The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Tuesday, the 12th of March, 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

 Trained up

There is always a wide range of skills to be lean’t in the Farming game. Most of the skills we learn have to be taught in a physical sense. By that, I mean someone has to show you how to do it, and then you learn by doing it yourself. Crutching a Sheep, operating a Tractor, etc etc. And everyone has a slightly different way of doing the same thing. I was interviewing Hayley Grosser for FarmTender2024 and she is a trained Accountant. Her talk was focused on how Farmers have a reltionship with money and how it’s a mindset thing. To get a better understanding of what we mean about having a different mindset with money, take a read of this article here. When Hayley did all the training to be an accountant, none of this mindset thing even spoken about. And it’s not as if Hayley was trained wrong; the accountancy course was just that, but Hayley had to go and learn these extra things from another source, add them to her accountancy skills and combine them all together to come up with a way that works for her. What sort of things have you been trained up to do? Reply to [email protected]

The Ag Retailer relationship

We had an interesting chat with Rob Dawes at FarmTender2024, and he said he encourages his clients to only deal with one of two, at the most three Ag Retailers, for their Farm inputs. Rob runs a unique business whereby he gives advice around Farm inputs, but he also analyses each invoice to make sure the Farmer is getting the right deal from their Ag Retailers. Most of his clients are towards the larger end, and they are spending big dollars on input, so by having Rob and his team scrutinise the spending, the savings can be material. It’s a unique business he has there. Farmers are pretty good at supporting local when it comes to buying stuff for the Farm. Some are happy to use one Reatailer, but others are after a bit more price pressure for the things they buy and will shop around a bit more. How many Ag Retailers do you deal with? Reply to [email protected]

What has been your favourite ever Tractor? 

I wrote once where my Grandfather, Errol Duxson, had a fleet of Chamberlain Super 70 series Tractors. 13, in fact. You can read the story here. They were the ones where you entered the Cab from the rear and have the hand clutch. I remember them but was to young to drive them. My Grandfather died, and my old man had a reduction sale at the Farm and sold them all off in exchange for a Massey Ferguson 1505 Tractor. It was next level and ended up being my favourite ever Tractor, mainly becuase I spent so many hours on that thing I knew it back to front. We sold it years ago, and I reckon I saw it the other day parked up on a Farm near Shepparton. We have all had our favourite Tractor over our time in Farming. What has been yours? Reply to [email protected]

Your replies

Below are snippets from some of the replies you sent in. All quotes will remain nameless. See a few current ones below:

• “I will never fly on virgin while this is their policy. Ridiculous”. In reply to our Note about Virgin letting Dogs on flights.

• “If you were to look further into NSW, there have been about four or five of these corporate buy-outs of private companies over the past couple of years, i.e. Emmes Mooney in the Orange/Bathurst area, SRL&P Finley, Arentz and Baker Deniliquin, to name of few to underline Elders aggressiveness in this area. I call it the "mid-season draft" or the agency merry-go-round...but remember, old agents never retire (entirely); their commission is too good”. - In reply to our Note about Agency buyouts.

• “Wishing Dwain a delayed happy birthday this weekend. Enjoy a Coopers or two. I'm a Cooper's Green (pale ale) stalwart, too”. - A Farmer who’s a Cooper Pale Ale drinker too.

• “What if a blue broke out? How would they handle it?” - In regard to Dogs on flights.

• “Like the Machinery Dealers buy-out of private/family Agency operations, this I see as the end result of the 1980's consolidation of Elders, DSM, Australian Estates, AML&F and later VPC companies when a number of disgruntled staff agents set up their own businesses with the backing of loyal clientele. These business owners, after 30, 40 and 50 years, are now cash out and collecting their superannuation. And it could be said Elders are only buying back what was originally theirs”. - In reply to our Agrncy buyout Note.

• “Trust me, there will be more of these buy-outs to come because a lot of the staff within these private operations don't have the financial backing to take on the risk at today's commodity values”. - Another one on Agency buyouts.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

Random and associated Ag articles and images.