The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Saturday the 13th of January 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

If you can, please get your family, friends and colleagues to sign up. See the website link here.

Out with the new and in with the old

One of our readers sent this in. But first, take a look at the first image below. Geoff is a Farmer in Tassie and takes up the story here: Our 10 Tractors and a working collection, they all have to pull their weight so to speak. Our newest Tractor is 1993, and the oldest regularly used is 1976, which was the first new John Deere my Dad bought new and with an air-conditioned cab! Many in our fleet Dad bought new for his Agricultural contracting business in the 1970s-80s, and they have done between 15,000 - 30,000 hours of work. (PS, I asked Geoff to total all the hours). These tractors do all our work every year. They are pre-electronic and pre-emission, and I grew up around them and understand them well. We have had newer Tractors but have settled on our old, reliable and serviceable Machines of yesteryear when they were built to last a lifetime, not your repayment schedule. Reply to [email protected]

This will be big for Ag

See the story from our Farm Tender Daily here.

Human behavior

They say we all should get better educated on human behaviour. I've heard it's not the dynamics that force the markets to go up and down; it's the human behaviour, the confidence or lack of confidence, the perceptions, etc. It's what we all think collectively that leads these markets to do what they do. Take last year's Sheep and Cattle price collapse. We blame in part the El Nino call from the BOM for the price drop, but because we all chose to listen and then react all at once, it forced the market into free fall. It wasn't the only problem, but it contributed. Would that happen if we all didn't hear those sorts of noises? I don't know because I really haven't sat down and thought about it deeply. Perhaps we can learn more and get better at what we do by researching human behaviour. I will try and dig up some examples. 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:

• "What would happen to world production if Farmers in those countries actually had to try and make money and become efficient. They Farm in better soil and climatically better conditions, so would produce more Grain, produce Meat ect.  Thus pushing the price farm commodity’s down. - In regards to what subsidies do I the US.

• "Dealer who also sold Chinese Tractors said to me, you seem like nice people, I wouldn’t sell you one of those”.- In regards to our Chinese Tractor story.

• “The US Farmers have no debt because of the Federal Crop program. This program caters for 'let's throw out a few seeds and hope it rains' farming practices”.- In reply to our story about subsidies.

• “After reading the 60 years history book released last year at the Field Days it was very interesting to discover it started as a quickly put together Field Day on Header settings for the local Farmers. - In regards to our Notes about events in towns.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

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