![Kiwi sheep and beef farmer Jane Smith has some big messages for Aussie farmers about advocacy. Kiwi sheep and beef farmer Jane Smith has some big messages for Aussie farmers about advocacy.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38U3JBx5nNussShT8aZyYjc/fa245d28-6c3c-4bae-9d1b-8029c510fef3.jpg/r0_14_450_404_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The first thing Australian farmers say after meeting Jane Smith is that Australian agriculture needs a Jane Smith.
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The same can't be said for farmer lobby group bosses, politicians, scientists, academics and big corporations - all of whom she frequently offends.
A beef and sheep producer from North Otago in New Zealand who does her lobbying work at night, she has no university degrees, no executive positions on boards, no personal assistant or media advisor and never gets paid to say anything.
Perhaps that is precisely why what she says seems to resonate with producers.
She says she could write a book on the treasonous behavior that many farming sector leaders have carried out behind-the-scenes in recent times.
Too many are there just to build their own resume.
She says academics also have to be kept on a short leash.
She says many banks, meat processors and dairy companies take as their default the apologist position, repeating the line that this is what global consumers want.
She described her country's previous agricultural minister as about as useful as a wormy wether in the ram paddock.
And she says Australian farmers have a tsunami of regulation heading their way at a cracking pace and had better listen up lest they make the same mistakes their NZ counterparts have and "end up on their knees, begging for forgiveness for daring to produce food for the world".
Jane Smith, whose family runs Perendale sheep and Angus cattle at Newhaven Farms along the Kakanui Range, is a unique phenomenon in the farm lobby space - a lone, straight shooter who many farmers would be happy to elect Prime Minister.
The Smiths own Fossil Creek Angus stud and Newhaven Perendale Sheep stud.
![NZ farmer Jane Smith at the Zanda McDonald Impact Summit in Queenstown. Picture Shan Goodwin. NZ farmer Jane Smith at the Zanda McDonald Impact Summit in Queenstown. Picture Shan Goodwin.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38U3JBx5nNussShT8aZyYjc/ebe51cc5-8a66-47bb-b4f4-9f5c851d4926.JPG/r0_307_6000_3694_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Speaking at the 2024 Zanda McDonald Impact Summit in Queenstown, she said ANZAC farmers have had to apologise for being damn good at leading the way in extensive pastoral farming.
"We have been asked to carry on our non-subsidised sustainable farming, whilst jumping through burning hoops of regulation, continuing to smile and wave while underpinning the economy," she said.
"It's akin to asking the All Blacks or the Australian cricket team to play with one hand tied behind their back as their punishment for innovation and winning ways."
Thrown under the bus
A major downfall of agriculture advocacy had been the sector leaders who "run with the hares and hunt with the hounds, dancing between the lines when it suits them", Mrs Smith said.
Over the past four years, she has carried out 22 information act requests on interactions and decisions made between NZ government ministries and lobby groups.
"It has been both fascinating and frightening to see how many times and on what scale farmers have been thrown under the bus simply as a political pawn or sacrificial lamb in a bigger game," she said.
"No more so than the ruminant livestock methane emissions tax debacle which has been a disgraceful example of what not to do."
Environmentalist
Jane Smith introduces herself as a farmer and an environmentalist.
She learnt that lesson after sending an opinion piece to a big mainstream NZ newspaper titled 'Urban NZ: You have been lied to'.
"It outlined facts around pastoral red meat production, arguing that farmers were not the environmental terrorists that we were being made out to be but were in fact a key element in the solution to the problems created by population growth, urban housing sprawl and water and land resource allocation," she said.
The paper refused to print a column 'promoting farming from a farmer.'
So she made one small change, adding the word environmentalist to her description.
The column was printed and three months later heralded as the most read online column for the publication that year.
Advice for Australia
Among Jane Smith's tips for Aussie farm advocacy is the idea that sector spokespeople are there for the greater good, not to build their own CV.
"If it appears at any time that your leaders have undergone an advocacy lobotomy, get them out of there as soon as you can. They will do more damage by being in the tent as an appeaser than not being there at all," she said.
An advocacy structure must include someone on the left, someone in the centre and then at least two or three wingers out to the far right, she believes.
"Quite a strange-sounding front row set up I acknowledge but if we had understood this from the start in NZ, then our agriculture spokespeople would have taken a stance that more accurately reflected what grassroots farmers wanted," she said.
The largest organisations, like the National Farmers' Federation and Federated Farmers, tend to hover in the safe centre, she said.
"I have no doubt that they want to do the right thing by farmers but tend to play it on safe ground and their point of view is often very sanitised by the time it goes through three or four layers within their organisation."
Those on the far right, who are willing to hold the line and stand their ground even if it means they never get invited to another Canberra cocktail party or Wellington wine junket, will help those centre righters to their job properly just by taking a stronger stance than them, Mrs Smith said.
"This is the line that represents the right-to-farm, and the right to run our communities and continue to underpin the economy," she said.
"Both the economy and the environment actually function better with the least amount of government interference possible.
"Governments should be chasing meth dealers not methane, they should be focusing on mandatory criminal sentences not mandatory freshwater farm plans and they should be encouraging farmers to remain guardians of unique areas on their land, not forcing ever-changing restrictions on them."
Finally, ask why instead of just saying no.
"Some of these ideas that our governments come up with have the shelf life of a banana yet the cost of a diamond and we may be stuck with them forever," Mrs Smith said.
"Asking the why is the best way to flush out deadend regulations."