23/02/2012Politicians must remember farmers are bread and butter of Queensland
WITH the state election now less than five weeks away we can look forward to most politicians cranking the hype up yet another notch.
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16/02/2012Levy vote important for a dairying future
OVER the past week the QDO CEO, Adrian Peake, Vice President, Ross McInnes, and I escorted two Dairy Australia representatives on a tour of central and southern Queensland to discuss the options for the Dairy Poll and to provide farmers with the latest information on work being done, supported by, or led by Dairy Australia on their behalf.
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09/02/2012Gillard Government fails dairy farming families
I WAS shocked by the contents of the sly release late last Friday afternoon of the Gillard government’s response to the two Senate Inquiries into the dairy industry and the sale of milk in Australia.
The dairy industry has spent two years providing clear and irrefutable evidence to these inquiries. While some Senators did their best to suppress the farmers’ arguments and peddle a scorched earth economic argument, the Inquiries still had many findings that could be of use in reaching some much-needed solutions to this domestic milk value chain crisis
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26/01/2012Time to award the ‘worthy’ recipients
ON the eve of Australia Day 2012, and especially in the year of the Farmer, I have been reflecting on the values we as a nation hold dear when we hand out the Australia Day honours.
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19/01/2012Food the ‘new oil’ for a hungry world
OVER the weekend I heard on ABC radio a woman who had accompanied her partner to Moscow, Russia, to work there in agribusiness. She noted Russia’s keenness to develop agriculture and commented that food is the new oil.
This is obviously not the way governments in Australia see agriculture, based on their policies on a number of issues.
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12/01/2012One year anniversary nothing to celebrate for dairy industry
WHILE Queenslanders remember the devastating impacts of natural disasters of last summer, the dairy industry has the dread of remembering the impacts of man made disasters which hit the industry on Australia Day 2011.
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05/01/2012Decide Very Carefuly this Election Year
HAPPY New Year and welcome to 2012, a year that could be many things, but one thing we know is that here in Queensland, 2012 will be an election year.
During the lead up to and over the Christmas New Year break I talked to a number of people in different places who were pondering a couple of basic political questions.
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22/12/2011Year of challenges and lessons for the future
WITH Christmas now only a few days away and 2011 drawing to a close, the Queensland dairy industry, like the ancient Roman God Janus, is looking both forward to the future challenges and back at what trials we have been through in the last year.
Both directions look more than a little scary.
The past twelve months has been filled with disasters both natural and man-made, which has made the business of dairy farming much more difficult than it needed to be.
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15/12/2011Draft Basin Plan a risk for Qld dairy industry
DAIRY farmers have had a few weeks to digest the draft Basin Plan for water use in the Murray-Darling, and the initial verdict is that it will have a very negative impact on the industry across four States.
Most notably, the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) has recognised that the dairy industry in northern Victoria will be among the hardest hit, with production dropping to drought-like levels of 1.6 billion litres, if the sustainable diversion limits being proposed are enacted .
However, the impact in Queensland is substantial as well. About 30 percent of Queensland dairy farms operate in the Condamine and Border Rivers catchments, and that percentage is likely to increase given the trend of the industry consolidating in this part of the State.
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08/12/2011Taking farmers for granted could come back to bite
WHILE various governments in Australia continue to indulge in their love affair with the mining industry, the words “food security” keep bobbing up to put a dampener on the party. Food security is the responsibility of a nation that lies beyond the mining party hangover.
As reported in the press last week, peanut growers in this State are looking at very high prices for the crop being planted, as peanuts are in short supply on the world market, while Australia will produce only a small percentage of its expected domestic demand.
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