National Farmers Federation board member Lisa Minogue says the sector will find it increasingly difficult to produce food unless Canberra starts listening to the concerns of rural Australia.
Ms Minogue has just wound up production of wool and merino lambs from her family-owned farm at Barmedman in NSW after more than 50 years but continues to run cattle and grow crops.
She is one of nine out of 10 Australian farmers who feel their voice is not being heard by the Labor government as they rapidly adopt technology to counter climate change.
The research involving more than 2000 farmers across seven countries found Australian farmers regarded adverse political and regulatory decisions as their biggest challenge, closely followed by price volatility and extreme weather events.
Ms Minogue said the Albanese government’s determination to phase out the live sheep trade highlighted its deaf ear to the concerns of farmers.
“You wonder what front they are going to attack us on next, and if it is just the thin-edge of the wedge,” she said.
“Cattle producers are still fighting for compensation from the Gillard government’s decision to ban live export to Indonesia. It annoys me that we still have to fight for everything in agriculture when, along with mining, we are the backbone of the Australian economy.”
The research released on Thursday showed that Australian and US farmers are the biggest adopters of digital and other technologies.
Australian farmers have also adopted regenerative agricultural practices more widely than their international counterparts.
Ms Minogue said some “city folks” wanted to attribute blame for climate change to farmers when in fact sustainable farming was the key to profitability.
“In dry years, we conserve as much moisture in the soil as we possibly can to grow crops. It’s amazing how little rain we can actually grow crops with,” she said.
It was flooding in 2022 and difficulty in finding labour and shearers that led to the Minogue family exiting the sheep industry.
“There were at least 75 years of breeding that had gone into those sheep so it was a really tough decision we made to get rid of them,” she said.
“In 2022, we had really bad flooding, and we essentially lived with the sheep. Everything we did with the sheep was hard work physically and emotionally.
“And then on the back of COVID workforce issues and not being able to get shearers. Something had to give, the sheep or us, so the sheep went.”
Ms Minogue and her husband John continue to run cattle and grow wheat, barley, oats and canola.
Warren Inwood, the boss of Bayer Crop Science in Australia and New Zealand said Australia needed the right policy support to stay one of the most food-secure nations in the world.
He said it was reassuring that 75 per cent of the Australian farmers surveyed wanted their children and grandchildren to continue in the industry despite the many challenges.
