Opinion Piece – Farm Weekly

12th December, 2022

The end of the year is upon us, so I wish everybody and safe and productive harvest, and a safe Christmas holiday period on our roads.

As 2022 closes, we find ourselves with a new Minister for Agriculture, so we are hoping for a new vision for agriculture and a change in the Government’s Ag agenda.

Alannah MacTiernan was a hard worker, and an intelligent and passionate advocate, as long as she agreed with the type of farming you were engaged in.

I have said many times that she was not a champion for the traditional forms of agriculture that have underpinned the State’s economy for a century.

That is not to say that Alannah failed to invest in traditional farming completely, as her support of grains research through the Grains Research and Development Corporation demonstrates.

But her focus has long been on lecturing farmers on how they need to change to match her vision of the future rather than listening to their needs.

 Now with a new Minister there is an opportunity to reset the Government’s agricultural policies and plans, and to engage cooperatively with farmers. This will mean to listen more than speak.

This way the new Minister can avoid the kind of foot-in-mouth comments that undermined the contribution the previous Minister made. Calling for calm when the Foot and Mouth virus hit Bali was the right call by Alannah; suggesting that prices would plunge for consumers undermined the very calm and confidence she was trying to sew. Hopefully the new Minister will listen first, and then remember that their constituency as a Minister is actually the farmers.

And there are plenty of other issues to be working on.

In the wheatbelt the logistics of getting grain to port rapidly to take advantage of the best prices remains an issue.

The investment of State ($40 million) and Commonwealth ($160 million) Governments into the Agricultural Supply Chain Improvement stage 1 projects will certainly help. 

But at the same time the Government is hiding the business cases for the Tier 3 lines they promised more than two years ago. Some honesty and clarity is called for; if the business cases don’t add up the new Minister should tell the community so, and we can look at alternatives.

In the South West the Government has kicked the Boyanup Saleyards issue down the road again for another ten years. This has been a decades long failure to deliver the Regional Saleyards Strategy that all side of politics endorsed.

The current ten-year extension on the same site has to be underpinned with a proper plan to shift the facility out of town to a sensible and safe location.

Alannah MacTiernan said all the sales will go online; here’s an opportunity for the new Minister to change direction and give the cattle industry the support it needs. Don’t waste another ten years just to reach the same crisis in 2033.

There is also a massive opportunity for the new Minister to get serious about the control of weeds and feral animals across this great State.

The Government has managed to shift responsibility from the bureaucrats who are charged with managing the problem to the community, especially nearby landowners.

Most landowners are engaged in weed and pest control themselves, and they also pay a levy – a state tax under another name – to fund control measures on the land of those who can’t be bothered doing it themselves. And the worst performer in this regard is the Government itself, whose lands are full of problem species.

The Biosecurity Levy provides very little income to the Recognised Biosecurity Groups who receive the funding. These great community volunteers are left to pick up the pieces on a shoestring budget; they have no capacity to make inroads with the pittance they get.

These are just a few examples of issues the new Minister could get their teeth into; there are plenty of others. What a fantastic opportunity for improvement that will make a real difference to the farming and regional communities that should rightfully be the focus. I wish the new Minister all the best in targeting farming success as the real measure of their own.