It has taken a while, at least five years, for Tasmania’s non-farming sector to appreciate the significance of the rural industries to the state economy and for the education sector to apprehend fully the career opportunities within those industries for young people facing the dilemma of having to leave the state to get a job.
There was a combination of factors that led to the understated nature of farming. One of them was our seeming obsession with the forestry wars. They dominated political life; they breathed life into the conservation movement and its political arm; they dominated the media because the stories were easy to write, claim and counter-claim.
The trouble was that it so dominated public debate in Tasmania that people here and in mainland states were given a false impression of the underlying strength of the state economy. They completely lost sight of the solid contribution that farmers were continuing to make to our balance of trade and to employment in regional centres, particularly in the north.
The Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association embarked on a deliberate program to lift the profile of farmers and farming. While we wanted to show our contribution to economic life here, there was also a degree of self-interest. As an advocacy body, we have to represent the interests of our members and we have to have the undivided attention of governments. We do not see handouts from them; we seek political consideration; we seek the removal of impediments to our productivity, growth and investment potential.
Agfest is a strong marketing tool for farmers. It lifts the veil on what we are doing in the paddocks beyond the highways and over the horizon; it shows the scale of the infrastructure that we must use to produce food and fibre profitably in markets where we have to be globally competitive. Agfest is the forum for non-farmers to walk up to their country kin and ask questions.
This week also saw the Our Place Our Future forum in Launceston where practitioners and academics proffered their view of the vision ahead. It led to some positive media for farming.
“There is a palpable sense of confidence sweeping the sector and there has been for the past few years,” declared the Mercury in its leader on Wednesday.
So we have emerged from an era in which we were, at best, quiet achievers and, at worst, overlooked as the noisier cogs in the economic engine attracted attention. The university is among our strongest supporters and we theirs.
This is an exercise on confidence building. From our point of view, farmers have to continue to put runs on the board, to maximise their opportunities because, as we have seen this week through the Four Corners revelations about labour hire firms interstate, there is always a negative story just around the corner that tests our credibility with the wider population.
I would like to think that we have reached the position where most Tasmanians, hopefully the vast majority, believe they can place their trust in their local farmers.
TFGA president Wayne Johnston
