The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Friday, the 23rd of February, 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

7 days to go - nearly 180 tickets sold so far

Our FarmTender2024 - Entrepreneurs in Farming event is not far away. Click here for more info. See the media release here. Read some of the questions we are going to ask Danny Thomas, Rob Dawes, Claire Booth, Andrew Weidemann, David Jochinke and John Gladigau.

Wool is testing the true believers.

One WA Wool Grower said in an article below, “I don’t think many Wool Growers know how bad the market is at the moment. We sold 18.5 micron Wool last week with all the bells and whistles and got 1100 cent/kg”. He went on to say that the current climate “was even testing the true believers”. Wool, as an industry, is at an interesting stage. You have Elders, who have invested millions in 2 new automated storage and testing centres in Perth and Melbourne. You have Fox and Lillie opening new stores at Tamworth, Wagga Wagga, Crookwell and Corowa just recently. These two organisations are investing in the industry, which is a good sign. Where do you thing the Wool industry is at? Reply to [email protected]

How Supermarkets operate

A Pig Farmer from Tassie reached out to explain how the Supermarkets treated him. Here is his story. “We had a very good relationship with Woolworths just as Morrisons at Cressy do with Coles. We supplied them with pork every week for 25 years. Occasionally, we’d get a price rise, but never once did we get a price decrease. There were times about every 10 years (1998, 2008, 2018/2019) when the industry was badly slumped, and they could have purchased for half the price they were paying us, but they stuck to it. When they introduced QA auditing, we complied; when they demanded the use of immuno-castration, we complied. We delivered every Monday morning, and they were paid for by Friday. Seem like a good story? In January 2020, they announced, “We’ve made the decision to have no suppliers in Tasmania. We’ll bring all our pork in boxes from the mainland” (there were 4 Tas suppliers at that stage). They were 60% of our business, and it vaporised without so much as a box of chocolates. Coles had done the same several years sooner (Not to us but to Tas). However, we’re still here, diversified and growing”. He went on to say that they never did contracts, and you can see why. Best buddy one day, gone the next. Reply to [email protected]

Scared to look

Internet banking is one of the best things ever invented. It’s made our lives better because we can make the money-go-round run faster. You can also check balances at the drop of a hat. I probably look at the bank balance once every couple of days, and when I do, I’m always playing a little game of guessing the balance. We run a business where we have multiple accounts and put money aside on a weekly basis for things like tax, super, commissions, etc. That way, we have a main bank account with a balance that resembles how much cash we have available. In other words, we know what cash position we are in at any point in time. There have also been times when you get a little panicky when opening the internet banking, more so when I was on the Farm, and we had an overdraft. There were times when we were swinging close to the breeze and had to apply to increase it a bit to get through. That’s not unusual on a Farm. Have you had times when you were scared to look at the bank balance? 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:

• “Some common sense to debunk the alarmists. In the last 100 years, c02 has gone from .03 to .04% of our atmosphere. That’s a 1 molecule of c02 increase per 10,000 molecules. And only 5% of that increase is man-made. And according to the experts, we should already be dead” - A Farmer who is what we call a Climate Change sceptic.

• “You might need to start organising farm candidates for the next federal election at your conference”. - A Farmer who wants more Ag representation in parliament. 

• “We are a small cattle property in a sea of Sheep places. I know a couple of people who hire out their old Shearing Sheds for country weddings. These are late 1800 units, so buckets of character. Plus, that old Shearing Shed smell. Smart, I thought”. - A Cattle Farmer talking about a trend we have noticed of having weddings in old Shearing Sheds.

• “Farmers are too busy to devote their time to get involved in agri politics, community, CFA etc. When my grandfather was around, he had time to be a councillor, a board member of the CFA, the Graziers Association etc. This was simply because he was able to afford to employ farm workers”. - In reply to our note about getting an Ag representative in parliament.

• “The school savings bank may have got some customers, but they had a lot of work running accounts with shillings and pence being deposited. The big plus was that kids got to understand saving money and learnt to save some”. - This is education that you use in the real world. Need more of this.

• “One thing the supermarkets wouldn’t do was have a written contract. We tried this a couple of times as the bank would have been happier, but NO. They’ve got no heart, they’re there to use us while we’re useful to them only”. - An edition to the story above on supermarkets.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

Random and associated Ag articles and images.