The majority of hardships suffered by farmers during a torrid COVID-19 pandemic for agriculture were caused by political decision-makers who did not understand the industry or take the time to do so.
In a submission to the federal government's response to the national emergency, National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said agriculture proved vital to Australia's ability to withstand the pandemic despite battling against "unnecessary and ill-formed" government measures.
"Whilst much of the country was in lockdown, agriculture, to the best of its ability, continued to provide for the nation," he said.
Several submissions to the inquiry, published last week, called for measures to be put into place before the next pandemic to stop the brakes being applied to the movement of food and other essentials, including maintaining domestic and international cross-border road and rail freight and shipping supply chains.
Mr Mahar wrote that domestic and international border closures, and the Federal Government's decision to limit interstate and overseas travel, posed significant difficulties to the agricultural sector at the time.
He said the limitations heavily impacted the movement of equipment, stock and workers, with more than half of the overseas workers cleared to work on Australian farms barred from entering the country due to the differing quarantine rules in each state.
"The choice to limit free movement over domestic borders also caused many agricultural services staff to refuse harvesting contracts due to the necessity to travel interstate," he said.
These two factors contributed to a severe shortage in agricultural workers and, according to Mr Mahar, led to "significant loss" in the industry.
"In general, the lack of understanding of decision makers in Canberra appeared to have around the agricultural industry led to the greatest amount of difficulty," he said.
"Agriculture, being an outdoors and low risk industry, was subject to restrictions that the NFF and its members do not believe were necessary, particularly the closure of borders."
However, the NFF welcomed the restart of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme as an alternative labour source during the pandemic.
However, while the number of PALM workers working on horticulture farms doubled from 7140 pre-pandemic to 14,900 at its height and compensated somewhat for the lack of Working Holiday Maker visa holders entering Australia Mr Mahar said it was not the panacea some may have taken it to be.
"While there may have been a few PALM workers outside horticulture, by-and-large the other commodities - such as grains, wool production, cotton, etc - were left struggling to find workers," he wrote.
"It should also be observed that government could have done more to support uptake of the scheme. We were especially disappointed at some of the finger pointing between state and federal governments.
"To industry, it appeared that federalism was used as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility, properly governing, and making decisions."
The purpose of the inquiry is to identify lessons learned to improve Australia's preparedness for future pandemics.
Mr Mahar said better consultation and understanding with and of the agricultural industry would have assisted the Government in making more reasoned decisions in relation to COVID- 19 restrictions.
Meanwhile, Woolworths told the inquiry that several issues were caused by variations in test, trace, isolate and quarantine requirements and definitions of freight protocols between jurisdictions.
"The delay from some jurisdictions to adopt practices that were tried, tested and proven in other jurisdictions led to a build up of issues that impacted the recovery of our supply chain, as COVID-19 moved across borders," it said.
The supermarket giant also said that a surge in demand for food and essentials during the early days of the pandemic, which led to product shortages on its shelves, "reflected a population of 50 million."
"COVID-19 was an unprecedented and challenging time," it said.
"We accepted - very early on - that it was not going to be business as usual and due to our footprint, our involvement in the national emergency response would be critical."
