The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2014 to be the International Year of Family Farming.
The intention is to stimulate policies that promote the sustainable development of agricultural systems that are based on farmer families, communal units, indigenous groups, cooperatives and fishing families.
The end game, of course, is to continue to fight hunger and poverty in the world within a production framework that respects the environment and biodiversity (the modern term for life in all its forms).
Across the country, 120,000 farmers manage 59 per cent of Australia’s land. From that, they generate $38 billion in export income and they produce 93 per cent of our daily domestic food supply. It is the best and healthiest food that money can buy and we grow it, we produce it.
Family farming is the heart and soul of Tasmanian agriculture. We have about 3600 farms contributing more than $1.5 billion a year directly to gross state product – $5 billion if you consider the economic multipliers that it generates.In common with the rest of the nation, Tasmanian farms are 99 per cent owned and run by families.
The family-owned and operated farm is an iconic part of the Tasmanian farming landscape, and long may this remain so in future,
The inter-generational nature of farming businesses here is our greatest strength. The strong history and culture of farming families breed pride, loyalty and a sense of confidence in the future. All members of the family have a stake in that future. Quite a few of our farms have been held in the same families for many generations (in some cases, as many as seven). Not only that, lots of our farms have two and even three generations of the same family working on the farm.
The term corporate farming is often used as a derogatory term to infer a heartless, industrialised system of agriculture, which is contrasted with the more warmly perceived and traditional concept of family farming. Even though the major retailers and food producers are playing up their connection with the average farmer, a bloke on a tractor with his hat on, that’s not the reality.
Research has shown that the 80/20 rule applies as much in farming as it does in everything else. Twenty per cent of Australia’s farmers produce 72% of the nation’s farm output – and most of these farms are family owned.
However, most consumers have a romantic idea of what is meant by the term ‘family farm’.
The general perception is of a small lifestyle-focussed operation with the farmer and his family members living on the farm and providing the labour needed to harvest crops and tend livestock.
This doesn’t mean that they are run by mum and dad and a bunch of kids sitting around the kitchen table. Modern farms are multi-million dollar businesses and, in such tough market conditions, only the efficient survive. Like most businesses, family farm businesses increasingly need to develop the scale and professionalism that is only possible within a well-capitalised structure.
Successful family farms engage expert advisors and often have corporate-type shareholding arrangements to ensure effective decision making and business planning. And many rely on outside funding and investment to achieve these outcomes.
A well-run family farm can out-perform a corporate farming business because it doesn’t have many of the administrative and overhead costs. Most importantly, the owners have a clear stake in the outcomes of the business decisions they make – it is their money they are investing.
Australian farmers are facing a market environment in which consumers increasingly dictate what is good or bad farming practice, irrespective of the science. More importantly, these expectations bear no relationship to whether the average consumer is prepared to pay the costs of production that result from particular production systems.
Farm businesses that can best respond to these pressures will succeed, irrespective of their business structure.
So, as we celebrate the International Year of the Family Farmer in 2014, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on the enormous and often unheralded contribution that farming families make to this state – and to this nation.
I’d also like you to consider this quote from Brenda Schoepp, a well-known Canadian agricultural researcher: “My grandfather used to say that once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman and a preacher, but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer.”
Jan Davis’ Mercury column today
