Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) has welcomed Agriculture Minister Murray Watt's recent comments acknowledging industry reform is an issue for dairy farmers, who have a right to choose how they are represented and how they resource their representative bodies.
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The comments were delivered in the minister's opening speech at the recent Dairy Symposium, which brought together dairy farmers and industry representatives from across the country.
"I acknowledge that an issue front of mind for many farmers is your industry's representative structure," Mr Watt said.
"As proud and productive producers, you know your industry best.
"As the experts, I strongly believe you are best placed to decide the appropriate way your voices should be represented.
"How you resource and structure your representative bodies is a matter for you, the producers - the people out on the farm day in, day out doing the hard yards.
"Your decisions about how you as farmers choose to be represented and how you choose to raise funds to ensure you have a sustainable body should be independent of government."
Make no mistake, this is very significant news, and ADF welcomes the recognition and acknowledgement by the minister of the concerns of dairy farmers, their need for a strong and united voice, and their right to choose how this is structured and funded.
Dairy farmer representatives from across Australia's six dairy producing states, as well as a cross-section of large corporate and family farms, met prior to the symposium and unanimously endorsed and supported the need for ADF as a peak dairy farmer representative body and the need to pursue a sustainable funding model.
The group unanimously supported ADF pursuing a consultation process to ultimately develop proposals and test with dairy farmers across the country.
ADF's challenge now is to develop the consultation process with all dairy farmers.
We'll seek to hear what functions of an industry representative body that farmers feel are important, how they want to be represented, and how to fund this, including the use of their levy funds.
The aim is to ensure we have a sustainable representative body into the future, because the current system is not sustainable.
For the Australian Dairy Plan in 2019/20, farmers called for reform to industry structures such as ADF to create a cohesive dairy industry and strengthen its influence with key stakeholders.
Most people think of ADF as dairy farmers' national policy and advocacy organisation, yet it also performs 'industry good' functions in biosecurity, food safety, and research and development.
It delivers these services on behalf of all dairy farmers - not only ADF members.
ADF is the dairy industry member of Animal Health Australia (AHA), and in the event of an Emergency Animal Disease Incursion, such as Lumpy Skin Disease or Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), it represents dairy farmers on the management group charged with the making decisions about how industry and governments manage an Australia-wide response.
It also has formal roles with other bodies such as Dairy Australia and SAFEMEAT.
Currently, ADF members foot the bill for the delivery of industry good services.
Considering the importance of these services to all farmers and the industry generally, it's important this responsibility is shared equitably.
As I said at the symposium, farmers don't want to beg for that equity. Nor do they want to stand on a soap box.
They simply want to know that when their industry faces challenges, someone will go in to bat for them.
At the same time, I'm conscious that the dairy industry has had more than its fair share of reviews, surveys and workshops.
But let's remember structural reform was the most important priority for industry bodies to come out of the Dairy Plan.
It has not yet been implemented.
It's essential we now move forward to deliver that priority and sustain these essential services.
As you can appreciate, it's early days for this process, but I look forward to engaging with my fellow dairy farmers and to having more to say on this process soon.
