rain.
farming marginal land on a financial knife edge is always going to be precarious and heartbreaking, and it appears likely that this is precisely what we have been discussing.
I have to respond, John Bennetts re rainfall. Our property is 26 km north east of Dunedoo and we have enjoyed a very sporadic 340mls to date this year. We had 2mls on Thursday when Dunedoo appeared to have close to 10mls. Our property is on the southern floe of the Coolah Tops basalt, hence we have both red and black basalt soils (plus self mulching black alluvials on the flats). The grey hue to the photo above is due to the decimated pasture and the impending dust storm. We researched and selected our place on the strength of the soil type, water (creeks, groundwater and dams) and the ‘reliability’ of rainfall, with the locality known anecdotally as a ‘safe’ area. If you want marginal country I suggest you have a look around the state and see how other areas are doing right now.
We went into this with our eyes open, and our method of management has improved our place substantially, increasing groundcover and encouraging regeneration of native species of pasture, shrubs and trees. It would be interesting to know how others would end up if faced with our set of circumstances?
On another note, an underlying theme that has arisen in this discussion is that of farm values. Rural land is largely not planned or managed as a resource that supports a range of values including agricultural production, energy generation and conservation. It is instead allowed to be subdivided by local and state government into lot sizes that are not representative of local holding sizes. Lifestyle subdivision has been rampant in the central west, resulting in land values beyond affordability of the genuine farmer looking for economies of scale. Hobby farms and ‘blocks’ generally are not productive and take agricultural land out of production permanently. They do not usually increase population locally (being another form of housing choice for locals or weekenders in most areas). Much of the land with productive soils and good rainfall has already been, or has pressure for lifestyle subdivision, such as the land around larger towns and regional cities such as Oberon and Orange. The point I’m making is that as climate change takes it’s toll, as agricultural lands contract, we are going to run into serious problems finding land for farming and food production.
Thanks, Gundooeegirl, for your response. I agree 100% with your comments re blocks and subdivisions, which remove productive land from use permanently… see my comment above re Singleton’s expansion on the river flats.
It’s odd that, as the population of the western parts of the state generally declines or stagnates, the subdivisions keep on happening around cities such as Dubbo, Bathurst and Orange which are regional hubs. East of the ranges in NSW the picture is worse - population growth due to tree-changers, etc. Where have the so-called town planners been the past 100 years? I pick Singleton as an example, because it has only one retail centre and that is below the 1-in-100 years flood level. The Council adheres tightly to expand the existing CBD and permits no other, even to the extent of planning a multi-million dollar streetscape, at a cost of about $1k per resident, in order to make the CBD more attrctive. In its present location. Which was where the river crossing was for bullock teams and horses. So, it seems that a chance crossing 100 years ago is the primary determinant of town planning matters and is the cause of many good farms being built over and lost.
Regarding your rainfall, 300mm plus, out of an annual average of 6 or 7 hundred seems to be about correct. I well remember the decades my sister’s family spent on a couple of thousand acres west of Merriwa with similar rainfall. They struggled in the poor years and got their finances in order in the good, assisted by two off-farm incomes. Their lifestyle was fine, they loved the place, but it was a relief when the time came to retire from the land, sell up and move into town. Two harder workers you would not find anywhere, smart and strong. He was born and raised on the land. Yet, with a full set of skills and seemingly adequate capital, they also did it tough on occasion.
Thanks for setting us straight re the soil types. Unfortunately, the El Nino seems to be with us again, so the next year is likely to repeat the last.