No 408 - Saturday's Club Notes

The “Club Notes” for Saturday, the 11th of January, 2025.

By Dwain Duxson - An Ag Enthusiast

The Changing Face of Ag Advocacy

The NFF is starting to become a bit topsy-turvy. By that, I mean it now gets $8 million of its yearly income from the government and $2 million from memberships. In 2020, it was around 3.5 million from the government and 2 million in membership. So, our national representative body is becoming more and more reliant on government funding than ever before. They fund you, and then you are fighting them on the field; when does it come a time when they say, Buddy, we are funding you, you can't do or say that? It might not be the case for the NFF, but once you start to rely more on the government to fund you, you tend to get lazy, because, more than likely, those funds are going to be there every year. If it was run like a commercial business, they would have to find a way to increase their income or reduce the spend. Is this telling us we are losing the ability to generate revenue in this country? We can't just always rely on governments to cover any shortfall. Because the NFF is mostly funded this way, does it lose some of its relevance because it's not surviving on its own 2 feet from a commercial perspective? You might think I am pretty hard here, but from what I have seen with businesses and organisations, once you get addicted to that government money, it becomes like cocaine, very addictive. You can read a couple of snippets in the "Agribusiness" section below. Do you think our Ag Advocacy groups should be run commercially like the Farming businesses they represent? Reply to [email protected] or 0427 011 900

The very first The Farmers Club Podcast

We did our first ever The Farmers Club Podcast. It’s just a short 1 minute 43-second one as an introduction. See the Apple version here and check out the Spotify version here. It would be great if you could download the podcast in readiness for what’s to come.

Free subscription Draw winners - See below

What’s in the paid section today:

Story 2 - We are heading into a new phone coverage dawn. But the old Telstra will still be there……

Story 3 - We talk about costs a bit, and we think we might know what might be the main cause of why they are rising…….

Number of articles and images - 61 quick reading snippets of valuable Farming news and info. We have 18 funnies to get your Saturday morning off to a flyer and also 7 words of “Just Saying” wisdom.

Number of Farmer replies - 6 in total. All good ones too.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.