The Farmers Club

The “Club Notes” for Friday, the 28th of June, 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

A massive watch and see

You would all have different amounts of time left in your Farming life. You know, one of the scary things you can here is that you only get, say, 40 Crops, Calvings or Lambings in your Farming life and probably less with you in charge. Anyway, that's a story for another day. We try and steer away from predictions, but life's too boring if you can't have a crack at guessing the outcomes of things. We'll I am saying that for the rest of your Farming life, keep an eye on the growth of India as a great trading partner for Australia. See my old mate Kevin Van Trump's report below in the "Places" section, and he is talking about it from a US perspective; just replace the US with Australia, and the opportunities will be endless. The reason I say they are a massive watch and see is that you have to see the place to believe it. You can't go anywhere without seeing people at every angle of your peripheral vision. They fill your eyes constantly; it's quite a strange experience. City or country areas, it doesn't matter. I can work in the back paddock of our family Farm at Marnoo and not see a person all day; it's different there. And like we see here in Australia, Indians want to lift their standard of living. That's a key ingredient and why we should be interested as an exporting nation. A bit like what China has been over the last 2030 years. Have you been to India?  Reply to [email protected]

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Cashflow and the Hay Job - Part 2

By Kelsey Miller. As I mentioned last time, the hay market is a very interesting one. The nature of the market creates a big imbalance between availability of cash and the need for hay supplies. For the hay supplier, as the season progresses and demand increases, so does the number of calls you make to collect on overdue invoices. This leads to those tough conversations along the lines of “sorry, we’ll need cash upfront for the next load”. In my experience, what tends to happen as late payments start to mount is trading businesses become less aggressive at making sales. This occurs as traders become reluctant to provide more credit or they switch to cash terms on the next load. Whilst this is practical and can be the best way to manage risk, it opens the door for the customer to go elsewhere, potentially losing a sale and providing an opportunity to lose a long-term customer to a competitor……. Read more here.

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